I was an early user of the flight simulator back in the day.
I logged over 2000 hours on the original flight simulator. I kept my flight hours in a log book. I used actual physical maps. I visited every airport within 500 miles of Meigs Field. I flew in all kinds of weather. I bought every extra option. I visited local pro shops and bought a dozen flying books.
I highly recommend "Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche". Best book ever.
I took private pilot flying lessons and knew exactly how to fly.
I pre-paid for the new MS Flight Simulator. I bought pedals and a yoke. I bought a new, high-end laptop that exceeded the specs. Once the flight simulator arrived I flew it every day for 2 weeks.
Half of every day was spent downloading updates. I spent 5 hours talking to a pleasant fellow in India trying to correct errors. I spent hours talking to other MS support people. In fact, for those 2 weeks I spent more hours on the phone with MS support than I did flying the plane.
When it worked it was truly an amazing program. Mostly it didn't work. Constant updates broke everything.
I sent back the pedals and yoke hardware.
I cancelled the flight simulator. MS kept my money.
Your (flying) miles might vary but I would not suggest buying this program.
Not that it's your fault, rather than the video game industry's for foisting this stupid standard on us, but rule number 1 is: never pre-order a game.
I broke my own rule for Cyberpunk 2077, because I thought 'hey, it's CDPR, they can't do anything bad', and got a badly broken game that didn't even play properly until several months after release.
Never again. I don't care how big or how fast the hype train is going; I will never ever pre-order a game again.
I was in the alpha and beta for MSFS, and my experience was the same as yours: it took hours and hours to update inside the program, and it felt like the developers had no idea what a CDN was. I still wanted the fancy graphics, so I actually did wait, since I got it essentially for free.
Not worth it. I ended up going back to X-Plane 11, which actually runs properly.
From reading the early press releases on FS2020, I was under the impression that Asobo created a pretty app to view satellite imagery and the simulation part came afterward.
After tying FS2020 like you did, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft decided to do a complete rewrite.
These activities remind me a lot of playing SimCopter. Nothing quite beets the anxiety of getting shot at by some baddies in the city I built while trying to drop a rope ladder on a train. Great times.
Generally, I really appreciate them putting stuff like this in the game though. Even though I’ve played flight simulator since the early days, I’ve always had a hard time engaging because I don’t enjoy flying for flying’s sake. It’s also part of the reason why I prefer the Forza games or other arcade racers over pure simulators. Obviously I’m not cultured enough but then again, I’m also a very casual gamer.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 41.9 ms ] threadWhen I think of what I used when I started (Flight Simulator 4).
Ad hoc medevac in a caravan is something I’ve done a time or two… this is kind of surreal.
Very cool.
https://www.xbox.com/en-us/play/games/microsoft-flight-simul...
I logged over 2000 hours on the original flight simulator. I kept my flight hours in a log book. I used actual physical maps. I visited every airport within 500 miles of Meigs Field. I flew in all kinds of weather. I bought every extra option. I visited local pro shops and bought a dozen flying books.
I highly recommend "Stick and Rudder by Wolfgang Langewiesche". Best book ever.
I took private pilot flying lessons and knew exactly how to fly.
I pre-paid for the new MS Flight Simulator. I bought pedals and a yoke. I bought a new, high-end laptop that exceeded the specs. Once the flight simulator arrived I flew it every day for 2 weeks.
Half of every day was spent downloading updates. I spent 5 hours talking to a pleasant fellow in India trying to correct errors. I spent hours talking to other MS support people. In fact, for those 2 weeks I spent more hours on the phone with MS support than I did flying the plane.
When it worked it was truly an amazing program. Mostly it didn't work. Constant updates broke everything.
I sent back the pedals and yoke hardware.
I cancelled the flight simulator. MS kept my money.
Your (flying) miles might vary but I would not suggest buying this program.
Not that it's your fault, rather than the video game industry's for foisting this stupid standard on us, but rule number 1 is: never pre-order a game.
I broke my own rule for Cyberpunk 2077, because I thought 'hey, it's CDPR, they can't do anything bad', and got a badly broken game that didn't even play properly until several months after release.
Never again. I don't care how big or how fast the hype train is going; I will never ever pre-order a game again.
I was in the alpha and beta for MSFS, and my experience was the same as yours: it took hours and hours to update inside the program, and it felt like the developers had no idea what a CDN was. I still wanted the fancy graphics, so I actually did wait, since I got it essentially for free.
Not worth it. I ended up going back to X-Plane 11, which actually runs properly.
After tying FS2020 like you did, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft decided to do a complete rewrite.
Generally, I really appreciate them putting stuff like this in the game though. Even though I’ve played flight simulator since the early days, I’ve always had a hard time engaging because I don’t enjoy flying for flying’s sake. It’s also part of the reason why I prefer the Forza games or other arcade racers over pure simulators. Obviously I’m not cultured enough but then again, I’m also a very casual gamer.
I feel like VR is the next big thing for this game if only more people could run it