Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020/2024)

Prepar3D has a trial period of one month. Satisfied or money refunded. This was one of the factors which encouraged me to move from FSX to v2.3 some years ago. Wouldn’t it be great to have the same with MS new kid ? Specially with the incertainty related to streaming for a lot of us.

Please place your votes before Oct.10. The sequence of the items listed in no way reflects their importance. The poll is now closed. We have what we asked for I guess.

As a Flight Sim enthusiast, like many here, flying on our desktops is the only way we got to feed out passion for aviation. And that´s why I´m writing these words. The more you value the importance of a well made Flight Sim, and the effect it has when you you love every part of flying an airplane, the more worried you get when you see a trend of behaviors that can have detrimental effect on the development of such sim. The luck we have, to have Devs such as MS and Asobo Studios, clearly so focused like I have never seen before since ACES team, and consequently, so eager to please the community, is something I couldn´t have imagined before E3. And there is where …

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The visual sense of scale is so much better than FSX. No matter what I did with the ESP based sims, there was always a fish eye effect and the scale never seemed right. Runways especially always looked out of whack on approach, short final, and touch down. In the videos we are seeing, approaching a 200ft wide runway in a 172 actually looks like a 200ft wide runway all the way through. Houses and trees appear properly scaled as well. This is something a lot of people won't think about, but it's a major improvement over FSX/P3D.

Let me know if I missed something but haven't heard allot about the AI engine and hopefully an improved ATC system. Heard allot about scenery but being able to populate the sim with realistic airliner traffic (Ultimate Traffic) and GA traffic as add-ons come out is a must for any successor to FS. A great default ATC system or something that can be expanded is key as well. Again let me know if I missed something.

According to Microsoft's Development Roadmap, they are scheduled to release Feature Discovery Series, Episode #1 (World) on Thursday, October 10th. Because of the massive release of video this week from the previewers who attended the big event in Seattle, am I correct in assuming that we've already seen what's scheduled to be released on October 10 by Microsoft? Or is there something additional that we should be expecting? I'm a little confused.

Has it been confirmed that it is 64bit?

From what i gathered in a previous interview about E3, Microsoft is now distributing some games on Steam as well but such decision is ultimately up to the ones managing the game itself. I really hope that this new MSFS will be distributed not only on the Xbox/Windows Store app but also on Steam for a number of reasons: 1) I have most games on it already 2) Steam offers a variety of nice tools to use, it's a known, reliable and serious game distribution platform. DLCs can be sold there too and it's the only PC platform out there who deals with over 15 million active accounts every day. 3) The Xbox app on Windows is still in its early stages lacking a lot of fe…

What about a sim that "considers 23 important airraft characteristics, an out-of-the window 3D dynamic flight display, extensive flight controls, minimum VFR instrumentation plus additional instruments (18 in all) and a radar display ? A great sim right ?

Not sure what kind of support still exists for the Saitek stuff. I abandoned XP10 2 yrs ago due to crappy peripheral support. I bought all of the Saitek panels for XP10 and 2 i-Pad minis for the glass screens to build a panel that should have worked. Unfortunately, it sucked too many frames per second to be usable and that was the final straw for me. This new sim looks amazing, but if I have to drop $3k on a new computer (Based on test machine specs) only to find that my panel goodies still require more HP, then where does it end in dollars? Can anyone speculate?

Its always refreshing to get a non simmers point of view. I feel fresh eyes on a product can really add more than what we as insiders see. He really has some good things, different things to say.

Could someone explain in simple terms: what machine learning really is? how it will be used in msfs? Re machine learning I have only really come across it as part of an advertising campaign (like my last iPhone) so I don’t really understand what it really is. It does, however, seem to be one of the things that makes this sim genuinely next generation so I’m interested to know what it will do for us.

I don’t understand how this is going to work? Does MSFS have a FSX calander that only reflects summer months or can you pick to fly out of Ontario in January where the real world weather calls for heavy snow squalls and you are in the middle of July summer textures and scenery? Will it snow in this sim in January if the location and weather calls for it? It would look really absurd in my opinion if so and the ground is displaying summer greenery! How is this going to work on release and appear realistic?

There must be a reason why pre-Alpha reviewers used PCs equipped with a huge 64Gb Ram and RTX 2080 TI. Wondering if it is time to plan for 64Gb Ram and an RTX 2080TI for my new PC build? 16Gb and 32 Gb Rams may be too little for MSFS2020. As the CPU was "only" an i7 -8700K running at 3.7Ghz and the GPU was a 2080TI with 11Gb Ram, it looks like MSFS2020 is using a lot of GPU power for the rendering tasks or that 6Gb Ram of an RTX 2080 is too little. It could also be that the CPU was overclocked or running in Turbo Mode at 4.7GHz, even though the reviewer states i7-8700K @ 3.7GHz Reference:

I don't know if this questions has already been asked, but that is imo what is currently still missing in todays simulators, with respect to immersion: Plants (trees, grass) that are animated in conjunction with wind speed and direction it destroys the realism totally if you are on a windy day at a airport and all trees around you are completely static Rain / snow on aircraft's surfaces and scenery objects. Snow / water on taxiways, runways that gets affected by wind or engine thrust output. FSX has already ship traffic on oceans but unfortunately the draw distance is too low to see them from 30.000 ft or higher. …

I noticed in one of the videos that the Microsoft people would not rule this out as subscription based. If they charge USD15 a month, that's USD180 a year. I don't care how good the graphics are, that would rule me out.

Are there any images of what the pre cache mode looks like? Something closer to what most of us will actually see on our home PCs. Lee

I was just getting back into simming after a hiatus...this is awesome! Might as well close all the other forums...fsx, p3d, x-plane...should all become ghost towns after FS 2020 is released. I have no idea if all my current saitek gear will be compatible...but don't care...I'm willing to start from scratch for this release. :)

If this wasn't mentioned here before, does msfs make use of public available real time geodata such as vulcano or wild fire monitoring data, tides?

Hi all All those previews at once. It looks more than promising. Amazing One thing I really missed in all my simming visuals were god rays. I just love them IRL (we have rainbows though, so don't take me too serious) but I miss them on the screenshots.. Anyone who has seen it? cheers vic

Maybe this got posted somewhere but I thought I'd share this interview of devs with flightsim.com https://www.flightsim.com/images/features/msfdev/FlightSim.com-Microsoft_Flight_Simulator_Interview_AUDIO.m4a Biggest takeaways 1) There will be seasons but their top priority is VR due tons of VR requests. The engine supports the seasons by default and the lakes or rivers will be able to freeze in winter. Snow can be generated on the fly and trees will be able to change color. 2) Flight model has a little bit of base legacy code but they completely overhauled it so its basically a 1000 times better now. 3) Competely new in house graphics engine from …

... ATC, seasons and water physics for the floatplanes. Hopefully we’ll get some insights in October.