What's the difference between the STEAM Version and MS Store Version of MSFS 2020?

[TheTwister7156]

Hi there, What is the difference in the STEAM Version and the MS STORE Version? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[tclayton2k]

Functionally, there should be no difference. The two versions install in different directories on your disk, but that’s about it.

[NeoKingRthur]

[Mayhem6633]

Here’s one difference. I fly in VR. Because I own the steam version I have the choice of openxr technology to use, either steam’s version of openxr or microsoft’s. For me the steam version is better so I’m glad I have bought from them.

[Gunrave]

Adding to that, if you want to record VR. It’s a bit easier on the Steam version, since you can get a solid LEFT or RIGHT eye image, and record that without much editing and weird stuff.

*This is at least in my experience, I’m not very good with the screen capturing stuff.

[CodeLoran69]

The main difference is the Store. MS need to grow, Steam is solid. This is what I posted when I tested MSFS during months from MS Store (monthly gamepass) and finally bought the game on Steam:

MS Store -Explanation why it fails so many times

Yesterday I gave up with the monthly game pass and switched to Steam where I bought the Sim full price. Too many issue from September when I bought the gamepass. Yesterday it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I tried for the first time to uninstall a game, and the place on my SSD didn’t change. I spent an hour to try all I can to retrieve my space, reboot, cleaning temp files, etc. and due to the overprotected directories system they have I wasn’t able to proceed. I had to change Right…

[Anarchae1]

@Mayhem6633

Here’s one difference. I fly in VR. Because I own the steam version I have the choice of openxr technology to use, either steam’s version of openxr or microsoft’s. For me the steam version is better so I’m glad I have bought from them.

I thought it was recommended to use the Windows Mixed Reality / OpenXR combo as it provided better performance.

Now I am confused.

[Hugothester]

In my Quest 2 I need to use steam, the link thing works terrible, so I used steam VR instead and it worked just fine.

[TemperedPaper48]

But I bought it from the Store and I haven’t got a gamepass. What is that? By the way my sim runs just fine.

[PauL1eeeeeeeeee]

is it that steam version doesn’t get crossplay function but xbox and ms store players get, someone can correct me if im wrong ?

[Mayhem6633]

The “Windows OpenXR is better” is not the full story. It’s not a one-size fits all type of situation. Yes, Window’s does give me slightly better performance but it’s not much. There’s other considerations for me that give steam the edge. For example, when I use motion reprojection in WMR’s version I get lots of squigly behavior in the visuals. That doesn’t happen in steam’s version. Also when accessing my desktop from VR, WMR’s version crashes me out of VR whereas steam’s version keeps me in VR. There’s other little niggles too which make me choose steam over WMR. I can get the steam version to look as good but also get the benefit of these other things as well.

[CromUK]

Yes only the XBOX store version has the crossplay functionality. So if you plan at some point to play this on an XBOX console you need the MS store version.

Me, this was not a consideration and because most of my other games are on Steam I went that way. A friend went for the MS Store version and had lots of problems with the install disappearing several times and trouble finding his community folder. Most issues are sorted now but he still wishes that he’d bought the Steam version.