Funky D

Monitors often have a bunch of color settings as well. When monitors have a "Game mode", it's usually over saturated and sacrifices visual quality for the lowest latency. HDR also makes a huge difference with MSFS IMHO. I searched a bunch of posts on reddit and other forums to find the graphic designers that have the same model monitor I use and have tweaked it based on their recommendations, so this is another avenue you can take if you want accurate colors and your monitor has the adjustment options.

Not cranking the settings to something your system can't handle 😄 I would wager the issues people are having are related to what SeedyL posted above... people are using Dynamic Settings since it's turned on out of the box, but they set the framerate target to 60fps because they don't understand how it works, and then the clouds look "cartoonish" because they aren't fully rendered because their system can't sustain 60fps under many circumstances. I'm also guessing folks turn on frame gen with these 40 and 50 series cards, but I'll wager the target framerate does not take frame generation into account, so that 90FPS people see is actually 45, and if the target is set to 60... well, that is why things look like a melted mess. Maybe more people should use the Nvidia app and have it control their settings... I've found the app suggests settings on the conservative side for my 3090, but even those conservative settings should look better than what some folks are describing.

Yes, the fuel bug has been fixed for a long time now. I believe the insurance issues were mostly fixed as well. I max out insurance for planes that AI employees fly, but they've never crashed. I've also personally never crashed but had a landing gear failure due to some of the wonky wear-and-tear functionality. Walk-arounds are a must (or paying your mechanic more often to do the checks for you). Unfortunately, if you find an issue during walk around, you can't fix it unless you abort the mission, but wear-and-tear is progressive so if you do the walk around for each flight you can fix something before it gets into yellow/red health. I forget what weight and balance was like in 2020, but it's all done via the tablet in 2024 missions. Yes, you go back to the world map after each mission. There is no in-game mission window. Typically, there is no flight out of your landing location and you have a pay a small fee to relocate your aircraft to the nearest airport with a suitable mission. Just a note that this has never happened to me, I think it was more common in the pre-SU1 days. But you should still zoom into your takeoff and landing airports, as the mission generator can pick some tiny strips (residential air parks, a local farmer's air strip, etc). Airfields with full taxiways, even if they are untowered, are going to have better handling of taxiing and parking than some of the tiny locations. The mission-breaking bugs I've had have usually been at tiny airfields with no taxiways and likely a single parking location. No save slots or backups. By "abort", I just mean picking abort in the menu option, which just aborts the mission and sends you back to the world map with no penalty other than the small costs of fuel and relocation for the aircraft. It also removes that mission from the generator in the near future. You cannot filter destinations, which is why looking into your destination is so important. I believe assistances are allowed (auto rudder, auto mixture, and other global sim assistances), but nothing that affects scoring. I have no clue how weather works... it seems to be some type of live weather after the IFR certification, but mission types that require good weather will always give you good weather (flight seeing, aerial advertising, sky diving, ag spraying, etc). The "live" weather will apply mostly to the longer cargo/passenger missions. You can also adjust the time... I have no clue is historical weather is implemented though. From some of your questions, you may be expecting too much out of what is available in the current mission system. It's all procedurally generated and the sim will give you odd scenarios if you blindly choose missions. ATC is just as broken in missions as it is in free flight. But as someone who views flight planning more like homework than fun, I appreciate that career mode gives me a suggested route to airports in locations I may not fly into otherwise. In 2020, I spent way too much time putt-putting VFR around my home airport. In 2024 I've probably been around 80% of the US and parts of Canada, Europe, Japan and Korea. At any rate, I hope the sim runs well on your system assuming you get the Game Pass trial up and running. If you want to purchase you'll just need to uninstall and reinstall from Steam if the MS Store doesn't have similar discounts to Steam.

