General Feedback --Two Months Later -- My MSFS 2020 Review

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At this point we have passed 2 months since the release of the game. This game is still not anywhere close to the experience that they advertised.

Like coronavirus, how this game affects you depends primarily on who you are. If you are a flight simulation enthusiast, know that this will bring you a lot of frustration and pain except for the graphics. The avionics are absolutely horrible, mostly not implemented. Forget about doing any type of serious IFR flight. For example, you can’t even go direct to a waypoint in your flight plan without deleting and recreating the whole plan. In addition, messing around with the avionics is one of the things that most often causes the game to crash. These crashes have become much more frequent since the Japan Scenery update, which was the second major development update that was released.

Essentially, it is very clear that the release of this game was pushed way ahead by Microsoft, causing them to release way before they were ready. The game essentially released in Alpha State. Many issues that alpha testers have been reporting since before the game released are still in the game. They said that this game was a “flight simulator” first and foremost. That’s an absolute joke.

In their official discord server, shortly (less than 2 weeks) before launch one of the moderators slipped up and directly reported that the game “Was not in a good state currently” This assessment was spot on.

The game was released with multiple, core simulation features completely missing and/or broken. The developers then continually failed to acknowledge these complaints and official bug reports. And only after much pressure from the community did they begin to acknowledge these game-breaking issues.

A handful of the most severe bugs were successfully fixed in the first major development update. And the performance of the game was significantly improved for many players, including myself.

Then the second development update came, and set the experience significantly back for the majority of players. Several major bugs, including the autopilot being unable to control plane planes have returned, and crashes to the desktop are much more frequent.

And that’s where we are right now.

WHATS GOOD:

  • The weather: The weather simulation is objectively much more detailed than in xplane/FSX/P3D the old sims basically just collect the metar data and winds aloft and interpolate them between points. MSFS uses an advanced weather model to more properly simulate the weather between airports. Large formations such as hurricane and other large weather formations will be visible in game, and on the game’s world map at the main menu.

-VFR Flight: I have been pretty much exclusively flying VFR.

-The Scenery: Worldwide satellite data + high detailed photogrammetry data for large and well known cities.

Conclusion: This is really more of a world / weather simulator at this time than an airplane / flight simulator. If you are new to flight simulation, or simply do not care about extreme real-world realism around the avionics or flight procedures, you will probably have a good time with this. If you are looking for a “serious flight sim” experience. working avionics for IFR flight allowing for simulation of real world IFR procedures. This game will be very frustrating, and is simply not worth the time

They should have called it “Early Access” and everything would have been fine.

Final Conclusion: If you are coming from another flight sim, Save yourself the trouble. This game is a joke. Do not recommend.

If you are new to flight sims, there’s a decent chance you will have a good time with it

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On the other hand, for me, weather is the only real problem I’m having with the game at the moment lol.

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Blockquote Final Conclusion: If you are coming from another flight sim, Save yourself the trouble. This game is a joke. Do not recommend.

Completely agree. I use it exclusively as a VFR simulator. I never intended to replace P3D with MSFS, I was of course not expecting study level airliners, but there are just so many bugs that it is not an enjoyable activity. I keep on using P3D, FSX and even FS9 almost all the time. I occasionally use MSFS for a VFR flight.

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I was trying to summarize your review, and to me it looks like your major complaints are revolving around IFR and avionics side of things.

I have some questions to ask about this part:

You said this because of the issues you are having with - again - the IFR+Avionics side of things, as you explained in the previous paragraph:

So when I add two plus two, I end up with the conclusion that according to you and your review, if X Y or Z flight simulator has hiccups with simulating IFR and IFR-capable avionics but does simulate VFR flights with little to no issue, it is not simulating flight, the process by which an object moves through an atmosphere without making any contact with the surface.

Therefore, according to you, MSFS 2020 is not a flight simulator simply because its simulation of IFR and IFR-capable avionics have issues and/or unusable to you, although it simulates VFR flights well, as per your own admission:

So my questions now are:

  1. When a MSFS 2020 user (such as you) performs a VFR flight in the C152 for example, is he going through or experiencing a simulation of flight (in the default C152), the process by which an object moves through an atmosphere without making any contact with the surface?

  2. When hundreds of thousands of Private Pilot License (PPL) holders without IFR rating perform thousands of VFR flights all over the world everyday in real life, are they conducting and experiencing flight, the process by which their chosen aircraft moves through an atmosphere without making any contact with the surface?

If according to you the answer to question no. 1 is ‘Yes’, that means MSFS 2020 simulates flight, and therefore is a flight simulator, and the VFR fliers in this sim are participating in a computer simulation of flight, (flight as in the process by which an object moves through an atmosphere without making any contact with the surface) and not playing Battlefield or COD.

If according to you the answer to question no. 2 is ‘Yes’, that means all these real world VFR-only pilots are performing flight (flight as in the process by which their chosen aircraft moves through an atmosphere without making any contact with the surface) and not playing hockey or baseball.

