What other games are we all playing?

[PiLhEaD]

This dev announcement has inspired emotions

Second to orgasm

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpe7ULtkYbU
...

I'm probably nit-picking but I was intrigued at 3:53 and onwards where Piers says that this is the 'fulfillment of the promise' made to allow players to 'finally... land on some planets and explore them on foot'. The word that stood out being fulfilment - which typically means the achievement of a goal or requirement, its completion. With nothing more to be done. I'd still love for atmospherics and base building, but, if this is all we're getting, I'm still okay with that I guess given the far-too-many hours I've already sunk into the game.

Putting my mithering aside, it looks really super fabulous and I love the way the SRV cuts up the surface on ice planets, and I'm looking forward to reloading ED (ahem) and doing a bit of plodding around in 2021 - I can't wait to hear what magic the sound team will have for us.

If I could have just one add-on in Odyssey it would be a space dog that I could throw a stick or ball for it to 'go fetch'.

I started with ED in the pre-release beta, and thought it pretty flipping amazing back then - I still smile remembering sitting terrified in my Sidewinder without a single darn idea how to do anything at all - thanking the heavens for the excellent forum community, the many community-made WIKIs and the many YouTubers. Even if I never play another second it would represent some of the most jaw-dropping moments I've had playing games - this is one of those games where often I would just stop and mutter 'wow' as I soaked up the scenery.

ED would also represent incredible value for money for hours played and also (in so many ways) it has been a 'good place to be' - in game meeting commanders, watching the Christmas live streams, even laughing like a drain at some of the forum participants great humour, and smiling at the almost continual warmth and help shown to new commanders seeking help.

o7

 

[Vasious]

I now have a weird hankering to drive a Scarab SRV in Snow Runner

&/Or

Do Snowrunner like missions on alien worlds in ED with suitable non-SRV surface vehicles like this from the EDRPG

 

[LanceLord]

For those of you who're now playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, what's the verdict? While in the top 5 on my Steam wish list, I'm holding off a bit for possible update etc. Because about 1 in 3 ppl who've played it so far have posted some really negative reviews on in game performance (how planes handle etc). If you've managed to fly a variety of planes (from trainer Cessnas to OG 747 transcontinental jets) are these negative reviews justified? I'm wondering if some of the negative feedback experiences are due to hardware. Trying to run the game on older systems or have weak video cards/RAM/CPUs etc etc.

 

[Mole HD]

For those of you who're now playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, what's the verdict? While in the top 5 on my Steam wish list, I'm holding off a bit for possible update etc. Because about 1 in 3 ppl who've played it so far have posted some really negative reviews on in game performance (how planes handle etc). If you've managed to fly a variety of planes (from trainer Cessnas to OG 747 transcontinental jets) are these negative reviews justified? I'm wondering if some of the negative feedback experiences are due to hardware. Trying to run the game on older systems or have weak video cards/RAM/CPUs etc etc.

I uninstalled it after it decided to delete itself and reinstall the entire 91Gb from scratch. That aside, I was gutted by the representation of my islands in the sim...enough that I died a bit inside when I saw it. Otherwise...the flight model is 'fairly' good but I feel I get a more realistic representation of flight from IL2...that's just a personal perspective based mainly on aircraft feedback with the flight experience options set to maximum realism.

In MSFS there is no aircraft feedback at all, or it's not allowed...if you stress the airframe the game part of the sim simply blanks out with an on screen box informing you that you've overstressed your aircraft leading you back to the menu...that killed my interest a lot more than seeing my beautiful islands drawn in like a patchwork quilt. If I overstress my aircraft, I want the plane to tell me that through feedback and let me deal with it, not have the game part interfering in a supposed simulator by blanking out to menu through some weird application of political correctness. It's enforced nannying and disappointing that it should appear in what is marketed as a simulator.

