Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

[brianmanahan]

This looks freaking amazing on a 32:9. I went and checked out my house and it was fully 3d, even the pergola I built out back a couple years back was there. Nuts.

what 32:9 do you have?

i'm trying to decide whether to get a 32:9 or a 21:9. hopefully should be able to handle either with a new 3080 or 3090 GPU

 

[shortylickens]

I have a Saitek PZ44 and frankly its got tons of problems. In game control is sticky and not terribly responsive. I checked the sensitivity settings over and over. The controls work fine in other games and in the Properties under Windows.

 

[Scarpozzi]

unfortunately most things are sold out now due to MSFS demand and COVID supply issues.

an xbox controller is a possibility. when i just want to play around and gawk at scenery i'll occasionally use that.

i got the honeycomb alpha yoke for 250$ and it is pretty nice. not the highest end, but a solid deal compared to ones that cost 2-3 times that

they also just released the honeycomb bravo throttle for 250$ as well. the demand was crazy but i managed to pre-order it, should get it in a couple months. logitech has a cheap one for 60$ that i almost got on amazon but it literally sold out while i had it in my cart, and they're probably going for around 100$ now. in the meantime i just use the keyboard

and for rudder pedals i got some thrustmaster TFRP pedals (normally < 100$ but i had to pay like 130$ due to demand). they feel a little flimsy/plasticky but haven't had any problems yet. the biggest issue is really that MSFS default sensitivity for rudder pedals seems way too high. i think i can fix that in the thrustmaster config utility but haven't done it yet.

I have a joystick now and it works...so no worries on waiting for supply. I just need to know what to look for. I was looking at the Xbox One/PC Hotas Thrustmaster for $80. It's in-stock on Amazon again, but reviews keep complaining about drift. That's one of the issues I have with my Saitek... I have to unplug/replug the USB to reset whatever is skewing it.

A long time ago, I had an analog yoke with pedals. I'm reluctant to get another one because it just seemed cumbersome. I'm pretty happy with a stick... I just want to be able to take my hand off the controls and adjust trim to achieve level flight. I know that's not quite the same as real life, but the way my Saitek is, the plane jerks to the right abruptly (more than the left) and will quickly go into a dive. Sensitivity is way high and it makes it very difficult to land or view different camera angles.

 

[Midwayman]

what 32:9 do you have?

i'm trying to decide whether to get a 32:9 or a 21:9. hopefully should be able to handle either with a new 3080 or 3090 GPU

aoc agon ag493ucx
Its a nice monitor. I primarily got it for WFH. I wanted dual montiors, but a second monitor would be a PITA with gaming and I didn't think 21:9 would do enough for productivity. I have some reservations with it for games. Most games work okay with it, but there are a enough that are clearly clipping vertical to fit it in. Even ones that fit fine often the UI elements are too far to the side. Ideally what I want is 21:9 UI with 32:9 rendering, that way stuff like health meters is more in sight. I'm running it now on a 1080 and it needs more grunt for sure. If I was primarily considering gaming I'd probably get a 21:9. They are cheaper, more options, and better supported in games.

 

[Midwayman]

I have a joystick now and it works...so no worries on waiting for supply. I just need to know what to look for. I was looking at the Xbox One/PC Hotas Thrustmaster for $80. It's in-stock on Amazon again, but reviews keep complaining about drift. That's one of the issues I have with my Saitek... I have to unplug/replug the USB to reset whatever is skewing it.

A long time ago, I had an analog yoke with pedals. I'm reluctant to get another one because it just seemed cumbersome. I'm pretty happy with a stick... I just want to be able to take my hand off the controls and adjust trim to achieve level flight. I know that's not quite the same as real life, but the way my Saitek is, the plane jerks to the right abruptly (more than the left) and will quickly go into a dive. Sensitivity is way high and it makes it very difficult to land or view different camera angles.

