If 2024 is Working for You, What Are You Doing That I am Not?

[Jettalost]

I deleted 2020, and really 2024’s potential depends on how vigorously the development team responds to the very crisis they created. There is no magic sauce here, if you’re going to do any project, best to do it right. Who am I to say? I only purchased a 3,000 euro computer.

Your original post, as well intentioned as it may be, should never have existed IF the developers were intent on releasing a polished product. They knew they were sitting on something that wasn’t finished and did it anyway. It might be paradoxical, but yes absolutely 2024 is working for me, but in many, many ways it isn’t.

[NixonRedgrave]

@NixonRedgrave

As an aside, using Settings > General > Advanced Options > Package reorder tool I was able to move Navigraph’s AIRAC Cycle to load last and it looks like it has resolved my issues with it. IFR is looking closer to reality for me.

BAM! A solid base hit!

My flight plan that wouldn’t load into the Vision Jet is now present and accounted for. Another step closer to IFR.

[Jimrh1993]

@SCGAMEC0X

Scanning responses from people who are having success with 2024, I see common themes - dumbing down the game by avoiding complexities, such as ATC and IFR, and sticking to a small subset of functional aircraft. That’s a truly shameful outcome for this massively hyped 2024 version.

On the one hand, I have to agree.  The game, in its present condition, would have gotten me fired if I was responsible for either the dev or the QA.

On the other hand, not everyone who plays MSFS - 20 or 24 - is in it for the “fleas on the back of the fleas on the back of those fleas” realism.  Some of us “just wanna have fun”.

Take me for example:
I’d really like to spend time trying to learn how to really fly in a realistic manner, but then I get distracted.  I get distracted by the sheer fun of being able to fly - even if in fantasy-mode.  I have fun exploring.  I have fun spending time on these forums trying to shine some light on someone else’s problems - or getting help with the stupid newbie problems I have.

It turns out that, for me, the complexities of precision approaches and trans-Atlantic commercial tubeliner flights, or the “thrills of search and rescue missions” doesn’t really do it for me.  I’m here to relax.

I spent almost my entire life stressing over other people’s problems and worrying about the next software release, or will product “X” pass FAA certification and qualification so it can be used on airliner “Y”?  Or can I resurrect a multi-million dollar high-profile project from going down the tubes with the Department Of Defense, BUNAV, BUAIR, and the FAA breathing down my neck?

I’ve worked hard and I saved my kopeks so that I can enjoy my retirement with my wife, son, and granddaughters and I am glad to have access to a simulator like this - warts and all - that I can actually use and enjoy, using levels of technology that would have gotten me classified Top Secret so fast there would be a hole in the air if I had it ten or fifteen years ago.

IMHO, if I’m not having fun doing what I’m doing, I’m obviously doing the wrong thing.

As Henry Thoreau said:  “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” - and I swore to myself I would never be that man.  Especially not with a game, so I chill.  Does that make me less of a man or less of a pilot?  I think not.  I find my fun where I can.

What say ye?

[Jimrh1993]

@NixonRedgrave

BAM! A solid base hit!

No.

You knocked it outta’ the park!

[cya1249214]

Hi all, is anyone else experiencing these issues?
In career mode, I now own my aircraft. Started my company, went on my first sight seeing flight when, again, the flight froze. You can tell when it happens, a light or knob will light up on the dash. Some controls still work, but most do not. Sometimes it will stop and un-freeze in time to save the flight. Not this time! my first flight with my new company, plane crashed into the local interstate road! lol
I am playing FS24 on the xbox series X.

[NixonRedgrave]

@NixonRedgrave

Another step closer to IFR.

With BeyondATC, I was able to obtain IFR clearance from an uncontrolled airport (albeit not with the local RCO, but that’s okay, BATC will get there) and I’m actually on my way with the Vision Jet.

Let’s see how the rest of this flight goes, but so far, we are go!

[NixonRedgrave]

@NixonRedgrave

Let’s see how the rest of this flight goes

I just landed RWY02 KSAC.

With the exception of a BATC oddity, the flight was a total success.

I see the “milky” environment many are speaking of. Is that an HDR issue?

I got this great whackado screen when I clicked End Flight:

Aside from the aforementioned, I actually completed an IFR flight from an uncontrolled airport to my destination for the first time since 2024 lauched.

That is a massive win for me!

@CD0139 @KnightofNi312 @Nikita @CriticalClub72 thank you so much for your contributions here and for suggesting the Vision Jet as a good go-to for success. I flew the 2024 version, as I don’t have the 2020, but it performed great!

It’s nice to be smiling.

[MrBill38119]

Really my best experiences have been with the VisionJet and Honda Jet from FFX.

