I can relate to you a lot. I am someone who as a kid got really into aviation and flight simulator and flew a lot on my family PC growing up. As I got older, I moved away from PC’s and into Macs, therefore not flying as much and losing interest in aviation.
I got an Xbox Series X when they came out and when FS was released my love of flying rushed right back into my brain. I used it pretty consistently on Xbox since it’s release and absolutely loved it, but I did really start to feel the limitations of things like add ons and potentially wanting to explore vatsim. Having to rely on the Marketplace is rough - especially when you have to buy things like liveries that are avail for free for PC users. The bugs with mouse usage have been really hard to deal with as well.
This week, I decided to jump the gun on a prebuilt HP Omen PC. I am still very much a Mac guy, so I really didn’t feel like going down the rabbit hole of custom building something. So far, it’s been a great experience. Being able to add in the Fly By Wire A320 is amazing. I feel a little crazy for getting a PC pretty much just for Flight Sim, and I am still questioning if it was the right thing to do, but I suppose I will use it for personal computer stuff too. I will still be using my Xbox for casual gaming with sports games, shooters, etc.
All this to say, if you have the budget for it, and you are really passionate about Flight Sim and you want to go deeper with it, I’d recommend the PC. I’m still a Mac guy though . Maybe eventually Xbox will open things up similar to PC, and if that’s the case maybe I’ll sell my PC, but for now it’s been fun.
I bought the Series X in September specifically for MSFS2020. Excitement quickly turned to disappointment and anger by the shear amount of issues, bugs and CTDs. Just awful. I made the decision to sell the Xbox and last month purchased a pre-built gaming PC with a 3070ti GPU. Had some early issues with CTDs still but was able to correct them and could not be happier. It really is amazing. I highly recommend a gaming PC for MSFS2020. Worth the investment IMO.
I used to throw $3k at computers virtually every year then got married and had kids and just kept an xbox around for the times when I could get my GTA on. Last peripheral I had for flying was the CH pro and think it may have been FS2000? I did stay with racing and had a Fanatec setup for the 360(just before kids), then evolved back to the onex and a modern setup, then a gaming laptop that can run i racing and found myself running out of time again. Then got the X early and everything seems to have gelled into a happy place. I have a decent racing setup I can roll up and plug in and the 'box games are good enough for me(and will only get better as they are all still in the xbox one versions) and now we have THIS. I can move in my little table and be a pilot in under 5 minutes, or move it all to the corner of the basement and push the TV to the wall. And with consoles holding the technology it gets BETTER as time goes by vs PC. It’s just easy enough and finally just good enough to keep me out of taking on the PC hobby again. I also have thousands in Lego and die cast cars and R/C cars, etc-mostly to offset not having a Porsche in the garage, which may have ended up being cheaper… But XBox is great when you’re short on time. And if I don’t feel like messing with gaming, it just doesn’t seem like such a big deal to just stay out of the basement corner. I’ve been with gaming since you had to write your own in BASIC on a floppy drive, and mouse-and-keyboard on COD on an xbsx with a 55" screen is quite an experience considering what I used to go through for a small fraction of what just spits out of that little box today.!
God only knows what i spent to get over 30fps on a very expensive 17" crt monitor back in the day… 20220125_223553|690x517
Yeah, so like - I am getting no mouse clicks at all now. Haven’t for days. Tried two different mouses, every single USB port, and I’ve just finished a complete uninstall and reinstall of MSFS. How discouraging.
You’re not crazy - I did the same. I’d only go crazy if I had to wait “several months” for a supposed WASM fix that isn’t even guaranteed. There’s not enough official communication that actually supports whether WASM issue will be fixed at all. And that to me makes it seem like it isn’t the biggest of priorities, which is worrying for Xbox.
Getting to finally fly the FBW A32X makes it 100% worth buying a gaming PC. There’s a real value to these things. Plus a ton lot of mods. For example, I can now finally fly a modded version of the CS777 that actually has 777 EICAS displays and a 777 flight model.
I do something similar using the Xbox controller, Xbox chat pad, Hotas, Thrustmaster Boeing with TCA Quad x2
I can use it all at the same time, just watch for duplicate key binds.