Everything was set to ultra on my system which is fairly average (i7 8700k/64Gb DDR4/GTX 1080ti) with little loss of FPS, the sim ran smooth enough and was certainly pretty enough in well populated areas, mostly the US. Northern UK, especially large parts of Scotland as represented in the sim via Bing maps, is a visual abomination...others reported the same tiling effect when I asked them to fly over my islands to confirm it wasn't just me, my settings or levels of set detail...It's easy to be wowed by the live weather and all the visual trappings of the sim...but as a base product I wasn't overly impressed by what should be the focus of it...the flying. It's fine if you like playing with a virtual version of a Garmin SATNAV and clicking on buttons and levers whilst looking out of the window, otherwise, the physical 'feel' of flying is poorly represented...to my mind (and I should stress I'm not a real pilot)...but I was already spoiled by the flight modelling in the IL2 series in that respect.

Considering I got the sim free with MS Gamepass Ultimate, I'll give it a pass until it's either fixed or improved. Overall...pretty good and for the most part, visually impressive but early bugs and graphical issues possibly requiring many, many microtransactions by the way of third party scenery or aircraft add-ons to rectify or improve the base sim doesn't fill me with joy. I'm sticking to IL2 Great Battles for my flying fix.

Spoiler: Badly drawn boy

Spoiler: For visual comparison only

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I still have MS FSX. I will probably use it to get my fix, by night flying.

They need to work on early stall warnings, buffeting, etc.

Bing Maps is probably going to get it's ears boxed.

Waiting on the sale. Yes, I know about the pass. The game isn't ready, yet.

 

[Revenant69]

I still have MS FSX. I will probably use it to get my fix, by night flying.

They need to work on early stall warnings, buffeting, etc.

Bing Maps is probably going to get it's ears boxed.

Waiting on the sale. Yes, I know about the pass. The game isn't ready, yet.

Sounds like it. At first I was really jealous that I couldn't play it for a few months (probably around 6), but after reading some of the stuff you, MoleHD and others are saying I've concluded that I was actually lucky. When I finally do get to play it's going to have had a whole lot of patches.

 

[LanceLord]

I uninstalled it after it decided to delete itself and reinstall the entire 91Gb from scratch. That aside, I was gutted by the representation of my islands in the sim...enough that I died a bit inside when I saw it. Otherwise...the flight model is 'fairly' good but I feel I get a more realistic representation of flight from IL2...that's just a personal perspective based mainly on aircraft feedback with the flight experience options set to maximum realism.

In MSFS there is no aircraft feedback at all, or it's not allowed...if you stress the airframe the game part of the sim simply blanks out with an on screen box informing you that you've overstressed your aircraft leading you back to the menu...that killed my interest a lot more than seeing my beautiful islands drawn in like a patchwork quilt. If I overstress my aircraft, I want the plane to tell me that through feedback and let me deal with it, not have the game part interfering in a supposed simulator by blanking out to menu through some weird application of political correctness. It's enforced nannying and disappointing that it should appear in what is marketed as a simulator.

Everything was set to ultra on my system which is fairly average (i7 8700k/64Gb DDR4/GTX 1080ti) with little loss of FPS, the sim ran smooth enough and was certainly pretty enough in well populated areas, mostly the US. Northern UK, especially large parts of Scotland as represented in the sim via Bing maps, is a visual abomination...others reported the same tiling effect when I asked them to fly over my islands to confirm it wasn't just me, my settings or levels of set detail...It's easy to be wowed by the live weather and all the visual trappings of the sim...but as a base product I wasn't overly impressed by what should be the focus of it...the flying. It's fine if you like playing with a virtual version of a Garmin SATNAV and clicking on buttons and levers whilst looking out of the window, otherwise, the physical 'feel' of flying is poorly represented...to my mind (and I should stress I'm not a real pilot)...but I was already spoiled by the flight modelling in the IL2 series in that respect.

Considering I got the sim free with MS Gamepass Ultimate, I'll give it a pass until it's either fixed or improved. Overall...pretty good and for the most part, visually impressive but early bugs and graphical issues possibly requiring many, many microtransactions by the way of third party scenery or aircraft add-ons to rectify or improve the base sim doesn't fill me with joy. I'm sticking to IL2 Great Battles for my flying fix.

Wow. Thanks for the feedback. The insane file sizes and download times was a premiere concern, as it was one of the biggest salt fests on Steam. So guess that bit is warranted. And that happened on your end with an SC capable baseline computer.

How much worse did performance and fps drop with inclement weather maxed out (e.g. highest wind shear, lightning, max disturbance, flying into thunderstorm clouds etc)? Obsidian Ant did a brief video covering this yesterday. Showed what would happen if you played psychological chicken with your seaplane when Mother Nature is royally chauffed off at the ocean.

