Just to clarify, you don’t need to create a single topic. You do need to enter 100 topics and post 20 replies.
We manually apoint users to TL3.
Pretty sure that the full name thing on AVSIM was the PMDG support subforum, when it was still hosted there.
AVSIM can be good but just keep in mind that most of the regulars believe the sim is perfectly good and any issues will be addressed in due course (they’ve got nothing but time) and badger and bully anyone who thinks otherwise.
That definitely does not sound like the sort of place I want to hang out for sim purposes.
Did these counts get reset after the Alpha finished? I’m pretty sure I’ve visited many 100s of posts since joining, made way over 100 replies by now and have actually lost features rather than gained any.
Not sure I need to ignore any particular user just yet, but I did want to start a poll the other day but wasn’t able to. Thanks.
I wont comment on the ethics of the approach, but if MS weren’t able to begin to recoup costs on FS2020 this year then I doubt it would have ever got off the blocks. The reason that I mostly agree with that Avsim view (and absolutely believe me when I say I don’t believe in many of their views) is that we wouldn’t have a new sim at all if the expectations of many users here had to be met from day 1.
I totally get the “I paid for a finished product” argument, but if the choice was no new sim at all or what we have now (with the expectation that it WILL improve), would you really want to stick with only P3D and XP in the market? As I wrote in at least one other thread, the very least FS2020 does is give the other sims the kick in the backside they needed to start pushing boundaries.
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While we have tweaked some of the trust level permissions at launch, those of you at TL2 (including yourself) should be close to the same.
If you think you are missing a vital permission that we had in alpha let me know and I’ll look it up.
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r/MicrosoftFlightSim on Reddit is a pretty active community.
Sadly, the gaming industry has devolved to the extent that shipping alpha or beta quality products is the norm, and drip feeding fixes and “new features” (that should have been there from day 1) while selling DLC is the new normal.
Microsoft does not have the financial pressures that some gaming studios have, and could have either invested far more resources earlier, or taken more time, and done this more right. But they followed the same path as Ubisoft, Rockstar and other game companies delivering a half baked product and will now drip feed us fixes for problems introduced in the last patch. I’ve seen this before.
What happens is that most gamers fall for the amazing marketing, load it up, play it, realize it’s not as good as the marketing claimed, run into countless issues and then move on. The game company got their money and the fact they bugger off after investing a few days or weeks is no big deal. The hard core fans, are left with a crappy product hanging on by a thread for the next update.
The productivity of Asobo is embarrassing. Compare what they’ve done to what the fly by wire team has done with the A320. That small group of devs working on their own time, is making Asobo look horribly pathetic.
A few months from now, the only ones left playing MSFS will be the same old crew that’s been doing it for decades. This was the chance to really broaden the audience, and I think MS screwed it because for most gamers, there’s nothing to do, and for those interested in the sim side, there’s too much broken, and life is too short to wait for it to be fixed.
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I think I’d be in total agreement if this was a car game, an FPS or any other mainstream genre, but there is a reason that there have only been 2 core players in the full flight sim market for the last decade (probably lots of reasons) - the commercials just aren’t there.
To have such a permanent view on this title 2 months after release is disheartening (but perception is reality). For many the damage is already done, but those same people will be just as quick to say FS2020 is great if in 6 months most of the initial gripes are fixed. It’s not as if they have oodles of other options and many of us are so totally bored with XP / P3D that MS’s reentry has brought a new lease of life.
Again, not wanting to rehash the same points over and over (but doing it anyway, indulge me), we have what we have. Let’s look for positive ways to improve the situation. If you can’t / wont be patient then that’s totally understandable, do with your time and money what you feel is best for you.
For me, 30+ years into simming and with at least $20k of investment in previous pitbuilds / software etc, FS2020 has brought me back to simming and I’m enjoying every moment, warts and all.
The Fly By Wire team should be totally applauded, but I don’t forget that they couldn’t have done what they have done without FS2020 being here in the first place, so I’m not about to throw Asobo to the coals and worship that team - rather I’ll say they’ve done an amazing job expanding on the solid base that Asobo have given us.
Full disclosure - I am super critical, but wont even begin to cast my uber critical judgement on FS2020 until it has had a reasonable time to mature. That will not be until at least mid 2021. If others don’t think that should be necessary, who am I to tell them they are wrong?
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I think your view is pretty common amongst the sim community. A year to mature is nothing to you guys. And that’s probably about how long it will take to address major issues.
I’m a long time gamer, first time simmer, and have become very disgruntled with the industry. I feel it’s very sad that we are at a point now, where you will have a much better experience with any game (or sim) if you wait a year. Gone are the days where it was thrilling to start a new game on launch day. All that does now, is reveal how half baked the game is, or how much potential it has. It’s a sad state of affairs that games are now largely judged on how much potential they have once year one and two DLC and patches have been rolled out.
