I have been using FSX for over 8 years and waited for the flight simulator 2020 and boy this is such an amazing experience. During a pandemic when you need an escape here comes an amazing experience. Yes I call it that an experience. The graphics! the effort! the intention. I’m a game developer I know how effin hard it is to make something like this, it’s a work in progress for sure but I just don’t understand why people have to be so negative. It’s not perfect but nothing ever is. We will as a collective always want the best and I think Asobo is doing there best. I stand by you and hope the best for Flight simulator. Let’s be positive in our feedback and let’s encourage the wider community and software developers who contribute to mods and add ons. Let’s help build this beautiful replica of the world we live in. And enjoy for all it’s flaws.
It’s (sic) flaws are the things that ruin the experience for me and many others.
I don’t think its an unpopular opinion, I truly don’t think we would all be here obsessing over the sim even after all the CTD’s and wonky bugs if that were. I’d say the majority of the people complaining are desperate to play the sim at its full potential, and there are various issues whether its bugs in the program, hardware, driver issues etc that are preventing them from doing so. This just happens to be the place people end up to talk to the community about those issues (and hopefully Zendesk).
But yeah, it’s incredible. I missed out on the XPlane and FSX era so it’s even more insane to see how far the genre has come. For the first time ever, I can see why someone would want/need a 4K monitor and $1,000+ graphics card to bring the experience to the fullest. Theres just some major issues that need smoothed out, and it is a series of very complex problems - literally every person that plays the game has a different system and flight sims in particular have a lot of people tweaking and making custom settings - so finding a baseline happy balance is going to be some time i’d imagine.
My gut feeling is that it’s not commercially viable to create a fully-featured, next gen flight simulator that is close to perfect (minor bugs only) on initial release.
I say this because:
1.) Flight sims are still a niche part of the gaming market.
2.) The amount of upfront effort and expenditure required are huge - probably underestimated by most.
3.) Pretty much any organisation that would take on such a task is likely a huge multi-national (read the opening sentence if you think Laminar are relevant to this comment).
4.) Because of point 3, there will be shareholders and commercial pressures to realise as much return in as short a period of time as possible.
In light of this, I think it is utterly incredible that MS came back to the market and that the sim is anywhere near as good as it actually is.
MS / Asobo set themselves a huge task and they gave themselves incredibly difficult and incredibly high targets - publicly.
It is for these reasons that I’m delighted to enjoy the sim as is and will be as patient as possible for improvements, which I’m convinced will come. I totally get why some people feel let down and are so negative, but there is a reason that there were only a couple of mainstream sims in the market before FS2020 and neither of them are anything near as ground breaking. If you want a well tested software product, don’t buy it within the first 6 months of release because you will often (not always) get bitten. I say this as a software dev of 30+ years experience (of writing bugs).
At worst, FS2020 will make other sim developers up their game (pun intended)… and all this from as little as $59. Cheap at twice the price - my opinion only of course.
Yes there have been some clangers (you properly QAd the 1.9.3 patch did you???) and there will likely be more, but the whole FS world is already so much richer because of the return of the franchise.
Many here have compared a flight sim to a driving sim and there are some huge differences, but remind yourself that:
1.) A car sim might replicate a vehicle that costs around $200k. A flight sim replicates a real simulator that costs around $10M, that in turn replicates a real aircraft that costs $200M.
2.) Even if a car sim replicated 1 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface (and I doubt that most get within a tenth of that), they would be representing less than 1% (much closed to half a %) of the area covered by FS2020 (and I’ve only taken into account land area here, not oceans or lakes).
Just my 2 cents.
I am loving the flight simulator for the features it currently has and looking forward to the features that need improvement to improve. We have a great start of a platform and it will get better and better over time.
The reality is what the reality is, which is MSFS is good for some use cases and needs improvement in others and it will get that improvement. It also has bugs and the team works to fix bugs. It is reasonable to believe that new bugs will be introduced for a time, but the Asobo are willing to fix things.
I agree with the topic-author! Its an amazing flightsim. I’m not a gamer - i don’t know if other games come with less bugs in the beginning - but as far as flightsimulators go, this one is so much more comfortable to set up and get to work than any of the others that i know - be it xplane (with all the add-ons and gigabytes of scenery downloading at a snails pace) or FSX (with its new addons but old technology, at some point it would just stall). Here - as far as scenery goes - everything is already at a pretty good level from the get-go. And of course before FS2002 or so, stutters just used to be part of the package - nothing could be done about them really.
Yes - the new one still has a few bugs and crashes a couple of times. But I’m used to save my flights at every important step (and now always before i turn on the vfr-map 
) - as every real pilot knows: always be prepared for a problem - have a plan B ready. Im really excited where this journey goes!
It’s an unhealthy relationship for me right now… MSFS has CTD, lock ups, or acts crazy but then you have that one perfect flight with amazing scenery and everything just goes right. Then you’re like well it’s not so bad… And the next day you can’t take off and you crash to desktop in the flight setup screen. I hope the relationship improves. But I still haven’t been tempted to fire up FSX and I have 1000 hours on that… (DCS, yes)
Opinion threads never end well on the Interwebs. Just a bit of prescience, that’s all. 
