Before anyone gets excited and goes to buy the game outright:
First: Please consider trying out the game via the Xbox Game Pass for PC program instead. $5/month, $1 for the first month instead of buying it outright. Do remember to cancel. Thank me later.
Second: The whole download/install experience is a trip. You need to download about ~90 GB of data (no problem!). However, the downloader is abysmal. It's not optimized for throughput at all, each (often small) file is individually downloaded and then uncompressed in sequence. Is this 1997? My favorite bug: if you minimize the download window it starts using 100% of the GPU. This is kind of indicative of what you'll experience later on - that special kind of randomness that stems from developer incompetence. Most people (including me) seem to need to restart the whole thing a couple of times. Loads of people are simply stuck at the download step.
Third: Loading times with this game are insane. It can take a minute or two (with a very fast 6-core CPU, 1 Gbit/s network connection, M.2 SSD, etc) to load the main menu, because it seems to download the scenery for the stuff that is vaguely visible in the background scenery every time. Then another minute or two for actually getting started with your flight. And when going back from flight mode to the main menu: yeah, another 1-2 mins.
Fourth: When you actually get to start the aircraft:
- There are loads of bugs that cause insane FPS drops/frameskips.
- There currently seems to exist an issue that causes FPS slowdowns when the Azure-based geometry servers are slow. Did they do blocking networking in the same thread as the rendering? :) No idea, but the propblem is for for real. The typical FPS is higher when fewer people are playing. All of those gorgeous youtube videos you've seen from before the launch? Yeah, those are no longer representative. Also, I think most of them have been carefully edited. There are just way too many random FPS
and frame skipping bugs abound. It's a mess.
I recommend looking at a recorded live stream (from recent days) to get a better understanding of the simulation performance.
(I've spent maybe 6 hours with MSFS2020 so far.)
Fifth: This is a very complicated application. There is no documentation.
Sixth: I'm running on a GTX 1070 with 8 GB of video memory, so sadly I can only run this at 1080p. When everything is working perfectly it's kinda smooth - about 40 fps. Most of the time though, something is causing a severe FPS slowdown, so closer to 5-10 fps. It's all kind of random. It seems like most of these issues are bugs, rather than the hardware meeting actual limitations. Changing the display quality (ultra/high/etc doesn't really impact these random variations in FPS much.)
Seventh: The in-game credits start with this sequence: DESIGN, UI DEVELOPMENT, PROGRAMMING. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but to me this order could sort of explain why this disaster shipped in its current form.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So many insane bugs.
Most infuriating of all: The constant social media spam about how this is fantastic. Talk of framerate issue issues/slowdowns/bugs is constantly downvoted e.g. on reddit.
Welcome to the world of flight simulation! I've been in to flight simulation for a long time, and while there are definite rough edges that need to be improved, this really does represent the next leap forward in what's available for this hobby. X-Plane with ortho scenery installed on my system has much longer load times. Prepar3d has lower framerates when you get some good scenery and a good aircraft loaded. I wish flight sim performed like AAA games. But this really does represent a significant improvement to the genre relative to what we've had before. It'll be a while before the high-quality add-on aircraft are ported over and available, as well as other types of content where hand-made airports and such are much better than the mostly-auto-generated content that comes with the game... but out of the box the new MSFS really does look so much more realistic (not just the earth but the sky: weather) and performs better than what we're used to.
So from the perspective of existing simmers, a game that seems to be pretty bad relative to mainstream AAA titles is actually looking really great compared to that status quo.
As for the download system -- yes, there's no excuse for that. I'm not sure how they got that so wrong given the abundance of prior art that does it better. The seeming relationship between Azure load and FPS/stutters is concerning and certainly a new condition that didn't exist in existing sims. Overall I do think the new sim suffers from being released prematurely, as we see so often with software now. But the reason for all the hype and praise is because the flight sim community really is excited about the potential this represents because we've been stuck with such ancient platforms for so long.
