It not being seriously usable.
I’ve been up all night and need to sleep. I’ll go into detail about this later.
With all due respect, it’s not just what I make it to be (a sim or a game).
For simmers (enthusiasts, hobbyists), the simulator is the platform on which the whole experience builds upon. It is the core part of the hobby.
The simmer usually has some sort of a home cockpit with multiple peripherals, multiple monitors or projectors, and various other software products that interface with the simulator.
The simulator platform has to be stable, reliable and correct in it’s basic functionality, so add on developers will invest into this platform to develop high quality and high development cost software.
To simmers, it’s a hobby into which they sink a lot time and money to create a realistic, immersive experience.
The simmer is not just after correct flight dynamics and correctly modelled avionics, it’s much more than that.
I can speak for myself. I don’t find it fun or immersive to fly on a single screen with a simple joystick over some beautiful landscapes.
MSFS used to sport this slogan, “as real as it gets” (up until FSX).
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Logically, if there has to be prioritisation then the casual flyers would be prioritised because there are simply more of them (it makes financial sense). I would hope, however, that the sim will develop with all interests being supported.
And I would guess that people like you are the main target audience.
Chapeau to MS as they pulled it off this time, a flying game for the masses.
Sadly, this leaves us, the enthusiasts, the hobbyists, in the dust. But I understand, we the simmers, make up a very small percentage of the total customer base and would not create enough revenue to pay for auch a large endeavour.
I am glad that MS finally was able to achieve what they attempted many times. Well done, MS and Asobo. I am glad that many people will be able to enjoy this game for what it is.
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While that is all true, please remember that FSX is from 2006 (Windows XP). I certainly loved it. At that time, I was already a licensed commercial pilot and flight instructor. I even used FSX in flight instruction. Never had an issue with blue screens though.
Thunderstorm at 8 AM woke me up.
Anyway I really hope I’m not coming across as arrogant when trying to make points nor is my intention to flaunt. I just have so much time and money invested into this hobby like many others but fail to understand why some dislike it with a passion. Could it be that I stick to flying light general aviation aircraft under VFR (most of the time) and on VATSIM? I try to read and reread what people say but I’m just not getting it.
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This hasn’t been “culture”, it’s just a reality of sim development. In the grand scheme of things it is simply more efficient and all around better for everyone if the sim developer focuses on expanding the platform and providing better and more competent tools, and the third party addon developers focus on using those tools to create better and more realistic addons. The time a sim developer would spend in creating an addon could be spent somewhere else that would enable a dozen other addons.
(And I know that a 3D modeller can’t, generally, work on core engine code, but how about this: rather than hiring 10 people to work on 3D models and textures, why not hire 10 people to work on the core engine?)
Yea well, you hire the company who’s last success was the MASTERPIECE called “A Plague Tale”…
Let’s hope the likes of A2A (I think that’s their name) will provide us with high quality Cessna add-ons soon. This would be really important to the sim, I think. I fly Pipers in real life: Warrior and Archer. Just Flight makes pretty good add-ons for these for MSFS 2020. They are not perfect, I’ll gladly discuss with you what I think the shortcomings are if interested, Have you checked out Just Flight? But I don’t think they make Cessnas…
There has been a discussion lately about this very subject in a topic for the next Q&A. Here are some possible explanations.
PS: I’m copying the full posts below for the sake of having it all in one place:
[quote="CptLucky8, post:49, topic:439972]
This doesn’t sound the same as what they sold us back then.
Go to 15:32 if the link didn’t automatically take you there:
“We got to get this right with you guys first, and by you guys I mean the people that really have been propping up this thing for the past 35 years”
Developers Q&A • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
In retrospect “get this right with you guys first” can have a different meaning: “When enough licenses are sold to simmers in order to sustain financing the additional year of development needed for Xbox, then Market Place sales will be 20x more on Xbox than PC and we’re good for 10 years.”
Nothing really wrong with this, but to stay on the topic, and on focus, this raises the question of what direction the game will take if 20x more Xbox users concerns are different than 20x less PC users. I’m not saying here something about gamers vs simmers, but to illustrate:
- How many Xbox users are concerned with multi-screen so that it finally gets supported?
- How many Xbox users are caring about slandering a “vendor propping this things for the past 20 years” ?
- How many Xbox users are caring about more serious VR support?
Nothing wrong with the Xbox in itself, but if this is so huge a success, and given the limited resources available, the game can only be focusing for the largest population using the game, an in this case, it is not a question of gamers and simmers (although it could), but I have a strong feeling from the initial Xbox feedback it will be a question of how you use the game and for what reasons. This can be diverging greatly from the traditional “simmers” usage scope (offering in-game purpose in the form of missions which is good in my opinion, instead of letting people learning on their own). But on the other hand, for the last 20 years I’ve been contributing to building this industry, the goal year after year was making the simulation closer to reality from an operational standpoint, not just a visual standpoint. With FS2020 I can’t help seeing, just taking the avionics as an example, a decline in fidelity to the point what you do on the game is no longer equivalent to what you’d do IRL sometimes.
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PS: In case it is misinterpreted, the above is only constructive criticism. I do like the game for what it’s worth, and I do entertain myself with it in VR from time to time. However this doesn’t mean one can’t see its faults and communicate about those either, unless believing those will automagically resolve by themselves.
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Their Comanche is coming first. I think the Aerostar was going to be their first product for MSFS but sadly their R&D aircraft suffered a gear up landing,
@CptLucky8 Thanks much, I will give this a good look over. 
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You obviously have not used the new NXi, which is under active development, and which will become the new default GA avionics package. It already has capabilities not found in even the most advanced 3PD avionics in other “real” simulators, and it is still in alpha.
Hard but true. “Show me the money”. If this game was produced by Boeing, I would expect … crashes. (For those who don’t get it: it’s sarcasm relating to Boeing’s company culture of greed over everything.)
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Who cares if it’s a game or simulator. Fix the ■■■■ bugs!
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You are free to make your own simulator, but don’t complain if we laugh at the result.
And that also means a simulator with 15 years of development. MSFS is just 1 year old and has progressed by leaps and bounds, to the point that nothing else touches it. VR is not ready ? So what ? It will eventually come. Patience is the mother of all virtues.
Look at the rating this game has in the store, compare to other games.
The ratings are mostly due to the difficult beginnings.
In the world of MSFS, at least in one respect, Gamers and Simmers are Equal.
We BOTH get CTDs
and we should both AGREE that after 1 year after the release, this should NOT be something we should both be sharing with each other .
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Are you really thinking MSFS code has been built from scratch ?
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I treat it as a flight simulator that still needs work but getting better over time. I hope to see more fixes in the future. I wish they could fix small things and release more often instead of a long list of things every couple of months
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MSFS code at this point is easily 90% new.
There is almost nothing that they kept from FSX.
Source: more than 20 years of software development.
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