Nixon, your post caught my eye this morning and though at the moment I don’t have time for a long detailed reply I’ll simply tell you that I’ve been using 2024 since it came out and have no desire (or need) to revert back to 2020. In fact, I kept 2020 on my system for about a month and then removed it just to “clean up” my PC after I was satisfied 2024 suited my flying preferences.
I really enjoy 2024 and will not nor need to go back to 2020. Why? All the same reasons many others have detailed in other posts, including improved lighting, more detailed ground visuals, stunning mountains and cliffs, and better clouds for starters.
As for what you were asking in your OP, I fly the Vision Jet (FFX version from 2020) in free flight mode. I fly VFR mostly for sightseeing but use the G3000 and AP with no issues and my flights are stunning visually. While my flying is unconventional I like to think I’m using GPS the way it is intended without the strict rules ATC lays on us, so I get an unfettered flight devoid of those rules but man is it smooth and fun. I use VNAV and visual approaches to my destination airports with the AP bringing me down for landing. In mountainous areas with tricky approaches I’ll use an ILS approach vs. a visual approach instead and it works just fine, again with VNAV to bring the aircraft down from cruise altitude.
I use Nvidia filters to give me the graphics look I prefer (for one thing 2024 has too much blue haze in the distance and I “fix” that to a more grayish look that’s more in tune with what I see when flying in real life). On my system I cap my frame rate at 27 fps with Vsync at 1/2 refresh rate on my 2K monitor with TAA, and also use Dynamic LOD for very smooth flights without stutters (my preference is for TLOD of 100 on the ground with a transition to 300 at cruise, and vice versa on descents to destination airports). It works great and in my opinion is a must have for smooth flying.
So, I went a little further than I intended but the short answer is yes you can fly very enjoyable flights in 2024 with its visual benefits. I do it nearly every day and there are many others who do the same. With time 2024 will become the sim everyone wants it to be but it is useable now and I am very happy with what I am able to do with it.
Well said. My specific problems highlight different areas than yours but I’ve been met with endless suggestions of “just don’t use that feature”. It reminds me of an old joke.
A man goes to the doctor and says “Doc, doc. My elbow hurts when I move it like this”.
The doctor says “Then don’t move it like that!”
It’s right down to a few adamant defenders of 24 in my discord that feel not only is 24 the perfect sim, but it cured their baldness, helped them lose weight, did their taxes, and made them more attractive to women. For some it can do no wrong and I just don’t get it.
I have no suggestions to improve your experience and I’ve tried all of the “just try X” things so far in this thread with no positive results. For the most part, the various planes suggested here all have bugs, control issues, flight model issues, sound issues, or various other things that keep me from enjoying them. Depending on my patience and how broken each one was, I gave a quick-ish flight on most planes in the sim and struggled to find anything I truly enjoyed and could say felt like flying a real plane. Like you, I have no interest in the Fenis so haven’t tried that nor do I intend to.
That’s on top of the endless, countless other sim bugs that even if I wasn’t trying to use X-feature, I’d still notice as they’re right in my face. It’s because of that I can’t just blindly choose to enjoy it.
I hope we can get to a good point with this sim but we’re nowhere near right now.
I just performed a full IFR hop from Ft. Lauderdale Exec to Nassau, about 0:55:00H at 183ish KTAS, 5000’.
ATC was a horrendous mess. Let’s not go there. I’m particularly annoyed that there’s no offline ATC anymore - my Phraseology mod from a friend would have handily overwritten some of the worst gaffes in that (why is ground reading me an altimeter with taxi instructions). ATIS says wind favors RWY 31 and ILS RWY9 is in use so why am I being sent to RWY 27? Gah. Took me three tries to load a flightplan without the sim shuffling my waypoints because I wanted a cold & dark spot start.
I saw some traffic - still wondering why a JetBlue flight is co-altitude with me near Bimini but whatever. At least there’s Air Traffic right? Let’s not talk about the tow-less glider opposite from me at the hold short though.
