Re: MSFS 2020 First Impressions
Posted: 19 Aug 2020, 14:31
I'm going to add my four penny worth here. Overall I'm pretty impressed. For all the niggles (some of which will get cured and some of course won't) flying in the sim is a treat and that's what it's about in the end ...
Liked
The scenery of course - I can't get over the fact that you get the whole world on photo real quality plus the sim for less than we were paying for the UK VFR CD's a few years back. Default airfields are OK and there are some UK farm strips in the sim that aren't in FSX as standard.
The flight model - I'm finding the aircraft much more convincing (=not easy) to handle than the default aircraft under FS-X.
Cockpit visuals - nicely done.
Runway slopes - so much more real.
Performance - all right I've got a fairly high spec machine but FS2020 is much smoother than my long tweaked FS-X was.
Lessons and challenges - lessons help you through the keyboard changes (see below) and challenges with comparison to others scores might be a bit gamey but fun nonetheless.
The Not So Liked
Because the scenery background is sooooo good, the deficiencies in the 3d buildings are more obvious - big buildings in place of housing, tower blocks in villages, etc. Maybe there's a role for ORBX replacing generic buildings with cotswold stone cottages in my neck of the woods, for example.
The cockpit view system - it may be a learning curve thing but I haven't been able to set up a view pan on my hat switch yet. Plus there an "instrument view" option that I haven't explored yet.
Not really sure about the whole traffic thing yet - I've yet to see any other aircraft and I'm missing the wonderful AI Ships that made FSX over water so much fun.
Keyboard mapping - I suppose it had to be different but it's going to take some getting used to and once I have I suspect that swiotching back to FSX will be a challenge.
Aircraft hangar interface - I'm not sure how that will cope with lots of aircraft types and lots of liveries...
The download time - I get 20-30mbps internet and it still took most of the day. That's all right for the initial setup but it will be a pain if there are big and frequent updates.
The Buggy
It's new - so surprise, surprise there are bugs. I haven't had anything fatal yet but air traffic control seems to forget to speak at some points even though it's displaying text messages. Vectoring under IFR seems a bit haphazard - had to switch to VFR on landing to get down on one flight.
The Worries
I can see that MS are plugged in to the third party payware developer community (and that's a big plus) but I'm not clear how friendly this sim is going to be to the amateurs. Will we see the rich range of quirky aircraft that we have for FS9 & FSX eventually? I hope so.
Liked
The scenery of course - I can't get over the fact that you get the whole world on photo real quality plus the sim for less than we were paying for the UK VFR CD's a few years back. Default airfields are OK and there are some UK farm strips in the sim that aren't in FSX as standard.
The flight model - I'm finding the aircraft much more convincing (=not easy) to handle than the default aircraft under FS-X.
Cockpit visuals - nicely done.
Runway slopes - so much more real.
Performance - all right I've got a fairly high spec machine but FS2020 is much smoother than my long tweaked FS-X was.
Lessons and challenges - lessons help you through the keyboard changes (see below) and challenges with comparison to others scores might be a bit gamey but fun nonetheless.
The Not So Liked
Because the scenery background is sooooo good, the deficiencies in the 3d buildings are more obvious - big buildings in place of housing, tower blocks in villages, etc. Maybe there's a role for ORBX replacing generic buildings with cotswold stone cottages in my neck of the woods, for example.
The cockpit view system - it may be a learning curve thing but I haven't been able to set up a view pan on my hat switch yet. Plus there an "instrument view" option that I haven't explored yet.
Not really sure about the whole traffic thing yet - I've yet to see any other aircraft and I'm missing the wonderful AI Ships that made FSX over water so much fun.
Keyboard mapping - I suppose it had to be different but it's going to take some getting used to and once I have I suspect that swiotching back to FSX will be a challenge.
Aircraft hangar interface - I'm not sure how that will cope with lots of aircraft types and lots of liveries...
The download time - I get 20-30mbps internet and it still took most of the day. That's all right for the initial setup but it will be a pain if there are big and frequent updates.
The Buggy
It's new - so surprise, surprise there are bugs. I haven't had anything fatal yet but air traffic control seems to forget to speak at some points even though it's displaying text messages. Vectoring under IFR seems a bit haphazard - had to switch to VFR on landing to get down on one flight.
The Worries
I can see that MS are plugged in to the third party payware developer community (and that's a big plus) but I'm not clear how friendly this sim is going to be to the amateurs. Will we see the rich range of quirky aircraft that we have for FS9 & FSX eventually? I hope so.