I’ve never seen the glitch you got before. You’re just lucky I guess

[SuperbAnemone90]

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 …

[Sal1800]

One thing that helped for me was to treat MSFS 2024 as an entirely new, different flight sim and approach it as I was learning how operate it from scratch. Now, they don’t make this easy because there is a lot that is not explained well.

But the other main thing is that I am just naturally much more forgiving of imperfection than most simmers are. This comes from my history with the most basic sims up to today’s offerings. I can focus on the core aspects and ignore the details that don’t work.

Some things like control setup was tedious and confusing, but over time, I feel that I have a good handle on how it works. A gotcha is that some types of aircraft have their own dedicated settings, so the first time you fly a glider, the existing controls you thought were configured need to be done again.

What works in my favor is that my typical flight sim sessions are VFR with fairly simple planes and I prefer the low and slow, stick and rudder work over playing with the technology of the avionics. When new freeware planes show up, I don’t care so much about visual fidelity or systems as long as they feel good to fly.

In fact, I think that the flight model improvements in MSFS 2024 have been an enormous step up and I tried some of the same conditions in 2020 to confirm it. This alone make me much more likely to choose 2024 for most flights. But again, this aligns with my personal preference, so others may have different priorities.

Performance has been much better in MSFS 2024 for me after I had turned down many graphics settings. It still looks very good but I seem to have found a sweet spot. I think that the bandwidth limits are useful for consistent performance. Signal to the sim to not try to stream more than can be handled, not what you think should be your maximum possible bandwidth. I suspect that some people that have performance issues have hidden bottlenecks that are making their experience worse.

[Deanscoh]

For the navigraph issues deleting way points and such there was talk of a workaround over there.

Go into msfs options under advanced. Think it’s reorder packages or something like that.

Drop the navigraph ones to the bottom. For some reason when they load before everything else the EFB deletes then the flight plans on their g1000s etc bork and don’t do anything right.

This should sort most of it.

[NixonRedgrave]

Yes. I mentioned this was the solution I came up with earlier in the thread.

Thanks for the tip!

@Deanscoh

Drop the navigraph ones to the bottom.

However, in my case I needed to move them to the top, so they would load last. When I tired them loading first, I continued to have the same issue.

[Deanscoh]

ahhh didnt see it was doom scrolling late at night! Still may help others so no harm done!

Glad at least some of its functional now. i moved mine to the bottom of the list and it seems to be ok. Not really sure which is load first and which is load last to be honest. i just assumed the MS ones that are "critical " as such will always load first from the top.

[OldpondGL]

@NixonRedgrave

At first, I thought it was going to be a repeat of a long-standing, repeating dream I have of frighteningly loud aircraft engines roaring, followed by an extremely low airplane headed straight for me. I usually wake myself at that point.

I get the one where I’m trying to climb out through wires that are everywhere.

[CaliFlier]

@cya1249214

Hi all, is anyone else experiencing these issues?
In career mode, I now own my aircraft. Started my company, went on my first sight seeing flight when, again, the flight froze. You can tell when it happens, a light or knob will light up on the dash. Some controls still work, but most do not. Sometimes it will stop and un-freeze in time to save the flight. Not this time! my first flight with my new company, plane crashed into the local interstate road! lol
I am playing FS24 on the xbox series X.

These are common experiences on PC also. After you do more complicated missions than flightseeing the freeze-ups become more common and the consequences more dire.

[Lochboisdale]

What keeps me on 2024 is the environment and performance. The environment looks spectacular and the weather integration is the best there has been in a desktop sim so far. The fluidity of the sim is way ahead of 2020 on the same hardware.

Flight wise then mainly low level VFR using the BE58 mainly and various small helicopters. Currently for a more complex experience I’m doing an around the world in the Fenix 320 and really enjoying that.

ATC is more broken than in 2020 if that’s possible, however there is some background noise, I don’t file IFR with it. Not being able to scale the UI is incredibly annoying, plus so many more places now there are heliports makes it virtually unusable to select a destination and request an approach/landing clearance until really close in busy airspace.

AI live traffic has great promise, I think I’m seeing more real liveries starting to appear however that could be generated by something else, aircraft placement and localisation is bonkers though, a line of Air China short haul aircraft in the take off queue at Boston Logan for example.

I have avoided career mode apart from a very quick look, I do like the idea of engaging that, in 6 months maybe.

I have a pull back to 2020 which I have avoided so far as I want to fly the PMDG 737.

I fully get why people are very frustrated, like most things in life it is how you choose to respond that will define your acceptance level. I am annoyed at having paid out a fair chunk of change for the Premium Deluxe edition and getting what we have, especially the regressions from things that work better in 2020. However I will keep using 2024 for the reasons I gave at the beginning, appreciate there are a bunch of add ons I might be able to use to mitigate some of the points however I’ll bide my time a bit more.

