So far, I think if we had to boil down the opinions and the state of the general flight sim community in a non-biased and factual basis, it would be in the following form.
The sim is awesome for VFR flying.
The sim is awesome for flying GA aircraft
The flight models of GA aircraft are pretty accurate based on the general consensus of real world pilots who flew in the sim.
The community is extremely unhappy with the flight model and the autopilot and systems implementation of commercial aircraft. It’s buggy and a big limitation to IFR flying.
Everyone is impressed by the lighting and weather engine. The sound design and soundscape is very well done too.
The community is not happy with the ATC and it’s become a habit to proceed flying without any ATC comms as the incorrect ATC implementation is annoying during flying.
Photogrammetry areas are generally very good, but disappoints when it comes to unique landmarks like castles, churches, landmarks etc. A+ for technical marvel as it never ceases to amaze the general crowd.
For Non-photogrammetry areas, the community is not confident in Bing maps and it’s timeline to bring photogrammetry to their regions. They think it’ll be too long until non-western regions like the Middle East and Asia are covered at all.
For those areas where people are not happy with the autogen or photogrammetry data of POI’s, there is a fast-growing trend to export Google Earth 3D data into blender and package that as a scenery file and importing to sim with extremely good results.
Performance issues vary extremely wildly. Some report good performance while other with the same specs report bad performance. But mostly it’s bad performance.
Some CTD and installation issues are still present.
The community feels the release was rushed, a decision which was made in bad faith. As a result, many believe the sim feels more like a game and is intended for gamers and that the developers will need several updates to bring the sim to a level which feels like it satisfies the simmer crowd.
Lack of support for major brands and models of joysticks/controllers/throttle quadrants is disappointing for many.
The community is still suffering form high sensitivity issues for external control devices such as joysticks.
There is heavy support for an XPlane style scenery gateway system to crowd-develop scenery/airports/POI for MSFS.
Lack of tutorials for creating liveries and scenery, general SDK use is frustrating for many, especially those who want to implement and distribute quick fixes to terrain/mesh data and other small mods/fixes.
There is heavy support for Microsoft and Asobo and their long-term plans for the sim and are hopeful and excited for future updates.
Replay feature is heavily desired.
Lack of live weather is disappointing for everyone. Many are getting 3 kts winds everywhere in the world.
Camera system is recognized as powerful but feel like the UI can be made more user-friendly.
These are what I can think of after spending extensive time reading through the forums and communities and getting a sense of the general opinion of simmers and newcomers.
Please let me know your thoughts and if there is anything that should be added/removed/amended.
12 thru 16 cannot be just dismissed. Without these items fixed, there is NO flightsim at all. Being a fan and owner of every MSFS’s since 1994 I find these issues should not be still there. I still use Steam FSX and P3Dv5.2 for different types of flying. The only AC I have found usable in 2020 is the little Virus. Sweet plane. I will be back in 90 days to see if issues are fixed. Not having toe brakes and rudder pedals is crucial. Good luck in fixing these items.
For me this is pretty spot on. FS is awesome and a great starting point. I have the utmost faith that MS and Asobo are going to listen and to improve. For right now, I am extremely happy with what we have. However there is sure work to be done.
The AI could use some work too. Has anybody ever just watched medium AI jets arriving at an airport, they don’t flare and land, they fall out of the sky onto the runway. FS is supposed to be the latest state of the art flight simulator but in some respects not enough attention to detail has been spent on the things that separate it from an xbox game.
Yep, that sums it up quite well.
You didn’t mention however:
• the manual cache which becomes unusable after downloading a couple of areas
• the VFR map which is a joke
• the world map which needs overhauling as well. When you zoom in it’s too blurry, if I don’t zoom in enough and click on an airfield it says “custom” instead of the airfield’s name (smh) so you have to get reaaaally close. Also you should be able to mark favourite places of yours and put them on a list […]
• the start-up takes too long, we need to get rid of the intro videos as well as the press any key thing.
Most Aircraft have a pretty detailed Checlist you can access with Shift + C
if you activate the copilot checklist assist you can have it done for you automatically.
Nothing like this has ever been in a flight sim before.
GL/
EDIT* should also mention you can have the CoPilot walk you through each step using the “Evaluation” button.
#11 that’s what an alpha test ver. is for… #12 Office polyps at Microsoft did this …
You basically outlined the MS survey all alpha/ beta testers got, too many gamers thought it was ready for gaming by gamers who like gaming on game machines so they can win games and brag about the games they play and tell everybody about the high scores they got in their games…
Just on the subject of no manual. If you purchase the media version, you receive a manual that appears to be quite comprehensive (from some of the photos I’ve seen posted). Why can’t we get access to the PDF. Any information would assist new flyers to come to grips with the “best” approach to achieving a task in the sim and also what’s available - the sim’s functionality. I’m still discovering things I didn’t realise I could do, because someone has stumbled onto it.
AFAIK there is no photogrammetry for the entire British Isles. It’s not just landmark buildings that are missing, the whole built environment is just guesses based on the size and shape of the roof seen from space.
That’s good imo. A quick overview of consolidated feedback and general consensus can help them gauge the community better compared to reading hundreds of individual topics.
On pt 8, I flew in lots of non-photogrammetry areas like Kenya that were amazingly beautiful still; I have pix in the alpha screenshots thread for ppl to see. Plus lots of other ppl flew in remote areas too.
I think higher-rez mesh would be nice though for non-North America areas. And higher-rez and seasonal texture are always welcome too.
It’s pretty much the same in the MENA and Asia and other countries. Photogrammetry scenery is one of the hallmarks of this sim and it’s lack of coverage is an important factor which can’t be overlooked.
It’s also why I don’t expect much from their Word 2.0 updates and Bing maps updates, at least for the first couple iterations, because in their own words they World is too big’ and there’s only so much and so fast they can do