Getting #REKT on a stormy ocean with 20ft+ waves is one thing. But much to my surprise (and extreme chagrin for M$ being the old school AAA pioneer they are for this genre), OA's next murder-suicide attempt went something like this:

OA's psycho jet: ALLAH AKBAR!!!

Side of building several seconds later: Am I a joke to you??

Basically his kamikaze stunt didn't do sh8te aka plane didn't even fart a single puff of smoke. OA literally got a popup which basically indicated game over No phenomenal explosions of pyrotechnics and horrible screeches of doomed passengers on board whatsoever.

I'll never understand why he bothered trying to quantumly tunnel his plane through the side of some random building over Paris---when he could've gone out in style warping into the Eiffel Tower some several soccer fields away....

Anyhow I digress. What edition were you playing? Wondering what the difference would be between the Standard low res edition v the ultra HD/custom airports etc. Ultimate edition.

 

[LanceLord]

I still have MS FSX. I will probably use it to get my fix, by night flying.

They need to work on early stall warnings, buffeting, etc.

Bing Maps is probably going to get it's ears boxed.

Waiting on the sale. Yes, I know about the pass. The game isn't ready, yet.

Imagine what FDev might be able to pull off licensing Bing or GoogleEarth maps for Earthlike planets in Odyssey. Use them to RNG terrain of Earth like terraformable worlds. Rockstar did an excellent job incorporating Google maps into the baseline design for GTA V. Badly drawn polygons or not, a feature like this would definitely add some much needed variety to flybys over earth like worlds. And rocky earth like worlds with no water/fluid on the surface. Just rocks and exotic RNG generated alien flora vegetation.

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Imagine what FDev might be able to pull off licensing Bing or GoogleEarth maps for Earthlike planets in Odyssey. Use them to RNG terrain of Earth like terraformable worlds. Rockstar did an excellent job incorporating Google maps into the baseline design for GTA V. Badly drawn polygons or not, a feature like this would definitely add some much needed variety to flybys over earth like worlds. And rocky earth like worlds with no water/fluid on the surface. Just rocks and exotic RNG generated alien flora vegetation.

Hmmmm. What did I already suggest earlier...

 

[Mole HD]

Wow. Thanks for the feedback. The insane file sizes and download times was a premiere concern, as it was one of the biggest salt fests on Steam. So guess that bit is warranted. And that happened on your end with an SC capable baseline computer.

How much worse did performance and fps drop with inclement weather maxed out (e.g. highest wind shear, lightning, max disturbance, flying into thunderstorm clouds etc)? Obsidian Ant did a brief video covering this yesterday. Showed what would happen if you played psychological chicken with your seaplane when Mother Nature is royally chauffed off at the ocean.

Getting #REKT on a stormy ocean with 20ft+ waves is one thing. But much to my surprise (and extreme chagrin for M$ being the old school AAA pioneer they are for this genre), OA's next murder-suicide attempt went something like this:

OA's psycho jet: ALLAH AKBAR!!!

Side of building several seconds later: Am I a joke to you??

Basically his kamikaze stunt didn't do sh8te aka plane didn't even fart a single puff of smoke. OA literally got a popup which basically indicated game over No phenomenal explosions of pyrotechnics and horrible screeches of doomed passengers on board whatsoever.

I'll never understand why he bothered trying to quantumly tunnel his plane through the side of some random building over Paris---when he could've gone out in style warping into the Eiffel Tower some several soccer fields away....

Anyhow I digress. What edition were you playing? Wondering what the difference would be between the Standard low res edition v the ultra HD/custom airports etc. Ultimate edition.