According to many long-time flight simmers, the performance of this title is about the same as previous ones, with the addition of 10x improved graphics. So that's why they don't care and you're getting downvoted on Reddit.
PS: It's a next gen game built for the future in mind, GTX 1070 is basically outdated.
Expect to require a 3xxx series graphics card for good performance.
I must have different expectations for games, 'minute or two' loading times sounds completely fine to me. Bugs are probably fairly typical of modern 'release broken now, patch later' development.
Also: ignore the 8GB minimum RAM requirement. Whoever built that chart ignored the fact that Win10 needs a gig or two of its own to run. And FS20 needs about 7.5GB to boot.
I've experienced most of the issues you described, and yet, I have to conclude that the game is absolutely fantastic despite them. The visual clarity is mind-blowing, and the UI and all the helpers make all the difference between this game and all other sims that I've, as a completely casual player, have tried before.
But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly following the service model, which gives me confidence that most of the bugs will be sorted out and game polished.
I'm on a fairly new machine (i9-9900K OC'd to 5.1 GHz, 32GB RAM, NVMe, RTX 2080 Super), and I was expecting smooth, stable frame rates at 1080p. Unfortunately, the game seems to be limited by one or two CPU threads consuming a constant 90-100% of those cores, while the other cores hover around 10-25%. As a result, I get fairly decent frame rates (25-50fps, depending on the area), but even in the best cases, it has a really annoying "micro stutter" that randomly - yet consistently - interrupts what would otherwise be an amazing experience.
I'm hopeful that an update could improve performance, especially with respect to spreading CPU load over more cores, but it sounds like a lot of other simmers are mostly content, so maybe that will never happen.
Original comment: I've seen reports that the Steam refund window of a few hours of 'gameplay' is used up by the mammoth download time. Steam only downloads the installer, and the installer then downloads the game data. Steam considers the installer to be the game itself and starts the clock ticking.
Maybe you are new to the Flight Simulation scene. This is the game that FS fans have been waiting for over 10 years. Yes, it has problems but we're talking about absolutely groundbreaking technology that didn't settle for incremental improvements. There are very few games, if any, that look like FS2020 with full detail on. It absolutely blew me away to fly over my home town and point to my high school, malls and other recognizable parts of town.
Please don't listen to the parent and go support this new technology. This is a game that needs more funding that many startups quoted and even celebrated on Hacker News. This is revolutionary stuff and, despite the glitches, I was able to have a blast with it even in my modest Core i5 with a $150 GPU. It literally brought tears to my eyes.
I signed up for Xbox Game Pass and downloaded this yesterday. I ran into the problem with the app hanging during the initial download ("update.") I had to restart it once, then it downloaded all 91 gigs. I'm not sure what it was doing the first time... I figured it was just a glitch.
The game does load very slowly. This is on a system with 32 gigs of RAM and NVME SSDs.
Yeah, the load times on this are crazy. 1-2 mins to start the app and get to the main menu, another 30s-1min after you pick your itinerary to get to the runway. And I have one of the fastest chips (3900x), m.2 SSD, and RAM. How long are people willing to wait to play it, especially given how often I crashed in my first few flights.
Loads times don’t bother me, it’s the really buggy aircraft systems that do. Multiple times I’ve gotten the avionics bugged out where they flat out don’t respond anymore. Autopilot also flys like a drunk.
First thing you should do though is disable live traffic and no online players. It greatly improved performance for me. Visuals are amazing now.
Your system is pretty underspec’d for anything other than 1080p on this game. It runs pretty smoothly on my 3950X/2080 TI. 4K is bit underwhelming, running between 30-40 FPS. But I’m expecting that to improve a fair bit when the RTX 3xxx cards come out.
Lots of folks here saying “it’s impressive but...”
