Microsoft Flight Simulator Is Alive!

[Von Due]

Glass cockpits never caught my interest the same way steam gauges do. They were good enough for the pioneers so who am I to complain! As for aircrafts, I still hope to see helicopters but for those I would really like to get 60+ FPS. 40 is great for airplanes but for helis it's like having the cyclic stirring a pot of mud. Not really enjoyable. Anyway next vacation payout should land me a 2080ti or better! Oh and someone better make an Alouette II pack like the one for fsx.

Edit: Setup will include

ASUS GeForce RTX 2060 DUAL EVO OC
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
HyperX Fury DDR4 3200MHz 32GB
ASUS ROG Strix B550-F GAMING motherboard

[Mr Quatro]

Looks great Sky ... thanks for all of your reporting saves us other problems

From what little I see so far (my rig is not up to date) you have to have an internet connection at all times even to download the game means no CD/DVD in your library.

I don't want to spend the money if I can't connect with enough speed

[Skybird]

Well, you are flying over Bing Maps, literally, and as long as you cannot save 2 Petabytes of data on your HD (or accept a simplified display of the landscape), you need online all times, yes. And even for that the game will save the sim data and plane data on your HD, which is over 100 GB.

But to say this for once and to leave no doubt on it: this is probbaly th ebets looking game I have ever played. Its gorgeous. My Game of the year 2020 contender, no doubt.

There are issues, probolems, bugs, yes. But it will be ironed out, and then addons will start to do the simulation magic.


I did not expectg to become so happy with VFR so quickly, since I was an exclsuive IFR flyer back in the days.



==============



I also have started my world tour, already am after day 3.

Day 1: EDDG-EHAM Münster-Osnabrück to Amsterdam Shiphol, VFR 1500 ft, Daher TBM 930, 1410H-1446H, fair, scattered


DAY 2: EHAM-LFAC Amsterdam Shiphol to Calais, VFR 2500 ft, DA40 TDI, 1443H-1636H, scattered, misty


DAY 3: LFAC-EGLC Calais to London City Airport, VFR 1500ft, Cub Crafter XCub, 1432H-1519H, fair, clear

So I am now in London and need to get up to the north to Kirkwall (for the slightly longer jump to Iceland, the small airfield on the Faroer Islands is not modelled in FS20). How to get from London to Kirkwall is not yet decided, any points of interests between here and there that I should not miss? I will fly some city sightseeing in London of course, but have done a 4 hours long VR Google Streetview visit in London just three weeks ago.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Von Due

Glass cockpits never caught my interest the same way steam gauges do. They were good enough for the pioneers so who am I to complain! As for aircrafts, I still hope to see helicopters but for those I would really like to get 60+ FPS. 40 is great for airplanes but for helis it's like having the cyclic stirring a pot of mud. Not really enjoyable. Anyway next vacation payout should land me a 2080ti or better! Oh and someone better make an Alouette II pack like the one for fsx.

Edit: Setup will include

ASUS GeForce RTX 2060 DUAL EVO OC
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
HyperX Fury DDR4 3200MHz 32GB
ASUS ROG Strix B550-F GAMING motherboard

60 FPS? Thats a good one, if you mean 4K. Many people insist that not 4K means "unplayable", that is nonsense, of course, but some people are like this. I run full HD, and I indeed get 60 fps both at medium and high settings, with the GA planes I so far have flown.


In 4K and at ultra you will not get 60 fps with any of today's hardware. Probably not even at high settings. It also depends on the CPU, not just the GPU, and I red today that the sim does not support, efficiently at least, more than 6 cores. Whether that includes or excludes HT, they did not say. But the memory quality also is important, somebody wrote. You want fast RAM.



If they ever give it DX12, that will reshuffle cards, most likely.



=============


Thank God finally a plane with a normal cockpit that normal people can understand.
www keyboard

[Skybird]

Great hardware benchmarking by Tom's Hardware.


https://www.tomshardware.com/feature...m-requirements

What about 4K Ultra? I can't recall any games that have managed to crush an RTX 2080 Ti quite like this. It gets only 33 fps, and that's not even the worst-case scenario for the type of performance you'll see in Flight Simulator.

Sounds ugly, but it is not, actually if you do not expect crazy things, much of the hardware does reasonably well. Also, in a civilian flightsim, 33 fps are absoluitely playable. I recall the years when I arranged myself with frames in the realm of 17-20. Most of my FS flying has been done with that. The many tools used in older FS versions poiucked away and frames mindlessly, laughing. Weather, traffic, airport services...



I am surprised how well my GTX1080Ti does compared to the newer 2000er-cards.



At full HD, single monitor, I get 60 fps at medium and high settings, reliably.

