So I will start by saying that I played FSX (that was my first Sim), Prepar3D and tried XPLANE11.
I was really enthusiastic when Flight Simulator (not this one, the old “reboot” that was even less than a game, and was killed basically immediately after) and when I tried it I was disappointed by a great deal.
So I wanted to try this new try of FS2020 and subscribed for the Alpha and the Beta (which I didn’t got selected to, not that it matters however) and followed the development pretty closely.
The Idea was fantastic, I was expecting an FSX with an integrated and optimized TileProxy on steroids, then it came out and I was able to finally try it.
I was greeted with a Windows 8 style layout, I was never a fan of that layout style but more than willing to give a full pass of it under the idea of what was running behind it, hence I decided to do a flight route I know really well and selected a 300i which i know fairly (not a master but not a newbie either), picked my route and started the flight with not much ease.
So after I entered into the world I looked around and I was amazed, remapped some keys for my controller and there I found the first issue, I can’t search the function I want to map as typing it in would return nothing (even when I know the exact name so no, it’s not that I’m looking for something that does not exist), well that could and probably would be addressed easily so who cares.
So after the remapping i entered into the cabin and I immediately noticed I can hide the yoke, looked good since that usually was not a part of the base sim but only on aftermarket planes so I was happy to see it, hided it and decided to give a look around the cockpit.
There comes my first disappointment, a lot of instruments dials/switches were inoperative, well that left me a bit unhappy but still it’s something that 3rd party would probably address, so I was even willing to give a pass on those.
I decided to play with the weather and there it comes the first hard strike, I wanted to test the realism of the model by setting a huge wind coming in front of me and see if the plane can take off without using the engine, opened the panel and… you can’t do that, you simply can’t.
You can set the wind speed in a relatively narrow area but you can’t for example say 200 knots of wind in front of me, you could do that in FSX and surely in Prepar3D, moreover you can’t say the wind is fixed but it’s always varying and at best you can make it vary relatively fast, but still no stable wind and another slider that limits your range of operation.
Well I said, that’s a disappointment but I can change the airplane with a lighter one and test it anyways right? Well no, you can’t change the airplane once in session, you have to restart it, FSX and P3D can definetly do that.
Alright I did the test after a reload (note: it seems to work fine for the model) and after doing the takeoff I went normal and wanted to try to simulate a failure, surely you can do that while flying right? Well no, you can’t, you have to set it up before you load the session. P3D/FSX can do that.
Go back in lobby, check the failures and… there’s literally a tiny faction of possible failures, even less than FSX base game. It’s starting to become disappointing but hey at least I can fly around in a realistic manner while looking under me and seeing a good graphic.
Reloaded once more, took off, opened the map to look for a point (based on the airport char) for a SID and… nothing, the point is nowhere to be found. Weird, maybe it missed one, let’s look for another one and pretend to do another SID and nothing again, points to do IFR seems to be missing for the most part (i found none of those i was looking for), plus the map is really laughable, the FSX map on M allows you to toggle what to see, make a study, make a plan (sort of) all inside the game, in FS2020 it’s a little window that contains barely anything useful for IFR. Now I’m disappointed for real but still, let’s continue.
Went to the destination and looked for the STAR points and, now unsurprisingly, nothing to be found, but I was already expecting that, so I aligned using my eye and wanted to try the ILS, i don’t remember right there the frequency tho, so well that’s simple open the map like FSX or P3D hover over the airport and it tells the frequency data and if you zoom you see the NDR VOR LOC etc. right? Haha of course not, the map is a desert of most useful infos. I am now very disappointed.
Alright let’s boil off by doing some VFR with a friend while I teach him how to manouvre the airplane before we hop back to P3D for the IFR and the technical details, so let’s connect to each other and share the cockpit, surely we can do it… right…? No. No direct-IP-connect to join a session between us or on a private server, no shared cockpit (“it will come later” is the news I found on it), so now i am very much disappointed and even a bit upset.
14 years later than FSX, instead of improving on everything, all was bet on graphic and the other parts not only were ignored, they even were inferior to the same product of a version that is 14 years old, this to me seemed unthinkable considering how the abortion that was Flight Simulator (the free one that was dropped immediately) should have sent a really strong message: the people who will buy it, play it for years and even tens of years are not the ones that will do some travels around and pass to another game shortly after, they are those who will use it as a framework to have a full pilot experience, “as real as possible” to say, and you decided to corn out all of them not only by not developing things they are interested for, but even to downgrade them, so much so that a 14 years old product beats your shiny new one all around except for graphic.
I am very deluded, Microsoft, I was first disappointed but then it came back to my mind what you said: It will be released on XBOX.
And now that all was clear, I was fooled again into thinking you would understand what users of a certain sector wants.
You clearly didn’t when you released Vista, when you released Windows 8, 8.1, with the microsoft store for windows and with telemetry and ads on windows 10, and now it seems with FS2020.
I hope, -I really hope-, I’m wrong, but so far nothing seems to point otherwise to me.
So P3D, my old friend that runs on the codebase of FSX, a product that will soon be able to legally drink alcohol in most of the world, it seems we will continue together for a long, long while at this rate.