"Good" is subjective 🙂 A wrote a bunch about career mode over a year ago. Most of those points still hold true (some of the mission-breaking bugs like broken refueling have been fixed). I enjoy career mode but will be the first to admit it can be a test of patience. The "dings" you mention still happen on occasion, but are a small annoyance compared to the occasional mission-breaking bugs. I have landed at my destination airport only to have my parking spot jump 2000nm to another location, forcing me to abort. I have arrived at an airport at night only to find it doesn't have any lights (my fault for not checking in advance), forcing me to abort. I have walked too far from my aircraft to admire the scenery, causing me to fail the mission for abandoning my aircraft. A price to pay when the scenery on the ground looks this good. I still fly in career mode, because the positives outweigh the negatives, for me. It gives me a goal to achieve in the sim and sends me to airports I would never discover on my own. I fly mostly cargo missions in the PC-12 and VIP passenger missions in the Vision Jet. I hope to fly more skydiving missions in the future, but the Kodiak isn't completely compatible yet. I would fly the aerial advertising and ag spraying missions more often if their scoring wasn't a bit bugged, but honestly, if you're not buying a 787, your money and score don't mean much once you start making bank with cargo missions. As for whether to pick up the sim now or wait, it will likely have the same discount during the Steam summer sale. SU5 should be dropping this week, and SU6 may still be in beta testing when the summer sale arrives. So, you'll basically be facing the same question come summer and the sim will be in the same state unless SU6 drops early. You're not really losing anything by going to 2024... you can continue to use Neofly, and you'll be gaining all the improvements that 2024 brings to the table. You can always do a Game Pass trial or use the return option in Steam if you're worried about performance. But I write all this as a guy who accidentally uninstalled 2020 during the 2024 alpha test, never reinstalled 2020, and never regretted that decision.

When I had 32GB, I always closed all my programs that weren't sim related. With 64GB I can be lazy and leave my dozens upon dozens of browser tabs open. I did a rudimentary test in 2020 when I upgraded from 32 to 64GB, and the faster memory speed is what actually gave me an additional 1-2 FPS, not the extra 32GB of memory. If you add an additional 32GB instead of buying a whole new 64GB kit, you may actually lose that tiny bit of performance if the new modules don't play nicely with your existing memory and your system lowers the timings of all the memory as a result. Rated memory speeds are only guaranteed when the memory is from the same kit... even if you buy identical memory, you're playing the "silicon lottery" by mixing different kits. As others mentioned, the sim will take advantage of over 32GB of RAM, but whether or not there is a noticeable performance benefit would require a lot of testing that I don't believe anyone has taken the time to do.

I've brought this up a few times in the past as well... it may be nostalgia talking, but I remember those FSX lessons being much better than what we have in 2020/2024. I think it was an earlier version of the sim (maybe 2000 or 2002?) where they first offered those lessons. Rod's Private Pilot Handbook was a go-to during my PPL training, but I've always had a soft spot for his type of dad humor! Looks like he's still chugging and his books are still getting new revisions.

Outside of handling all of the complexities of a complex aircraft for a new player, here are a few examples of what an AI instructor may be able to do: Explain every button, gauge, PFD/MFD screen, etc. Offer guidance and/or assistance through every phase of flight Critique the player when they keep making the same mistake Offer control assistance to help line up with the runway during landing, help smooth out the controls if the player is over controlling, etc. Help navigate to any airport or POI Offer a debrief after the flight An AI copilot could be useful for all of us with voice assistance: "Hey copilot, read through the startup checklist for me" "What should my ITT be for takeoff in these conditions?" "Tune to Atlanta approach" "I'm stepping away, handle the flight and radio for me until I return" As for career mode... Given the number of users posting career related questions and info related to the updated Kodiak in the MSFS forums, I think plenty of folks who want realism are messing around with career mode, myself included. Unfortunately, at this point, some people think career mode is a good indicator of how things work in real life. It has a long way to go... ATC fixes will help immensely.

MSFS is a sim or game, depending on how you treat it. I've also always viewed flying IRL as a privilege and did all the book related studying for my PPL on my own time with a mishmash of books, DVD's and online resources. But flying virtually in MSFS is no more of a privilege than playing GTA V or Cyberpunk. Not everyone wants to be a real pilot. I would rather our hobby grow by hooking in kids at a young age by making it accessible instead of gatekeeping it to only those who are willing to do a bunch of research outside of the sim. Maybe some of those kids will end up falling in love with aviation as a result and go on to become real pilots.