[Zeanuck]

I’ve completely stopped mucking about in 2024 for all the reasons stated above. I have very limited time to enjoy the sim (as I am currently working towards my Commercial License IRL), so when I want to fly I just want it to work. That being said, I do check on 2024 once a week or so to see how things have improved…. I know that there are back-end service items being fixed all the time, in addition to to the downloadable update.

For me I’ve started tracking start times and time to CTD, yup…. Here are my numbers….
Average Start time - 2:45
Average time to CTD - 24:30 min

My system CTD every time the sim is loaded, sometimes its at an airport, sometimes its in flight departure/arrival/taxiing, sometimes changing aircraft, there is no specific point…

My system
I9-12000k - Water cooled
4090 - Water cooled w/ 24GB RAM
64GB DDR5 RAM
2TB .m2 main drive (6TB on others)
3Gbit Fibre internet (on dedicated 10Gbit Cat6 line from modem)
Pimax Crystal
Aviator Edition

SO like @NixonRedgrave WHY can’t I get 2024 to run? let alone smoothly. Fly mostly VFR in “simple” (steam gauges) aircraft, and yet I see others having no issues.

Currently 2020 runs like a dream for me, so IMHO switching to 2024 feels like going back to the 80’s and trying to run it on Commodore64…

[NixonRedgrave]

Because I am both a scientist and a glutton for punishment, I decided to “push the envelope” this morning.

Much like an F1 driver, I need to know when the car is going to “let go” to find the boundaries of how I can drive it.

I love the Albatross (the Grumman). It is one of the gems in 2024.

Now, SimBrief doesn’t have a profile for many aircraft beyond airliners (grumble, grumble). There are a few non-airliner type aircraft, so I chose the Twin Otter as a baseline. Why SImBrief? Well, I want to use BeyondATC and it needs SImBrief to know where you are flying to generate its ATC services, so I’m married to SimBrief, for now.

Since the Albatross version I fly has the GNS 530, it definitely doesn’t have built-in SimBrief integration like the Vision Jet and others.

To get all this working in concert, I needed to generate a flight plan in SimBrief using the Twin Otter as a baseline. I’m going to ignore the fuel and payload values.

I copied the text version of the flight plan and pasted it into the web-based flight planner for MSFS 2024 and saved it. Then in the sim I opened the EFB at the World Map and imported it and…

…nope.

After Mickey Mousing around, I discover that my fix for Navigraph not loading correctly is, apparently, a one-time deal. Basically, to get Navigraph’s AIRAC cycle to work in my install I have to open the Package Reorder Tool, move Navigraph once place, move it back, quit the sim and relaunch it. Apparently, I am going to have to do this every time I relaunch the sim. WHAT A PAIN!

Once I figured that out, I was able to open the EFB at the World Map and import the flight plan that I’d saved via the web-based flight planner successfully. I clicked “Send to Avionics” and launched the flight.

Upon entering the Albatross, I turned on the battery and radios and found, yet again, no flight plan in the GNS 530.

Using the EFB from the toolbar, I sent the flight plan to the avionics and it populated it. Again, I’ve seen this before.

I was able to request IFR clearance with BATC and go on my way. The autopilot was able to engage with the flight plan sent to the avionics via the in-cockpit EFB. This was a change from the last time I did this Send to Avionics process with the Albatross. That is a net positive.

So, after a bunch more MSFS 2024 malarkey I’ve got the Albatross on its way IFR from an uncontrolled airport.

[PZSW001]

Agree and i got at the crossroad you described as well. Did problem free flights with C152 and 172 incl gtn750 but that was not a value of $80.
And career mode can be purchased as addon in 2020, so that is no reason to migrate either (and it’s not my thing either).

[NixonRedgrave]

@NixonRedgrave

Basically, to get Navigraph’s AIRAC cycle to work in my install I have to open the Package Reorder Tool, move Navigraph once place, move it back, quit the sim and relaunch it. Apparently, I am going to have to do this every time I relaunch the sim. WHAT A PAIN!

Well, today even this didn’t get Navigraph to work.

I did my usual — launch the sim, open the tool, move Navigraph and move it back, quit and relaunch the sim.

Unfortunately, Navigraph still didn’t load correctly and I had the missing navdata issue I’ve outlined previously.

You know what? This is hard.

It is really hard trying to stay in a positive state about this simulator. It’s a seriously uphill battle, actually it’s more like Sisyphus.

I dunno. Maybe it really isn’t going to be something I can reliably use.

I’m tired of being tried of being in this position with it.

Dang, Microsoft. Why did you do this?