The graphics options and quality are the same over all editions...the premium version merely gives you 10 more hand crafted major airports and 10 extra aircraft (or variants) over the standard edition. I was running the sim at max everything, ultra graphics settings throughout, all the terrain sliders etc at full max...my system coped with it admirably with no visible hitches or choppy framerates no matter what was happening onscreen...as it seems to do with practically anything I throw at it. I don't use a framerate counter...since most folks seem overly fascinated by little numbers in the corner of the screen. Basically, if I can't see the joins or individual frames drawing in...it's fine by me

My one concern apart from the initial download size on my net connection was that during the downloading process with no visible UI except for the loading screen, was that it was hammering my GPU (1080ti) to 70+% during the entire download...if I minimised the loader to taskbar, the GPU useage went mental actually topping out at 100% in flashes...all this with no game running, just the installer. The loader also hogged 15% to 30+% of my CPU useage during the download. Once installed and running however, CPU/GPU and RAM useage were what I'd expect as normal range for such a visually extravagant game.

I've still no idea how it came to delete itself...I thought initially it was downloading a patch on firing the sim up for the third or fourth time that day... until I realised it was downloading the entire 91GB all over again...when I checked the install folders, there are several... the main install location had less than 10GB of files in there. I decided it was less painful to just uninstall what was left rather than lose the use of my entire PC for another 2 days of downloading on my net connection due to the over the top GPU/CPU useage during the installation process.

The installer also hogs all control inputs from an Xbox controller...I tried playing a bit of HZD and a few other games I use the controller for but every time I pressed the 'A' button, it alt tabbed out of the game so that the installer could fire up a live web link embedded in it...pretty poor not being able to leave the installation running in the background whilst you play something else, especially if like me you have a less than superfast download speed. (16Mbps down / 8Mbps up)

 

[Iron Golem]

For those of you who're now playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, what's the verdict? While in the top 5 on my Steam wish list, I'm holding off a bit for possible update etc. Because about 1 in 3 ppl who've played it so far have posted some really negative reviews on in game performance (how planes handle etc). If you've managed to fly a variety of planes (from trainer Cessnas to OG 747 transcontinental jets) are these negative reviews justified? I'm wondering if some of the negative feedback experiences are due to hardware. Trying to run the game on older systems or have weak video cards/RAM/CPUs etc etc.

Wonky install and teething problems but that aside, 10/10. Never played a flight sim before but being able to explore our world from the air has been an amazing experience for me so far. I literally lost myself flying through cloud scapes for three hours last night. Breathtaking. Every road, business and naunce in my town is spot on for me (This varies across location and user).

The game also runs fantastic on my middling hardware. Plus I already had game pass so the fact it was free didn't hurt.

 

[Mengy]

For those of you who're now playing Microsoft Flight Simulator, what's the verdict?

My opinion: It's the best flight simulator I've ever owned or played. And I own a LOT of flight simulators!

The scenery is breathtakingly realistic. The graphics are incredible and it all runs a smooth 30fps on my PC with HIGH settings (still using an old GTX970 card). The weather system is awe inspiring. The planes handle very good, maybe not A2A Accusim good but close, and in some regards a bit more realistic honestly.

For this GA enthusiast with many hours flight time in real planes the new MFS is a dream come true.

 

[Revenant69]

My opinion: It's the best flight simulator I've ever owned or played. And I own a LOT of flight simulators!

The scenery is breathtakingly realistic. The graphics are incredible and it all runs a smooth 30fps on my PC with HIGH settings (still using an old GTX970 card). The weather system is awe inspiring. The planes handle very good, maybe not A2A Accusim good but close, and in some regards a bit more realistic honestly.

For this GA enthusiast with many hours flight time in real planes the new MFS is a dream come true.

I gather that the weather modeling is excellent, but how are you finding the real time weather aspect of the sim?

 

[LanceLord]

My opinion: It's the best flight simulator I've ever owned or played. And I own a LOT of flight simulators!

The scenery is breathtakingly realistic. The graphics are incredible and it all runs a smooth 30fps on my PC with HIGH settings (still using an old GTX970 card). The weather system is awe inspiring. The planes handle very good, maybe not A2A Accusim good but close, and in some regards a bit more realistic honestly.

For this GA enthusiast with many hours flight time in real planes the new MFS is a dream come true.

Thanks! I'm dying to get this because I was sold on all the previews. So 90% of me is committed to going all out and buying the ultimate version. But the decision to do so is becoming hard, because the game has spanned such a wide range of emotional experiences. Some hate it because of the textures/graphics. But that may probably be because they have underpowered hardware and/or bought the lowest resolution/standard version. Some are butt hurt because they went the McScrooge route and missed out on all the graphical perks that come behind that nasty paywall M$ slipped in there.

