Since you posted your views, I thought Iâll do the same too cause Iâm in the same boat, kinda.
I uninstalled it too, but Iâm not taking a break. Iâm just not coming back to it anymore unless a lot of radical, drastic changes take place. My free time costs money and Iâm not willing to donate it to MSFS 'cause for me itâs simply not worth it anymore. MSFS has absolutely nothing that I canât find in other products. Yes they too have their issues, inaccuracies or whatever, but not nearly as severe and show-stopping as MSFS.
I donât respect them for this decision. Itâs not what they promised back in 2019. They said several times MSFS is going to be a âsim for simmersâ in numerous interviews, articles and even their own websiteâs blog. They even said "We got to get this right with you guys first, and by you guys I mean the people that really have been propping up this thing for the past 35 yearsâ. Source: https://youtu.be/a-ppN8HjZGk?t=920 (Go to 15:32 if the link didnât automatically take you there.).
People whoâve been propping this thing up for the past 35 years werenât financially investing into or developing for an entertainment video-game, nor were they being shoved a Xbox flight model, UI, advertisements and graphics down their throat. Developers like Reality XP, Eagle Dynamics, FSLabs, PMDG, Milviz, A2A, Majestic, Laminar Research werenât making comedy, twitchy flight models, avionics etc and falsely advertising them as âhigh-fidelityâ products.
Yes they technically all started as video-game developers (cause both XP and MSFS franchise were games at that time) but the extensions/addons they ended up developing and improvements they added to their base simulators were appropriately realistic, matured and professional enough that aviation authorities such as FAA, CAA, EASA started to take notice and approve them for professional flight training.
Therefore, after a year, I hate to put this way but I as a fee-paying customer now have the profound impression and belief that they (people in charge of MSFS 2020) have blatantly lied to me, and falsely advertised a silly, arcade video game to me by calling it a âflightâ simulator. I equally blame myself because it was me who decided to just believe what they were saying and advertising.
An increased number of CTDs after SU5 was definitely a show-stopper for me and a majority of people I know, including at least two die-hard fans of the franchise. To be fair, itâs not like other platforms like P3D, XP and DCS donât suffer from CTDs, but their severity and frequency levels are very low, and can be solved with a little bit of research most of the time. Iâm not a graphics-first-everything-else-second person when it comes to flight simulators, so I donât understand all those missing auto-gen, graphics downgrade stuff that so many others keep complaining about. I did enjoy the extra FPS performance in SU5 (that was the only good thing about SU5) but I fully sympathize with people who couldnât accept the downgrade of graphics. The comedy default ATC doesnât bother me cause I donât use it. AI ATC in all other platforms is equally bad.
May be it did for a lot of people when it comes to performance, stability etc, but it never worked good enough as an overall âflightâ or âaviationâ simulator. The development of this product started back in 1982, that was 38 years ago, and itâs downright embarrassing to realize that its previous version FSX and its addon ecosystem is almost 10-20 years ahead of this latest arcadey, comedy flight game when it comes to simulating aviation in a matured, professional way.
I was hoping that the PR gimmick would stop after the absolute disaster that was SU5, that they would be ashamed of themselves, issue a video apology, explaining what went wrong and how soon they are going to fix it. But what I got in return were more smiley faces, Twitch group flights and more advertisements for air racing, arcade gaming and a default-level, old, useless Junk aircraft that they would shamelessly label as âpayware levelâ and âhigh-fidelityâ again and ask for money for it from people who donât know well.
In other platforms, when X or Y doesnât work, or if the base simulator devs donât wanna work on that feature, they at least have the decency to open up that area of the sim for established third party developers to come in and solve it best to their abilities. Yes those 3rd party solutions are not always perfect, but they work to a highly acceptable standard 99 percent of the time. Two great examples of it are Hifiâs Active Sky (for P3D and XP) and Reality XPâs Garmin avionics.
In the case of MSFS 2020, itâs intentionally different because people who are in charge of the product have been intentionally and pro-actively locking many 3rd parties out of the ecosystem and preventing them from coming in and fixing some of the core issues. Again, the way the developers of Active Sky and Reality XP have been treated by the decision makers in charge of MSFS 2020 is the best example of this.
Same with the default flight model. In many ways itâs worse than the default flight model found in P3D and FSX, and itâs great that the developers have high ambitions for a better, default flight model in MSFS 2020, but 3rd party aircraft developers who donât want to use this default FM (for whatever reason) should be given full freedom and assistance to inject their own FM into the product. Yes, external flight models are already possible in MSFS 2020, but to what extentâŠI donât know. This is the sole reason why any and all third party aircraft developed for MSFS 2020 so far is plagued with various show-stopping issues that canât be easily overcome by their developers.
I donât think they should. AI ATC is a very tough business. Just believe it. We have PilotEdge, VATSIM, IVAO, POSCON etc for ATC. Having faulty or no AI ATC in a flight simulator doesnât technically prevent you from performing a realistically simulated flight from point A to B if you are willing to study a little and use some of these online ATCs. Plus there are way better payware AI ATC addons you can use, such as Pilot2ATC.
Absolutely agreed 100 percent. They will not see a penny from me ever again until some radical, drastic changes occur in this platform, and until I see and sense a huge focus on aviation and serious flight simming and not flight âgamingâ. Until these radical changes happen, Iâll not be supporting this platform with my money and time, and will be sure to let others know so that they donât make the same mistake that you and I did.
surviving all these virtual zombies and mutants is not an easy taskâŠ