I just completed my first brief flight from EDDG to Atterheide near Osnabrück.
Yeah, i know what Ii said yesterday. Don't ask me, I wont comment.
I run an i7 8700K, 32 GB RAM, 1080 TI overclocked and 13 GB RAM. No, i mdid not update the graohcis driver which is two years old or so. No, I am not on the latest built version of Windown 10. Still, it runs, I havbe no frames number, but the game autodected me for "ultra" settings, and in a Diamond Katana and in that region of Germany, the grpoahcis were smooth as silk at a sunny day (live weather). I left the options at what the sim had thrown at me, just overlooked them, and yes, pretty much all was on ultra.
However. My system was throttled down by temperature alarm (room temperature 26°C). Three cores reported maximum values of 99°C, two 97°C, one 95°C.
Not even Assetto Corsa Competizione manages that, not even on a hotter day with room temp at 28°C.
Visually, the beast is a feast. This is VFR sim flying from another star. The system of combining Bing maps with autogen (in this part of the world they did not care to hand-craft buildings and towns) creastes stunnign results. Even with autogen buildings repalcing the look of the rela ones, you can easily maintain VFR orientation by eye. Roads, rivers, woods, railtracks, autobahns (with moving traffic) - it looks splendig. add ot this live eeather, the sky, ther sun, clouds, dynamic time of day.
This sim is made for VFR exploration.
And that is good, because about IFR I have my doubts, currently. The planes are what was to be expected: the defualt planes are a bit toyish. Not what I consider to be sim-heavy, which is especially true for the airliner cockpits that i just briefly checked, it does not compare to PMDG's functionality, but then i did not expect that, of course. Sounds and looks however are top class. I doubt my system would take ti well if I put a PMDG 737 on top of what it already had to move in work and heat digestion.
However, like in VR I have formed a taste for discovering the world in Google Earth and Streetview in VR, I feel tempted to repeat anm experinece I had in FSX so many years ago. bck then, I made a world travel in short hopping planes, once aroudn the whole globe, in around 40 individual flights. I think I will do that again. And stray much further off my original plans. This FS world looks gorgous, no doubt. Maybe I sholuld say farewell to my demand for complex airliner cockpits and IFR, and instead take it as what it is: an expert for VFR fun air hopping.
On the installation, I downloaded a 500MB installer from Steam, which then downloaded 95 GB (!) froim Microsoft. That went smooth, the download took 2 hours, 40 minutes. After that, installation, which took another 25 minutes, and then defragmentation (I have only system and windows on an SSD, ym work horse still is a HD), another hour, almost. When you then launch the game for the first time and have to file a Microsoft account, there comes a time when you get a screen with a blue bar at the bottom that appears to be a progress bar, many people get that, so did I. Just that it never progresses for many, and so not for me. In that case, leave the process via Task manager, and launch the sim new (no worries, the download already has been done at that time). On that new start, the sim then should start normally.
The game is not without issues, apparently, some are bugs, others are questionable desing decisons. (edited, deleted).
Teethign issues aside, this could be the beginning of a years-long new journey into flight simming. And I think I will enjoy it the better the lighter and less hardcore-demanding I take it. So far its not FSX plus PMDG plus Aerosoft Airport Sceneries. Maybe it will never get there, could be. But for what it is, it is stunning, and that already is an awesome looking lot.
And to admit that: I am not really hungry for doing all that modules-installing dance again. After all, I am ten years older than back then.