MS Flight Simulator (2020) Releases Aug. 18

I will be buying this on launch day. I love VFR flying in X-Plane 11 with Orthophoto scenery, but I've been limited to Nova Scotia due to the file sizes and the autogen kinda sucks. I can't wait.

Interesting. I still have the original hidden away somewhere in the cupboard in the study. I wonder what the minimum CPU / GPU / RAM specs are? and how it will be priced?

Three Editions of Microsoft Flight Simulator

The Microsoft Flight Simulator Standard Edition ($59.99 USD) includes 20 highly detailed planes with unique flight models and 30 hand-crafted airports. The Standard Edition will be available on day one with Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta).

The Deluxe Edition ($89.99 USD) includes everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator’s standard edition plus 5 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 5 additional handcrafted international airports.  

The Premium Deluxe Edition ($119.99 USD) includes everything from Microsoft Flight Simulator Standard Edition plus 10 additional highly accurate planes with unique flight models and 10 additional handcrafted international airports.

The Standard Edition is also available for XBox Game Pass for PC.

FAQ with system requirements.

Looks great, can't wait.

Demo Flight into Sudbury Ontario.

Part 1


Part 2

I was invited to the closed beta. This is the real deal. It's a simulator at heart, but very approachable. The flight model feels just as good as anything out there.

It was playable, not completely smooth, but playable, on ultra over downtown Toronto with scattered clouds. I don't know how they did it. There were literally thousands and thousands of buildings, probably a million trees and clouds you could fly around and view from all sides. My specs are an i5 6600k, 1080ti, 16GB RAM and the game was running from a standard HDD. My SSD is full because of DCS.

The lighting is just amazing. I flew from Charlottetown to Quebec City with the evening sun right in front of me most of the way. The glare from the dash and the way the light and shadow interacted on the seat backs as the plane was tossed around in some rough air was jaw dropping. The shadows on the ground would get longer and the valleys would fill with darkness on one side while the other side would appear to shine in contrast.

One issue I had was it would not run with my 7 port USB hub. I struggled for about an hour trying to figure out which controller was causing it before I realized it was the hub. My 3 port hub works fine.

I feel bad for X-Plane, Prepar3d and Aerofly, because even with thousands of dollars worth of add on content, they can't hold a candle to Flight Sim.

It would be fun to try and start a virtual airline service and try to 'earn' enough to buy better aircraft, etc. Start with some cheaper aircraft running short hops or bush piloting and try to move up to larger things.

Wolverine wrote:It would be fun to try and start a virtual airline service and try to 'earn' enough to buy better aircraft, etc. Start with some cheaper aircraft running short hops or bush piloting and try to move up to larger things.

Sounds fun. We can challenge ourselves by flying laden cubs in increasingly weather worse weather. There are bush challenges in the sim to get started.

Sounds fun!

I'm thinking about maybe seeing if I can program an artificial passenger program. We would have to set our own $/km rates but the program would output number of passengers (load) and start/finish locations.

Or something else. Still bouncing it around in my head. MFS certainly looks stunning. Just need to get a few warbirds in there!

So I'm seeing huge performance hits since the game went live. I'll try turning off live players to see if that helps, but it looks like the servers providing the scenery data are getting slammed. Every time I load a scenario or fly into a new location, the game stutters for several seconds at a time.

One cool thing about online though is that you can see other players on the map and get their flight info. I found 3 planes heading to CYQY so I loaded in at the airport and watched all 3 land.

StiC wrote:One cool thing about online though is that you can see other players on the map and get their flight info. I found 3 planes heading to CYQY so I loaded in at the  airport and watched all 3 land.

I think some of the aircraft you see are real world ones too. The game uses realtime flight data from the real world and puts those aircraft into the sim.

So that aircraft you're landing behind in the game is actually landing at the same time in the real world.

Pretty cool!

OK, the Icon A5 is becoming my go to plane for casual VFR.

How is the Baron working for you Wolverine?

StiC wrote:OK, the Icon A5 is becoming my go to plane for casual VFR.

How is the Baron working for you Wolverine?

Working up to it. Still flying the Cessna 152