I still haven’t purchased FS2024. Everything is just ready to go on 2020 and I dread the process of a new sim. I coud just download both sims and use whichever suits me better, but why? What can 2024 give me?
I am worried about:
Is it worth the hassle? Wait for the first sale maybe?
Much better graphics, better flight model, impressiv weather, better light and shadow effects, better ground physics just to name a few improvements. I only fly airliners, too. FS 2024 is despite the problems that exist a large improvement over FS 2020, imho.
Personal Comment:
2024 is better in almost every way than 2020, three of the main downsides with it currently are no Marketplace, the inability to download anything locally yet, and the current number of bugs!
If you’ve got a nice setup on 2020 and you already aren’t sure whether to move over or not, I’d consider waiting until at least Sim Update 1 has been released and 2024 is more stable (local content downloads have been promised for sometime in the future too), and the Marketplace has been released (currently scheduled for Sim Update 1). That way you get all the positives without any of the negatives 
Triple frames which gives you at least the right feeling of flying (and taxiing) an airliner.
Very good decision. Right now, MSFS 2024 is unplayable and should still be in the alpha stage.
Visually the major improvements come at ground level (better textures and displacement maps) but other than that you couldn’t tell them apart. Weather depiction has not change significally either as the only addition is ugly cirrus clouds.
Flight model is essentially the same (though now you can fly air ballons).
Ground physics I’d say is the most noticeable improvement when it comes to modelling the friction and lateral forces but I think it will depend on how much love each aircraft dev put into adjusting it (Inibuilds didn’t put much care into it).
Career mode is somewhat extenive but extremely swallow, some missions can be fun (firefighting, sling load, rescue, agricultural…) but their procedural nature means in many cases the experience is frustrating. Some may say “wait until they fix it” but I think they can’t, it is just bad game design.
Controls scheme is sloppy, they changed the default commands vs what one would be used to in 2020 and has many confilcting bindings. They are split between general and specific, with profiles that applied indepently to each group…making it all more complex than it needs to be. Add to that those profiles chaninging by themselves so you can never be sure what kind of mapping you have when you start a flight.
Performance is the same if you are lucky, worse if you are not.
Given all that I would say you are not missing much.
Control bindings are better in my opinion, but many complain about it.
Payware airports work fine, most of them.
The only payware aircraft that work fine is Fenix, Avro RJ, A300, A380 and recently released A350.
From airliner perspective, you still cannot connect more than one jetway, ATC is still the same or even worse. Personally, I use Beyond ATC with their AI traffic.
Graphics are better but in more “arcadish” way, rather than realistic. Lights are over done, cities glow at night like they have just been visited by Eighth Air Force. A few days ago, I flew at night over Europe in real life and none of the big cities looked like in FS2024, including Amsterdam and London.
The biggest improvement are loading times and the game does not freeze for a few seconds on approach when it’s loading a 3rd party scenery. Something I experienced many times in FS2020.
If you are an airliner guy, stick with 2020 for now. You can still buy 2024 and mess around with it like I did, but it’s not there yet. Planes like the pmdg 737 aren’t even compatible with 2024 yet. I’m not sure why people think the graphics in 2024 are better. I have both sims and the graphics and scenery look the same to me. What little differences there are is nothing to get excited about.
A big “Your mileage may vary” as I have certainly been playing this “unplayable” game.
I flew the Grand Canyon in 2024 and was very impressed by the quality of the graphics. I’ve flown in other places (admittedly on a limited basis) and didn’t think it was worse, but didn’t really see a difference from 2020.
Where would you suggest I fly where the quality of 2024 greatly outdistances the qualitty of 2020? Depending on how the sim is responding, I fly on either High or Ultra settings.
And this is a serious request - I’m not looking to show anyone up or come back with a counter to support 2020. Thanks.
After 4 years FS 2020 is almost perfected, yet other than three flights to experience the PMDG 777F I’ve basically only flown 2024 since December. It’s not unplayable for many, In fact it is much better all-around than 2020.
Totally agree, having a high-end system I run MSFS2020 in 4K at 90/100 FPS with Fenix, AI traffic and FSHUD for ATC.
I only do airliner flights in career mode with APLv2.
Apart from the exaggeratedly red sky of FS2020 in certain circumstances, for the rest I do not find graphical improvements in FS2024 except for the 3D trees.
For the rest FS2024 are only problems and as far as I’m concerned at the moment my interest in it is equal to 0.
If you’re a big fan of time acceleration, you’re not going to like 2024. I don’t have time to sit in front of my PC for 14 hours, so I am sticking with 2020 for the time being.
Imho, 2024 will be ready once:
If Asobo is as dedicated as they would like to appear, I’m expecting 2024 to be ready within the next year. With all due respect, however, this is how it should have been upon release.