The game was probably released faster than what one would expect from a super polished title, but the game is still extraordinary. The visuals are superb, the detail is spectacular (I can see my real house with our pool as I fly over), the mechanics are incredible for a base flight simulator (lots of stuff you’d normally pay extra via addons for), and the game has been out less than a week.
They’re going to make the game better, and if you’re into flight simulators it’s a super easy purchase.
I went into this week with high expectations and my expectations were greatly exceeded.
I think this will be a problem a bit - apart from initial WOW effect, not that many people are into civilian flying. Its way too complex for casual gamers and learning curve is almost vertical, you need ultra-expensive hardware (how many want to spend 1000s in covid times?) and to be honest, non-combat realistic flight sims are really not for everybody, I would say not for most gamers.
People rave about details, but plenty of places look on similar level as if I would take google earth's built in flight sim - I am talking about what I've seen around Mont Blanc, not exactly a remote place. Yes, few more nicer buildings and slightly more detail, but that's hardly enough for non-geeks.
Sorry to sound so pessimistic, it is a fantastic game in its own tiny little niche and I am sure most issues will be resolved over time, I just think nowadays that niche is pretty small and won't expand that much because its not something that's easy to grasp and have fun quickly.
This game has been a ton of fun for me. The load times are annoying, but it runs well for me most of the time on my two-years-ago-it-was-high-end PC (6th gen i7, 1080 not-TI, m.2 drive, 16Gb RAM). I managed to find my 10 year old flight stick from when I played FSX and thats been great as apparently this game has caused a flight stick shortage. I would recommend people try it out, I have not encountered any game-breaking bugs (except for maybe the rudder control being weird but that could be the aforementioned flight stick). My recommendation is lower the sensitivity way, way down. I have mine at -60% on all axes. Medium graphics look pretty good too.
The results are super iffy, if your area matches the designed solution it’s great otherwise you are in for the weird version of the place. Which seems par for the course with these AI based solutions. There’s some obvious funny issues that have cropped up in the media but in general the results are mediocre from the perspective of actually representing places you know. Iceland for example has a loooooot of trees and the height data is just bizarre in a lot of cases.
It is however much better than anything that has previously existed and as long as you squint a bit and accept the flaws it’s great fun.
I don't have Flight Simulator, but someone on Facebook posted a screenshot of a friend's house in a suburban area in Florida, and I duplicated the image in Google Earth. It's just one data point, but here's what I noticed.
- The water looks better in Flight Simulator. A large pond has ripples and reflections in Flight Simulator but it's just flat in Google Earth.
- Trees and houses look better in Google Earth. Flight Simulator put trees in the middle of a house and in the middle of a street, and they seem a bit more crumply.
- Neither one gets palm trees right. On a major road with palm trees next to it, Flight Simulator turned them into green stalagmites and Google Earth didn't model them at all, leaving them as flat shadows on the ground.
It seems like if you like good-looking water or clouds (which Google Earth barely has) then Flight Simulator would be better, and obviously clouds are important for flight simulation. But if you just want to see the sights, Google Earth is pretty good and Flight Simulator isn't necessarily going to model things better.
Half the point is the delay of gratification. If you want to see the different islands of Hawaii, there will be some downtime while you're cruising.
The tension starts building once you get closer and closer, until you finally get to see the absolutely epic view.
Comparing Google Earth vs Flight Sim is the same as watching 3D images of hiking trail end points vs actually walking through the trail.
It’d be kind of amazing if GTA 6 was using this kind of tech to create its open world environment when it releases.
Sadly though, I expect it will need to have a free to play mode with micro transactions to support the ongoing investment into keeping the infrastructure up for delivering the open world imaging.
Generally speaking, mapping out an area in high quality requires imagery that was captured not only relatively close to the subject (flying at a few thousand feet vs on orbit) as well as capturing objects from multiple oblique angles. This requires intensively flying a "waffle fries" pattern over a subject area of interest with a plane with a bunch of cameras on it pointing in multiple direction. E.g. https://www.sanborn.com/oblique-imagery/
So - many orders of magnitude more expensive than just capturing satellite imagery.
