We’re nearly a year on in this game’s life span. Its been a bumpy ride but a good one, as personally I hoped it would’ve been. What started as just a simple scenery simulator in my eyes has become my go-to for general aviation flying.
When the game first released, there was no doubt about its beauty. Its functionality however? It was a rough start. Poor optimization, features that flat refused to work, physics that seemed off, and aircraft behavior that just was incorrect, even for out of the box aircraft. I was one of many that pointed these issues out (politely I’d like to say) and decided to put the game on the back burner, let the dev team sort things out, and check back after each update to see how things were coming along.
Well, in the past month the game has become my main flight sim. As I type this out I’m IFR in a Seminole out of Nashville TN for Elmira NY. My NAV radios are tuned for Livingston and Lexington respectively, I’m buzzing above the clouds at 9,000 feet, ForeFlight has an ETE of 4 hours, 11 minutes, and I’m racing a storm front north of my route.
Credit to the devs. The game has come a long way and I’m excited for what the future holds. The community has created some wonderful mods that I follow for some of the aircraft (CJ4, King Air, and TBM) and third party devs are always working on new toys to play with. Well done Asobo, well done Microsoft. Here’s to another year of flying.
Hear hear. Sadly there will be many who will say its “broken” because obscure X feature is not there, or maybe due to user error. But the sim has grown and is maturing nicely for me.
I am especially gratefull as we have been in lockdown for over a year (UK) and this is pretty much the only way for us to fly to many of the areas we want to go to.
Between the lockdowns, being an “essential” worker, and work injury I’m in the same boat. I blew out my back back in early April and have since spent my time getting used to the sim again, and tying it in with a lot of sim racing that I do. At one point I had a decent following streaming and wanted to tie in flight simming but mentally just haven’t had the courage I suppose. Its been cool flying about in the sim seeing the different race tracks and such, as well as the other sights.
I whole heartedly agree with the positive comments. The sim is still developing and how much have we had to pay for the updates? Zilch. My pc is far from top dog but I don’t get ctds and only a little stutter here and there. It is amazing what has been achieved in such a short time. But there are always those who will moan. Such is life.
Thanks, Sean, that’s a lovely post. I’m with you there. I guess I was lucky as I managed to enjoy the sim day 1 being more into GA and exploration, and later VR this is a perfect match. Some exciting updates to come as well so it’s never been better to dip your toes into MSFS. Big thumbs up to Asobo, Microsoft, and all their partners for their continued great efforts.
Exactly, awesome achievement and will continue to improve. To all the “literally unflyable”, " worst ever", " want my money back", " the trees are the wrong color so therefore this is worst sim ever", “cant believe the fmc is not 100% like the real world, worst ever” type people…who were and continue to be SO indignant when people like myself dare to criticise them for being so harsh and told them… just be patient, acknowledge the roadmap and commitment… Yeah…we prefer you take your negativity to the nirvana of xplane, P3D etc
Everyone has a different system so that could be why others have problems. However, the sim is getting better over all. I have noticed the small things like taxi markers updated, trees are better so on. I have not really tried 3rd party aircrafts much even though I own 2. The G1000 is working much better since I returned and the DA 40 is a lot nicer to fly. Yes, I would like additional areas to be looked at but that comes with time.
Performance for me is pretty good, nothing stutters for me and I am using 3 monitors one being 4k. I have the PFD and MFD on the other 2. The overall scenery cannot be beat, that’s for sure. Considering the advance behind the scenes of how this sim works they have done an amazing job.
