I agree with much of what you said. But why wouldn’t you have confidence that you could follow a VOR/DME flight plan in a real aircraft after mastering it in the sim? What’s different from how it’s done in the sim?
It’s not misinformation, open the .air file of the Fokker F.VIIa in MSFS and see for your self. or go and see my other posts with feedback for MS and how it’s utterly ignored.
3 years ago your best advice you gave me was to “take a break”. Years later, MSFS2020 was abandoned by MS in an incomplete state, you had to basically purchase the next bug fix, which is now called MS2024, which is now also a big mess. It’s fine that you have a good experience with it, but what I am telling is not misinformation. It’s partly my opinion, and partly fact.
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To my remembrance not a single flight simulator has ever been finished, nor bug-free. There have always been people who enjoyed the then current state immensely, and others who were watching slide shows, ctd’s, or bsod’s.
Also in this case. Many users are asking that 1.15.12 will be the final version, others are still experiencing lots of nagging bugs. Who will say what the cause of all these different experiences is.
What I do read, without wanting to point to specific people, is that some users, after rolling back a change they suddenly remembered, were having much better experience. So there’s also that.
It’s 100 shades of grey, and always has been.
My hope is that they will unencrypt the default planes so that simmers can fine tune the flight models. It’s all there, but hardly ever implemented completely.
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A potential PS5 version would be great for expanding the community, but in its current form the simulator would suffer from the same operational issues on PlayStation that it does on Xbox. Namely, it’s not properly usable without a mouse, because the UI and in-flight behaviour makes it almost impossible to set up and complete flights in a realistic manner. And this is my main qualm with FS24 as an Xbox player. 2020 just worked out of the box, even though performance and stability needed optimization over the years.
Now FS24 not only looks and runs worse on Xbox, but you can’t as much as plan a flight without a mouse, and if you want to interact with instruments during flight, some kind of AI takes over and crashes the plane, or at least deviates it from the intended flight, pulling the throttle, banking, stalling, etc. I’m sure PlayStation players would have a puzzling first impression, trying to operate aircraft, set up flights, search for airports etc. Both the UI and in-flight operation is wildly inconsistent, and even though these bugs have been submitted and logged, we’re here 8 months later and nothing’s happening with them.
I’ve been beating this horse ever since release, trying to get the point across that on console and cloud, without a mouse, it’s just not possible to fly realistically, I sent reports, captured screenshots and videos, asked in developer streams, looked through the various betas and patch notes, and there’s just no reaction to this day. The game is simply not working to the standards of a console game, which is all the more disheartening since 2020 never had these problems.
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They care. Devs were working really hard since release, and still so. https://devsupport.flightsimulator.com/c/msfs-2024-bug-reports/67
Go to 1:14:40 at video Twitch, some crazy hardwares are coming. I wish they were at FSExpo but i can understand. Have a great positive day you all.
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I agree.
I had an issue and logged it through the support page.
The staff were quick to respond and while it took a few responses to get to the end, we got there.
My point is, they are working on the issues and if you have one, it doesn’t help if you don’t log it in the right place.
I am one of the first to criticise this release, being a person that preordered this flight sim. So please don’t get me wrong and think I am having a go at all the members that post stuff on this forum. I even get some laughs at what is posted. But, please ensure you report issues in the right area as well.
Happy flight simming everyone.
Oz.
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Here’s an opinion. I’m a hardcore msfs user and have been since FS2002. But they have two problems on their hands.
- They are just not passionate simmers. They do ‘t all have to be, but I think they miss it at all levels. This is why you see some core areas of the sim doing better and others being neglected for a long time. There’s nobody there having this as a passion, using simbrief, 3rd party atc (or any atc given how broken atc was) and to direct efforts towards the high prio areas and features that are core to a flight simulator.
- Their production pipelines are broken. Quality controls are lackluster, Beta versions are sometime completely broken.
In contrast, you see X-Plane betas being far more stable and less broken and the core simming functionality being top notch. They don’t have access to MS’s enormous infrastructure so scenery is lackluster, but after 12.2, in almost every area of the sim they are outdoing MSFS by a good stretch.
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Life and Death, for one.
I’d add to this that it doesn’t seem that any of them are seriously testing it on an Xbox, especially not with just a controller.
I personally have a VelocityOne yoke w/pedals, keyboard and mouse connected and this works well (barring some funky mouse issues).