It's a very good (and new) simulation model. The issue is that it's pretty buggy, and performance is varied. I think there is real potential for it to be optimised into being much better (very poor use of multi core CPU for example), but that's a pretty fundamental rewrite you'd need for that. That it isn't built with DX12/vulkan is again disappointing and I doubt will be something that's addressed in an update, though I'd love to be proven wrong!
It’s probably the best flight sim to date. I see huge potential for addons to leverage the map data. Perhaps an arcade mode to make it more accessible to casual gamers.
London and Paris have fairly uninteresting airspaces from an aviation standpoint. Flat, not many airports. If sightseeing is your thing, there are better ways.
I wonder if it’s based on usage from previous versions of Flight Simulator.
I wish this game launched with xCloud. I understand that simulation enthusiast won't be interested in that but for many people like me who don't want to worry about streaming and storing all that world data, as well as people not having enough resources to run the game it would be the perfect opportunity to try game streaming.
I feel like Microsoft needs to take this a step further and just put the simulation on the server too.
Considering their current global footprint (latency) and the fact that the game already requires a massive amount of always-on bandwidth, it would seem like this is a less painful conversation in this case.
I've been watching a few unboxing videos on youtube where MS has sent influencers a box with the Deluxe Premium Ed (comes with 10 DVDs for install) with full HOTAS controls.
(Even after the install there's a 19g download update.)
I wonder if everyone who gets one has a system with the specs to run it?
I have an 8 year old workstation as a gaming PC, with a 3GB GTX 1060, and a 2.5" HDD as a data drive, and it works fine for me on medium graphics at 1080p.
To be honest, I expected the AI to be a lot better and nuanced. It‘s good enough but does not catch a lot of things who should be obvious based on satellite and street view data. I think the google data would be a better source than bing but I understand the issue there.
I think this is a quite impressive piece of tech, especially the AI generated landscape, flora and fauna.
Of course there is always a gap to 100% accuracy, this is the case with every AI model I know, no matter what domain. I wonder how they measure accuracy here?
Microsoft Flight Simulator's (69,99€) AI is so good they'll charge you not to use it!
The Deluxe Edition (89,99€) includes everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
The Premium Deluxe Edition (119,99€) includes everything from the Microsoft Flight Simulator Deluxe edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
tpmx|5 years ago
First: Please consider trying out the game via the Xbox Game Pass for PC program instead. $5/month, $1 for the first month instead of buying it outright. Do remember to cancel. Thank me later.
Second: The whole download/install experience is a trip. You need to download about ~90 GB of data (no problem!). However, the downloader is abysmal. It's not optimized for throughput at all, each (often small) file is individually downloaded and then uncompressed in sequence. Is this 1997? My favorite bug: if you minimize the download window it starts using 100% of the GPU. This is kind of indicative of what you'll experience later on - that special kind of randomness that stems from developer incompetence. Most people (including me) seem to need to restart the whole thing a couple of times. Loads of people are simply stuck at the download step.
Third: Loading times with this game are insane. It can take a minute or two (with a very fast 6-core CPU, 1 Gbit/s network connection, M.2 SSD, etc) to load the main menu, because it seems to download the scenery for the stuff that is vaguely visible in the background scenery every time. Then another minute or two for actually getting started with your flight. And when going back from flight mode to the main menu: yeah, another 1-2 mins.
Fourth: When you actually get to start the aircraft:
- There are loads of bugs that cause insane FPS drops/frameskips.
- There currently seems to exist an issue that causes FPS slowdowns when the Azure-based geometry servers are slow. Did they do blocking networking in the same thread as the rendering? :) No idea, but the propblem is for for real. The typical FPS is higher when fewer people are playing. All of those gorgeous youtube videos you've seen from before the launch? Yeah, those are no longer representative. Also, I think most of them have been carefully edited. There are just way too many random FPS and frame skipping bugs abound. It's a mess.
