I disagree with a lot of the talk in the flight simulation community that always runs along the lines of "MSFS is a game with nice visuals, use X-Plane if you want a real simulator". I've used X-Plane for many years prior to FS2020 being released, both for legal currency as well as learning the inside out of complex types I haven't flown.
I'm a US certified commercial pilot and have been using simulators since the early 90s.
Regarding #1, the only approaches I've noticed that aren't in the simulator are some RNAV approaches to smaller airports. Are you seeing otherwise? If you need those now, Navigraph seems like a solution.
MSFS is a technological tour de force that has only been out now for 1/2 a year. X-Plane has been around for decades, which is why things like the G1000 are more reliable at the moment.
Aircraft like the newly released Aerosoft CRJ show the potential in the sim, and this is with the developer only having their hands on the SDK for a short period of time.
For developers reading this, a peek at the SDK is interesting. They are using modern techniques throughout the simulator, such as using WASM along with HTML/CSS/JS for gauges, among many other interesting choices.
For anyone like me who immediately scoffed and said "there's no way you can use X-Plane for actual FAA currency requirements," it turns out you can if you have appropriately certified hardware controls to go with it: https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...
Be careful with this. I used to give aircraft simulator instruction and had to learn that AC backwards and forwards. Bottom line is it's not enough just to get a certified yoke and throttle quadrant. The entire package, hardware and software together, has to be "authorized," not just "certified." The instrument for this is a Letter of Authorization (LOA) that spells out exactly which kinds of currency/experience can be logged on that specific Aviation Training Device, and the approved aircraft configurations (e.g. SR20, PA-28R, BE-76). No LOA, no hours. If you can get a copy of the manufacturer's LOA, and the experience you want is in that letter, go for it! Otherwise, you've just got a very expensive video game.
Well, at this time XPlane is better for IFR training and everything the original poster mentioned is true.
But MS Flightsim is still a young product, so let's wait and see. But if I had to bet, I'd always bet on Austin Meyers and his enthusiasm for aviation.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my Dad used the 80s MS Flight Simulator for IFR training. The graphics, on our amazing CGA monitor, were Battleship Gray ground (with mixes of solid green, I think) with white lines representing "scenery". I'm guessing that (for the 80s) the physics were a high priority, but graphics -- even for the 80s -- were not.
Microsoft could do the scenery more easily than others due to Bing, and frankly, if it weren't for the scenery, I wouldn't have shelled out the cash. The flight physics, while positively amazing[0], wouldn't have even been able to be described to me in a manner that would have gotten me excited enough to purchase it, but on that -- alone -- it'd be worth it[1].
I can't speak as to how well it simulates IFR/related things -- not a pilot -- though I mentioned in a previous post that my Dad basically got his IFR rating by practicing on ancient MS Flight Simulator.
I am curious, though -- what is it that MS Flight Simulator's latest version gets wrong about IFR that X-Plane gets right?
[0] Admittedly, I've probably used it for a total of 3-4 hours since its release. What I saw was impressive in that I wasn't intending to notice the physics, but it was impossible not to. There were moments where I had (extremely minor) anxiety while angled just right, looking out the "window" trying to get the plane to do something nuts.
[1] Bear in mind, my impressions come from not having played a modern flight simulator (outside of ones that are not intended to be accurate) in over a decade. Perhaps some of the things that I'm so impressed with have been available in other simulators and I'm just seeing them for the first time, here. I'm encouraged that so many people love X-Plane; I hadn't looked at it, yet (and not exactly sure as to why), but I'll be checking it out, now.
> MSFS is a game with nice visuals, use X-Plane if you want a real simulator
I completely agree -- Microsoft Flight Simulator has always been more than a game. I haven't used X-Plane, myself, and wouldn't have the expertise to properly judge the differences, myself.
However, as a kid in the early 90s, we had upgraded from an 8088 to a 80486, and getting time on the shared, single, computer, was difficult while Dad was training for his pilot's license and later IFR rating using the 80s version of Flight Simulator.
The funny thing is that until recently, it never occurred to me that the intention of Flight Simulator[0] was to be "a game". Now, I'm sure 1985 (or so) Flight Simulator on an 8088 left a lot to be desired as simulators go, but even back then it was "far more than a game".
I remember playing with it after my dad purchased it. The pretty picture on the front/box art gave everything the appearance of being a game. But it was missing one, critical, element. Games, I thought, were supposed to be fun. But outside of a small handful of major airports, which had a few lines to represent landscape, the game was basically "make the small airport disappear into large amounts of gray landscape", dial in the frequency, aim the plane, and then the best part -- when you're done, try make it a car[1].
As a child, I flew with my Dad in his Piper Cherokee probably somewhere in high doubles/low triple digits (over about 5 years). As a kid, I remember my Dad saying something along the lines of: Take-off, Landing and Problems are the only time the pilot is doing anything. Most of the time you aim the plane and wait. My Dad used to keep a 500 ct box of Atomic Fireball candies to keep him awake on long, multi-leg flights.
