I would like to commend the developers for their work, my first impressions on Sim Update 4 are very positive. This is the first update after which the game feels tangibly better on Xbox Series X. The UI is faster and more responsive, loading times seem shorter, and several bugs that have been affecting me have been fixed. The experience as a whole feels more cohesive and polished.
There is still a medium and a severe issue and I’d like to use this opportunity to highlight them again. The Center Dot functionality still can’t be disabled, and the more severe issue on Xbox, and for controller players on every console, is that the AI Pilot still intervenes when Cursor Mode is engaged. After more than a year of trying to highlight these issues, I cannot overstate how much these (especially the latter) affect and degrade the flight experience.
That said, Sim Update 4 does feel like a big step in the right direction. I’m sure there are still many issues remaining and I hope the teams continue working on fixes, but I feel this is the state the simulator should’ve been released in. If it was called MSFS 2025 and released just now, the overall sentiment would’ve been much more positive from the get-go.
I’m looking forward to future Sim Updates and bug fixes! I feel we can now call “positive climb”, but we’re not fully clear of the terrain just yet.