Just a little background… I have been a flight simmer since the days of Flight Simulator II, and after MS divested from the FS industry, I took a break for a number of years before I found x-plane, and I was very pleased with x-plane (still am).
When MSFS2020 was announced, I was excited. I did not expect MSFS to be as feature rich and realistic as x-plane – and certainly not at launch. But I was underwhelmed by the release and I stopped using MSFS. Simply because every time I’d try to fly, something wouldn’t work as it should. Yes, the problems are mainly around IFR and systems modelled, but I couldn’t even really enjoy it as a pure VFR sim because performance was so poor.
To put it simply, I was never able to just feel like I am flying. Because of the issues and the slide-show frame rate, the sim was just not able to pull me into an immersive experience.
But last night, that changed. There are still some issues in the IFR space, but there have been some improvements. There have been some new issues introduced – like a number of switches are no longer operative. Yes, I understand they redesigned the UI… no, it is not me misunderstanding the new way. They broke a lot of switches.
But overall, because performance is greatly improved, it feels like it should and therefore immersion can happen… at least for me.
So I view SU5 as making big progress. I just wish that whatever they did which improved performance, that had been done in the release. But we can’t really roll back the hands of time, can we?
That said, unfortunately you still have to fly anywhere except NYC to have a good visual experience. While it has been improved, NYC still looks post apocalyptic. And no, I am not turning photogrammetry off.