I have a complete CH setup. Flightstick pro, throttle quadrant, and pedals. It has trim on the stick and isn't really a 'fighter' setup. Only thing I really don' t like is they are still pot based devices. I'd try and get hall effect sticks if possible. In a lot of ways I think you have to decide if you're going all in before you start buying stuff. Its generally better if you stick in the same ecosystem for compatibility. Things like sticks with twist for rudder suck if you plan on getting pedals, but are great for a cheap setup. If you plan on going hardcore with MFD, etc that's well above my level of experience.

 

[sze5003]

Just a note that I found a bug if you are doing bush trips. After patch 2 your bush trips can not continue. From what I am reading it will not register the landing. Was on leg 6 of the Nevada bush trip and I landed at the runway, made sure it was correct, took off, landed at the opposite end of the runway, still didn't register and give me the checked complete stage. People are saying you need to start them over. Don't have time for that.

 

[brianmanahan]

Just a note that I found a bug if you are doing bush trips. After patch 2 your bush trips can not continue. From what I am reading it will not register the landing. Was on leg 6 of the Nevada bush trip and I landed at the runway, made sure it was correct, took off, landed at the opposite end of the runway, still didn't register and give me the checked complete stage. People are saying you need to start them over. Don't have time for that.

bah, that sucks

i've been busy so haven't had much time to fly lately. am partly of waiting for another patch or two, and partly waiting for my honeycomb throttle to arrive.

i was all psyched about getting a RTX 30X0 and an ultrawide monitor but uh, after today's "launch" that might have to wait until mid-2021

 

[sze5003]

bah, that sucks

i've been busy so haven't had much time to fly lately. am partly of waiting for another patch or two, and partly waiting for my honeycomb throttle to arrive.

i was all psyched about getting a RTX 30X0 and an ultrawide monitor but uh, after today's "launch" that might have to wait until mid-2021

I hear you on that. I'll try for the 3090 next week. But you know what, it's gonna be the same crap as today so at that point we have no choice but to wait until 2021 and see what happens. Hoping for a 3080 with more memory if I can't grab a 3090.

 

[sswingle]

Bush trips bug sucks, was on leg 14 in Nevada.
However I am enjoying Patagonia. Hopefully I finish it before the next patch breaks that one.

 

[PlanetJosh]

I watched a YouTube vid on the new Flight Simulator; I think it must've came up in my Recommended list. Looks to be quite awesome!

I admit I enjoyed flying over the countryside from San Diego out east over the hills and mountains leading to the desert around the Salton Sea in southern California. But I don't want to spend that much time online in a game. I've moved to single player in the last few years. And downloading areas for offline play in the game is not very practical from what I've read, that it doesn't have the detail of online play from their cloud.

 

[ultimatebob]

Wow, this game is pretty buggy. I installed a copy using the $1 a month Game Pass trial, and had the game crash on me when I tried to fly out of JFK. I tried again from LGA, and it crashed again. I tried a third time from a local Connecticut airport, and that finally worked.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I just flew from North Carolina to Orlando (MCO) after work this evening. It was pretty uneventful, except there are still some glitches. The flight time was around an hour and 20 minutes. I had to swing wide to get into the traffic pattern for runway 36L. I got a decent enough deal on the flight though because I didn't take any bags, but sadly...my seat didn't recline.



Funny because I flew that exact flight....to that exact gate back in August of 2019. It's pretty spot on. MCO even has the trams going back and forth. Biggest difference was that the typical flight plan would actually take you over the ocean down the coast, perhaps to maximize air space.



Edit: Scratch that same gate stuff.... wasn't the same gate. I forgot, I was hitting up Club MCO (lounge) by that gate and had to jump a tram for the free drinks. I was actually on the same side, gate 32. I may need to push back and move.

 

[sze5003]

Are the extra liveries included with the base game or is that a mod? I still noticed last time I tried that the first engine shuts down after I turn off the apu I'm the a320.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Are the extra liveries included with the base game or is that a mod? I still noticed last time I tried that the first engine shuts down after I turn off the apu I'm the a320.

