Game Discussions Microsoft Flight Simulator

The tall downtown buildings were badly formed, with gaps and odd angles. It almost looked bombed out!

NYC looked like that. The city looked almost abandoned in a way because how odd the buildings looked. They didn't have any reflection and the "windows" were mostly black squares so they looked broken out. Also one of the bridges looks like a dam on the Hudson River. I was running on high and cached the city but still pretty disappointing. Overall the landscaping and lighting look impressive but buildings and cities need work......lots of it. Landmarks too. Somebody on Reddit posted a pic of the Washington Monument and it looked like an office building. Oh and roller coasters look like mountains with trees on them. I work at a theme park so I had to make it my first stop.
 
For gauge reading, that's one of the areas where trackIR makes a major difference. Being able to just lean forward a bit then lean back is quick and natural, as opposed to using a view hat button and a zoom slider. Back in the days, we also had the option to overlay a high-res 2d flattened instrument panel, but that one has likely gone the way of the dodo with full 3d cockpits.
 

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For gauge reading, that's one of the areas where trackIR makes a major difference. Being able to just lean forward a bit then lean back is quick and natural, as opposed to using a view hat button and a zoom slider. Back in the days, we also had the option to overlay a high-res 2d flattened instrument panel, but that one has likely gone the way of the dodo with full 3d cockpits.
This very much, it really comes into its own with detailed sims like this. I normally have the X/y/z axises turned off in other games (incl Elite) but in this it's very useful.

There's also a standard set of keybinds to zoom in on the key instrument sections, assigned by default on my Xbox pad's up/down buttons. Not sure whether other controllers have this assigned from the get go, might be worth checking in the camera section.
 
OK, now I'm officially annoyed with this sim.

Not done much flying - I've spent the majority of my time painstakingly manual caching areas and cities. Have a nice 100GB cache file.

I was caching a bit more of Tokyo last night, which admittedly is rather large, and the UI hung when it had finished. So after leaving it for 10 minutes or so with no change, I force closed it with Task Manager. Then went to bed.

This morning, the whole thing hangs whenever I click 'View' on the manual cache option. Whole data file is screwed. Have to delete everything and start all over again. 😭
 
Man this sim sure can be gorgeous.

Flying a sunset route from State College up to Sunbury, PA. Just enjoying the dusk as the lights start to come on down below me.

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Indeed, the lighting and clouds are breathtaking. The scenery truly comes alive once above a certain height, around 3000ft or so.
This was taken above Ukraine, showers can be seen down there... I'm en route via Siberia to China and continue on my planned RTW trip, currently approaching Yekatinburg - fondly remember the day I spent there. :)

So far the experience was good, download was seamless too. Landing is challenging with all the multitasking, ATC is still confusing at times (yesterday I bumped the plane too hard on the landing strip because I was fidlling with ATC info to make sure I've really got that landing permission.
The physics itself is easy with a Cessna in normal conditions, that's all I know. :) Rocking the 172 with G1000 as auto pilot plus navigation helps a lot on long range journeys.

Edit: in case anyone wants to friend me in game, my xbox user ID is: realoptimal909
 
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OK, now I'm officially annoyed with this sim.

Not done much flying - I've spent the majority of my time painstakingly manual caching areas and cities. Have a nice 100GB cache file.

I was caching a bit more of Tokyo last night, which admittedly is rather large, and the UI hung when it had finished. So after leaving it for 10 minutes or so with no change, I force closed it with Task Manager. Then went to bed.

This morning, the whole thing hangs whenever I click 'View' on the manual cache option. Whole data file is screwed. Have to delete everything and start all over again. 😭

Well it's a microsoft game after all :p

Perhaps in the future X-Plane will partner with Google and make the new supreme flight sim of all time.
 
