FS2020 vs FS2024 - THE LAST COMPARISON

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THE LAST COMPARISON

This time I recorded leg number 148 of my round-the-world trip, flying it with a replay first on FS2020 and then on FS2024.

Just for reference, the system on which everything runs: 13900KF, 4090, 64 GB of RAM at 6400. Game Mode OFF, HAGS ON.

Flown in VR with Pico 4 at 143% resolution. I’m recording in the headset, so what you see is “real VR”. All the options (Virtual Desktop, OpenXR Toolkit, graphic settings in FS2020 and FS2024) are visible in the video.

I’ll start by saying that this will be my last test – from today I’m going back to flying. And this was probably my last flight with FS2020 as well: for how I use the simulator ( “free” flight in VFR), I have no more reasons to use it.

In the video, you can see the comparison on cities, mountains, hills, coasts, and rivers. In all situations, FS2024 emerges victorious (which is logical, after all), in some cases in a “stunning” way (look at the coasts and morphing, look at the rivers, look at the color of the lakes). Sure, there are still problems (speaking of lakes, the “milk lake” nearby Christchurch) and the colors in snow-covered areas are still too washed out, despite the “sunglasses” from the OpenXR Toolkit. However… look at the valley. There’s just no comparison.

And everything is complemented by a greater sense of graphic realism, at a general level.

As the icing on the cake, the performance: FS2020 is fully maxed out, FS2024 with optimized settings. The first is on DLSS Quality, the second Balanced but still better looking and running with an average of 20% more FPS (quite probably FS2020 would make up for the difference switching to DX11).

On my system, FS2024 is rock solid – no crashes in the last week, and quick loading times.

My dear FS2020, it has been nice. Indeed, beautiful. In fact: more than beautiful. But it’s time to fly towards new skies.

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Glad you’re very happy with msfs 2024. Have you now uninstalled msfs 2020? I guess that will be the real test, lol! I hope to be able to do this sometime next year and save myself +400Gb of disk space. Cheers.

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Thanks for sharing! I have a similar setup and am absolutely loving 2024 as well.

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Not yet. That will be a difficult moment, emotionally speaking :smiley:

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I’m pleased to hear someone is happy with 2024. Gives me hope that MSobo can get it all together.

Obviously there is a “However” :roll-eyes: I watched your video on a 4K monitor and I made sure the video quality was at max. I thought there was a slight advantage to 2024 but not that much: Rivers, especially small streams; vertical cliffs do look better. I’m guessing seeing it directly, rather in a video, may make the difference more obvious; nice to see the frame rate advantage for 2024. All that said I don’t feel there is it is £70 better (imho). It may be my old eyes. I switched from 1080p to 4K monitors recently and there was little difference apart from glass cockpits were a bit more readable.

Any way, nice video comparison to allow us to understand the difference in the video quality. Thanks sPK

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MSFS 2024 looks amazing… the difference is really starting to stand out the more I play. The biggest advantage is that it’s designed to go beyond the limitations of 2020. This is really as rough as it’s ever going to be… it’s exciting to think about how much better it’s going to get in the future!

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I am back to 2020 mostly because there I don’t see airplanes parked in the air. Getting unknown point deductions for doing things right in career mode, and so on. I hop in every now and then on 2024 but it is still major work in progress, so meanwhile, I am Bush Trippin in 2020 for some real flawless fun.

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I don’t dislike 2024 but I have a renewed love for 2020. The settings I’ve used for 2024 I now use in 2020 and it looks great. I won’t be uninstalling 2020 anytime soon.

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I haven’t seen any break-dancing airplanes in 2024 yet. :grin:

Funny enough, I’m sticking to mostly bush trips in 2024 to avoid many of the 2024 bugs.

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Another important aspect to me is that, although with a rough start, they (Asobo) are showing how much manpower they have. We’re 3 patches in already, the last one was huge, and December is already a slow month.
I trust them, they pushed content out constantly for years in FS20. It’s going to be fun for sure.

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I like the early Bush Trips of 2020 too, but the later ones seemed rushed and I don’t like taking over planes already lined up for take off. I rather do the whole start-up procedures myself and also enjoy the route briefings with pictures and so on, all of which ended up being reduced or completely eliminated in the later bush trips, which is unfortunate.

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I just always do self-planned bush trips in free flight. I always felt disoriented in the bush trip system without a detailed planning from a map.

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So we’re basically looking at exactly the same scenery with some difference in color.

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Great OP :slight_smile: smile:

My experience is now all the same as OP, and I am very very pleased with MSFS2024.
Yes there are a lot that needs to be fixed and a there plenty off room for improvements, agreed.

But what a bad start it was indeed, I had the same issues as everyone else, so I reinstalled MSFS2020 very quickly again. But after the first fixes was done, I have not started MSFS2020 since, and have no plans for it.

The only reason I see to keep MSFS2020 in the future, is if MSFS2024 will be offline some day (and it probably will), then I will have a possibility to go flying anyway.

But when that is said, I think that MSFS2024 is just a great platform to build on.

MSFS2024 for me is after the first 3 patches rock stable, performance in pancake mode actually quite good and in VR smooth and nice and best of all it is all stutter free, and the visuals are in many places just stunning, thanks for that Msobo. I am very sure it all will get just better and better in the future, what a bright Simming future to look into :slight_smile:

Rig: 9800x3d, 64GB (6000mhz), RTX4090, 35" 2K UW screen, Pimax Crystal Light.

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Thank you for sharing the comparison. I appreciate it.

Was there any particular reason to run

  • DLSS in Quality mode and Terrain LOD at 200 in MSFS 2020

vs

  • DLSS in Balanced mode and Terrain LOD at 100 in MSFS 2024?

Thanks.

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Well you know, the planet is still Earth.

Then, please confirm that this looks the same, but with different colors, to you…

Screenshot 2024-12-17 170523
Screenshot 2024-12-17 1705231920×1071 199 KB

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It was just to push 2020 as much as possible (not really usable), while keeping FS2024 optimized (real use).

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Same here. All the talk of issues with 2024 has me pushing that purchase off for several months. Over the past week, my love for the 414 has been renewed and I have done at least a flight per night on VATSIM with this beauty. 2020 looking really good in VR with a few nice payware aircraft and sceneries. Honestly, the 2024 release was just what I needed to get back into flight sim :slight_smile: (in MSFS 2020)

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Not sure the whole specs that was about but an RTX 4090 on DLSS Performance with most everything on Ultra/ LOD 200 (with a good CPU) is killer.

On a 7950X3D I haven’t seem much difference in performance with lower vs. higher LODs. It might be 2 fps?

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I think one thing has to be said very clearly, to be fair to Microsoft and Asobo. The only reason why 2020 comes close right now in terms of visuals to 2024, is of course because of 2024. It is because of 2024 that all the streamed data was updated. For example, in my home state of Iowa, the graphical fidelity. we have now is light years ahead of what we had before the streamed map overhaul.