I am reading comments in this Forum on a daily basis. I noticed that the perception of the quality of the Sim varies greatly. It ranges from best Sim ever to absolutely unplayable garbage. How can the Sim be perceived so differently? For me it is by far not perfect, there are still a lot of bugs that need the attention of the Devs and that hopefully will be becoming less over time. But still, I am using the Sim close to daily and I am having a really good time. I do everything from Bush VFR Flying using real world VFR charts to complex IFR Flights. I mostly use GA or the Turboprops and most of the time all is well. Is it maybe because I am not big into Addons and my Sim is close to Vanilla?
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Keep in mind that this forum mostly consists of people who are very passionate about Flight Simming in general. And of the total forum membership, only a small fraction are reasonably active. Iām quite active and I usually see the same names active - maybe a couple hundred people? Or fewer, even.
So naturally you end up with the most extreme views because the majority of players donāt bother to post on the forum.
This forum is not reflective of MSFSs perception in the āreal worldā, so to speak. There are other ways to collect that data, and Iām sure Microsoft has a good sense of the public perception.
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As does the range from which users view the sim.
Some sit 3m from a display. Others mount the display just a few cm from their eyes (VR) - and every distance in between with varied resolutions.
This can be extended also to the hardware used.
(GPU, CPU etc) which impacts just how well the sim performs for different users.
Time served with various different versions of the sim over and having seen better/worse visuals and performance is likely a factor also.
Finally, Iām sure that perception of āwhat a sim should beā is another factor.
Personally speaking for myself, viewed on a 1440p monitor from about 60cm driven by reasonably high end hardware and first installed in December 2020 the sim actually shifts between states. Sometimes it IS the best sim ever and other times it truly is utter garbage. (Because not all updates are particularly good ones)
Right now, using it the way I am (Bush flights in rural Africa) itās a pretty ā ā ā ā ā ā good sim with a reasonably good mix of performance and visual fidelity.
But if I fly to Edinburgh itās an utter mess. Which is sad because I know that Edinburgh has looked great with good performance in the past and now it just looks like garbage.
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A lot of those saying it is garbage are users frustrated because X bug affects them. I have also suffered from certain issues, it is a new sim after all, but if we invested all the time we spend complaining in reporting bugs to zendesk or looking for solutions to issues caused by addons that have not been updated, we would advance way faster.
Completely agree, after SU5 the same 30-40 people that were experiencing the most serious issues opened more than 15 threads as far as I can remember. Most of their issues were legit, (stutters and low res textures in certain areas were really a pain) but a very small number of people were very vocal and thus gave the impression most users were suuuper upset, which was not the case from what I see outside the forums.
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Also, people who complain alot (me somtimes included) can still play the sim on a daily basis and is not always meaning this person doesnāt enjoy it.
Iāve never said this game is complete garbage, but i also made some topics wich were negative and may look like i think this way.
Problem is, people experience issues, get frustrated, then write a new topic while still being frustrated. The next day they fly a different plane in a different location and everything is fine again at that moment.
Donāt use this forum to find out if people like the sim or notš
Ps. This sim also just has alot of issues atmā¦
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Reminds me of the old saying: ācomedy equals tragedy plus time.ā Letās just say that some people stopped smiling when the list of tragedies got longer and the period between them got shorter. 
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Shouting louder doesnāt mean youāre right, agree with you.
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People use the sim in different ways with different purpose, and people have different expectations.
If you are someone who is a pilot in real life and do training in a full motion commercial pilot training simulators, and expecting the same level of quality, feel, and experience in a $120 home flight simulator, then youāre going to be disappointed.
If you are someone who just wants a good world to fly in and just want to enjoy flying manually, then youāre going to have a great time.
I myself, only fly Airbus in IFR, so I only keep the A320 while I uninstall everything else that I donāt need. I donāt care about VFR that much since Iām not interested in it. Same thing that other people is not interested in IFR but do care about the VFR experience. Even so, my knowledge is very limited to IFR, so as long as I can go from Point A to Point B through waypoints and airways with Autopilot Nav, Iām happy. But other people who are more knowledgeable about IFR may sense there are missing things like Altitude constraints that the AP never seem to conform to. And we both would have completely different experience simple because weāre both expecting different things from the sim.