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Indeed, the lighting and clouds are breathtaking. The scenery truly comes alive once above a certain height, around 3000ft or so.
This was taken above Ukraine, showers can be seen down there... I'm en route via Siberia to China and continue on my planned RTW trip, currently approaching Yekatinburg - foindly remember the day I spent there. :)

So far the experience was good, download was seamless too. Landing is challenging with all the multitasking, ATC is still confusing at times (yesterday I bumped the plane too hard on the landing strip because I was fidlling with ATC info to make sure I've really got that landing permission.
The physics itself is easy with a Cessna in normal conditions, that's all I know. :) Rocking the 172 with G1000 as auto pilot plus navigation helps a lot on long range journeys.

Edit: in case anyone wants to friend me in game, my xbox user ID is: realoptimal909

True the visuals are best taken advantage of from higher altitude, but they're still pretty good from low altitude, even though some areas are better than others, they're still many, many notches above anything else in the market. Sadly, the Tongariro alpine crossing is a bit borked... There's trees up the slopes and even on top of mount Ngauruhoe ... Mount St. Helens on the other hand was quite glorious. :)
 
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True the visuals are best taken advantage of from higher altitude, but they're still pretty good from low altitude, even though some areas are better than others, they're still many, many notches above anything else in the market. Sadly, the Tongariro alpine crossing is a bit borked... There's trees up the slopes and even on top of mount Ngauruhoe... Mount St. Helens on the other hand was quite glorious. :)

Yeah, visuals from altitude have been there for a while now. XP11 with ortho tiles is pretty much the same (even more so if you use Bing as your source for the tiles). The low altitude autogen is something else however. It's simply criminal not to have helicopters at launch. :p
 
True the visuals are best taken advantage of from higher altitude, but they're still pretty good from low altitude, even though some areas are better than others, they're still many, many notches above anything else in the market. Sadly, the Tongariro alpine crossing is a bit borked... There's trees up the slopes and even on top of mount Ngauruhoe ... Mount St. Helens on the other hand was quite glorious. :)

I will get to NZ there, eventually... :) I just realized though that my Pacific leg of the trip is compromised as the airport I added to link the sparse regions coming through Midway (Wake island I think) has no airport added yet. Even more disappointing that Faroe Islands has no airport even though it was one of the most scenic landings I've every experienced. :(

For the moment doing 'hutton' trips with AP on towards Irkutsk/Lake Baikal, that's where the huge expanses and pine forests succumb to more scenic landscapes.
BTW I will check out Mt Aso too, that's the volcano I visited when I was in Japan. :)

Edit: flying through grease right now (we have bank holiday for the rest of the wek :p ), the clouds are amazing whenever I pop out of them!
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Well it's a microsoft game after all :p

And don't they like to remind you of that at every opportunity. 🤦‍♀️

It's just done it again. Thought I'd try smaller this time, and did Greater Manchester (my current 'hood) on a new 20GB file. Takes a while, so I alt-Tabbed out to do some work in the meantime.

Now it's hung. It doesn't like not being the centre of attention.

Perhaps in the future X-Plane will partner with Google and make the new supreme flight sim of all time.

Perhaps, but I've never played X-Plane so I don't know if that's a good thing or not. Minor issues aside, many of which are probably engine bugs like what MoleHD experienced, Bing isn't bad. It's just not as comprehensive at a low level - Google has more data. Bing relies on satellite data more, and it often shows.
 
Even more disappointing that Faroe Islands has no airport even though it was one of the most scenic landings I've every experienced. :(

Sad to learn about no airport/airfield in the Faroes... it was definitively in my go-to list... But if there's a real airport there, it will be added sooner or later. I have already realized there are so many places I want to fly to, that this game will last me many, many, many years. And the game it will only tend to become even better with time.

Regarding flight itself, my only gripe so far is with trimming... It feels unresponsive without any feedback and I can barely tell if it's working at all, but I am yet to determine if it's the game itself, or my control settings that cause this. I'm playing with props and turbo-props so no big deal for now, this issue will likely feel worse with jets which usually require more use of trimming.

I expect that once I tried all the planes I end up settling mostly for turbo-props, as they're IMO the best compromise between being great for sightseeing while having a bit of extra speed for when I actually want to get somewhere a little bit faster, so they fit my "tourist flights" role play the best.
 