Those of you that have been doing this for decades I’m sure will continue to be here 10 years from now. But as I said, MS had an opportunity to broaden this genre, and a flight sim, scenery sim, travel sim, couldn’t have come at a better time in the midst of a global lock down. But I think they blew it. There’s nothing here… the scenery needs to be modded to be tourism worthy, the planes need to be modded to be simulators and not toys, and even the weather isn’t matching reality. And don’t even start with the ATC. You need mods on top of mods to make this even start to get good. That’s not mainstream. That’s not going to work on X-box. It will continue to be a tiny niche segment of the market as a result. It had so much potential.
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Yep that is pretty much spot on, but I doubt any vendor would be able to produce a fully featured sim that is at the level that those people would expect on initial release and so they would miss out on the genre anyway. From that perspective nothing really lost.
Thats an unfair comment. Asobo have to focus on the entire sim including all planes, scenery , weather and features like VR and Direct X 12. Hardly the same as focusing on one cockpit only for 2 months.
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I understand your point and agree to a large extent. I think the reason is that games nowadays are extremely complex and very expensive to make. Waiting until a game is perfect is a high risk strategy since it may not sell any better than releasing it earlier and fixing up issues after.
A lot of people here say microsoft have deep pockets so can afford to do this but if they did this with all their gaming products it would undoubtly cost them a lot of money and regardless of how much money is in the bank you have to be competitive or you end up like Blackberry or Netscape or any of the other giants who took their eye off the ball.
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You’re right. Not in this industry.
But had they considered the global appeal this might have had if they had focused on making it a virtual tourism simulator… want to see the pyramids? The Taj Mahal? Paris? Venice? Check out MSFS. You can fly yourself, or have the computer fly you, or even explore via a drone on these amazing sight seeing trips. Take photos and share them.
If they had really nailed the scenery, the sim aspect could have suffered as it is now, and the game might have a good chance to thrive (especially as a VR app).
But instead, everything is sub par. Nothing is great. It’s all a big compromise. The scenery falls apart as you get close unless it’s hand crafted. The planes require sufficient learning to fly that casual gamers won’t have patience for it, but they are too lacking to satisfy simmers. It’s trying to do too much that it does nothing really well.
Many say it’s a breakthrough compared to previous flight sim products. That’s true, I’m sure, but it’s still not to the point where any one aspect doesn’t require a mod to make it good. I wish MS or Asobo would have picked one thing… anything… and made it so good, no one would feel compelled to mod it.
But what have they done really? Have they made substantial improvements in any aspect? It seems the last patch was largely a hot fix to address issues from the previous patch. Not a step forward in any regard. Except for Japan which was probably a team of scenery people, not coders, has the sim improved in any substantial way since launch? No.
There is NO real name requirement at Avsim. I’ve posted there for twenty years, I should know.
This is a legend coming some weird haters on Reddit who were, I suppose, banned from Avsim for good reasons (abuse, piracy etc.).
It is a very large forums with the usual various lot of people. Lots of old simmers and knowledgeable people in the aviation world.
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The sim released less than 2 months ago. How many substantial improvements were you expecting? The performance has certainly improved since launch and they have fixed a bunch of installation and other bugs from launch.
People on these forums demand things immediately then when Asobo rush out the fixes they are the first to complain about the fix being incomplete or it has broken something else.
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I think the scenery is a great value for money (or time spent, ref ortho4xp). You can get a full world with orhto, updated at the pace of bing, with AI buildings. Compare this to any other sim out there, except for handcrafted orbx, for which you’d pay a lot if you want the whole globe. It’s also not comparable with let’s say a GTA V or RDR2, where you get a map which is just a fraction of the size for 60$.
Of course there are glitches, but when you realize how vast and big our earth is, its not more than common sense.
I dissagree here as well. I’m a simmer and I’m satisfied with the default planes as being default planes. There are bugs yes, but the functionality for a default plane is there. Study level is and should be left to 3rd party devs, just because it requires a lot of focus on one single item that it shouldn’t come in the way of the general simulator development.
And there are easy planes for the people who want to fly without getting familiar with a plane. There are plenty of other games around that have an arcade style for flying.
It would never be worth an investment as simmers are very niche in what they want. Someone wants a steam gauge plane, the other wants a b747 and another one only flies Airbus. To be perfect for all of them they would need to buy up a couple of 3rd party developers like pmdg.
I think it’s best to leave some things to people/companies that do best. Give them a decent platform to build on (this still requires work from asobo/ms at least at the current state).
Lastly I want to note that behind every big product there is a business plan. People seem to forget that the world isn’t build on philanthropy (although that would be nice).
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I think we had many a decent convo there last year and before. That being the case, hello and welcome sir.
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