I recommend looking at a recorded live stream (from recent days) to get a better understanding of the simulation performance.
(I've spent maybe 6 hours with MSFS2020 so far.)
Fifth: This is a very complicated application. There is no documentation.
Sixth: I'm running on a GTX 1070 with 8 GB of video memory, so sadly I can only run this at 1080p. When everything is working perfectly it's kinda smooth - about 40 fps. Most of the time though, something is causing a severe FPS slowdown, so closer to 5-10 fps. It's all kind of random. It seems like most of these issues are bugs, rather than the hardware meeting actual limitations. Changing the display quality (ultra/high/etc doesn't really impact these random variations in FPS much.)
Seventh: The in-game credits start with this sequence: DESIGN, UI DEVELOPMENT, PROGRAMMING. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive here, but to me this order could sort of explain why this disaster shipped in its current form.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. So many insane bugs.
Most infuriating of all: The constant social media spam about how this is fantastic. Talk of framerate issue issues/slowdowns/bugs is constantly downvoted e.g. on reddit.
Anyone thinking about getting this game should first read through https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/ic3o90/...
Of course there are also many positive aspects of this app/game. I just wanted to bring attention to what I think should have been showstopper issues.
racingmars|5 years ago
So from the perspective of existing simmers, a game that seems to be pretty bad relative to mainstream AAA titles is actually looking really great compared to that status quo.
As for the download system -- yes, there's no excuse for that. I'm not sure how they got that so wrong given the abundance of prior art that does it better. The seeming relationship between Azure load and FPS/stutters is concerning and certainly a new condition that didn't exist in existing sims. Overall I do think the new sim suffers from being released prematurely, as we see so often with software now. But the reason for all the hype and praise is because the flight sim community really is excited about the potential this represents because we've been stuck with such ancient platforms for so long.
user_501238901|5 years ago
PS: It's a next gen game built for the future in mind, GTX 1070 is basically outdated. Expect to require a 3xxx series graphics card for good performance.
garaetjjte|5 years ago
joezydeco|5 years ago
Get 32GB and give yourself some breathing room.
golergka|5 years ago
But more importantly, it's not a game that's defined by it's release; developers are clearly following the service model, which gives me confidence that most of the bugs will be sorted out and game polished.
dperfect|5 years ago
I'm hopeful that an update could improve performance, especially with respect to spreading CPU load over more cores, but it sounds like a lot of other simmers are mostly content, so maybe that will never happen.
georgespencer|5 years ago
Original comment: I've seen reports that the Steam refund window of a few hours of 'gameplay' is used up by the mammoth download time. Steam only downloads the installer, and the installer then downloads the game data. Steam considers the installer to be the game itself and starts the clock ticking.
danielrpa|5 years ago
Please don't listen to the parent and go support this new technology. This is a game that needs more funding that many startups quoted and even celebrated on Hacker News. This is revolutionary stuff and, despite the glitches, I was able to have a blast with it even in my modest Core i5 with a $150 GPU. It literally brought tears to my eyes.
ornitorrincos|5 years ago
I haven't done a full comparison yet because the plane I could compare more directly would involve stock vs payware, which is not really fair.
I do think that they can improve it with time but definitively feels rushed.
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
alkonaut|5 years ago
Just wait 6 months and if it’s not smooth by then it probably never will be.
icedchai|5 years ago
The game does load very slowly. This is on a system with 32 gigs of RAM and NVME SSDs.
It looks amazing though!
bluedevil2k|5 years ago
dawnerd|5 years ago
First thing you should do though is disable live traffic and no online players. It greatly improved performance for me. Visuals are amazing now.
