I’ve been enjoying this topic as a lurker but have to add my bit at last. It’s great to see so many positive approaches to what looked like an impossible mess a few weeks ago.
My expectations from a flight simulation program costing less than $500 are mainly in the direction of entertainment, not serious training, certification, or software development. I probably have more leisure time than most because I’m retired and venerable and slow, but still a wannabee pilot whose real-life travelling days are over. I’ve used most home computer flight simulators since about 1985. I live in Queensland, Australia.
My rig is medium/high end - i9, 32G ram, 3070ti, six monitors, Air Manager, Spad, Track-IR, 7800x1440 high-end graphics, yoke, pedals, Saitek panels, 20-30 fps is enough.
By delaying my purchase for three weeks I missed the original congestion on release day.
2020 left me with bitter memories of many man-months of frustration so I have little reason to feel any regret at seeing it superseded by 2024. Yes, it still worked better than the present 2024 in many ways but surely we haven’t forgotten all those bitter months of waiting for fixes, and the long list of unresolved problems. It’s still on my pc but I haven’t felt the need to go back to it.
Anyway, with 2024 I decided to take my time. It took a solid three weeks to understand the controls setup system, just for one plane. But I have to say that I like in now. I think many people are reading too much into it and over-complicating what is really a logical solution to the 2020 problem of having to duplicate settings for different aircraft. It does save profiles but yes, you have to remember to press the “save” button frequently and restart - resume many times.
Restricting your flying to a single, uncomplicated airport and a single plane while you get the hang of it is not what we bought our MSFS for but it works at present. Most people seem to like the graphics and smoother performance from multi-threading.
Meanwhile a couple (?) of hundred dedicated and well-paid people in Asobo and Microsoft are working flat-out on the remaining bugs, and the fixes are now being streamed to us instead of having to put up with those tedious updates of 2020.
We all have our own targets and hopes, and patience seems like a better virtue than it ever has been. This software will improve, even if Microsoft gets sick of it and we all contribute to a crowd-funded buyout.
Now there’s an idea …