MS/Asobo - How Did This Happen? Free Flight is Awful

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I’m doing my best to remain as professional as I can, yes launch days have been terrible in the past, they’ll be terrible in the future and a lot of ‘games’ go through launch day pains. Unfortunately, customers have no say.

This is not what this post is about.

This is about free flight. I spawned at KJFK trying the Airbus A321 from Inibuilds. My first impression were the lackluster amazing graphics that I felt we’ve been hearing about from MS/Asobo over these last several months. Sure doesn’t look like the trailers, does it? (ps, this is on ultra 4k)

But the experience – all I want to do is get into the cockpit and start flying, but I can’t do that because all of our peripherals and mapped controls are gone; we get to start from scratch and of course nothing makes sense or is easy.

Thankfully I learned how to use my keyboard to walk around, but how did this pass inspection? AI is a total mess, an aircraft just randomly spawns over me, half the airplanes in real traffic have generic Asobo liveries. Finally saw SOME that do have a livery at JFK.

Can’t even get into the cockpit. Clicking on the door doesn’t work with my mouse.

I am just baffled at how Jorg/Seb thought, “yes, this is it. We’re done! We made it a great sim.”

Sorry guys, I’ve been huge fans of this franchise, but I feel like this is a backwards leap in the wrong direction.

And maybe it’s just not for me… but I have a feeling others feel the exact same. What happened with caring about core simmers?

Regardless of my personal opinion, how this became “launch day” approved is what I am so disappointed in. Think about how long and how many months it’s going to take just to do regular things we do every single day in MSFS 2020. But hey, we got career mode.

  1. Custom JFK airport looks worse than other sims I won’t mention. Not better. KDFW looks more arcade like than it does in MSFS 2020.
  2. Whoever thought to redo the controls/bindings system really needs to figure out how that went so off the rails. None of my peripherals (Thrustmaster TCA Officer Pack) work as plug in play, so I am forced to use a keyboard and that’s not even been any positive experience.
  3. AI traffic is a joke (Real Time traffic) - we’re still talking about terrible AI traffic in this NEW sim and it’s 2024?
  4. Weird graphical glitches with random spikes coming out of the ground (you can see at beginning of the recording)
  5. And probably the nail in the coffin for me, all of us airliner simmers who have been here from the beginning – just to think the months and months and months of work Asobo still has to do just to get this sim to where MSFS 2020 is; that’s what really frustrates me.

For those who like MSFS 2024, good.. I truly hope you enjoy it. And I hope I will too, someday. But today, this sim has me thoroughly disappointed when it comes to free flight.

Tried a different airport, KDFW. Real-time traffic is pointless when it “works” like this. Just not good.

From a technical aspect, Jayz 2 cents says it the best:

“Msfs 2024 was simply a money grab, that’s all it was.”

3 days later… this is an Asobo airport… how is this “amazing?”

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Try SHIFT+C, which is the default “Take control of character” hotkey. That worked for me after much frustration.

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thank you Mooncat. Appreciate it.

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Just an incredible disappointment. Seems like a marginal step forward and many steps back.

-Ignition key won’t work for multiple aircraft.
-Can’t remove the chocks from the twin diamond.
-Can’t remove the cockpit EFB from the twin diamond. Blocks half of the windscreen.
-Can’t select certain airports in career.
-Multiple crashes. Waiting another 30m to start the sim each time.
etc etc…don’t feel like making a full bug report now. Didn’t even get that much time as the wait to get back in was too long.

MSFS 2020 was in such a great place. I just don’t understand how 24 was released in such a poor state. It’ll probably be fixed at some point, but MSFS2020 was a better game at release. And there were major problems with it.

No big deal, I’m not loosing any sleep over it. Just extremely surprised at the state of the sim. All of the launch issues notwithstanding. Very basic issues are wrong with the sim. I couldn’t even get into career mode due to crashing, I would be amazed if it worked properly though. Perhaps the scope just got too large for the devs and they lost sight of the basic foundations that make a sim great. It’ll be a long road for improvement, maybe in a year or two this will surpass 2020.