AmericanChopper|5 years ago
bufferoverflow|5 years ago
https://i.imgur.com/hpNfPtZ.jpg
Notice the little porches added by the AI. It's actually impressive how good the 3D models turned out.
neolog|5 years ago
tiagobraw|5 years ago
wjossey|5 years ago
The game was probably released faster than what one would expect from a super polished title, but the game is still extraordinary. The visuals are superb, the detail is spectacular (I can see my real house with our pool as I fly over), the mechanics are incredible for a base flight simulator (lots of stuff you’d normally pay extra via addons for), and the game has been out less than a week.
They’re going to make the game better, and if you’re into flight simulators it’s a super easy purchase.
I went into this week with high expectations and my expectations were greatly exceeded.
saiya-jin|5 years ago
I think this will be a problem a bit - apart from initial WOW effect, not that many people are into civilian flying. Its way too complex for casual gamers and learning curve is almost vertical, you need ultra-expensive hardware (how many want to spend 1000s in covid times?) and to be honest, non-combat realistic flight sims are really not for everybody, I would say not for most gamers.
People rave about details, but plenty of places look on similar level as if I would take google earth's built in flight sim - I am talking about what I've seen around Mont Blanc, not exactly a remote place. Yes, few more nicer buildings and slightly more detail, but that's hardly enough for non-geeks.
Sorry to sound so pessimistic, it is a fantastic game in its own tiny little niche and I am sure most issues will be resolved over time, I just think nowadays that niche is pretty small and won't expand that much because its not something that's easy to grasp and have fun quickly.
jturpin|5 years ago
meheleventyone|5 years ago
It is however much better than anything that has previously existed and as long as you squint a bit and accept the flaws it’s great fun.
skybrian|5 years ago
- The water looks better in Flight Simulator. A large pond has ripples and reflections in Flight Simulator but it's just flat in Google Earth.
- Trees and houses look better in Google Earth. Flight Simulator put trees in the middle of a house and in the middle of a street, and they seem a bit more crumply.
- Neither one gets palm trees right. On a major road with palm trees next to it, Flight Simulator turned them into green stalagmites and Google Earth didn't model them at all, leaving them as flat shadows on the ground.
It seems like if you like good-looking water or clouds (which Google Earth barely has) then Flight Simulator would be better, and obviously clouds are important for flight simulation. But if you just want to see the sights, Google Earth is pretty good and Flight Simulator isn't necessarily going to model things better.
user_501238901|5 years ago
Comparing Google Earth vs Flight Sim is the same as watching 3D images of hiking trail end points vs actually walking through the trail.
bitxbit|5 years ago
godzillabrennus|5 years ago
Sadly though, I expect it will need to have a free to play mode with micro transactions to support the ongoing investment into keeping the infrastructure up for delivering the open world imaging.
dweekly|5 years ago
So - many orders of magnitude more expensive than just capturing satellite imagery.
bufferoverflow|5 years ago
jimnotgym|5 years ago
g_p|5 years ago
bitxbit|5 years ago
dawnerd|5 years ago
dudus|5 years ago
Havoc|5 years ago
ceejayoz|5 years ago
I wonder if it’s based on usage from previous versions of Flight Simulator.
ponker|5 years ago
0pranav|5 years ago
nickflood|5 years ago
bob1029|5 years ago
Considering their current global footprint (latency) and the fact that the game already requires a massive amount of always-on bandwidth, it would seem like this is a less painful conversation in this case.
ourmandave|5 years ago
(Even after the install there's a 19g download update.)
I wonder if everyone who gets one has a system with the specs to run it?
fyfy18|5 years ago
faebi|5 years ago
yayr|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]
mrkeen|5 years ago
The Deluxe Edition (89,99€) includes everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
The Premium Deluxe Edition (119,99€) includes everything from the Microsoft Flight Simulator Deluxe edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.
xnyan|5 years ago
I’d strongly recommend this if you’re not very sure you’ll like the game.
perryizgr8|5 years ago
maydemir|5 years ago
meheleventyone|5 years ago
macspoofing|5 years ago
unknown|5 years ago
[deleted]