henke on 21/11/2024 at 16:11
Somehow we didn't have a good general purpose MS flight sim thread but I know we got enough flight sim sickos here to warrant one so here goes.
[video=youtube;rvzlC4iCtns]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvzlC4iCtns[/video]
MSFS2024 came out 2 days ago. Servers were bogged down on day one and pissed off everyone, but after that it's been smooth sailing. Mostly.
Technical stuff
I've been playing it on XBox Series X. Runs at ~30fps I'd say. Just installed and tried it on PC. Ran at 60fps(I guess, Shadowplay wouldn't show me the actual fps) and looked good at Medium/High detail on a RTX 3080. Loadtimes are about the same as the previous game? (not short) Also the XBox Quick Resume ain't working for me. Game always runs for 2 seconds upon resuming then crashes so I need to wait for the whole initial load again. This has happened to me with other XBox games too so I dunno if it's just on my end or a wider issue.
This is a serious flight sim tho and can barely fit all the buttons it needs on the gamepad. If I want to look at my flight map, guess what I need to do! LB+Y to enter active pause, LB+Select to display the map, RB+Left Stick Click to enter Cursor Mode so I can actually interact with the map. Holy shit. I like simulators that are serious about the physics but streamline the heck out of the controls, and MSFS is... uh.. a bit BUTTONY for my liking.
The game looks great, but details of ground things/buildings is as guessworky as in the last game.
Campaign
So yeah I got into the campaign, starting my pilot journey in southern Finland. First you gotta take your Personal Pilot License, which includes taking a whole bunch of courses or you can just skip right to the exam. I didn't feel like any of these exams really tested me on everything the courses covered, but I've been taking the courses anyway. This game is very serious about all this piloting stuff and I'm doing my best to play along. After getting the PPL I did a couple non-paying sightseeing missions before I was allowed to start earning my Commercial Pilot License so I can actually get paid for all this flying around.
Oh btw, but I recommend leaving the Measurement Units option to the default US, otherwise following the instructions can be tricky, since the instructions will show up in meters, but your flight instruments still show imperial units. So I need to go to 400m altitude? How much is that in feet? Who the fuck knows. Why can't this game just show the flight instruments in your unit of choice? Who the fuck knows.
Anyway, so far so good. I feel like I've scratched the surface of this game and am about to get to the good stuff. Will let you know how it turns out.
Anyone else playing this thing yet?
WingedKagouti on 21/11/2024 at 16:52
MSFS has always had a reputation for being as far on the realistic/complex side of simulation as was technically feasible for the target system as possible. This most definitely includes the instrumentation and general UI. HOTAS + keyboard is the control setup I've heard most about in relation to the series.
Never played it myself.
heywood on 21/11/2024 at 18:50
How does 2024 compare to 2020? Family life got busy and I stopped playing XPlane, but I still like to joy ride around in MSFS 2020. I don't need a campaign mode. Most of the time I just want to quickly get into VFR flight to check someplace out, without planning the flight, without dealing with traffic.
demagogue on 21/11/2024 at 21:27
Just from the video previews and reviews, the first difference that stand out when they put them side by side is that 2024's color palette and landscapes are more natural (or 2020's is more stylized), and 2024 comes with the career mode, as you already know.
They showed a video of a plane flying into a gargantuan hurricane front which was pretty awe inspiring in 2024, and I think they said it couldn't be like that (the clouds and weather system, etc.) in 2020. The other thing that or another video pointed out were that the reflections and sunlight, etc., on the windows and generally everything in the cockpit area are much more realistic looking.
I already said before the one thing I want to see is if out-of-the way areas are developed, because I liked flying around in out-of-the way places like SEAsia or Central Asia or Central Africa, etc.
heywood on 22/11/2024 at 13:51
I am interested in the same thing. The virtual tourism aspect of MSFS 2020 is what drew me to it from X-Plane. These days, I'm more into short flights of exploration when I have a little free time rather than staying up 3 hours late to sim a commercial flight. I guess I'm not as interested in flying as I once was either. What MSFS 2020 did was incredibly impressive in scale. Previous flight sims were limited to islands of content, typically metro-sized add-ons that you paid for and third-party packages. Once you left those metropolitan areas, it was featureless low-res satellite imagery, functional for flight simulation but not representative of what it would look like to be there. Then MSFS came along and elevated the level of realism everywhere outside of those islands I was talking about, and really opened the world. But it didn't quite live up to my hope that it would be like flight simming in Google Earth. If 2024 has improved realism in areas that haven't been hand-edited, I would buy.
henke on 23/11/2024 at 17:06
I'm in Madagascar, doing cargo missions so I can level up enough to do Search & Rescue missions. It's fun, in a grindy way. Plenty of bugs popping up, like sometimes it won't let me respond to ATC messages no matter how much I hammer the respond button, and then the game gives me minus-points for not responding, like it's MY fault!
Also, when I started the game this morning (playing on PC now) it took 12 minutes from starting the game till mission start. Later in the day it just took 4 minutes. You'll want a podcast or some music to go with this.
demagogue on 23/11/2024 at 22:27
IIRC Madagascar was the place I flew in MSFS 2020 where I first saw a really lowpoly featureless landscape that took me aback and realize that a big chunks of the world weren't developed yet. I imagine if you're doing missions there that they've at least fixed that much.
henke on 25/11/2024 at 10:19
Yeah it looks fine now. Haven't seen any lowpoly landscapes there.
I got started on the Search & Rescue missions now, which basically play like the flight sim I'm making. MS are ripping me off. They're fun tho. Also got my instrument rating so I know how to fly in foggy weather now.
heywood on 25/11/2024 at 15:16
Dare I ask what the install footprint is? I think I'm going to need another SSD.
henke on 25/11/2024 at 15:28
Before launch it was reported that the install would be 30GB, but I'm looking at my install now and it's... 11.8GB! At least that's the main game folder, perhaps it stores some cache files somewhere else as well?
Anyway, yes, massive improvement over the previous game's 120GB+ installs.
