Random thoughts on Microsoft Flight Simulator
Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 3:20 pmThere's a lot to take in, it'll be a while before everything becomes clear, but that's part of the fun. First of all, the install -- some people are finding it tricky. There's another thread here with a link to possible solutions, so I won't go over that. All I'll say is that on install, and every time you run it, there are various stumbling blocks, such as logging into Xbox Live, then checking updates, and logging into the various other servers. These don't give much indication of what is going on, and they don't indicate when things have gone wrong, you'll just sit there waiting. So if it seems like it's taking too long, then I'm inclined to reach for ctrl-shift-Esc, and End things. Most of the time it'll do better when you try again.
No doubt most of us just dive in, which is the correct way of doing things! Once you've had a look, you'll start to wonder why things don't work like the old sims, so you really should spend some time setting things up. If you are lucky, your controller will be supported, and will do the hard work for you. If not, then be prepared to fiddle a bit. And as always, you can tweak your settings as often as you like, until you get sick of it or get things set up the way you like.
One annoying thing -- I use a joystick, which set itself up nicely, although I needed to tweak it to get the drone working. This time around it doesn't want me to use it to control the drone, I have no idea why. At the moment I'm controlling the drone with the keyboard, which isn't that intuitive... I am thinking of grabbing an Xbox controller, which is meant to be the best drone controller. There goes another $100.
I haven't really been able to say during the alpha that a lot of us with middle-of-the-road systems will be happy with the performance. With my seven year old i5 | GTX980 | 16GB RAM I'm able to use High settings, at 1440, although this is simply flying around NZ countryside, I would be better off setting to Mid in built-up areas. Here's a snapshot of performance during a flight along the Coast to land at Greymouth. This is while using the drone, as the cockpit does reduce FPS by 2 or 3. And of course things may be different with photogrammetry, when flying in Europe/US etc where they have those new-fangled things.
This seems very nicely balanced, the alpha used a lot less CPU and a lot more GPU. The FPS may seem low, but I'm very happy with it, as I suspect I'll get better when my new PC arrives... if it arrives....
Bearing in mind that P3Dv5 just fills up the GPU and stops.
Getting back to the servers, this afternoon I wasn't seeing any/much real traffic, so I think this may come and go depending on the server load etc. I have seen a couple of simmers, but would expect to see a lot more when everyone gets into it.
Multiplayer is a lot simpler with MFS, you really just need to turn up. Someone should set up a flight, just to kick things off. I would imagine something casual, just fly from A to B, via some of the sights.
No doubt most of us just dive in, which is the correct way of doing things! Once you've had a look, you'll start to wonder why things don't work like the old sims, so you really should spend some time setting things up. If you are lucky, your controller will be supported, and will do the hard work for you. If not, then be prepared to fiddle a bit. And as always, you can tweak your settings as often as you like, until you get sick of it or get things set up the way you like.
One annoying thing -- I use a joystick, which set itself up nicely, although I needed to tweak it to get the drone working. This time around it doesn't want me to use it to control the drone, I have no idea why. At the moment I'm controlling the drone with the keyboard, which isn't that intuitive... I am thinking of grabbing an Xbox controller, which is meant to be the best drone controller. There goes another $100.
I haven't really been able to say during the alpha that a lot of us with middle-of-the-road systems will be happy with the performance. With my seven year old i5 | GTX980 | 16GB RAM I'm able to use High settings, at 1440, although this is simply flying around NZ countryside, I would be better off setting to Mid in built-up areas. Here's a snapshot of performance during a flight along the Coast to land at Greymouth. This is while using the drone, as the cockpit does reduce FPS by 2 or 3. And of course things may be different with photogrammetry, when flying in Europe/US etc where they have those new-fangled things.
This seems very nicely balanced, the alpha used a lot less CPU and a lot more GPU. The FPS may seem low, but I'm very happy with it, as I suspect I'll get better when my new PC arrives... if it arrives....
Bearing in mind that P3Dv5 just fills up the GPU and stops.
Getting back to the servers, this afternoon I wasn't seeing any/much real traffic, so I think this may come and go depending on the server load etc. I have seen a couple of simmers, but would expect to see a lot more when everyone gets into it.
Multiplayer is a lot simpler with MFS, you really just need to turn up. Someone should set up a flight, just to kick things off. I would imagine something casual, just fly from A to B, via some of the sights.