I might add a num pad too
And shoot, sometimes out of nowhere this setup I was complaining about just impresses the heck out of me. After a week of mouse-click bugs and stutters, the darn thing just behaved so well tonight. MSP > DEN, full cold and dark A320neo startup with baggage service, catering and jetways both ends. Talking to ATC. Live weather and traffic. Gratuitous drone cam partying. ILS runway 7. VelocityOne behaving nicely. No Smoking sign on.
My GPU and CPU are medium priced and I fly along happily one step beneath ultra. (Knock on wood!)
Not only are GPU prices crazy right now, but I also don’t feel the current ratio of VR cost : hardware : and ease of use is very favorable either. By waiting another year(?) to upgrade the GPU and CPU, and buying a next gen VR headset only once, will save me money in the long run and will also give the sim time to shake out what hardware may work the best.
Yeah… buying a PC is no silver bullet solution to bugs and quirks and for some they can’t even get the sim to load.
And you being a Mac guy you probably aren’t used to being your own crummy IT dept. Be prepared to have some flightless evenings and don’t get discouraged if you need to walk away for a week or nine.
It has never been the right time to buy computer hardware. Every year you get more power for your penny. It always makes sense to wait until next year, and it’ll still make as much sense when next year does come around.
When msfs2020 came out, I discovered that on my laptop, the build-in Nvidia card wouldn’t work with msfs so I was using the ‘ordinary’ graphics card in it, and getting 10 FPS at best. That’s hopeless.
At the time, video cards were in short supply, so I had to shop around to find anything decent.
I could have for a system with a 3090 but the price was silly. I decided to go for leading edge instead of bleeding edge, and settled for a 3080 setup.
That PC is only used for msfs and allied software. Seems to work very well.
Not sure if the grass is actually greener lol. SU3 broke the sim for me for a few weeks, was a stutter show. A hotfix did fix this. Recent updates since, and including SU6 have put more and more load on cpu, the current fix being to uninstall all photogrammetry cities from World updates to have a decent experience in North America, only installing the WU for the area you are flying if outside North America. I run an actual ■■■■ tonne of addons. This sounds great in theory. Then you are chasing conflicts, changing generic file names like modelLib, materialLibs, and pulling hair out to make addon number 1118 work with the rest of the lot. And this is with payware addons. I’m sure I could organize better and only load scenery/airport etc for the local I’m at, but what’s the fun in that. Liveries are hit and miss. I’ve had them break live weather, cause ctds, and mess up a planes systems/functionality. But I’ve also found some great ones. To sum up the PC experience for me, It’s been mostly good.
There is a global chip shortage and even low end GPUs are double retail than what they should be. This isn’t the usual “wait for next or buy now” debate.
And VR hardware simply isn’t ready in my opinion (my wants), every time I go looking I can’t seem to find the right gear and then I head over to the VR forums and they seem to have invited a whole new layer of issues upon themselves. The folks that are stuck between bad VR and “I can never going back to 2D” is an unfortunate spot to be in for 4k worth of an investment.
And I’m not trying to throw shade or make comparisons, just demonstrating that there are different ways to solve the MSFS puzzle. I’m having an amazing time on mid level hardware and a track IR, and I know in the future this title will be like new for me all over again.
I know you’ve said all this. But I feel if the sim was at least 80% stable you’d feel better about it. As somebody on PC and Xbox the stability of msfs is leading me to want to give up. Especially on the Xbox side. It’s like they spent all that time “optimizing “ and currently have nothing to show for it as the reports of constant crashes to dashboard are rampant.
And 9 is supposed to be focused on stability, too. So, they are fixing it. Just on a patch every two months schedule.
So, you know how slow sims can be to upgrade. They have a life cycle, and it takes years for them to mature. You can always take a break for a few months and come back to see what it is like after SU9.
We all have different tolerances to bugs and crashes. If you hate playing it in this state, just remember, you don’t have to. It will be here in a few months, and it will be more stable.
are you guys in the public beta testing of SU8 ? is it really more stable on xbox?
all i want is to fully enjoy the game, i dont want to start a long haul airliner flight with having fear the game will crash again 50ft before my landing
I am not part of it however you can read a lot of the threads under the public beta for SU8 as it is open to everyone, and you will find a couple of threads from Xbox players saying that the beta the seen some gain of stability and performance with it.
. Maybe eventually Xbox will open things up similar to PC, and if that’s the case maybe I’ll sell my PC, but for now it’s been fun.