[Von Due]

4k is not something I worry about. In honesty I'm not totally up to date on what it even means! I mean, I still have my crt monitors laying around, my sb16 and tnt cards too! As long as I can get a fast framerate for heli flight, I'm happy.

[Skybird]

4k means doubling of resolution fullHD, both horizontally and vertically. 4 times as many pixels.

[Skybird]

4k means doubling of resolution fullHD, both horizontally and vertically. 4 times as many pixels. Thats a lot of more stress for the GPU.

[Von Due]

Originally Posted by Skybird

4k means doubling of resolution fullHD, both horizontally and vertically. 4 times as many pixels. Thats a lot of more stress for the GPU.

Thanks, Skybird, for the explanation! Yeah 4k sound alright but not the additional costs for the hardware. My c64 was good enough for 15 years and fsx runs well enough.

[Skybird]

I do not care for 4K either. It makes sense if you sit very very close to your monitor and your nosetip touches the screen surface, so to speak, of if you use a TV of a really big size. Then one might see those tiny single pixes. But I cannot see them, not on my 24" computer monitor and not on my TV screen with 80cm diagonally form which I sit 2 meters away. It makes no sense for me to buy 4K, it is simply a wasdte of money asnd hardware ressoruces for my living conditions.

If I had a screen with 1.5 meters, it would be somethign different. But i do not want such a monster in my flat. Full HD, 1920x1080 that is, is fully sufficient for me. My eyes cannot benefit from higher resolutions at these screen sizes and seating distances. And I bet the eyes of many others, too. You see, there are people who claim less than 120 fps is "unplayable".

Well, they must be very, very young then.

[Skybird]

10 Minutes of a normal day on an open server.





I am not sure Microsoft does the title a favour by allowing this stuff happening, instead of letting the planes physically correctly break apart, it makes FS20 look like an arcade title. The ghostign effect on the victim plane when an offender runs/flies into it can be kept, but the offender should get killed, according to the laws of physics, while his victim may play on.

[Von Due]

Looks like 60 fps is possible now with the new geforce 3080/3090 cards. Not too keen on the 3090 though as the cheapest I could find cost the same as the entire new pc I bought... The 3080 is a LOT cheaper though so that might be a buy. Now for those helicopters...

[Skybird]

LittleNavMap, an alternative to SkyVector Flightplanner.


https://albar965.github.io/littlenavmap.html

[Skybird]

Must correct my first condemning impression, apparently the update went wrong somehow, despite downloading for 4 or 5 hours on a fast cable connection. I had switched off the system meanwhile, ate, and then went back to it, cold start, it downloaded again something for FS2020, I think it was no quick hotfix, but I am not certain. Since then, things go better here, and I meanwhile found the way to get rid of that irritating black square frame as well (toggle off FOV stencil in Occulus tool).

Working frames over Berlin in small airplanes, actually I am surprised how smooth it works. But the instruments are unreadable, an airliner or IFR plan i do not want to fly this way, it is of little use, cannot really be handled well. For VFR, I now think it actualyl works very good, and with newer headsets and higher resolution it may be even better. But it remains to be a toy thing for pure VFR in small planes. Take it as that and have fun. Expect more, and you will be disappointed.

I would have wished for some way of mini-windows overlay over instruments that gives a readable readout of values and data. Glass cockpit screens also are almost unusable in a Occulus Rift sicn ethey scale text anbd readouts realistically, and the resolution of the headset, Occulus Rift, does not do justice to that.

Positive is that you do not need VR hand controllers, I know how it worked in XPlane and I hated it, and while it works wonders in VTOL, the whole game is tailored to be more forgiving. VTOL works well with Vr sticks, but in FS20, having hardware HOTAS I prefer.


Since FS20 focusses on VFR over IFR, VR for it is a real enrichment. Its stunning, when it works. The agme allows different graphcis setups for 2D and VR.

[Skybird]

My rig just took a grilling, I am surprised how well it holds the show together, though almost smoking: fluent frames, no stuttery at all, I cannot believe it. VR and down the Colorado water raceway down that small crack in this tiny rock they call the Grand Canyon, from east to west and into the morning sun, the colours were dancing, the water was blinding at times, the landscape was unbelievable, zigzagging down the canyon and the walls left and right, sometimes sunny and wide valley, sometimes in dark shadow and everything narrow and tight , and all sort of colours outside and reflection on the windshield, and I swear I sat in that cockpit truly and in full reality - breathtaking, absolutely breathtaking once those VR starting problems got sorted out.

Unbelievable! In fact I am blown away by how well the landscape is rendered and how well VR works for VFR. Want instrument simulation and IFR and map navigation? Better stick to 2D and TrackIR, its a full simulation for that, too, but for tourist flying and VFR - VR is a must.


This title in VR is an acchievement hard to overestimate. Its so unbelievably real.