Visually stunning. Aircraft and systems needs more work.
FSX reached maturity about 6-8 years after release. This product will too, but everyone’s been accustomed to accelerating “Internet time.” No amount of Agile can increase cadence on maturing this product. It needs time. And more skilled hands. As the old Engineer’s Dilemma goes “You can have it Fast, Easy or Cheap. Pick two out of the three.”
In spite of the CTDs I started getting with 1.9.3, I still call it a ground breaking product. Started my sim journey with MSFS 95 and never looked back since then.
Coming from the software background, I was in awe seeing the very first video of this sim breaking cover. What they are trying to do with cloud, AI - satellite imagery, weather integration, real world flight integration, all then relayed to their worldwide servers, has never been attempted before and at the scale we are seeing. They set the target high, way higher than anyone would’ve even thought so.
At least I, expected a bumpy road for first few months to a year with my exp of the field and as a result went for the basic version in face of massive temptation to go for premium deluxe. In spite of my going in for a second reinstallation, I can still say with some confidence, I doubt if any sim out there will ever be able to match it out of the box vs out of the box.
LOL - but I always heard that old saw as: “Better, Faster, Cheaper” - pick any two.
I agree with the earlier comment about always being prepared for a problem. Lately I’m flying the TBM930 and finding the AP goes haywire about half the time in the approach to an ILS or RNAV landing. Generally this has been high enough that I can start flying manual headings and step down altitudes until either the AP can capture the glideslope (if ILS) or I see the ground. Would almost be boring now if this didn’t happen - too easy! But I know many others are apparently having quite a bit more issues than I am. In 100+ hours of flying I’ve had 3 CTDs in what has been mostly instrument flight in the Cirrus, Bonanza and TBM.
That’s far from an “unpopular opinion.”
The few overly vocal usual suspects circlejerking in the forums hating on the sims, who have no idea of a product of this complexity usually launches, are hardly representative of the “people.”
Agree - the use of AI and Cloud is a classic concurrency challenge to a previously locally stored and mostly enclosed program. You’re trying to deliver a base product while the underlying technologies themselves aren’t fully matured either.
Unfortunately, concurrency is an ugly word in project management, but it doesn’t mean it’s invalid. It’s risky. And managing that risk is the main mitigation to concurrency sending a project up in smoke or not. Again, time will tell if MS-Asobo is managing the risk appropriately.
No decisions are perfect. 10 people will have 12.75 opinions on decision cycles (ask anyone who’s worked a team or a committee ). We all have our individual hopes and preferences for what gets checked off next on a long To-Do list. If nothing else, at least the Voting ability in Bugs and Wishlist democratizes and enables some Voice of the Customer to make it back to the developers. I just wish the Community Managers had better tools to identify and consolidate topics and trends, which could inform where potential flaws and bugs are wide-spread, and deploy the appropriate methods to address: FAQ, procedure, workaround, real bug and escalate, etc.
This is the other half of managing expectations around a digital product. And it’s just as hard as working the code.
I like this sim. too. Im flying with a32x mod the A320 without any issues all over europe and imported some fsx ac from Rikooooo. This is amazing when you flying through the clouds.
regards.
Concurrency problems made me sweat, a lot, during my days at a developer 
I thoroughly enjoy the sim. I don‘t use the pseudo advanced G1000- or G3000 aircraft except the Bonanza but rather use the VL3, the C152, Katana, DR400, all slightly modded except the DV20. They are well done, fly nicely and using them together with FSEconomy it brings me to beautiful regions I probably would not fly to otherwise. I live the sim. And I‘m looking forward to the future when the current issues are fixed and A2A etc can release their addons. 
It’s my first flight sim and as someone casual, I love how I can access the entire world without spending hundreds of dollars and downloading hundreds of gigabytes of addons, that’s why I’ve always avoided the genre until MSFS.
Despite the bugs and CTDs, it’s hands down the best experience I’ve had on my PC in years.
And paired with On-Air Company, it’s the game I’ve dreamed about since childhood.
I’m enjoying it immensely, but at the same time, it’s utterly frustrating. I like to look at it as having amazing potential. Right now, it looks amazing, but is lacking in overall quality since it’s very incomplete.
Love/hate relationship currently.
Love it when it all works, hate it when it doesn’t.
What really gets to me is the lack of proper ramp/gate night lighting at 37,000 default airports (I appreciate many don’t fly at night as scenery can’t be seen), a buggy weather system which looks great but doesn’t provide accurate weather and, naturally, ai aircraft that usually don’t take-off, crash into the ground or, if using live traffic, just disappear, while ATC frequently talks rubbish.
Apart from the above, the sim is usable and enjoyable.
I believe Asobo are using a learning AI, and the forums here are used to teach it.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist! 
Here we go. Been waiting all day.