Liveries here: https://www.msfsaddons.org/liveries

I snagged a few of the scenery packs from there too. The Washington DC representation was pretty bad until I dropped those in and they're pretty decent, but still the textures look too perfect....but way better than it was.

I've been having issues with the cockpit controls not working. Clicks don't register. I read somewhere that if you drag the VFR window around the screen, it fixes the problem. There are still many glitches like that. I've got a freshly built AMD 3600 with 32GB of 3200 ram with a GTX 1660 Super and a 1TB SSD just for FS2020. I went low on the video card for the sake of getting something around $230. Everything is plenty fast, but once the game is going it occasionally starts to stutter and gets laggy. I noticed it once when I stopped at an airport to refuel and tried to taxi back out. I was getting 5-7 fps. There are some serious issues with the 3d renderings and data requirements. Hopefully in the next year or 3 they fix whatever they can detect. I'm afraid much of the flight sim team will disband after the Xbox release, so hopefully they fix whatever's going on soon.

 

[brianmanahan]

new patch for japan scenery (plus a number of bugfixes) is out now

there's a new known problem though: if you don't pop open the VFR window right away at the start of the flight then your game might crash

if it's a problem i think i'll just turn on the option to open it automatically

 

[Scarpozzi]

new patch for japan scenery (plus a number of bugfixes) is out now

there's a new known problem though: if you don't pop open the VFR window right away at the start of the flight then your game might crash

if it's a problem i think i'll just turn on the option to open it automatically

I left the download running. I flew from MCO to FLL IFR this morning in the a320, but didn't use autopilot. My controller setup and concept of altitude is pretty bad so I keep landing the heavy jets like a space shuttle and nail it every time.

I basically kill the throttle and pitch the nose down, deploy flaps and spoilers and use throttle accordingly to keep from coming up short.....only works because I disabled airframe stress damage. 😜

 

[KentState]

The fuel consumption is still messed up with the a320 and some of the other planes. They seem to almost burn twice as much fuel as they should.

Also, been trying to see to test the FPS between a 2080 Super, 2080 Ti and 3090 and the game is painfully cpu limited. I did notice a small uptick in vram usage but it’s not really using more than 12GB on the 3090 when flying out of LAX to San Fransico.

 

[Scarpozzi]

The fuel consumption is still messed up with the a320 and some of the other planes. They seem to almost burn twice as much fuel as they should.

Also, been trying to see to test the FPS between a 2080 Super, 2080 Ti and 3090 and the game is painfully cpu limited. I did notice a small uptick in vram usage but it’s not really using more than 12GB on the 3090 when flying out of LAX to San Fransico.

What do you mean it's painfully CPU limited? Just that they capped usage for what it needs?

My understanding from reading performance stuff is that so much of the performance limitations are based on bandwidth data caps that the bottleneck is typically caused by server latency or network bottlenecks....not actual system performance issues. My system does great most of the time, but I notice if I land it loses performance. I think the issue comes from AI drawing buildings around the airport and generating more structures and traffic...that stuff starts to get taxing on the engine, along with the bandwidth limitations and it gets jerky. I tried changing graphics settings from Ultra to High to Medium and nothing helped it...I then capped data from Unlimited to 5Gbps and it still struggled some. I'm going to keep working with it and see if I can figure out what's causing it. At the end of the day, it may just need more work from the development team to generalize the setup a little better for the masses. My system is not bleeding edge, but is solid enough that it should have no trouble...particularly because I'm running a SSD drive and giving the game 32GB of swap space, basically to work with on scenery.

 

[Scarpozzi]

new patch for japan scenery (plus a number of bugfixes) is out now

there's a new known problem though: if you don't pop open the VFR window right away at the start of the flight then your game might crash

if it's a problem i think i'll just turn on the option to open it automatically

I actually started a flight from Kona to Honolulu tonight and the game crashed shortly after takeoff. I find it interesting that the "crash" is just the window disappearing with no error/feedback. That seems to be the worst kind for them to try to fix if something doesn't get logged somewhere. Hopefully they're on it with the source code. I popped it back up and opened the VFR window and completed the flight. (30 min hop) I think the "REAL" airport is shut down in HNL still. It's tough seeing Maui over there knowing I want to head to OGG in real life once flying is deemed safe again.