But I’ve tried it with just an Xbox controller out of curiosity and it’s simply not usable. There are basic functions that are inaccessible with a controller. They eliminated the virtual cursor that was present in 2020 and as a result, there are menu and EFB items that simply cannot be utilized.
I tried it on Cloud Gaming and it’s even worse. They shouldn’t even claim that to be available. It’s fundamentally unusable.
This take feels both misinformed and overly speculative. Also seems more rooted in frustration with bugs, which I guess that part is understandable… but it’s unfair to suggest that no one on the development team is passionate. Both Jorg Neumann and Sebastian Wloch have spoken about their deep love for aviation and flight simulation. Also, the point of a beta program is literally to uncover bugs and break things in a controlled environment before public release. The X-Plane comparison is the most biased argument you make and largely misses the point of MSFS’s core ambition. X-Plane operates on a much smaller scale and doesn’t rely on streaming petabytes of real-time global data from a cloud infrastructure.
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Something too often easily forgotten in the excitement of being first in line.
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The flip side of this argument is, where was the “controlled environment “BEFORE” public release”, i.e. of the entire SIM?
Don’t get me wrong, I love 2024 and accept it is not a study level SIM like X-plane. But there are some things I would very much like to be emulated here and that is the amount of personal contact Marko has with clients and the developers visibility with customers. The openess they demonstrate and the functionality of the craft.
I know the argument that MSFS 20/24 are large world enterprises with complex code but ignore your user base for too long and the conspiracy theories, the vitriol and expressions of rejection become a force.
You know, just yesterday I scrolled over the “badges” you get in Steam for progress in the 2024 Sim. In one categtory - ie the PPL achievement, it said that only just over 51% of purchasers had achieved that badge. What has happened to the other 49%? They bought it and just decided it was too complex and left or did they decide they could not live with the bugs and left? It would be an interesting bit of research.
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Absolutely. But that complaint has been beat to death.
I complained about it in November, then stopped complaining about it because everyone (including Jorg) knew they’d made a big mistake.
As I’ve said before… Higher powers drove the release date.
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Yeah, my point was that you can’t on the one hand espouse the virtues of Beta testing now when you did not use it at the off.
I am sure there would have been many happy Beta testers to take up the offer of that opportunity back then.
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Fair enough. But they are in Beta now, and anyone who joins it should understand what that means. I think you do.
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I echo that thought, I would’ve have no issue beta testing, as long as the feedback was properly documented and incorporated. But to call the release a retail version does feel flawed with fundamental issues such as basic physics modeling (coefficient of friction and clean stall behavior)
Even the hardware devs didn’t get an Release Candidate version ahead of the Nov 24 release, forcing them to scramble (thinking of realsimgear with their G1000 interface
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Just to highlight your first point too, the feedback issue - there are still multiple complaints about the lack of that - discussion about SU3…(which is what the title of the blog is) - between the Beta testers and the folk who take all their hard work and ideas and just produce another version. Where is the respect for the Beta testers?
Just so you understand, ALL REAL pilots sim. Every year. Not in MSFS but they sim for currency. Having a home setup that is good enough to practice basic instrument flying is not a big ask in 2025. In fact, X-Plane sells a commercial license for this exact purpose and is the platform for several FAA certified sims where a pilot can log time.
Put simply, don’t be surprised.
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Ah. This topic is evolving into yet another MSFS vs X-Plane rope pull contest.
Let me get my pop corn…
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I recall the very beginning of MSFS2020. It was very obvious that there had been some very passionate and dedicated people in MS who kept pushing for MS to go back into the FlightSim business. I dont think they did that because they saw it purely as a money maker. There was real passion for flightsimming there with a desire to produce the flightsim of all flightsims.
To some extend I do believe they succeeded, 2020 runs fine and I love it.
Problem they had was where to go next and what to do with all the legacy code.
for whatever reason they decided to turn it into more of a Game rather than just a flightSimulator although they may well argue against that statement.
So there it is 2024 which by all accounts has been a bit underwhelming, it seems mostly for the ‘serious simmers’ (whoever they are).
But for me 2020 is a million miles from where I ever thought we would be, in a good way.
Produced by people who at all times have, in my opinion, displayed passion for their product.
In my view as an ex ICT guy, MS Flightsimulator is a tremendous achievement.
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