Good news is I didn’t have suicidal headons at MYNN from departing traffic using the opposing runway end from active. I did botch the Visual Approach but that was defo pilot error, I had already passed calculated TOD and had to dive for the GP.
No marshals, no tugs at Arrival, good thing the Jepp Charts clearly show where the GA FBO is (way at the South end of the airport). Parked myself again between two tow-less gliders. Model matching, amirite?
Overall, some of the sim works. Some of it is just a hot mess. Let’s not even get into the individual broken flaws of the Corvalis TTx which I desperately want to enjoy as a new guilty pleasure ride. I swear the vintage configurations Carenado comes up with avionics wise leads me to believe he must be scouring the most obscure For-Sale publications and calling up the really sus offers to get a cockpit tour.
So no, I don’t think you’re doing it wrong. It’s really a matter of how much one is really bothered by certain things. We all have our pet peeves and it’s going to take time to fix them. Like FS20, some of our pet peeves may never get fixed or addressed adequately. Onwards!
I currently stay away from anything serious or simulation-oriented. I literally just game around with the photography mode. I don’t want to be disappointed any more, so right now I don’t give a … about procedures, checklists, realism or weather. I paused my SayIntentions and Navigraph subscriptions. I take the F18 and go crazy at busy airports because there’s no working live traffic or multiplayer anyway I try to find forest elephants in South Africa for two days now and have a blast staring at the never ending beautiful landscape.
I probably spent more than 15000 euro for my sim rig (Monstertech, all Brunner, maxed out workstation, VR) but who cares It can all be so simple. At least until Sim Update 1.
My interests are GA and VFR. And I don’t particularly like GPS at all.
Flying the C404 using Navigraph for flight planning, SayIntentions for ATC and entertainment, OnAir for purpose, and time-map-ground to find my way … and all in VR. It all works.
MSFS2024 is a blast like this and a step up from 2020 in lots of important little ways. I’d like some of my add-on aircraft back, I’d like MSFS to remember my control settings, but I haven’t had to go back to 2020 yet…
I just hope they can quickly sort out the many, many bugs that spoil it for those who don’t use it the way I do.
So, yeah, here I am trying to use the Vision Jet and I needed to see the registration number on the aircraft to enter it into SimBrief for my flight plan.
I toggle Pause and enter Free Cam. I zoom in and copy down the reg and then click on “Back to Briefing” aaaaaand… nothing. Nope. Not going to work.
It’s this stuff that is killing me here, Smalls.
Okay, cross off using the Free Cam, got it. Add that to the endless scroll of “don’t use” sim features that has poured off my sim rig and unfurled itself across the floor like a roll of toilet paper let loose.
Like I said in the OP, I’m really, really, really trying here, but I cannot get past this sort of obstacle to success every time I try 2024.
EDIT:
¡Olé! I used my troubleshooting hat and fired up an Xbox controller and that gave me a press of “B” to get “Back to Briefing” working.
EDIT2:
No luck on the SimBrief import. It’s the same issue I saw yesterday with the FSR500 – no enroute waypoints.
And before someone tells me there are issues with airways, yesterday’s flight plan didn’t have V25 in it, at all. Is this a Navigraph navdata issue? Do I want to go down the troubleshooting hole again?
Sometimes I have to reload the flight plan once I’m in the plane to get the entire plan to load. It also fixes the reassignment that the original load changed. With that said I just completed a VJ flight that started out at 50fps and landed at 5fps. Other times there is no drop in frame rate. A frustrating experience at every start.
2024 is obviously not working working, but I’ve deleted 2020 and fly in 2024 exclusively because it looks that much better to me and I can’t go back. There’s something about the way the light works or the colours look but it is much more lifelike than 2020, IMHO.
Luckily for me, I’m not very skilled in aviation anyway, and even luckier that my beloved DA42 made it to 2024. All I do is VFR free flight in the DA42. I just pretend it’s a DA42 free flight simulator with no ATC or IFR and I’m having a great time. I know this doesn’t help you with your needs but it’s one answer to your question.