I have only, briefly, played with the latest Flight Simulator, but I felt like they nailed a lot of the physics engine. I used to love taking my friends with us on trips in the small plane. Where we lived, by about my teen years, all of my close friends had been on at least one commercial (jet) flight, and they all acted macho (the boys, anyway) having flown before (none would admit to a fear of heights at this point). The most intelligent of my friends would start to see their anxiety rise shortly after the hangar was opened. My Dad would hand me this pole to attach to the front landing gear -- so that I could pull the thing out of the garage. I was all of 145 pounds soaking wet, so watching me pull a larger-than-a-car-sized object that seats 7 with one arm and no physical exertion is the first sign that it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Shortly after, when my Dad asks for everyone's weight, the new passenger is confronted with the fact that "the plane is so light that everyone's safety partly depends on where I sit in this thing". If they aren't scared, yet, the next chance is about ten minutes after take-off, when my Dad would usually make a comment over the headphones about how smooth the air is -- I'm not sure if he was always being sarcastic, but "a smooth flight" was usually about as bad as the worst turbulence I've experienced on a commercial jet. So depending on how long we had planned on flying that day, my buddy now realizes this is as safe as they're going to feel.
The best description I've heard of it is that it feels like you're sitting in a kite. It's a kite that can be controlled, safely[2], but you feel every gust of wind and you can't help get the feeling like mother nature is getting annoyed with you and might just decide to slap you out of the air, much like we would do to an annoying fly... and that it would take very little effort on her part.
[0] In reference to the original MS Flight simulator from the 80s/90s -- there are many flight simulation games out there, but the point of these games is usually "to use a plane for war/combat/other traditional game purpose". The physics engines of these kinds of games are far simpler and sometimes feel like the plane is flying through loose snow rather than air -- i.e. like a ski/snowboard simulation game that includes "up/down" and reacts more slowly to turns than "being firmly attached to the ground" but not so slowly that you feel completely at the mercy of the wind.
[1] Also known as "landing" -- on that version, if memory serves, a good landing was characterized by a high-pitched "chirp" (implying the wheels hit the ground) and you could roll around on the ground. If you didn't stick the landing, the plane just stopped dead wherever it touched the ground (I think a "game over/start again" screen popped up but I'm not sure).
[2] I've written a few stories about the kinds of fun my Dad has experienced flying -- he was a "private pilot" in that he was not licensed to charge people to take them places, but he flew multiple times per week as a sales manager/owner of his company. He hated flying if he wasn't the pilot (commercial or otherwise) because he'd been through enough trouble in the air (and handled the problems successfully) that he had greater confidence in his abilities to handle problems than "a person he didn't know who was in charge of his life". I had always thought we were trying to save money, but it was far more expensive to fly the small plane (alone) than commercial.
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That is not a fair comparison. If MSFS has less features but better graphics it is either moving backwards as a sim or becoming more arcadeish. A sim with less sim is less not more.
The new Flight Simulator is an upgraded version of the engine that dates back to at least 1990s, if not earlier, and traces of the fact are obvious. Legacy aerodynamics simulation from Flight Simulator X (2006) is included and fully functional. Air traffic control system introduced in Flight Simulator 2002 is also there with minor changes throughout the years. Even some artwork is 20+ years old, such as "737-400_scenery_t1.bmp" texture map[1] for a fictional 737-400 that came with Flight Simulator 2000[2]. I guess they forgot to remove it, or left it for backwards compatibility reasons.
"not much" is a bit subjective. In any case, I'd wager that 99% of the ATC code was taken from them. It has the same incorrect terminology and nonsense than in any other version of Microsoft Flight Simulator.
From scratch? No, consequently there is a pretty much automated aircraft converter [1] and the directory structure is incredibly similar and early alphas had the fsx flight physics, and started with fsx airports before the ml scenery was finished.
It's certainly a more ambitious engine upgrade of the engine than p3d or fsw, even excluding the cloud scenery stuff, but "write a flight sim from scratch" is a task on par with "write a Web browser from scratch".
Yes, most of this forum could write a IE3 or Netscape 2 or Lynx clone in a long but manageable amount of time, but if you want to catch up to Chrome/Firefox/Safari, good luck.
I'm a US certified commercial pilot and have been using simulators since the early 90s.
Regarding #1, the only approaches I've noticed that aren't in the simulator are some RNAV approaches to smaller airports. Are you seeing otherwise? If you need those now, Navigraph seems like a solution.
MSFS is a technological tour de force that has only been out now for 1/2 a year. X-Plane has been around for decades, which is why things like the G1000 are more reliable at the moment.
Aircraft like the newly released Aerosoft CRJ show the potential in the sim, and this is with the developer only having their hands on the SDK for a short period of time.
For developers reading this, a peek at the SDK is interesting. They are using modern techniques throughout the simulator, such as using WASM along with HTML/CSS/JS for gauges, among many other interesting choices.
https://docs.flightsimulator.com/html/index.htm