It gets more confusing because in the conclusion you state:

So basically, if in a flight simulator the IFR and IFR-capable avionics have issues and/or are unusable to you but VFR and VFR-capable aircraft in that sim are okay and useable, the sim magically ceases to simulate flight and the airplane?

And if a PPL pilot without IFR rating hops in to a VFR-only aircraft that has no IFR-capable avionics and then takes off, he magically ceases to perform a flight?

PMDG’s CEO Robert S. Randazzo agrees when you mention the “world simulation” part in your irrational rant, although in a completely different and more appropriate way:

MSFS is providing to us is a world simulation into which we can insert some truly incredible simulations.

Microsoft and Asobo are about to bring to market a fully modern simulator that leverages the data driven
world in order to create a magnificently beautiful simulation world in which all of us can exist and fly

Don’t go into MSFS expecting it to be like FSX with a better graphics engine, because you will be disappointed if you do. This is an entirely new world simulation and with this new world we are all going to spend some time adapting to new ways of doing things.

Source: https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/general-discussion-news-and-announcements/75469-30jul20-pmdg-s-view-of-msfs-and-the-future-of-simming

P.S. I’ve done 40+ hours of autopilot-assisted IFR flights in MSFS 2020 so far, and never had a CTD while using the avionics. There were only two times when the autopilot decided to do a full 360 degree during approach, but not anymore after the patch prior to the latest one.

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“P.S. I’ve done 40+ hours of autopilot-assisted IFR flights in MSFS 2020 so far, and never had a CTD while using the avionics. There were only two times when the autopilot decided to do a full 360 degree during approach, but not anymore after the patch prior to the latest one.”

Congrats well majority of people have had CTDS throughout the world. For me personally, its happened randomly and can’t really pinpoint when its gonna do it…Just because you haven’t had issues doesn’t mean others haven’t. Its quite obvious from the bug section that many are still experiencing CTDS constantly.

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I’ve been flying it since it’s official release. Though I am not an expert at vfr flight I can do simple flight from point a to b the hook up the ils in most cases and land. I like the fact that I can now glide my planes over the runway threshold like in real life. I love the scenery and the weather. I’m optimistic about the airplanes. I’ve done a few group flights with a few friends and it’s great fun. I’m super thankful that we live in a day and age where we have home computers and sims like MSFS. It will constantly improve as long as we don’t slam the developers and make them feel like we don’t appreciate their amazing efforts.

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After two months of sim experience, I might profoundly state that I’ve hardly seen any betterment, except for comedowns and downgrades… regarding both graphics and avionics. However I still am simply in love with it, d*mn. My current relationship with MSFS2020 is a love and hate kind of thing…

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This is hardly a review…just some mindless ranting…

I just don’t get these kind of posts. If I would dislike something as much as this I would quit playing it and go back to whatever product I enjoyed more. What’s the point in staying in a community for something you clearly dislike?

In my opinion there are three approaches here:

  1. You dislike MSFS and should hence quit both the sim and the community. Which would do both yourself and the community a favour.
  2. You are not happy with MSFS currently but see potential and should take a break and return later. You keep an eye on the forums now and then maybe, but in a more passive way, as you don’t have much to contribute with as you are not actively using the sim.
  3. You enjoy MSFS and have the option to contribute to the community by sharing experiences, reporting bugs, suggesting improvements etc.

Constructive criticism is naturally fine, but this “review” really adds nothing of that.

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I see a lot of frustration on these forums and I understand why. In the history of flight sims this happens time over time. In the nineties I happend to be an official reviewer of the genre for a (paper based) games magazine. It was the time that I reveived almost every month a bunch of CD-roms with a new title to review, mostly arcade like sims. The very small hardcore community was eagerly awaiting some serious stuff but it takes an enormous amount of time to simulate this kind of fidelity, and will propably never reach the expectations of enjoying real flight.

X-plane had been around for a long time before it even became popular, mostly due to the fact that Microsoft stepped out of the genre and the community and developers started to enhance it. I remember the development of Falcon4 which took years and when it finally was released it had a very buggy start and the publisher killed it after a few years. However it’s still alive with the help of the community.

For what I see in this early life of msfs2020 I have strong belief that we are on the right track. The community is on board, and the developers are busy to start enhancing the sim. Maybe you are right that it is feeling more like an open beta in this state, but maybe that’s exactly why development will go faster.
I see a next level sim with a bright future.

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It just goes on and on and on forever, and doesn’t help anyone in any way. How hard should it be in the year 2020 to describe the problem/s, reproduction methods, hardware and software configs etc, and then post one copy in the #self-service section and the other in Zendesk? MSFS developers already acknowledged a huge majority of the issues and are working on them. They even addressed the silly little request concerning 'Press any key", something I never ever expected. In any other app, simulator or games the devs would simply ignore such requests.

