Yeah I thought about that too, was waiting for the consoles to come out to see how they do. I paid for playstation pro for the longest time and got free games every month for years. But the xbox game pass is even sweeter deal with 100+ games for a $5-10 fee a month thats not bad at all especially if they put AAA games in there
Here is a video that shows off all of the planes and airports in all the different versions of the game
MSFS 2020 Installation steps:
1. Install launcher (easy peasy)
2. Wait for launcher to download 100 GB
(20+ hours for me, and had a few glitches. Could be coincidental but running the app "as admin" and putting it in the AV's trusted list seems to help)
3. Poke at all the settings for a few hours to find the soft spot for your machine
(my [Ryzen 5 3600, 16 GB, GTX 1660 S] can run the beast smoothly in medium-high settings at 30% CPU + 50% GPU loads with the frame rate locked at 30 fps through the NVidia driver settings)
4. Go to a place you know well with live weather (may induce some drooling)
5. Make a fool of yourself by sending lots of "you live here!" screenshots to friends and family
OK now you're ready to fly 🙂
Haha, I hope to pick this up during the winter steam sale... hoping that the price of the premium edition drops a little by then. @d-c-elington did you just buy the base version what is your thoughts on the content provided in that edition? And 100GB download 😉 does that also include the downloading of maps they talk about in the video or is that done while you play?
Think maybe I will buy a new gfx card soon if I can 😉
So where is your house in the game? 🤣
downloading of maps
I believe those maps use Bing Maps, which sometimes contain amusing errors!
Oolite Naval Attaché
Bing Maps...pah! I still do plenty of flying in FS2004 and FSX! No need for online connections and the scenery is fine. 😎
did you just buy the base version what is your thoughts on the content provided in that edition?
Must admit I got into full "frak this" mode and got the "deluxe premium" version... won't make a big difference with a near-zero hourly cost in the long run anyway! 🤣
But the base version is certainly the rational choice and offers already many planes with wildly different characteristics. Also compared to the previous FS iterations the models are much better. For instance the "default" TBM-930 easily compares to some existing 30+$ 3rd-party add-ons IMO.
And to sum-up my general feeling: that reminds me of when I changed my old 24" 720p TV for a 48" Full-HD one...
You'll see much nicer screenshots but maybe the most impressive are the not-so-special ones! So that's a medium-size French town (Caen - Normandy, where I live) a few minutes ago from about 800 ft. The buildings are synthesized but I can recognize all of them for what they are, same for the roads. The neighborhood at the front is in the shadow of a cloud 🙂
And so everything is "default" (scenery, plane and weather), running smoothly in 1920x1080 on a reasonable 1660 S locked at 30 fps. These are medium-high settings with about 55% reported load on the GPU (I like my machine to run cool and with some reserve power).
Wow, even at medium settings and 1920x1080 that shot looks really impressive @d-c-elington. I will definitely be getting this in the next few months, I usually wait a bit while the patches role out. But impressed with visuals from the hardware you listed that your setup has. And 30fps is plenty for a simulation like this because it is not a twitch based game.
@sscadmin I'd call these "high-where-it-counts" settings 🙂
That is the view distance, trees, buildings, reflections... are in 'high' and I scaled down to 'medium' on the shadows and some of the post-processing (that did not make such a difference TBH).
But you're definitely right to wait a few months for more patches, that will make the experience even better!
MS Wallpaper Generator 2020 over Alaska 🙂
Damn, that is one pretty screenshot.... the lighting and clouds in this game look amazing. I didn't pick this up yet because I spent too much money on the kids and family but I will I hope this year during the summer sale. How has the game been playing for you @d-c-elington, any game or immersion breaking aspects so far?
I will I hope this year during the summer sale
Sounds like a perfect timing! It was clearly released too soon as they are still adding major features at the moment, including to the SDK for the legion of eager 3rd party devs. But then again that's already a marvel... good times ahead for the flight-simming community!
So with the SDk release modders will be able to add features or alterations to systems (ie: weather, clouds, lighting, new planes, adding birds and other aircraft to the skys) that would just make the game so much more lived in.
Damn, that is one pretty screenshot....
Ain't it just! Can I has a P-51D Mustang please?
Oolite Naval Attaché
Ain't it just! Can I has a P-51D Mustang please?
A2A is coming to FS2020! 😃
(ie: weather, clouds, lighting, new planes, adding birds and other aircraft to the skys)
IMHO the main 3rd party contributions will be to local scenery and aircraft models while the base sim will manage the rest. For instance its current weather system and ATC are far more advanced than anything I've seen with any other sim (and I spent quite too many $ on weather add-ons when I was full steam on FSX! 😱).
A2A is coming to FS2020!
Now if only DX12 would come to Win7...
Oolite Naval Attaché
Delightful
Delightful name for a band... almost as good as Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
Oolite Naval Attaché
Looks like there is a new update for UK & Ireland, looking really good. I am not sure if my Vega64 can run this with everything turned on and I hear modders are doing some good things like adding helicopters.
Meanwhile in the Pyrénées... (mountain range at the border between Spain and France)
The model is the Piper Arrow IV from JustFlight and the scenery vanilla MSFS as usual. Incidentally that's the first iteration of the sim with which I'm prefectly happy with GA planes, just trying to fly properly by the rules and mostly by hand. I also used to snub the "activities" and "missions" but not this time: that LESU-LFNQ hop was taken from one of the sim's "Bush Trips", multi-legged flights in scenic places around the planet. This one goes from Bordeaux to Megève in Switzerland (16 stops over about 660 nm).