Then others complain about aircraft performance and/or realism in operational flight mechanics (which is the most critical factor for me). I can tolerate low res graphics if the game performance and satisfactory game play experience makes up for this.

But all reviewers who complained on Steam could agree on one thing: the 90GB+ d/l was complete torture. Some (like Mole) literally d/l 99% to 100% of the game after several HOURS of real life. Only to have the launcher? Whatever cloud server they were d/l from reset/disrupt the process. what?? Causing them to re-download the blasted files all over again.....

So now I'll content myself watching OA's and other YT influencer video reviews online. As badly as I want to get this, I'm not going to fall down that obsession trap where I blindly fling money at a AAA dev out my window. Because unlike a battered spouse, I've got zero intention of repeating this expensive collector's nightmare scenario ever again:

Bethesda: We're the ultimate release day fan base dev trolls. Submit to crushing domination with this 3 hr download 50GB patch for F76----

M$: Shaddup and hang on to ur digital Heineken. Now wotch dis........

 

[Ralph Vargr]

Stayed up too late shooting night IFR approaches in MS FS X.

The biggest problem with a real-time game, like Elite, and MSFS 2020, is that it sucks up lots of real time.

I did cross-country flying, with night approaches, and it ate last night. Nothing wrong with the game- everything wrong with my need for sleep.

 

[Mole HD]

Thanks! I'm dying to get this because I was sold on all the previews. So 90% of me is committed to going all out and buying the ultimate version. But the decision to do so is becoming hard, because the game has spanned such a wide range of emotional experiences. Some hate it because of the textures/graphics. But that may probably be because they have underpowered hardware and/or bought the lowest resolution/standard version. Some are butt hurt because they went the McScrooge route and missed out on all the graphical perks that come behind that nasty paywall M$ slipped in there.

Then others complain about aircraft performance and/or realism in operational flight mechanics (which is the most critical factor for me). I can tolerate low res graphics if the game performance and satisfactory game play experience makes up for this.

But all reviewers who complained on Steam could agree on one thing: the 90GB+ d/l was complete torture. Some (like Mole) literally d/l 99% to 100% of the game after several HOURS of real life. Only to have the launcher? Whatever cloud server they were d/l from reset/disrupt the process. what?? Causing them to re-download the blasted files all over again.....

So now I'll content myself watching OA's and other YT influencer video reviews online. As badly as I want to get this, I'm not going to fall down that obsession trap where I blindly fling money at a AAA dev out my window. Because unlike a battered spouse, I've got zero intention of repeating this expensive collector's nightmare scenario ever again:

Bethesda: We're the ultimate release day fan base dev trolls. Submit to crushing domination with this 3 hr download 50GB patch for F76----

M$: Shaddup and hang on to ur digital Heineken. Now wotch dis........

Apologies in advance for the upcoming wall of text

I'll say again that there is no difference between the ultimate edition and the base standard edition graphically...both have exactly the same resolutions and graphics options available. The only difference is in the amount of aircraft and hand crafted airports between all 3 versions...20 planes and hand crafted airfields with the standard, 25 of each with the premium and 30 of each with the ultimate. In each edition, the standard of graphics and options is exactly the same.

As for the sim deleting itself...although I've no firm idea why it did so, it's an extremely unlikely case that many others had this issue...in the MSFS discussion thread, there was only perhaps 2 others who remarked on the same thing. In my case the sim was installed on a 2Tb NVME drive that was only 30% full...and besides basic PC maintenance in between sessions on the sim I hadn't installed anything else...

PC maintenance being AVG tune-up...clears registry errors, temp files, startup errors etc, etc. My one possible suspect being that in the cleanup I removed an old Windows restore point that was taking up 29Gb of space...perhaps removing that was somehow connected with the deletion of the sim...although exactly why or how I've no idea since I do this consistently and repeatedly with no effect to anything else on my PC.

As for the download size...it's by no means the biggest game file I've had to download in stages...CoD Modern warfare was a whopping 155Gb download and lasted for 2 whole days, several others were in the 50-65Gb range...Hitman 2 was 66Gb. My issue was with the Microsoft installer dominating my PC resources whilst simply downloading..that was unacceptable and tiresome since it left me no option but to download it over 2 nights whilst I was asleep since playing anything else as it downloaded in the background was almost impossible.

