WIN + ALT + G
Opens the XBox GameBar.
Nearly every time I open that there are people in the SOCIAL menu looking to arrange MP flights.
The XBox Party Chat allows for real time voice communications with others in your MP flight without any hoops to jump through.
MSFS is, afterall, an XBox title, so why not take advantage of that. Anytime I play a MP game on XBox we always have Party Chat active, so why not on PC too?
Part of flying in a Simulation, is simulating the flight… including the pilot calculating and confirming items such as the TOC, TOD, Fuel, T/O and landing speeds and distances… 
At the end of the day, while this is a simulation, it is still a game, and Asobo is a GAME developer. As much as we would all LOVE to see a fully immersive and fully functional simulated environment, it is important to remember that Asobo answers to Microsoft; and Microsoft is a business that wants to make money…
To me personally, Asobo have done an amazing job so far. YES there are a number of issues, and I have been frustrated and annoyed at times and struggled through updates and broken items. But at the end of the day, where, WHERE can you pick up a fully mapped globe and fly anywhere for less than $1000CDN??? (Cost of an XBox and core software). While most of us have spent a $hit ton of money on new computers, GPUs, peripherals, and addons to make this sim better, think about the alternatives and what they provide? What do YOU (as a user of this software) want to do with it? If you want to fly fighter plans and shoot at each other and that’s it, then perhaps DCS or IL-2 might be a better option. There is also XPlane and P3D as other options…
FOR ME Personally I like the freedom of this sim to do pretty much anything, anywhere: I can conduct basic flight training with a Piper Arrow (or C172), I can fly airliners with the CRJ or FBWA320, I can practice carrier landings with the F14 or F18 (or Piper Arrow???)… So many possibilities, and in VR it all looks amazing. That being said, I currently run a Mid-Range system, so graphics are set to medium/high, so there is always areas for improvement. And it takes time to save for a new graphics card (if I can even find one available).
At the end of the day, This is still a GAME. It is a ten year project, and we just are barely in year two. YES there are a number of bugs, but show me a system that doesn’t have bugs… If you want to call this an arcade, so be it. If you don’t like it, don’t fly it, pick another software, don’t whine and drip because its not 100%, I challenge those whiners to come up with something better… Drop mic.
There is a TON of F18’s in the game. All over the place. From TNCM PANC and all points in-between.
None of the default airplanes were ever “study level”. If you wanted one of those you would have to pay for it. There are certain companies that cater to those who want study level aircraft, but Asobo/MS isn’t one of them. They design airplanes that the 99% will use. Not the 1%.
The only problem i have with MSFS becoming a main stream game is the lack of interest for realism aspects of the game.
Currently it’s virtually impossible to fly on VATSIM with the weather problems and the clouds that are too low. For an instrument approach i have to be visual at some point to land the plane. If the weather report says CAVOK conditions but when i arrive there is this cloud covering the runway it’s a huge deal breaker.
But most people don’t care for these things they just want to fly around a bit and don’t even notice the bugs. Yeah it’s nice to have lots of people flying but the attention to detail is gone.
I think the cloud level issue has been noticed well enough and is being corrected. It is not only evident for VATSIM users. I’m expecting information on this next week from the team.
you’re right. but if some study level devs have to use P3D to debug their product, there is a problem with the plateform (in term of dev/ debug / documentation). Majority of these study level aircafts use external engines (coded in c++ dll mainly). MSFS seems to make things harder for that.
And i don’t speak about study level avionics (no good aircrafts with bad avionics) like rxp or F1 not able to work with the sim in its actual state.
So it is not the job of the base sim to offer study level aircrafts, but it is its job to allow to make them And with a minimum stability, and if not, giving a detailed changelog is a minimum (and we are again on the problem of the ridiculously too small sdk team for such an open plateform)
It is 4.3 today in the marketplace today. It went up since I made my comments. Your snip took what I said out of context. Your jet is not arcade. Was my point. I have the suite of CRJ. It is a fine product and you do have to read the manual. The difficulty bar is high, So $54 is a great value for what you get.
Yeah but when is this being corrected? This wouldn’t have happened if they focused on flight simulation. You don’t release a patch with broken weather, i mean how often are these things going to happen? Every update they seem to break a major part of the sim. There are probably going to be more weeks of not being able to fly in the future, i don’t think that’s acceptable.
They can make these mistakes because the big majority of their customers are main stream gamers who don’t care about cloud layer heights.
