My heart goes out to those who felt frustrated with how this launch panned out. This comment sums it up for me:
In lots of ways we only have ourselves to blame. Though it takes a lot of will to ignore a well oiled marketing machine like Microsoft. Even I with my all my life experience find it hard not to see the grass as greener on the other side of the fence.
It’s hard not to come away with the feeling that Microsoft do this because they can. They know if they dangle the carrot of a ‘new, better flight simulator’ many will lap it up. No need to offer early adopters a discount, they will all swarm like flies to a rubbish heap.
I guess I was lucky. I did plan to buy FS24 because I was not sure I’d have the energy for the next one and I wanted to ride the rollercoaster. However at the last moment, after a lovely flight in Ant’s Tiger Moth which I really enjoyed, I thought: what is it I am going to get in FS24? I concluded that, the way I would play it, all I was getting was:
- Possibly a PC-6 with which you can reliably do a cold and dark start and have all the avionics work (The FS20 PC-6 is fine but the transponder will only work 50% of the time on a cold and dark start).
- The Twin Otter. I was really sad when the FS20 one was withdrawn because of issues.
- The A400M Atlas. I have wanted to have a good version of this for a long time. Remembering the C-130 Hercules that I really enjoyed in FSX.
Also I had the following doubts about FS24:
- Despite the talk of “backwards compatibility” it is obvious that it will be a while before 3rd party aircraft make it across to FS24, so it would be a while before I could fly the aircraft I really like.
- I was not interested in the career mode – when you look at how buggy and restrictive missions are in FS20 I had little hope that they would be better in FS24.
- I was also sure the launch would not go smoothly and I probably could spend my energy more positively doing something else. If I was wrong I could always order it there and then and join the party.
sPK 