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That’s my point, but you stated it better. Launch issues aside, the sim is what I find extremely underwhelming based on what I felt like we were told and shown from MS/Asobo. And maybe that’s partly to due with none of our expertly made payware ACs being able to “just work” in 2024 yet… but man I can’t wait for custom airport scenery and better planes to work in 2024.

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Lol all of this problems will be fixed in the new and improved Microsoft Flight sim 2028.

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anyone got some airstairs? First flight and I can’t get in the cockpit.

At KBOS and I’m noticing planes are not where they should be (i.e. different terminals)

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I think, perhaps, there are some good bones of the sim. Some scenery looks better, ground handling. Bones of a career mode, replay mode. But everything on top of that needs some major work. I would think the cardinal rule would be not to release something in a worse state than it’s predecessor. But I’m no dev, just a pilot.

I’m not going to refund, I think it’ll get better with time. Just off to a pretty terrible start. So many bugs and things wrong.

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Got into career mode. Upwind leg is incorrect. Upwind is the direction parallel to takeoff on the cold side of the pattern. Tower instructions “taxi to runway 17 via taxiway”. Jesus. Progressive taxi goes through airplanes on the ground. Still can’t turn the ignition key. Its just stuck on “both”; have to use ctrl E. I’m also supposed to fly the pattern but am requesting departure to the north? Not closed traffic? And still no right rudder required for takeoff. You might as well not even have rudder pedals. The number 3 is pronounced “tree” by tower.

Was this not tested at all?

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Technically correct if using the NATO Phonetic Alphabet:

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news to me. never heard it pronounced that way by anyone flying in the US.

i realize i’m probably being harsh. I’m glad to see flight sims getting attention from MSFS and should probably tone it back a bit.

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Hello @SnufflingHook40,

As @NixonRedgrave wrote above, saying 3 like “tree” is accurate according to ICAO standards. The correct radio pronunciation of each numeral is:

Zero
One
Two
Tree
Fow-er
Fife
Six
Seven
Eight
Niner

I had to learn all of this during ground school for my PPL written exam. Then, once I got out of the classroom and into the air, I never once heard anyone on the radio say “tree”, “fow-er”, or “fife”, although “niner” was common. I believe these pronunciations are more commonly heard on frequency while flying in countries where English isn’t the native language.

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Double check your assistance settings and confirm that rudder assist isn’t turned on. If you disable that option, you’ll definitely need to apply right rudder on takeoff.

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thanks seedy. i never had to learn that during PPL. however it is a big world and it might be pronounced that way elsewhere.

career mode is starting to grow on me a bit. i’m enjoying it. however i’m trying to do the first mission, and getting a request for takeoff denied as the field is IFR. however it is CAVOK, clear and a million. another bug i guess…

still can’t get the starter key in the ignition to move from “both”.

auto rudder is off. is there another rudder assist i’m missing?

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also somehow i got an “ATC speed infringement” while taking off in a 172. the canned AI voices in career are kinda off putting as well. stream of consciousness continues.

it would be cool to see other aircraft in the pattern and around the area. completely dead.

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Lol I like this one. Oh you know all those that got to test it early all those YOUTUBERS will just KISS KISS UP to Microsoft saying “what great launch I had no huge wait getting in the game ran fine”

Looks like few days maybe next week I will try. I don’t know how you don’t anticipate this. I am no one out side the box and from what I was watching and reading.. this was going to be HUGE. To be caught with your pants down.. we didn’t even get to see that

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can’t finish CPL. tried 3 times and got different bugs each time. try again tmrw

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wanted to do some fun in the 300M. no dice. come on Asobo. just garbage. who gave this the green light to release?

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Fair enough. I agree. They did a great job with 2020, and as a pilot and flight sim user for many years i was going to get it either way. I remember Asobo saying we could download the game locally, and not have to stream everything. I think the streaming is causing some of the issues, and loathe the ‘on demand’ and ‘streaming’ method of data delivery. Let the people keep the files on their hard drives.

It also just seems corners were cut. Shame, they had a good thing going.

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Best we got though. Coming from P3D and XPL, 2020 was a giant leap forward. This is a niche genre, at least it was until 2020. Maybe it still is.

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