I can understand that gamers are enthusiastic about FS2020. Flying through Norwegian fjords in marginal weather against the low midnight sun or evading low stratus while navigating low level at night through the bay of San Francisco trying to find Half Moon Bay airfield is a phantastic experience.
But did we get “the world”?
Apart from the US and parts of Europe it looks pretty bleak. Flying low level across Bangkok reminds me of Fallout 4 and even many world heritage sites in Europe or Asia are either a generic box, a cylinder or in worst case nothing more than a discoloured spot on the ground.
The planes are another source of wailing and gnashing of teeth. While the little Cessnas appear to be fully functional, other planes proudly present an array of INOP, non functional or falsely labelled switches. The simple Savage Cub even has around half a dozen of them.
The DR400 cannot get airborne with a full fuel load even when 100lbs below MTOW. When you have to lean the mixture at sea level to get a measly 100ft/min climb with tanks half empty you know that something is wrong. Many of the planes I have piloted so far like the DR400 or the C172 appear to be too slow in level flight at cruise power setting. It is almost impossible to get the speed out of the white arc without descending. Other instruments like “oil temp” show values in the red arc even with reduced power setting.
And while ATC is provided even in the remotest country outside the US according to FAA rules and altimeter setting is in inHg, the airspeed indicators of the GA planes provide a wide array of measurements from KIAS to mph and km/h.
Even on difficulty level “HARD” the planes are surprisingly docile and arcade-ish. I have limited RL experience with taildraggers but no problems to land the Cub replicas in all wind conditions. Earlier versions of the MSFS were a lot less forgiving. “HARD” is definitely not “REALISTIC”:
There are small bugs here and there, but defining it as “not working” is the typical forum whiner’s hyperbole that deprives your argument of any validity whatsoever.
The funny thing is that some people around here seriously don’t understand how bad they make the flight simulation community look by piling onto threads opened by people looking to celebrate their and their family’s experience with the sim, polluting them with ridiculous and hyperbolic negativity. Seriously, get a grip.
I’ve been enjoying flight sims since the times of the Sinclair Spectrum, but’d I’d more happily fly 1,000 times with someone who never took a stick in their hand than with any of you self-fashioned veterans who actually have zero idea on how flight simulators release and evolve over time.
Why is this STILL a point people bring up? Yeah, wow, it’s only default planes, who would’ve thought that you don’t get the full simulation depth at launch. My god, some people here are insufferable. I hope all those haters come back when the first 3rd party planes launch and the navigation is updated to the point where true IFR is possible. Something tells me they will have silently disappeared by then. Well, maybe some extreme haters will still be here telling us not to forget how the sim was at launch, just to stop anybody from enjoying the sim.
Has anyone else seen this, and if so where? I’m getting conflicting reports on the forums, but would love to check it out if it’s in the game. Or is the OP just looking at the sim’s default clouds?
Exactly what I did too. It’s just great. There is a whole world to explore and all that people do is complaining about the bad VNAV capabilities of default aircraft. I fly the Katana and C152 almost exclusively as I know them from RW and find them pretty good. Not perfect, but very well done for a 1$ airplane. I enjoy the great flight dynamics engine, the spot on weather here in southernly Europe (I mean I can check for rain or TS cells on the smartphone rain radar and they are exactly there in the sim too) and admire the world from above… I’m currently following the french coast to Spain and when I compare it with Google Maps it’s all there. But hey, let’s complain about the default 747, there is a great world below but we desperately need to fly at FL400. Turn on the AP right after take off and it must land automatically because touching the plane is a no-go, so let’s complain!
Couldn’t agree more with this. I’ve pulled out my real world charts and approach plates, planned a flight, practiced instrument scanning in IMC while managing navigation and radios, and shot an approach - on flights I’ve done in the real world. You can build real world proficiency in this “arcade game”.
These blobby cumulus “ground clouds” seem like the only way the sim can attempt mist, haze, or smoke. I hope they go back and revisit this at some point down the line. In theory, Meteoblue could run a parameter like this on their models and feed it to Microsoft’s live weather servers, which is then directly injected into the sim via the “aerosol density” parameter:
@gordongreig Pardon me if I expect a flight simulator to model IFR flight. Yes, I am totally unreasonable and “entitled”.
That was sarcasm in case you missed it. I’d say the “entitled” ones are those that think only their ideas matter and everyone that uses a simulator any differently should just leave.
yes I guess they will do that. Robert Randazzo has said that he had many talks with the Asobo team and they were exceptionally eager to do the “world simulation” right. Mist and smoke is definitely part of this world, also imagine large volcano eruptions.
Yeah and it’s coming? This was communicated long ago. They never said that default planes have all capabilities in the world. It’s very clear that for certain things you need 3rd party add-ons, every simmer knows this. They also said that they’re hard at work to improve the IFR aspects. But even if they will include features that enable full IFR flight with default planes, I’ll ALWAYS buy 3rd party add-ons and planes. That’s the way it always was if you wanted the best quality and there’s nothing wrong with that. Nobody buys this sim for the default planes, expecting a “as real as it gets experience” out of the box. There’s only so much the base content can do after all.
No one expects default aircraft to match study level 3rd party aircraft. It is reasonable to expect avionics to be modeled to a level that is commensurate with default aircraft in other simulators.
It is not the fault of the user base Microsoft took a 14 year hiatus from the industry and has a very huge uphill battle. Nor is it the fault of the user base that the production release was premature.
