WHOLE world scenery and most airports with stunning detail. Weather and time selectable in real-time, VERY easy folder structure and procedure for add-ons, simply putting them in the community folder. Gorgeous detail, textures and specular, icing, spay and rain effects on the planes and landscapes.
Good simulation of the aerodynamics of most of the airplanes, (Modern), as far as I can judge, not being a pilot but an avid user of a good dozen of sims since over 20 years. Quite good airport life.
Monthly free updates that add POIs, airports and even more scenery detail and improvements to several countries.
Very active community (e.G. Fltsim.to), and serious, engaged third-party collaborators (e.g. PMDG, Carenado, Aerosoft).
The Bad:
Set aside the fact that now we can delegate the ATC communications to the A.I., it is barely better than it was in FSX. On a lot of approaches it keeps repeating the same instructions over and over, (clear ILS…).
No damage model. If landing heavily the gear is severely damaged, hitting a small obstacle, performing a tail strike etc… all not fatal incidents, the result is always only a black screen. Other sims out there model this in exquisite detail since many years.
The globe / map on which one does the planning has a ridiculous fault: EACH time one has to enable or disable the navaids, cloud cover, view settings, etc. No way to SAVE those as enabled or disabled per default.
No seasons.
The in-flight map lacks hugely in detail and information, (e.g., no ILS / Loc frequencies). I am well aware that it is called “VFR map” but in FSX it would show much more information, including, and most importantly, ILS / Loc frequencies. ***
No tower or fly-by views ***
The simulation rate can be accelerated (2 X, 4 X,etc.) and reduced (1/2 X, 1/4 X, etc), via keyboard shortcut, but there is no keyboard shortcut or other way to reset it to 1X (normal)! ***
No Replay function. ***
*** Already present or much better in FSX, 15 years ago!
The Ugly:
After the update 5 of the 27th of July 2021 + hotfix there is no ugly anymore, at last, after almost one year, most of the stutters are fortunately a thing of the past, at least at my end, and in spite of the well-known CTD’s.
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That’s a matter of opinion we don’t know what level of realism Asobo was going for and compared to previous incarnations of MSFS most planes are quite decent, some even very good. With a whole sim offering 20 aircraft for 120,- I don’t expect the same quality as with addons. An airline enthusiast accustomed to a PMDG 737 will of course not be satisfied with Asobos 787, but when I see what kind of rubbish is being sold at simmarket for up to 25,- I think most of Asobos aircraft are a pretty good deal for the average pilot.
As a sim pilot since FS-98, the 787 and 747 in this one are marginal. FSX’s are way better for getting flight plan/ils apporach/etc. Well better is really I guess “easier”, now, that was lets say 20 years ago, systems have evolved, procedures have done same. FMC is now used almost exclusively to handle Flight Plane, ILS and Approach, way more than FSX systems. BUT, in FSX those systems, albeit old, work every single time. In MSFS, it’s a crxxp shoot if you get ILS GS to work, and for plane to take it. Also, after a year, absolutly NOT ONE PAGE OF DOCUMENTATION ON HOW ANY SYSTEMS IN ANY PLANE is supposed to work. FSX has hundreds of pages of built in documentation. Many of the same commands work in MSFS, i.e., Y for slew mode, not sure for the associated commands in slew; Shift Key + P works for pushback, not sure if L or R work for directions. I keep FSX on PC, because my favorite plane is only avlabler there, and when this one causing severe hair loss (pulling it out because it dont work) I go back to FSX and ahhhhhhh, reality again. I love the graphis here, the realism is top notch, but, too many systems do not perform as the instructional videos Asobo has commissioned, do. FWIW-Lights in 747, using legasy mouse, cannot turn on beacon, landing lights period. Read hair loss above.
For me the most important and urgent thing is to fix the flight model which is only correct for the c172 and c152. Without a correct flight model for larger aircraft it is impossible for the developers to work on a correct study model. The real weather is a complete mess and they don’t open the sdk to third party developers, which makes the simulator for something casual and not for serious flying.
From my point of view these points are the ones that need to be fixed as urgently as possible.
Best regards.
I agree, I wrongly stated “Good simulation of the aerodynamics of MOST of the airplanes”. Yes, in fact the c172 and c152 flight model is quite good, and so is the FBW A320 Development,and the Carenado Mooney.
I guess also the PMDG DC-6 and the Aerosoft CRJ are good, but I don’t have them. Eagerly waiting for the PMDG 737, though.
I don’t even take in consideration the other MSFS default planes, especially not the 747 and the 787.
Hope I clarified that, and really hope that this thread has attracted the attention of Asobo towards the “Bad” points, especially to the features that were present in FSX 15 years ago, and which are inexplicably missing from MSFS 2020…
In my opinion, far too much attention and huge efforts have been dedicated to the landscapes, POI’s, fauna and whatnot, and FAR too less attention has been given to most basic and important features, which I can’t stress enough, were present in FSX and even before.
The C208 and A36 mods are pretty good. Also the DA62 and 40. It’s nice to see community projects bring these aircraft to life. Would be nice if Asobo would allow more default planes to be modded by the community as the default planes do look nice
Indeed, let’s hope.
In addition to implement at least some of the features that I mentioned
in the “Bad” section, which I remind Asobo one more time,
were present in FSX and even before, 15+ years ago.
Exactly right. They even use some old code from FSX . One of the developers said online that some of the code is from 1995 which of course would make it even older!
But they can’t seem to get the basics right. Much of the community is losing patience. Thankfully some freeware developers created some fixes for what is lacking but then the “updates” break those. It is a constant merry-go-round of updating all the addons and testing them until the next update breaks them again.
They need to get all the features found in FSX working…THEN work on the scenery.
You do know that there isn’t just a single developer working on MSFS, who gets up each morning, yawns and stretches, and then thinks “What should I do today? Bugs or scenery? Stuff it, let’s play with mountains!” ?
Perfectly formulated. I could not agree more…
“They can’t seem to get the basics right”
“They need to get all the features found in FSX working…THEN work on the scenery”
(And the stupid fauna and grass…)
I just recently bought the game hoping to role play cargo delivery using full AI flying.
Out of 5 flights the AI nailed it once and that was in a field for a delivery for airpark (then that program just stopped working) and the other times they crashed into airport buildings or couldn’t follow the blue arrows to the parking spot or completely botched the approach.
It’s hard to believe really that the AI is that bad!