As for the sim itself...I hadn't flown any civilian or GA simulators previously. Up until MSFS 2020 was announced, I looked on them as a special niche amidst a niche genre group hobby...Flight simmers in general being the niche genre... as in the likes of me who primarily enjoy lavish historic or modern combat sims (IL2/DCS)...the other sub-niche type being the strict GA type simmers who have little or no interest in combat sims. I was attracted to MSFS 2020 by the technology, the lavish visuals...but most of all by the accessibility the sim opened up for casual players... or even console players eventually...it'll be a huge success for that on it's own and rightly deserves to be. It was a bold move by both Asobo and Microsoft opening up a niche genre to casual gamers with no more complicated peripherals than a mouse, keyboard or even an Xbox controller..."Leave no pilot behind." was their motto when designing MSFS...and their efforts are both admirable and laudable.

As it stands, yes...I was disappointed with the release version for the variety of reasons I've stated, that in no way should detract from what is a very ambitious and lavish simulator which will only improve and grow with time. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold much interest for me due to it's reliance to further it's community development via after market third party sales as is common with GA simulators as a whole...I won't be sinking Star Citizen amounts of cash into it...nor even IL2 Great Battles amounts... which is by far the most expensive franchise on my PC to date. GA simulations along with their restrictive and nannying 'realism' just aren't for me I guess. Landing a Heinkel 111 on one engine with most of the control surfaces shot away by AA and fighter attacks is more my bag...horses for courses

I'll probably re-download MFS 2020 at some point but only as far as my MS Gamepass membership facilitates it, I won't be sinking cash into it.

 

[Gary Graham]

Halo Masterchief edition, mass effect andromeda and shipbreaker.

 

[Mengy]

I gather that the weather modeling is excellent, but how are you finding the real time weather aspect of the sim?

The real time weather has seemed to be working great for me so far. I've been checking real weather where I fly on Intellicast and the sim seems to be matching it well, I'm super happy with it.

The weather simulation is what sets this sim really apart from everything else. It's a generational LEAP over the other sims.

 

[askavir]

Thanks! I'm dying to get this because I was sold on all the previews. So 90% of me is committed to going all out and buying the ultimate version. But the decision to do so is becoming hard, because the game has spanned such a wide range of emotional experiences. Some hate it because of the textures/graphics. But that may probably be because they have underpowered hardware and/or bought the lowest resolution/standard version. Some are butt hurt because they went the McScrooge route and missed out on all the graphical perks that come behind that nasty paywall M$ slipped in there.

Then others complain about aircraft performance and/or realism in operational flight mechanics (which is the most critical factor for me). I can tolerate low res graphics if the game performance and satisfactory game play experience makes up for this.

But all reviewers who complained on Steam could agree on one thing: the 90GB+ d/l was complete torture. Some (like Mole) literally d/l 99% to 100% of the game after several HOURS of real life. Only to have the launcher? Whatever cloud server they were d/l from reset/disrupt the process. what?? Causing them to re-download the blasted files all over again.....

So now I'll content myself watching OA's and other YT influencer video reviews online. As badly as I want to get this, I'm not going to fall down that obsession trap where I blindly fling money at a AAA dev out my window. Because unlike a battered spouse, I've got zero intention of repeating this expensive collector's nightmare scenario ever again:

Bethesda: We're the ultimate release day fan base dev trolls. Submit to crushing domination with this 3 hr download 50GB patch for F76----

M$: Shaddup and hang on to ur digital Heineken. Now wotch dis........

If you're on the fence I highly recommend you subscribe the microsft games service for PC. It's currently priced at one single dollar per month, and you can cancel at any moment with a single click. There are many countries where even a single beer costs more than that. For a puny dollar, you can try it for a whole month and decide if it's worth your money or not.

 

[Revenant69]

The real time weather has seemed to be working great for me so far. I've been checking real weather where I fly on Intellicast and the sim seems to be matching it well, I'm super happy with it.

The weather simulation is what sets this sim really apart from everything else. It's a generational LEAP over the other sims.

I'm sooo happy to hear that my friend. The live weather is easily my most anticipated aspect of it!