Big surprise: starting to enjoy the sim!

🔒 Sim Update 2 Beta | MSFS 2024 Beta Discussion
, , ,
1

I am not going to lie: my initial experience with 2024 was… let’s just call it " less than satisfactory" and leave it at that. For instance: I found that the truly ghastly UI on aircraft selection in Free Flight was beyond belief. The myriad small, silly and inexcusable errors and deficiencies in the sim sucked the enjoyment out of using the sim. Poor framerates, never ending glitches: the list went on and on.

I ended up using 2024 a fraction of how much I was using 2020 before 2024 was released. But because of some of the things that I saw that I liked, I just did not feel like going back to 2020. But I was also not enjoying 2024 at all, so I was just doing way, way less flying in the sim than in the previous years. But I still did some flying, still liked some things, still hated a ton of others. And I also enrolled in the Sim Update 2 Beta and gave it a chance.

And then all of a sudden this afternoon, like a bolt out of the blue, it struck me: I was actually enjoying the sim again! I was totally stunned: never saw it coming! Unseen, unheard, unexpected: it just snuck up on me. Mega surprise.

Now before the howls of disagreement and the repeating all the issues start: I know it is still a long, long way from perfect. I know it still has a very long way to go. There are still a tremendous number of small details that defy comprehension how they could have regressed so badly from 2020 and how they have not been fixed as they are so trivial. And the experience varies MASSIVELY from person to person. But that is what it is.

In spite of this: I am enjoying the sim! Who’d a thunk it???

For perspective, I also need to qualify how I use the sim. And it is clearly and obviously the best possible of best cases for MSFS 2024:

  • I fly essentially GA only
  • I fly a limited number of aircraft that I relate to and enjoy due to things like having owned or flown these aircraft quite a bit in real life. Most often the Bonanza Improvement project and the G1000 C172. But also sometimes the TBM 930, the CJ4, the Beaver, loving the Albatross etc. etc.
  • From the above it is clear that airliners are not my thing. And I have zero interest in career, bush trips, challenges, multiplayer events or actually any kind of organised flying.
  • I generally fly low and slow and enjoy the excellent visual quality that I experience in the sim.

And in thinking of why it is that I am pretty satisfied at the moment, these were some of the thoughts that occurred to me:

  • Load times have improved dramatically for me. It is now consistently fast.
  • For Free Flight, the fact that finally the version etc. of aircraft you fly is sticking was a MAJOR improvement. I was tearing my hair out with frustration with the initial awful experience.
  • Framerates have improved a lot. For me.
  • Smoothness has improved a lot. Again: for me.
  • Getting CTDs when I started using 2024 was a major shock for me. I almost never had those issues in 2020 so this was a major frustration. And I am now finally back to a situation where I again rarely have CTDs.
  • I love the details in many of the handcrafted airports. I love the extensive PG. I love the visual quality I am now seeing: see hardware and settings listed at the end of the post.
  • Some of the massively irritating little things in aircraft have slowly been improving.
  • I love the fact that I can start an instrument flight plan with for instance an arrival and approach and be confident that, with some exceptions, it will go as it should. I like that I can change an IF flight plan in the aircraft in the air and I can safely expect it to work.

OK, I did not want to write a novel: these are the main points why I am where I am. And why I am looking forward to some further significant improvement in the medium term.

Key Hardware and settings

Hardware:

ASRock X670E PG Lightning
9800X3D
Gigabyte RTX 4080 Super
G.SKILL Flare X Series 64GB 6000 CAS 30 2x32GB
OS WD Black SN770 500GB
Game WD Black SN850X 2TB
NVIDIA 566.36 driver

Game settings:

4K
Mostly Ultra
200 OLOD
400 TLOD
TAA
No frame gen

34 Likes
2

Very happy free flight user here too (su 2 v1.4.14)

4 Likes
3

I was a big defender before and after MSFS2024 was released. But at the moment nothing motivates me mount my controls and start the sim. The Beta 2 release notes feel underwhelming. I hope at some point I will find my passion for the sim again. So I really appreciate this thread. Maybe I can contribute something positive soon.

7 Likes
4

You should fly airliners to far destinations then fly your GA aircraft within those countries :grin:

2 Likes
5

I mostly would agree. The current SU2 beta is about the state we could/should have had at release in November.
There is still a LOT to be done, but now it starts to become fun again :grinning_face:
The constant feeling of being paying pre-alpha tester is slowly disappearing.

6 Likes
6

Aahh, the joys of digital life: I can magically transport my C172 to the other end of the world in the blink of an eye! :laughing:

But this does remind me of the old, old joke of the snob telling an unsophisticated person who did not like the taste of oysters that it is an “acquired taste”. To which the pleb said “I see no point in eating something that I don’t like in the hope that I might acquire a taste for it.” And this absolutely not to disrespect airline flyers in the sim but just to again highlight that the sim is meant to be - and can be - many things to many people and there is no single right way of using it. I have done a few “soup to nuts” complete end to end airline flights in for instance the A320 Neo just for the experience. It was challenging and in the end very satisfying. But it just isn’t what I like to do in the sim as a general rule.

Vive la différence!

1 Like
7

Some of us are like the early humans who first decided, “OK, I’ll try one of those slimy, barnacle-encrusted shell things!” No fear.

I too bought FS24 pre-release, and haven’t touched my FS20 install very often since.

I’ve been mostly very happy with the new sim. I have one major issue with it, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it won’t get solved, or even acknowledged. So I just deal with it.

Load times, stability, performance, look and feel; all superior in FS24, and I see no reason not to keep using it. I’ve avoided Career mode. It looks like fun, but it also looks to be full of problems I’d rather avoid for now.

