yeah, that’s it. I have a hard time putting a finger on it, but I think you nailed it.
and greys. When I see people streaming P3D, the scenery always looks like a mountain meadow, with grass and grey rock interspersed.
I’m on a I7- 10700, Radeon 5700xt, 32 GB ram on a Viotek 49in ultra-wide monitor. This patch has blown my mind. So much smoother, framerates better, and the graphics continue to amaze. I run ultra settings with no stutter. My experience from release has been nothing more than fabulous. Rarely am I amazed, but this sim is just the cat’s meow. Into the wild blue yonder I go on the wings of the incredible TBM930 and the A320nx. 
!
Nice system! I’m similar, Ryzen 3700X, Radeon 5700XT, 32 GB RAM on MSI 34" Curved Ultrawide 1440p mostly ultra settings, game looks amazing and has been running silky smooth since last patch, I averaged 60FPS on my last flight 2 hour hop in Japan in the TBM.
Love it!
Thanks for the explanation 
The scenery is incredibly immersive and, at the moment, it’s impossible to consider other sims. That said, it is still much more like a game than a simulator. Eye candy alone can hold your interest for only so long. If they don’t bring the sim aspect up to par with x-plane etc., then I can see people starting to trickle back.
I’m rooting for them to do as well with the sim side as they have with the scenery side. At that point, there really will be no competition at all.
I think just smoothness and higher frame rates at this point, obviously for 4K the new cards would be very beneficial but I am super happy with my 1440p ultrawide and with my 5700XT for MSFS2020 (bang for buck wise) My frames fluctuate between 40 - 60 depending on where I am which is more then reasonable for a flight sim.
Happening already
Yes, I keep harping on also about the scenery being great (even fantastic) and for the devs. to start tackling the sim’s weaknesses like systems, SDK etc. I want to see study level aircraft. I know it will take some time for this but I now want to see some sort of tangible progress being made towards it. I am not convinced that all this time spent on scenery improvements is the best use of dev. time and dev. budget.
I agree with what you say. Some people might eventually start returning to the other sims. unless some progress is soon made in these weak areas. I won’t be one of those returning to X-plane (too last gen for me) but it is conceivable that I might take a break from simming for a bit if the weak areas remain unaddressed.
Some folks will (and are) going back to FSX, P3D or XP. In terms of being very mature, hardcore sim experiences, anyone who disagrees that these options are leaps and bounds ahead of MSFS2020 are kidding themselves.
But it’s going to be a tough step back for many. For all but the most hardcore simmers and home cockpit owners / builders, it’s going to be hard looking at the visual downgrade. And in time as MSFS matures and gets the features the more hardcore simmers wants, they’ll be flocking back.
Give it a couple of years for MSFS to mature. Unless XP makes some deal with Google for their (higher quality) equivalent of the Bing data MSFS uses and makes huge leaps in visual advancement, the only people that will still be playing XP will the the ultra fanboys that are heavily invested it in and unwilling to switch.
FS2020 best simulator?
With these lousy airline aircraft?
With updates released without being tested? I highly doubt it.
So not yet, then? 
I agree with what you say. X-plane in its current iteration has definitely lost me as a customer and I won’t be returning to X-plane 11.
Can’t see them using Google either in X-plane 12, but I suppose we’ll just wait and see.
I brought up Google specifically, because they’re the only other company on the planet other than Bing Microsoft that have an amalgamation of satellite and aerial imagery, as well as photogrammetry on the scale required to do this. Apple does too, but they don’t play well with others, so that would never happen. lol
So unless Austin can loosen his iron grip on XP and ‘partner up’ with Google (which would likely result in Laminar being acquired by Google), they’re not likely to ever be able to catch up to MSFS in the long term.
Give it 2-5 years, and the only the most dedicated, hardcore XP fanboys will still be playing it.
Probably, but not 100% sure really.
I think in X-plane 12 they will likely use much better ground and sky textures. I know that won’t look anything like as good as FS2020 but there is at least an outside chance that it might look respectable. If sim performance goes down a lot as a result and the sim is badly optimised then yes, I would agree that it’s likely game over and that it will be probably only be used by the X-plane faithful and the hardcore simmers and that it will in effect become a fringe product. If they keep on ignoring their customers wishes and ignoring fundamental business principles then I would even go as far as saying it is inevitable.
Ouch
Right now there are key things keeping people from making the switch to MSFS completely:
- lack of multi-monitor support (a HUGE deal breaker for people with 10s of thousands invested in home cockpits)
- Incomplete included planes
- lack of quality ‘staple’ planes (like the popular 737)
- lack of any study level aircraft (due to the SDK being incomplete)
- Incomplete avionics
- Performance issues
- sometimes questionable flight model
- compatibility with a lot of high end boutique 3rd party sim hardware (also due to SDK being so far behind)
- probably a few more I can’t think of
All those points are very valid. If I had thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours invested in a home cockpit and it didn’t work with MSFS or the plane it was set up for didn’t exist, I wouldn’t make the switch either.
Once those issues are taken care of though, which will happen in time, there’s really little reason to look at another sim except for the hardcore fanboys.
There’s no way Austin making a couple of million per year through Laminar will ever be able to compete with Microsoft in the long run. The reason XPlane has done so well for so long as that they were really the only serious game in town that was actively being developed. They were the pinnacle of consumer grade sims. P3D got some traction with the “civvies”, but it was always intended as a high end, professional training tool, not a game for us playing pretend pilot.
How often to we see comments on the forum now that people are using MSFS for VFR, but XP for IFR. Once the IFR experience is up to par with what’s available on XP, there’ s no longer a reason to use it other than people who are hardcore fanboys and have heavy plugin / scenery investments. And even at some point, most of those will come over.
In all honesty, in my opinion the Laminar Research boys should probably take a good hard look into the mirror and the future of flight sim. The Google thing is probably not even an option and they are not going to be able to compete in any meaningful way in the next year or two as things get updated, features added, stability improvements and when study level 3rd party Aircraft are out for MSFS 2020.
I would suggest they funnel at least some of their assets into development for MSFS 2020. With their expertise I feel they could deliver some ridiculously detailed content be it Aircraft, immersion mods, flight tools, etc. I don’t see how XP12 will even stand a chance against Microsoft and a fully active, detailed and engaged dev team that’s committed for the next 10 years.
Plus the more people/companies/content we get rolling with MSFS the healthier the industry becomes and we get a more polished, working, MSFS much faster.
MSFS 2020 is the flight sim environment many people have dreamed of, give it some time to stretch it’s legs, update, add features, SDK improvements, 3rd party aircraft and my goodness, what else do us flight simmers need!
Agreed on all fronts.
However, from the XP videos I’ve watched on YouTube from Laminar (which is mostly Austin patting himself on the back for a job well done) I don’t see him as the type of person that plays well with others unless he’s 100% in charge and calling all the shots. I could be 100% wrong, but that’s the impression I get of him. He knows his ■■■■, there’s no doubt about that. And he knows that he knows his ■■■■. But he seems to have a very controlling personality where he has to be in charge or he’ll take his toys and go home. That doesn’t lend itself well to building assets for his competitor’s software.
Not sure what the future of XP holds. It will likely keep going for several more years to come, but once MSFS hits the milestones it needs to, it’s going to take a miracle to keep XP profitable enough to keep up active developing with the current model.