I found another inaccuracy last night. I live in nowhereland rural America, yet at night FS has all the back roads lit up like the Vegas strip. WUT??? I confess my disappointment (and eagerness for proper scenery editing tools). Almost as bad, the lights that should be there - specifically, the many towers in my region, are missing. How does a flight simulator miss huge radio towers? Aren't this cataloged as "navigational hazards" or something IRL?
 
Sad to learn about no airport/airfield in the Faroes... it was definitively in my go-to list... But if there's a real airport there, it will be added sooner or later. I have already realized there are so many places I want to fly to, that this game will last me many, many, many years. And the game it will only tend to become even better with time.

Regarding flight itself, my only gripe so far is with trimming... It feels unresponsive without any feedback and I can barely tell if it's working at all, but I am yet to determine if it's the game itself, or my control settings that cause this. I'm playing with props and turbo-props so no big deal for now, this issue will likely feel worse with jets which usually require more use of trimming.

I expect that once I tried all the planes I end up settling mostly for turbo-props, as they're IMO the best compromise between being great for sightseeing while having a bit of extra speed for when I actually want to get somewhere a little bit faster, so they fit my "tourist flights" role play the best.

Yes, trimming can be a issue, mainly if the plane lists to one side, otherwise I can set it up sooner or later - though with G1000 it isn't a problem as it sorts it out by itself.
Also, G1000 allows me to do other things, like this morning I took off, went beck to bed for a while, then checked again, way point bearing adjustment, occasionally peeking out of the windows, prepared pizza dough, again coming back... life is slow at 100kts. :)

Regarding the X-Plane comment - it may be superior with some 3rd party planes, but the foundations of MFS are more solid with simulated wind and accurate weather data, plus it is the first to actually measure the airflow on 1000 points - so by definition it will end up being superior to X-Plane. At least that's what one of the main 3rd party developers said.
 
I found another inaccuracy last night. I live in nowhereland rural America, yet at night FS has all the back roads lit up like the Vegas strip. WUT??? I confess my disappointment (and eagerness for proper scenery editing tools). Almost as bad, the lights that should be there - specifically, the many towers in my region, are missing. How does a flight simulator miss huge radio towers? Aren't this cataloged as "navigational hazards" or something IRL?

I think the lights are a deliberate decision for VFR night flights. You're supposed to use the roads for navigation. You can't do that if they're all in darkness. 🤷‍♀️

As for the radio towers - yeah, it has problems with any kind of tower it seems. They're either not there at all, or they get converted into hotels.
 
I think the lights are a deliberate decision for VFR night flights. You're supposed to use the roads for navigation. You can't do that if they're all in darkness. 🤷‍♀️
Are you telling me there's a way to turn them off? I don't want FS changing reality to make it the game easier. There should be lights where there are lights, and none where there are none. Otherwise might as well put giant billboards everywhere that say "This way to the airport!" Oh, wait....
 
Are you telling me there's a way to turn them off? I don't want FS changing reality to make it the game easier. There should be lights where there are lights, and none where there are none. Otherwise might as well put giant billboards everywhere that say "This way to the airport!" Oh, wait....

Roads are identified based on satellite data, and then put into the world as 'roads' (so with traffic, lights, textures and so on). Which roads are or are not lighted during the night is not really in the data I suspect, so they just go with a generic light system. In the Netherlands pretty much ALL roads always have lights. In Belgium even parts of highways sometimes don't, or not properly.
 
Roads are identified based on satellite data, and then put into the world as 'roads' (so with traffic, lights, textures and so on). Which roads are or are not lighted during the night is not really in the data I suspect, so they just go with a generic light system. In the Netherlands pretty much ALL roads always have lights. In Belgium even parts of highways sometimes don't, or not properly.

I've discovered an even WORSE problem!

The cars in the UK drive on the right.

That's it. It's going in the bin. Utter rubbish!

🤪
 
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