And why don’t they make a beta branch so they can experiment a bit. This is live environment, you cant just break the weather.
I keep repeating this when I have the chance these days to go on this forum and write a couple of lines:
I suggest to contact companies like CAE for any professional simulation solutions. It will certainly cost “slightly more” to acquire one but you will certainly get study level “out of the box”…
But then once acquired at a modest price one might complain about their scenery and other details and will complain that MSFS has a better scenery at slightly less $…
All the default FREE aircraft that are included in the updates of MSFS are MORE than enough for anyone to have fun…
But I understand that not many people here were or are part of any software development team in real life to understand what is development cost and budgets… Let alone complex software like MSFS…
Cheers!
MSFS is a game - if it were an accredited flight simulator you would need to use it to attain a pilot license. The fact that it has a disclaimer about that informs you of its entertainment status.
Why this topic comes up ad nauseum?
Also - as others have said - Asobo / MS have provided an outstanding platform for 3rd party developers to create content for. Same as every other MS flight sim/game…the only difference is the improvement in quality of the platform with each iteration…and before folks take issue with that remember that this one is still a WiP
“Working In”, yes, “Progress”, i have more and more doubts 
It cannot be expected of a game like this to have “study level” airplanes in it. It would be an IMMEDIATE and utter turn off for many gamers (me included).
I wanna fire up MSFS pick two airports A to B and go flying. If the game had planes that needed me to study on how to learn to poke at an airliner MCDU that looks like its a vintage calculator then I would have asked for a refund lol. I like how it is now, can jump in one of the stock jets with a simple A to B flight plan and blast off.
I understand the desires of “study level” gamers but thats for the 3rd party devs to do and they do it very very well. PMDG will be coming out with a 737NG for MSFS and that is what many of the study levelers are waiting for. More will follow. In the meantime there is freeware like the very good A320neo mod that I feel will become MSFS’ answer to XP11s Zibo.
What MiSobo have done is give us a fantastic virtual 1:1 earth with realistic landscape & weather …and they filled it with a selection of fun accessible planes.
Because of this YouTube is filling up with fun vids of MSFS multiplayer madness with so many people having fun - for some its their very first flight game.
MiSobo have given us the platform. This will be built on by the excellent modders and 3rd party devs. Look at FSX, XP11 and P3D…full of study level stuff. MSFS will be headed there too.
Now, its time to fly the A320 upside down through a canyon 
I think that topic comes up ad nauseum, because there is no such requirement for a consumer-level simulator that it needs to be accredited by FAA to be considered as one.
Aerosoft said “CRJ will never be “study” level in MSFS. We have commercial products that are “study level” but the cost is more” Aerosoft sets the difficulty bar high on how to fly the CRJ too the max in MSFS. You have to read the manual and such.
Back in the day FSX XP PMDG 747 $200 and the 737 may have been more. Lets see what they bring next. I’m excited about it.
I saw some YTs of that CRJ, it does look nice.
I dont have the PMDG DC6 but I hear it has a clever feature that even a casual like me finds nice: it has an “easy mode” where the AI engineer takes care of all the complex airplane systems. Letting casuals enjoy the flying without worrying about complex systems management stuff. This is a neat idea.
However it would be a waste of money also as we are paying for the complex coding that simulates these systems so I guess I’ll just have to wait for a freeware or a much cheaper simpler DC6!
Yup the DC-6 virtual crew is a nice touch, and there’s a checklist mod available on Flightsim.to that’s very helpful. PMDG also provide several .pdf files to help get acquainted with the aircraft.
Not really sure what OP’s point is. ‘Arcade’ in my opinion would be something more along the lines of the Ace Combat series.
Even the default Asobo planes, while far from ‘study level’ still have a reasonable learning curve and serve as a good introduction for new players and there’s plenty of third-party content that delves deeper.
ok you have it all figured out then…complain away - but maybe read the post just above yours first
I don’t quite get it. The post above mine is just an opinion of someone who views the sim the way they do. Nothing to do with if the sim is a sim or a game. There is nothing wrong with expecting study-level planes, which are on their way from 3rd party developers. We already have some, all the CRJs, and the free FBW is getting better and better. In the end, people can enjoy this sim (or a game) exactly as they want to, there is no reason to make a hard distinction if it is one or the other.
Sometimes, when reading comments here I get the feeling that some people are not really interested in aviation at all, but just expect to have an elitist experience of absolute realism that only they themsleves can define as the true “simulation”.