We all have different way of thinking, we all come from different cultural, socio-economical background, different upbringing and different mindset. People around the world use this sim. People from Asia, Australia, Africa, South America, Europe, and North America, all come from different backgrounds and react to things differently.
You can have two people getting the exact same chair from a store with a damaged leg. And one person can complain and request a refund or a replacement to the store and wonāt be happy until they get it, while the other person may just pick up the broken leg and screw the leg back to the seat and continues on sitting on it then be happy with it.
I think we have come to a point in a global society that we should not think that āIf I think this way, then everyone else should think the same wayā Or if āsomeone else thinks about this way, then Iām going to think the same way as they doā. We are all unique individuals, and weāre all different. And itās better to respect each of our differences, and be empathetic by putting ourselves in other peopleās shoes.
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Its certainly been a rollercoaster so far.
So Iām on XSX and it launched about what 8 weeks ago?
Bought the Premium, spent a load on add ons. When it launched it was epic. Beautiful weather, lovely rendered scenery, consistently good photogrammetry.
But since SU5 and during WU6 lots of things have gone wrong. I have encountered the following since launch:
Lack of updates for third party add ons
Third party add ons broken or not working
Missing marketplace deadlines (for a few weeks at least)
Missing jetways
Pop in scenery
Morphing scenery
Broken weather (Lightning in skies with no clouds)
Night lighting completely broken for two weeks
Photogrammetry now not working as it should
We also had issues last night with the server just getting into the game. It is a wonderful title, but it has been an undeniably frustrating and inconsistent experience, especially when you plough a lot of cash into something you are invested in. Last night I flew Paris and good grief it was AWFUL. Scenery loading in, morphing, changing, some stuff didnāt load in at all, broken buildings, I mean this is a flagship title.
I am a really patient guy and Iām not prone to knee-jerk reactions, I work in software and Iām well aware of what goes on. However Iām also well aware of how customers feel, what with working in UX and Research. These things need to be hammered ASAP and fixed quickly as peoples patience is wearing thin as is third party developers.
failing being able to respond quicker, constant communication is a must for paying customers. keep them in the loop, keep them up to date with what is happening, reassure them. A lot of which i just donāt see.
So im not surprised at the mixed reactions on here. i havenāt even got into some of the hardcore sim aspects people who are much more dedicated than myself want to see in the title.
Transparency, communication, fast resolution. Implement this and you will see less whinging on the forums.
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Nailed it!
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Incorrect, it was new over a full year ago at release, its no longer new being over a full year since release.
Theyāve had countless updates released and hot fixes to fix the updates that have steadily gotten worse introducing bugs, each time, even the hotfixes didnāt fix the bugs after the xbox port.
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In the grand scheme of things its all very new. The tech is new. Nothing really has been attempted like this before. Hence all the problems. To my mind the first year of this sims release leading up to SU5 has been one long beta test. In some ways SU5 marked the launch of the sim proper. Its clear a lot of stuff can now happen with the sim now SU5 is out and slowly bedding in. That big bit of optimisation we got with SU5 means the ground work for whats really possible with the sim can begin properly. Thats the way I look at it anyway.
Truthfully though the sim is a constant work in progress.
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lol I see you were not there in the early days of FSX or X-Plane 11, 1 year is nothing, they were in WAY worse state than MSFS has been at launch, and look at them now.
100% agree, if the next patch is terrible I will be the first to complain, but I was willing to give them a year to fix things, and now, in WU6, I could not be happier with what they have achieved performance/graphics-wise.
Many things need to and will be improved, the key now is to do so without breaking other stuff, if they manage to do that, well, we got a winner.
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I downloaded orbx london, which made london a little better, but still broken skyscrapers ā¦ the ones orbx decided to leave out for some reason, and broken smaller buildings along the thames and warning of photogrammetry bandwidth too low. Server ping very good, download speed 65. So i dont get whats going on. Also, what are the grey massive blobs of missing data in places.Like huge round or elongated shadows ! Flying from LA to las vegas, and also south of the alps northern italy. Series x
Iād give up till the next updates itās a mess on xbox
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Yea to be honest the sim is not in that bad of a place. Iām just really critical about transparency. Thatās where a lot of my frustration came. I wonāt rehash all Iāve gone over many times in the past.