If you have a bit of dedication, I agree. But I've seen plenty of those Twitch streamers I mentioned give up on the sim due to sheer frustration. And most of that frustration could be alleviated if there were better training and guidance in the sim for folks who know absolutely nothing about aviation. When I was a kid, I bought Falcon 4.0, probably one of the first "study level" sims ever created. I think I got up in the air a few times, but ultimately gave up on it because it was way above my level. If there were some guidance though, something that kept the complexity of the sim but basically did the hard stuff for me until I was ready to do it myself, who knows... Maybe I'd be flying DCS and Falcon BMS alongside MSFS. Instead, I never flew another modern milsim again. So, I think of the kid that tries to fly a 787 over their house. How many install MSFS but can barely get off the ground in the plane they really want to fly? How many uninstall and never try again? How many would be inspired to learn more if they had more guidance and direction in those early days/weeks/months of using the sim? That is what I'm getting at when I talk about accessibility. And I think with AI "instructors" we'll eventually be able to get there without needing to sacrifice realism. Because that was another thing, as a kid I WANTED all of those switches and systems and realism, but I needed a more interactive way to learn everything.

Judging by the recent BATC thread, it's terrible as well! I've ventured into XP forums, and folks complain about XP ATC as well. I'm guessing this is why they aren't addressing it... not because they don't realize it's broken, but because they don't know how to fix it. I'll take these small incremental updates over no updates at all. They did mention helicopter traffic being portrayed in the future. Also, remember that FSX did not have live traffic. I'm sure live traffic does not make the ATC situation any easier. Edit: Also, Jorg did mention wanting to improve career mode, and frankly a lot that is broken in career mode is due to broken traffic and ATC.

I was a bit bummed about his answer related to the default aircraft though... I think the question was if all aircraft would receive the 2024 treatment (which I interpreted as things like the additions added to the SDK and CFD flight models being ported to old aircraft) and Jorg seemed a bit confused that this is what the question was asking. Honestly, I think so many default aircraft are so rarely touched that Asobo doesn't even know how broken they are. If you peruse the official forums, some default aircraft surveys have posts in the single digits. Aircraft like the Pitts have so much potential but no one flies them, probably for the same reason I don't fly them: they fly like poo! Who knows though, maybe all the extra bells and whistles wouldn't fix much.

With so much of the systems work WT put into the Longitude going unnoticed because of the lack of visualization, I'm glad they're following this trend! I've always viewed it as a tad gimmicky, but it is a nice way to learn how the systems work under the hood.

Reading between the lines, the current live weather limitations are caused by the source data from Meteoblue. Asobo can either work with the data they have or completely redo the weather engine. Seems like some people would prefer the latter, even though it would likely be a monumental undertaking that would cut into every other part of development with the sim. We also don't know if Meteoblue has plans to improve the data. We'll probably never know due to NDAs that surround these kinds of things. At this point, I'd say the horse is dead. Just because Asobo doesn't publicly acknowledge something doesn't mean they don't believe it's an issue. Why even comment when you haven't watched any of the video? They mentioned improvements with turbulence and updrafts. They even mentioned a new interface they will be implementing to see where turbulence is coming from and to troubleshoot perceived issues with too much or too little turbulence.

Even so, I've been surprised by some of the Twitch streamers who have messed around in MSFS, even if it's just once to fly over their city. Game Pass makes the sim accessible to people who otherwise wouldn't have touched it. Unfortunately, the sim itself is still pretty inaccessible to people who know nothing about aviation. I think that is one reason we don't have bigger numbers in this hobby. I'm sure it would be an unpopular opinion around here, but I think the next version of MSFS really needs to improve accessibility for first-time pilots with better training lessons and better AI copilot options. I don't mess with any of the assist options (outside of the helicopter assists), but I am pretty sure you can't just hop into the 787, jam the throttle forward and fly without getting bombarded by alarms for doing everything wrong. If you had an (optional) AI copilot with levels from "realistic" to "instructor", any kid that can play Minecraft could fly in MSFS in their aircraft of choice and brag to their parents as they fly over their house. And this option shouldn't dissuade the purists either... a "realistic" second officer that you can actually talk to is much more realistic than flying a heavy solo!

It's really not... Content is generally suitable for all ages. May contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language. Some here may remember the fake videos made in DCS that ended up being circulated by media outlets at the start of the Ukraine war. Definitely beyond the realm of "fantasy or mild violence" and obviously something MS/Asobo wants to avoid. Microsoft's legal and PR teams have more influence than those who pay Jorg's salary, I'm sure.