5 Likes
8

Good to see some more people having a sorta kinda similar experience. There have been times when I have been really despondent about the state of the sim, so this is a good space for me now.

One thing I neglected to mention in the original post: I find FSLTL works very well with MSFS2024. My current experience with FSLTL is WAY better than it was originally in 2020, but this in large part might be because of my upgraded computer. Suffice to say that I find FSLTL has minimal impact on the sim. Now if only the in-sim AI could manage the injected aircraft movements better…

9

I use MSFS 2024 for testing only, for actual flying it has to be 2020 for me until they fix the massive regression of cloud quality in 2024 compared to 2020.

4 Likes
10

What? FSLTL aircraft don’t even land in MSFS 2024, they just overfly the airports. Absolutely useless in 2024 for me. The devs admitted the issue and said they are waiting for Asobo to fix it.

2 Likes
11

Indeed, that is why I made the comment “Now if only the in-sim AI could manage the injected aircraft movements better…”. I believe your “waiting for Asobo to fix it” also reflects the situation. My positive comment re FSLTL was regarding the actual injection and quality of the real world liveries and models plus the small FPS impact that I experience.

12

I completely agree! I tried FSLTL on my old system (FS2020, 5800X3D, DDR4, 3090 Ti) and the performance hit caused me to abandon it.

I recently hopped into the F28-4000 (also practically unusable in FS2020) and ran FSLTL.
Night and day difference in FS2024. I was getting 60 FPS at KMCO, which was fantastic compared to when I tried both those things in FS2020 (different computer, yes.)

I’ll be patient regarding the ‘no landings’ thing.
Still 100 times better than the default AI Traffic.
It’s such a massive improvement that I can’t help but smile.

3 Likes
13

Umm yea, it was a suggestion, a notion to add more character to it like a story behind it.

Viva Las Vegas

14

I agree it’s looking a lot better with the new Beta software, however, I mainly fly commercial aircraft and it’s still very dissatisfying. I am on the Xbox series X, other than the A320v2 & A330-330 from Inibuilds everything else is clunky. The Max is nearly impossible. It’s certainly getting there, and I remember all the CTD and black screens in early versions of MSFS 2020, however, now it’s very stable. When PMDG migrate across to 2024, I guess I give another try.

15

AMD Software Settings Used:

  • FSR 3: Enabled (in Game)
  • Fluid Motion Frames: Enabled (Card)
  • Radeon Anti-Lag: Enabled (Card)

Performance Summary:

With both FSR 3 and Fluid Motion Frames active, MSFS 2024 reached peaks of over 250 FPS in lighter scenes such as cruising or cockpit-only views. In heavier airport areas or photogrammetry-heavy cities, performance stayed well above 80–120 FPS FSR (in Game) and 180+ FPS Fluid Motion AMD consistently.

Visual Smoothness:

Using FreeSync + FMF resulted in near-zero microstuttering and extremely smooth visuals. Transitions, camera panning, and taxi sequences felt seamless.

On NVIDIA, I expect similar results and might be getting 60+ FPS even for lower end card. This is very much improved and there is no going back to MSFS 2020. The Key is you need a very Good Processor for MSFS.

Also, I have seen major improvement in smootheness in increasing Virtual Memory to 96 GB and Rolling Cache to 120 GB, even though i was getting smoothness both over 64GB. Keep your SSD at least 200 GB of Free Space.

1 Like
16

So what kinds of things are better? From the stock sim position, I am most interested to know if the old 2020 aircraft fly properly now? Planes like the DA40 and stock Bonanza where like RC planes.

17

I listed the things that were the main improvements for me in my original post. In terms of 2020 aircraft: I do not use any so I cannot comment. However, I am using the G36 Improvement Project addon for the Bonanza and I find it is very nice. It gives me the same sense of solidity and stability that struck me when I first flew the Beech Debonair that we bought many years ago after I owned and flew a Cessna 210 for several years.

18

It’s great to read the positive comments in this thread :slightly_smiling_face:

The FSLTL landing state has been bug logged in the Dev forum for quite some time. I expect we will see it fixed somewhere along SU3.

But at KDCA I do quite often see landings. I experiment with AI Flow and AI Ground. I enjoy using FSLTL because I can’t stand the default sim liveries.

I was messing with FS2020 today and FSLTL liveries still work with the default live traffic and it’s pretty good. At night the aircraft strobes are much brighter than 2024.

Regarding my experience with FS2024, I was able to start using it the afternoon the sim was launched, and I was using an old Alienware 15R2 laptop. I was blown away at how much smoother everything was compared to FS2020. About a month after launch I upgraded to an Alienware R16.

I have a high tolerance for bugs and having been through the 2020 betas I am used to roller coaster rides. I do enjoy watching the sim evolve for the better. I feel Asobo is moving things along faster with the FS2024 betas than they did with FS2020 as they should.

Looking forward to SU3 as from what they said that beta will be devoted to fixing bugs, hopefully the most annoying ones. But IMO they have squashed quite a few bugs so far.

2 Likes
19

I am looking forward to 2024, but it will require a new, upgraded computer - so, at least $4-5,000. Like you, scenery is only moderately interesting to me, but glitches with framerate, jumpiness, etc., bother me a lot. As a retired real-world pilot and aircraft owner, I am mostly just interested in SIDS, enroutes, STARS, and approaches with aircraft I flew, or wish I flew (e.g., Citation Longitude). Recently, BATC made it a little easier in 2020 to request changes to runways and approaches - if you know the right controller to make the request to. Since that is working better, I can safely delay my acquisition of 2024 until I gather more shekels!

20

Re flight behavior, I would say Yes, much improved.. :grinning_face:
And I fly 2020 aircraft, pretty much exclusively.

1 Like