They do need to rework their update process. It has to be the worst system Iāve seen ever. I quite literally mean #1 never been a worse update process. Even if youāve never had a single issue (Iāve only had a couple times that it looped and took forever but ultimately succeeded) the update is running your GPU full on max ā ā ā ā ā to the walls for absolutely no reason. Iāve had my video card do a hard crash into video safe mode and one of my monitors turned off and the main one went to 480p and green hue. Freaked me out I thought that was the end of the line for my GPU. Be the end of the line for my MSFS for the foreseeable future too with video cards still so hard to find. Luckily I rebooted and everything was fine.
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Sim is just fine. Developer focus leaves a lot to be desired for people who actually want simulation. And of course there is an issue of promises and what was delivered as far as stock planes go at release etc. Right this minute nothing default is worth your time Everything GA modded is actually pretty good. DA62 42 CJ4 NXI. Good enough to enjoy simming lite and very enjoyable VFR low and slow environment again in modded planes. Something that shouldāve existed a year ago and paid for with my money when I bought the package and not with the time and effort of modding community. But it is what it is. Next stepping stone if big corp is going to be done playing whatever power games they are playing with third party devs in terms of SDK IP ownership and whatever else is going on behind the scenes that we are not privy to and we can have ourselves proper polished deep simulated airliners. If PMDGs 737 which by the looks of it is going to be the first such airliner, flies and flies well and survives couple of SU updates then we can all collectively claim a win for the platform.
Meanwhile for people like me who are not married to our ideas have enough disposable income and as a result acess to decent computing hardware itās a solid good time. Xplane is coming up with ton of good planes and features. So I spend a lot of time there. Of course P3D is home to PMDG a gold standard for boeing heavy simulation so I spend time there and WT CJ4 is my second favorite biz jet next to Aerobask phenom so MSFS gets a decent workout too.
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All - Some experience in FS-Since FS-98, that is about 25 years or so.
- I think more varied hardware systems in the vast arena of PC trying to use this sim than grains of sand in ocean. Since I used to build and service PCās, and was customer support in 3000 employee company, that is one reason.
- Everyoneās internet is different, naha, that cannot be reason, you bet it is. Cache has some bearing on this, and since no good explanation on how it should be setup, bet hundreds of thousands different settings on this one alone.
- Game originally written for PC platform mainly, ported to X-Box consoles, so now, all the code has to work in two different platforms at the same time, with no gotchas? Sure it does.
- Hundreds of different Peripheral hooked up in variety of ways, USB 2.0-2.1, 2.x, 3.0, some USB-C hubs with again devices through them.
Folks just trying to get by in todayās world, and who knows how many counterfit parts in PC, how many marginal parts in PCās, how many close to bad Capacitors on Motherboards exist. Game runs my video card at 84C, that is really warm, suspect, in some cases that is quickly taxing many components of a marginal nature.
Add in, all the bugs, downloading issues, patches/ and this is close to nightmare.
That all of us have stuck it out this long is a High Quality Testiment to our love go Flight Simming, I know I sure do. For me, very disappointed in the promises at the outset āas real as it getsā, and now been 13 months, and still things from outset broken, with new broken things each patch and world update. I rest my case.
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I can assure you as an alpha tester since December 2019 there are bugs to this day that have been there since day 1 which almost all have gone to Zendesk multiple times by multiple people so donāt be so quick to think thatās the path forward. The real world and development is a lot more complex than that. I would advise that people of course send Zendesk tickets, just that itās not the final answer. Looking for answers in the community and others helping out is also beneficial I agree. You should know this as well as you were involved also. Find where Jorg said that people making a lot of noise about not having VR right away is what actually got the ball rolling.
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Yep, you are absolutly correct. I just did test on why certain mouse actions did not work, when I know they used to work. HC-BTQ and possibly the Alpha Flight Controls, through the switch panels on them are coded to take over for mouse actions on some functions. Dual input/change using BTQ or Mouse in setting up Auto Pilot settings, but landing/taxi lights in 747, has switch on HTQ, Avionics on F-14 has switch on HTQ. Ran into this and gave some thought the other evening, since I know mouse used to work all those things in 747. I figured it was bug, and did zendesk it, turns out, programed to do it that way, but, no explanation from developers or Honeycomb about that āfeatureā. Believe, we need better communication between users and developers or something, so we are not wasting their time on things which really are not bugs at all, but enhancements.
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