I still am quite surprised by how well received MSFS 2020 was upon release.
It was a mess of bugs and in quite a similar state as 2024 is.
But it was the first year of COVID, almost every single other major game got delayed for about a year because of COVID, and Cyberpunk 2077 released that same year in a near unplayable state on consoles.
So MSFS 2020 kind of got a pass. We were lucky to have it at all that year, and in spite of the bugs, it worked, which was better than Cyberpunk.
2024 had the added issue of locking almost everyone out for most of the first day, but other than that it is in quite similar shape as 2020 was. We just don’t have a pandemic, and an epically bad Cyberpunk launch to give it cover this time.
2024 has been a rough launch, but nothing at all compared to 2020 for me. That one was a nightmare. This one was about 7 hours of troubleshooting vs. 13 days. I’m happy, but feel for others who are having bigger issues.
I think the issue here is that 2024 is a branched development from 2020. It comes from the same code base. So why is it so many things working in 2020 don’t in 2024? Why are so many things that were fixed in 2020 broken again in 2024?
They took a working code base and broke it. Last time they made this from nothing. This time they made this from 2020. There is a huge difference in the starting point there. So no, they do not get the same amount of patience from me.
2020 is currently very mature to the point that we expected that mature state in 2024. We expected that new stuff like career will have some issues but for sake, they broke almost everything. Literally.
Not my experience. The things I need for my flying (good weather, good world, good planes with good fm) are working extremely well. Better than any other sim.
I recall 2020 having tons of issues when it came out. I quit playing for a while after sim update 4 I believe it was. They seemed to be going backwards. As a matter of fact I recall some grumbling about customers bringing a class action lawsuit over 2020 but I guess that fizzled out. Microsoft/Asobo never learns a lesson. They will get 2024 running great about the time 2028 comes out and it will be Groundhog Day all over again.
The big thing 2020 had going for it is it was it was the first to do world streaming imagery and photogrammetry. It was really easy to look past the problems when the world was just so gorgeous compared to anything we had before.
I remember when I first got the sim I did the Breckenridge Yosemite bush flight, and just had my mind blown flying over the Sequoia National Forest.
FS2024 has an even more amazing digital globe, but compared to the already amazing 2020, it doesn’t hit quite as hard. The new things that we have that are immediately noticable is the career mode and walking around outside the plane. But compared to that initial feeling of flying around in the “real” world like 2020 gave me, 2024 doesn’t make the same kind of leap.
I will say I’m happy with it though, but just putting some perspective on why the bugs are so much more noticable this time around. I’m fully confident the dev team is going to iron out the bugs and optimize this thing
MSFS 2020 caused quite a stir in the flightsim community when it was released. Up until its release, the benchmark for flight sim graphics was X-Plane 11. Going from XP11 graphics to MSFS graphics was a huge leap forward.
This gave MSFS 2020 a free pass despite the amount of bugs it had at launch. People who had been flying exclusively VFR immediately switched to MSFS on day 1 and never went back to X-Plane. Even though XP11 was more mature and had better aircraft, MSFS graphics made XP11 graphics look 15 years old and going back would have been seen as a step backwards by them.