I’m done with this. From now on if I see even the slightest hint of a condescending remark, bad attitude towards the project or developers, negative-nancism or anything remotely similar, that person will end up permanently in my ignore list in any and all MSFS-related social media platforms (the ignore feature is there for a reason).

I’m more than willing to help people in the Bugs section or support them with raising their concern by upvoting etc. But these negative nancies are a distraction and just a waste of space and time for the large majority of grateful and knowledgeable people who are willing to help and not having major issues with the sim.

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Blockquote
They even addressed the silly little request concerning 'Press any key", something I never ever expected.

In this you’re right that it’s incredibly silly, but I’m actually disappointed they have that earmarked for next release while actual critical bugs are still “Not Started”
Besides, the fantastic community already beat them to the punch:

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you had the chance to try the full sim for 1 month at a cost of 1$/€ which would be automatically refunded when canceled before the end of the subscription

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I wonder if in a car simulator its dynamics and control did not correspond to reality, but the landscape would be beautiful, how would the user react? And the developer says that this is an exact copy. It’s just that absolutely everyone drives cars and they immediately feel the catch. Even Xbox users

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Same here. My position now, 2 sims. My currently installed , for many years, Xplane 11.50 vulkan fully loaded for my ifr and true orbx te vfrs, fs2020 for vfr,low and slow with the unreal metar only.

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Nailed it right there!

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The business model of MFS is ofcause to make a simulator that will satisfy 90% of potential customers over time.
The money does not come from the hardcore simmers or even the semi hard core. It comes from the casual simmers or people just wanting to experience the thrill of flying.
But even the less experienced or novices or “fun” gamers want something realistic, hence the need to cater for the (hardcore) simming community. They dont want another Microsoft Flight fiasco on their hands.

Asobo/Microsft have quite clearly said that MFS is an evolving platform where 3rd party developers are a key ingredient, and quite cleverly thought so.

There have sold more than one million copies so far. The simming community (people that see this as an ongoing hobby) is about 10% of that, 100.000 worldwide. This is the ones that are active on this forum.

So the problem for Microsoft is to find the sweet spot where their evolving platform caters for the majority of simmers as well as 90% non simmers without spending millions of $ or lengthy development on aircraft or systems the wast majority of users dont care about.
They leave it to 3rd party developers to do so, and quite rightly so.

I think that Asobo/Microsoft have hit that spot rather well so far. Nice assortment of aircraft, much further developed than earlier sims lineup of default aircrafts with adequate systems depth for the majority to enjoy.

What they have done not so well is too many bugs at launch, and a unfinished SDK that hampers launch of “studylevel” aircrafts.

To the ones that expected a simulator with full systems depth, it be aircraft, communication, navigation or their own house in precise 3d glory I say welcome to the real world.

If there were a profitable marked for this we would have many more sims to choose from.

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yep yep yep.

It’s a very difficult game of balancing and juggling the balls. To properly understand it we need to go back to the very early days of IBM/Xerox/Apple/Microsoft/Novell/Linux/Sun. It’s a separate scholarly topic in its own right, requires heavy research and studies and I won’t go into it now but here are some questions for anyone who’s interested:

  1. How did Microsoft being a software/OS-only company single-handedly bring Apple - then a hardware+software company - to its knees? Answer: Third party support.

  2. How do Valve, a video-game development company, no longer make video games but still make billions of dollars every year? Answer: Third party support.

  3. Why did some flight sims such as Microsoft Flight, Dovetail’s Flight Sim World, Xplane11 and Aerofly FS2 die? Answer: Lack of third party support

Moral of the story: For flight simulator and many other apps/services, once you tick the third parties off, you end up with a dead product. You do not tick them off. You need them under your umbrella, not on top or outside of it.

Microsoft have the financial and corporate strength to kill all the third party study-level aircraft developers within the next two months by asking Boeing, Airbus and Textron to develop and release study-level aircraft, but doing so will be neither moral nor beneficial to the flight sim community in the long run.

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You are being deliberately abstruse by saying Xplane 11 is dead. In fact, it’s as strong as ever and development is well ahead for Xplane 12.

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Try and be a little more considered and adult please.

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No IFR ???

Weird … flying IFR from nice to rotterdam on instruments in a c172… 5 hours (1 to go )… no crashes … no nothing … working like a charm … OnAir on my Ipad … GREAT FUN. Weather is impressive … 40 FPS on my gaming LAPTOP … again NO ISSUES ( although i’m not everyone … i know that )

No IFR ???

Ever tried the A320nx mod ? Or other mods for that matter

No IFR ???

Do you know how to tune a VOR at all ? No issues with that.

No IFR ???

Aha … you THINK IFR is : loading a msfs flightplan in a fmc and “fly” 8 hours on autopilot to autoland in the end ??

PERFECT : nope … but just 2 months old … imagine what this will be in 10 months more ! If you can imagine

Have fun

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