And I’m not only talking technologically.
I was fortunate enough to test this game for the past few months, and I was of course blown away from the beginning. The technology is amazing, and while there are a handful of bugs at the moment, if you look at the big picture, this is the next generation of flight sims and is what I’ve been hoping for for the past 20 years.
I would consider myself a hardcore simmer. Since there are Simconnect issues, I couldn’t hop on Vatsim yesterday. But I ended up having more fun and more laughs than I’ve had while flying in a very long time. Having old flying friends and friends new to flight sims hop onto multiplayer for a group flight was an incredible experience. It was FUN. Isn’t that why we’re in this hobby? To have fun? Yes, it’s fun to fly by the book on Vatsim but there are in fact other means of having fun too.
We had a 6 or 7 person formation take off from Paro in spotty weather and we made the slow climb into the Himalayas to Lukla. The stress of maintaining close formation in IMC, and then the awe of breaking out of the clouds and seeing mountain peaks all around us was incredible. And the best part was, we had joined an “All Players” lobby, so there was essentially a party going on at Lukla when we arrived. Watching friends (especially the new guys), land at Lukla was just constant laughs.
Among the frustrations of launch that many are experiencing (we ran into some multiplayer bugs yesterday too, and spent a while troubleshooting), it’s a good time to step back and look at the program before us, because this is just the start of a long journey of MSFS giving us years of enjoyable experiences.