Psychology says that people who go through tough times together often have stronger relationships than those who simply enjoy good times together. So by the end of this we’re all just going to LOVE 2024, I just know it.
As a side note the new glass effects are too strong for the DA42 canopy so I sometimes have to adjust my course in order to see clearly. And the sim annoyingly resets my binding profiles EVERY TIME so that’s a little annoying. So yeah, even for my limited use it isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty darn beautiful. And I forgive a lot for beautiful.
@NixonRedgrave Thank you for the most mature and professional posting I’ve read in a long time on these forums - you had me at “eleventy billion”.
I’m afraid I can’t offer much help, since I probably fly the simplest way possible on MSFS 2024. I’m a VFR fan, so I live in the Edgley Optica, taking short hops while using pilotage and dead reckoning to find the next airport (using skyvector.com to show a VFR sectional of the area but not showing where my plane is), and will sometimes use the autopilot. Throughout all this, the only problem I’ve encountered is (still) the occasional and random insane turbulence that tosses the plane all around (usually right after takeoff), but that doesn’t happen all the time, so it’s not a showstopper for me, just annoying (and I have all the turbulence/wind turned down as low as possible).
Thanks again for a well-constructed post. Here’s hoping your skies turn cerulean with SU1.
Are we really going to have to wait until SU1 to have lighting that works? Nothing has been said to the contrary, so I’m guessing the answer to that is, “Yes.”
Sigh, this is such a drag for me.
There has to be a good VFR aircraft with some working lights. I wonder if any of my Marketplace purchases from 2020 would do the trick.
EDIT:
AH! I found the spotlight up behind the seats will do the trick. It looks like none of these instruments are even meant to be lit, I don’t see the lighting fixtures except the ones for the Airspeed and CDI.
I know this isn’t much help, but I then pop on the “flashlight” (Alt-F for me) to see the other dials. Also, note that to turn down the intense brightness on the Garmin GNS-530, the dial is on the left of that whole cabinet - there are two of them, and it’s the one closest to the windscreen. I have to turn it down to like 5% to not burn my eyes out.
The 172 classic is in pretty good shape. The only real problem is that the cockpit and exterior lights are hardly visible in the daylight, but they are fine at night.
The M20R Ovation isn’t bad either, but the autopilot display is really dim and hard to read in the daylight. Other than that, everything else seems to work. Can’t recall if I’ve flown it at night though.
I’ve flown the A2A Commanche a couple of times and don’t recall any problems with it either, but I haven’t tried it at night.
Well, I am up here in the Optima, at night, at 3500’, with live weather in pure VFR conditions – CAVOK as it can be.
The sim looks stunning. I’ve got the fortune of having hardware that lets me run this thing at maxed out settings, it is smooth, and it looks absolutely insane on my fancypants OLED display, too.
The only oddity I’m noting is the automobiles don’t seem to spawn but for a small area below the aircraft and even then, their presence is a bit erratic. Perhaps a streaming issue?
The Optima flies nicely. It sure is slow, but if 2024 is currently a VFR and scenery simulator, then this seems to be the way to go. Got Friends does nice work, no?
Man, if they can get the IFR issues sorted this is going to be something else. I do fear for the amount of work they have on their plate, though.
I have the C-172 and the B-787 pretty much working as best as I think possible with a 8 GB 3070ti.
What hardware are you using? Seems pretty clear this software will barely work with a 8GB card like I have with a lot of manipulation. Seems like 12 or 16 GB are needed as a minimum if you are not experienced, i.e. an IT pro.
It was Stephen Coonts and his daughter in the Cannibal Queen as they flew to small fields across the lower 48.
(I get goosebumps writing this because of your dream, the Stearman and how the book of the same name is about the pure thrill of just flying.)
I try to find forest elephants in South Africa for two days now and have a blast staring at the never ending beautiful landscape.