This time, I was flying a different budget airline though...

 

[KentState]

What do you mean it's painfully CPU limited? Just that they capped usage for what it needs?

Being a DX11 game, it only uses a limited number of cores. I get basically the same framerate no matter if I use a 2080 Super, 2080 Ti or 3090 and the quality settings barely make a dent. I'm also using the same flight paths to test and have set aside 100GB on my NVMe RAID 0 array. So pretty much everything should be cached and readily available local to stream. I think this is pretty well documented so nothing new on my end besides a little hope that a beefier GPU would help.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Being a DX11 game, it only uses a limited number of cores. I get basically the same framerate no matter if I use a 2080 Super, 2080 Ti or 3090 and the quality settings barely make a dent. I'm also using the same flight paths to test and have set aside 100GB on my NVMe RAID 0 array. So pretty much everything should be cached and readily available local to stream. I think this is pretty well documented so nothing new on my end besides a little hope that a beefier GPU would help.

Gotcha. I've not ever been impressed with Windows' use of multi-processors *(virtual or physical). I notice more than utilization percentage is capped as much as the cores themselves, but not sure how it handles the threads. I hadn't taken it as far as pointing to DX11, but have heard that's the true limitation of the 3XXX cards....they'll need DX12 to actually do anything from what I read.

One of the more powerful servers I ever worked on was a quad processor Xeon running Linux. This was maybe 2010 before all of our datacenter stuff started getting shipped up to AWS. I installed Red Hat on this box and when it spun up, it was a sight because it had 4, 12 core processors. When Linux booted it tagged each core as 2 virtual processors, so as it booted it accounted for 96 virtual procs. Oracle actually used them too.

 

[brianmanahan]

Oracle actually used them too.

it better since they charge a buttload for each one

 

[Scarpozzi]

it better since they charge a buttload for each one

I'm fairly certain our ERP was paying those royalties and we weren't required to pay anything directly to Oracle. The ERP was really struggling to turn a profit after the constant 25%+ annual cost increases(I'm guessing since that's kind of an industry standard for inflation). It only took them 20 years, but they finally got all their clients moving to AWS and more affordable options.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I really enjoy the short hop flights you can make in 30 minutes in the big jets. The controls are more sluggish and the computer assistance takes some of the jumpiness out of my cheap joystick. That being said, I just had a really enjoyable flight from KFLL to MYNN (Nassau, Bahamas) It's fun when you hit 25,000 feet on such a short flight and get to really open it up.

Here's a shot over the Bahamas where the color of the water starts to change due to the depth:


Finally, with the sun at my back, I'm on final approach to runway 14 and lining up after coming off my last waypoint.

 

[sze5003]

I really enjoy the short hop flights you can make in 30 minutes in the big jets. The controls are more sluggish and the computer assistance takes some of the jumpiness out of my cheap joystick. That being said, I just had a really enjoyable flight from KFLL to MYNN (Nassau, Bahamas) It's fun when you hit 25,000 feet on such a short flight and get to really open it up.

Here's a shot over the Bahamas where the color of the water starts to change due to the depth:
View attachment 30713

Finally, with the sun at my back, I'm on final approach to runway 14 and lining up after coming off my last waypoint.
View attachment 30712

Do you set up flight plans using simbrief or just pick destinations from the sim's world map?

I've done both at times. Sim brief is a cool website that will plan routes for you. But then you need to enter them into the a320 computer.

I often want to do these short trips but have problems figuring out all the details so sim brief comes in handy. I guess not all routes may be picked up in MS 2020 but at least I have seen that the direct destination waypoints are in there.