Give it some time. Psyshic wise and plane behaviour needs some little adjustment same with the weather system. the next Sim Update looks very promising and i just cant wait for it. Alot of respect and love for all devs working at Asobo. Cheers
So sorry to hear about the work injury, really hope you get better. Glad you are keeping your spirits high with the game! I havent tried sim racing on FS2020, but definately something I would love to do one day
Totally agree, at the beginning I was amazed by the graphics because it was extremely better than XP or P3D (specially without add ons). But after I fell in love with the graphics then I was disappointed because the planes and performance were not good at all. Before MSFS I used to fly only big birds and I didn’t enjoy GA aircrafts, so MSFS at the beginning was a terrible sim for me. I decided to uninstall the sim and wait for 3-4 months and keep flying others sims…
I decided to install the sim again when CRJ was released, by that time the first mod I tried was WT CJ4 and I was surprised how good that mod is and the sim was running much better and for some reason the unexpected happened… Installed the C152 Community Mod just to try GA Flying and I loved it, in this sim is such a great experience to fly near the houses, cities, mountains, etc.
A couple of weeks ago I bought for the first time a GA Aircraft for any sim, the JF PA28 Turbo Arrow… and I LOVE the aircraft and VFR flying in MSFS. I also purchased TrackIR to improve my experience and I have to say it is incredible the level of graphics, performance and immersion with this setup. My next step I think will be VR.
I want to thank MS and ASOBO for all your commitment with our hobby, especially I think Jorg is doing a lot for this. I like how every week we have an update of upcoming features, every month there is a couple of streams for Q&As and when there is something important to fix, we have a hotfix asap. Not many developers have this level of engagement with the community and I appreciate that. There is going to be always few people that is not happy with anything, hopefully I see everyday the forums have more positive feedback and that’s nice.
Lets keep enjoying our hobby and hope MS/Asobo will continue improving the sim the way they are doing now!
What I tried is lowering a bit my settings and trying to find a good balance between Quality and Performance and I feel happy with the results, as I mentioned now I only fly GA aircraft without glass instruments, may be that’s why I don’t notice a downgrade in performance and have a smooth experience.
There are things to fix in the sim like trees draw distance, photogrammetry in some cities looks like melted buildings, in some regions mountains change elevation while you fly, IFR instruments still lack some features, etc etc… that’s why I hope MS/Asobo will keep improving the sim as they are doing, and may be with DX12 we will see some improvement in performance… the fact is that I see their commitment with this product and that is a good sign…
I’m new to flight sims but sims and ‘open world’ generally are things I’ve enjoyed for years - I always thought they were recognised as being a bit ‘iffy’ on initial release. With incremental improvements over the months and years, plus custom modding often putting them into the ‘classic’ status with time.
Anyway, I found the thread and thought (with just 60 hours of flight time in VR with my C152 and 10 with the B-N Islander) I’d pop in and say how much I’m loving it. I’ve just completed a flight from Naples to Marseille in the Islander and can’t quite believe how much I enjoyed sitting in my seat for so long.
I invite you to these very forums where we have a bug report section that has a nice constant flow of complaints and reports. Flat ignoring it does nothing but stifle the game’s development and anger/alienate those who want to enjoy the game.
When this sim was first anounced, I feared Azure services would be payware. They turned out not to be. I suspected from MS FS franchise experience that it would require some pro gamer end-game rig, it turned out that it wasn’t the case. I was sad to leave my Vertx DA62 behind. Oh look ! A DA62 as stock airplane ! Ok certainly not as good but… it was there.
I expected nothing in particular, and this sim delivered so much. Flawless ? By far not, but still, I’m not complaining because I love how things turned out. And all that just for the base sim.
The base sim.
Okay FBW mod included but hey ! It’s free. And many thanks to FBW’s team.
No more weather software, immersion nor Orbx additions needed, and that that makes a tremendous difference. I haven’t spent anything yet on payware addition… well because they’re not there yet. Comparing my first year spendings in P3D and FS2020, it was well worth the edition I purchased.
All positive review being said, it is still under construction. Oh I know it never will be perfect, because why then would we be paying hundreds of bucks for addons ?
DX12 from scratch would have saved many of us some headaches, including devs. And that’s just one example of a bad choice.
Yet I’m not complaining, I’m just grateful for this wonderful piece of a software. I really am.
