background info on = to explain my personal choice.
In the very early days of computing, we are talking early 80’s I was a very large fan of the MS DOS. By the 90’s are MS came to dominate the PC space I still enjoyed the pace of innovation and consolidation. By the late 2000’s I moved in my personal use away from MS. In the workspace I still was the IT pro but home space only other OS’s. By 2015 I have completely moved MS out of my personal spaces. I have no desire or use for any version of MS. I make NO judgment for those that like and enjoy MS products and machines.
background info off
In my past history, I loved MS Flight Sim. Spent many many hours playing the game. I was very very happy when I learned MS was going to re-introduce the game and make a 10-year commitment. As luck would have it the supply chain was broken and I could only get a XBox S. So be it. I got a Xbox S brought MSFS. On the whole, it was a good experience. I also brought a 1TB expansion card. Enclosed is a screenshot of that setup. I have since brought a XBox X. I was/am very happy with the overall experience.
For the $$ it’s a very good investment. IMHO beats spending lots of $$$$$ for a high-end PC just to enjoy flying at home (smile)
If you are buying an Xbox purely because of MSFS I would wait. If you want it for other games also then yes, it’s a great console.
Í play it on both Xbox and PC, currently on Xbox with SU10 the sim looks nice but has major issues with a lot of marketplace content that I have extensively tested for months on end to try and root out the problem.
Now with Su11 beta, they seem to have fixed the majority of marketplace addons that CTD the system, however it’s come at a cost - the visual fidelity is all over the place compared to SU10 in the air, the LOD, the Bing imagery, photogrammetry and autogen. It has been nothing short of horrific.
Now this does not mean it won’t be fixed on release, however they are no longer updating SU11 to test. My money is on a release as is, then a fix later on (possibly).
One of the draws of the sim is the real-life experience of flying around the globe and the level of immersion and wonder it gives you when you fly to and from and across locations, it can be a real nice pick up and play experience whilst coasting on the couch. In SU11 that’s missing and it’s only a week or so away.
Of course, I’m not sure how scarce Xboxes are these days so you might need to get one just to secure it.
Yes, sim update 11 beta has been a very mixed ‘surprise’, but I am hopeful that they’ll be able to bring the visual quality back up in the long run. The increased stability of 3rd party add ons is really appreciated though.
I think all the opinions above are very valid, and worth your time to explore some of the links posted above as well.
To add my two cents, the Microsoft Team is very invested in both the PC and Xbox space in the long term and are always working to improve the experience overall. It wholly depends on what type of simmer you plan to be when deciding if you’d rather get an Xbox or PC!
As an MS employee of course I will say it is worth it, but definitely have a biased answer here. Plenty of others have shared their opinions and are all informative. Thanks for joining the forums!
Yes. Sometimes when I am having issues with dropping fps in-game, I will save the flight and resume it from the save immediately, which fixes the fps drop. I see no reason why you couldn’t reload the save at a later time.
Well, this is concerning… I have thoroughly enjoyed my Xbox Series X experience on MSFS. I got the Xbox a year ago specifically for MSFS. I have had few issues with 3rd party airports but that has been offset with the great visuals and the immersion you mention. And, its been a very stable platform for me with the aircraft and flying I like to do. The immersion part of it is critical to me and one of the main reason I “fly”.
When you say the visual fidelity is horrific, like how horrific? This does not make me happy at all. I have neither the funds or the desire to spend thousands of dollars on a PC to run the program. It will be mighty disappointing if MS decides to take these backward steps either permanent or shift to low priority to address in an expedient manner. Frankly unacceptable in my opinion. I guess we will soon find out.
It isn’t horrific. It is a slight downgrade in LOD meaning photogrammetry, trees, and detailed mountains pop in a bit closer to your eye than they did before.
Anyone saying the graphics are, “Horrific” is exaggerating to make a point. Even in Beta, it is the best looking flight sim ever… just slightly less good looking than before, and the difference, if you know what you are looking for, is noticeable.
Agreed. I started off playing FS2020 in XsX on a 55” 4K TV. The graphics are far from horrific. Personally I think they are very good. People will always tend to exaggerate a negative, such as the ever uttered “…literally unplayable” phrase.
They are/were horrific. Previous places that loaded in seamless I’ve witnessed whole areas of map load in and disappear on a whim in the distance. Bing imagery is blurry and pixellated. Autogen doesn’t load properly. Photogrammetry always had issues so not much change there.
It’s one of the reasons I opted out. Once I took off from the third party airport the flight itself was pretty ugly.
It’s nowhere near su10 in regards to quality. Some areas have poor bing imagery but places in Europe like Germany and the uk have always been pretty good, but not in this build. Anyone who does GA or Vr will be disappointed.
Nobody is saying that. In fact, there are other threads for it. This is kinda an odd place to discuss that issue with the beta. Like, this is not the beta forum for starters.
When did you start playing it? When it was released? It was fine up to Su5. Then took a dip, then improved by su7. Then dipped in 8 and 9 and improved in 10. Now it’s dipped in 11.
Well I’m just giving the guy balance. I’ve spent the last few months testing the sim through beta 10 and 11 so feel well qualified to be transparent. If you are on pc it’s not as bad probably because you have graphical settings to play with, but I haven’t tried beta on pc.
*I have been flight simming since the Sublogic days and have always been a PC user, however, apart from those early days, when a lot of CPU power wasn’t required to run the sim, I have NEVER, had a PC where I could max absolutely everything out and it would be nice and smooth.
I got to the point where I was satisfied, but always wished for more, and so it also got to the point that FSX and P3D was the end of it for me. I rarely flew anymore.
I saw MS2020 and thought, I really need that, but had friends that had spent upwards of 3K in AUD to be able to do so, but I didn’t really want to do that, as I know all too well the software and driver compatibility issues that always arise. I’ve also been down the more PC add ons path over the years, and you know what, I hardly used most of them and there were times were I would constantly try this and that, to try to get rid of those stutters and be able to move those sliders a little more to the right, but I would invariably put them back to where they were prior to my tuning.
I was also concerned about “would an XBox really cut it?” Anyway, I bought an XBox…AND I LOVE IT!!! I rarely have any issues and it just performs so well for me and looks great. For me, I am an addict again! I have had one loading screen hang, and 3 CTD and two weird pause issues in 200hrs of simming since mid-July 22, so I now really look forward to planning what I am going to do the next chance I get to fire up the sim.*
Plenty of others have shared their opinions and are all informative. Thanks for joining the forums!