Everything except some eye is better in fs2020. I would not recommend fs24 unless you only fly GA or are interested in a bugged gaming-career mode.
I was stupid enough to uninstall fs20 when fs24 was released, but now that I am not using fs24 - I am considering going back to fs20.
imo, Everything about fs24 seems to be aimed at console gamers. And on top of that it is buggy, broken and worse performance.
Basically, you’ll lose the PMDG Boeings, the ifly Max8 and the MD11, (if you decide to delete 2020) and gain INI’s A321 and 330, and the SAAB 340 if you care (personally I think INI’s planes alone are worth the price of a basic MSFS 2024 package)
You’ll gain the walk-around function, and possibly a substantial increase in frame rates (although many people have reported that they haven’t got that improvement I have gotten a big improvement in the cockpit, generally the walkaround feature slows framerates down a bit, but it’s not a slideshow or anything).
If you have a ton of add-ons, the load time of the game will be a fraction of what it once was (used to take me 40 minutes to load 2020 now it’s 5 minutes), loading into a flight can often take longer in 2024 as you download streamed scenery and aircraft but in total getting from computer off, to on the tarmac in 2024 is much less for me. This is a double edged sword, because 2020 can be played without the internet whereas 2024, so far, does not seem to be.
Control bindings are a bit tricky, but once set up it’s more automatic, and each plane will load settings for controls that are bound to them, instead of having to change your bindings every time you switch between planes with different control settings (ie going from a three holer with three throttles to a twin with two)
As for scenery I have one by one been enabling my airport collection from the 2020 marketplace and testing for crashes, despite there being a warning that the developer may not have certified it for 2024 I have about 15 2020 airports enabled to be streamed, none have caused a crash, two of them have had grass covering the taxiways and aprons instead of pavement, and the rest have worked perfectly fine as far as I can tell. If you have purchased scenery outside of the marketplace, some will have been approved for 2024, and some may not be, so check your vendors if there are some airports you are unwilling to part with.
GSX and Beyond ATC work fine in the sim, if you use these. I have no other quality of life type add-ons so I can’t comment on other ATC systems or anything like that.
I have a 14900k CPU and a 4060ti GPU and 32mb RAM, and I almost never use 2020, but I keep it around just in case something breaks.
For me, and many others, 2024 is better than 2020 in most if not all ways, but others are having major problems. It may be worth buying the cheapest version of 2024 and testing to see if you are one of the lucky ones or not, and if not try for a refund within the specified time. If it works fine you can upgrade to premium, or premium deluxe later if you wish.
Game pass is the way to go for a cheap trial
I am pretty expert with the B-787 and MSFS 2024 is a step back. 2020 had these beautify wing flexes in a loaded turn that are gone. The cockpit gauges look blurry. Not sure why I upgraded but am a born hacker, so unless you have hacking numerous issues in your blood, stay away.
I almost cry when I see this…
I resisted switching to 2024 until this past weekend because of airliners. I was endlessly disappointed with the launch of 2024 and the handling of post-launch support. It’s entirely unacceptable that 3+ months after launch we still don’t have a major patch to fix the major issues in the sim. But with the launch of the A350, I figured it’s time to enjoy multi-thread support and check out how the SU1 Beta handles. I haven’t switched back.
, especially when loading up complex scenery. Has some memory leaks, some rolling cache issues. Expect to troubleshoot things until you get to know what’s what. My sim time since Friday has been 30% troubleshooting (maybe more), 70% flying. The other part is, this is a VRAM hog and fiddling with settings for the optimum balance at major airports is still a thing.
. But if you use Opentrack, it’s plug and play and works way better than their FS2020 implementation. But you can do that in FS2020 already as well, I just wish I had known how much better OpenTrack is sooner.If you count it’s 5 Pros to 6 Cons for someone like me that enjoys Free Flight + airliners as their main use of the sim. Career mode is a bad joke (how hard is it to copy Eurotruck Simulator 2 for airplanes?) and I never cared for challenges, etc. .
Other than the performance stutters (which when rolling cache is full comes with audio stutters as well), I’d say I have no reason today to switch back. PMDGs will be soon available after SU1 drops and then hopefully with the marketplace and everything coming online, we’ll have things porting regularly.
There are fewer choices in 2024 right now for airliners. The Fenix is experimental in 2024, and it can’t seem to run two flights in a row without breaking. The new a350 is sub-par in 2020, but runs great for me in 2024. The a310 and a321 are both broken in 2024. There are no exterior lights on the otherwise great 737. The 787 and 747 seem to be fine in 2024. No Bombardier, no Embraer yet in 2024.
