Flight Simulator impressions, does it get better?

[porina]

Got FS earlier today via Xbox Game Pass, which as the first time I signed up to it, was discounted 75% too.

 

This forced me to tidy up my SSDs to make up the required 150GB free before it would install. After uninstall some Steam games I don't play (and might never play) I was good, but I noticed also there were many orphaned installs in the steam folder. This took up many tens of GB, so might be something to check up on if you have a particularly old game library.

 

Anyway, load times were a bit slow, I thought I was on a console! At this point, my gaming PC specs are:

1080Ti

8086k (turbo disabled from previous testing, never turned it back on)

64GB 3200 ram (4x16GB)

OS: Optane 280GB

FS: Crucial BX200 1TB

Monitor is Acer Predator 1440p 144Hz G-sync

 

After the main download, I started the game. The initial config screen bugged a bit, but pressing some buttons got it to display after all. It offered my system the Ultra preset so I went with it. Turned on all the assists. Poking through the settings menus, I turned up the rolling cache and manual cache. I had no context for what size to set them, and might have gone overboard with 32GB and 64GB respectively. Adding a part of Swindon around my house to the manual cache took less than 1GB.

 

I wanted just to do a quick flight and see if I can see my house. The search function seemed broken, or I don't know how to use it. I couldn't get any results for airports by name or code. In the end I had to pick them manually on the map. I chose Lyneham to Fairford as I knew my house is in between. In the plane, it told me to use ctrl-numpad-decimal to turn off the parking brake. I'm using TKL... so I grabbed a full size keyboard off another system and plugged it in, at which point the game crashed.

 

I thought at this point I'd dust off my Warthog HOTAS and get serious. Starting the game again, I went into the control settings. It looked like the main stick was ok, as you can press buttons and it'll show activity when detected. The buttons on the throttle side weren't all working though, but I just ignored it and moved on. Something to sort out later.

 

Soon I was back in the cockpit. However I was in a different plane than last time. Never mind, I'll work around it. Parking brake released, throttle up, and I'm moving. I couldn't find the airspeed, not that I knew what takeoff speed was for the craft, so I just bought the nose up when the game prompted and I was away! A large part of the problems from this point is due to me not knowing the aircraft, or controls. Game told me to bring the gerar up. I pressed the mapped button, nothing seemed to happen. Then I remembered it might be one of the throttle side ones that wasn't working in the earlier check. Never mind. Game kept telling me throughout the flight to climb to some altitude, but not what that altitude was. Didn't see anything in the ATC log either. It also kept warning me about my speed should be reduced below 95kts. I now wonder if that's because I didn't retract the gear. I'm not sure I could get the plane that slow regardless.

 

I couldn't monitor fps, because nvidia's drivers was being silly and overlaid the recording icons over the fps count. The fps was visible on the recording, so after the fact I saw most of the time it was running around low-20's fps. Reminder: this is as 2560x1440 Ultra on a 1080Ti. This is about half the fps that Tom's Hardware reported for that configuration (I only remember as the last article I saw). I'm wondering if Vsync is working against me here, not sure if the game is running full screen or borderless Windowed. When the game was loading assets, it dropped to single digit fps.

 

Flight controls were doing weird things. I wonder if it is because I had all assists on, and I wasn't sticking to the flight plan (not that I knew what it was) in the search for my house. Landing went about as well as can be expected for someone who doesn't know the controls. My first contact with the ground wasn't too bad, but I had excess speed and was airborne again not long after. Being more aggressive with pushing the nose down I made it stay down after another bounce or two. Damage is turned off. I also used the brake button that appeared on screen and it didn't take long to stop. Taxiing to parking spot was really weird. Brake off, at low throttle nothing was happening so I had to push a bit more, but that made me speed even after reducing back to minimum. Had to frequently brake to keep speed down. Also, the steering went everywhere. Again, I wonder if this is related to having assists on, and I might not have passed all expected waypoints. Once I got to the parking spot (I wouldn't want to be the guy with the wavy things to tell you when to stop!), only then did it ask me to request taxi. Bit late? That did let me complete the flight, kinda. It gave me a key combo to shut down engine, but when I did that it complained my engine was off and told me to start it again. Whatever, I'm done.

 

And just to finish off a perfect experience, I tried to exit game. It stuck on the exit screen. After leaving it some time to see if it would sort itself out, I had to force close it from task manager.

 

Things I need to do:

Work out why the buttons on the throttle controller aren't working.

RTFM (or equivalent guide)

I might move it to another system, and use this on an ultra-wide. I was thinking about running it 4k TV but given what I've seen so far, that doesn't seem wise with my existing hardware.

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, porina said:

game crashed.

That's a Microsoft program alright. More bugs than a garbage dump.

Give it a month or two, they'll issue a 1TB patch that will fix 200 bugs, and introduce 45 new ones, 3 of which will break the game entirely, and 1 that might brick your PC.

[Morrie Sells Wigs]

On 8/24/2020 at 4:14 AM, DutchGuyTom said:

I haven't had as many issues.

 

The game crashes occasionally and more frequently it will freeze and need a minute. Luckily, whenever it froze for me it didn't have the simulation continue in the background so that unbeknownst to me I am crashing into the ground. 

 

My experience has been to be a bit more patient with it and not overload it with inputs at the same time. 

 

My setup:

I use a keyboard along with an Xbox controller. Settings on High with a few tweaks to make textures look sharper. I have a 2070S with a R5-2600X. I don't mind 30 fps on this game since it is not an action game.

 

Tip: there is a new Nvidia driver which supposedly is optimized for MSFS.

Yes, I saw the FS driver update too.

[s_k]

I have been able to fly but training mode doesn't work and then it's quite the learning curve. The tiles simply don't load. Reinstalling the game didn't help, other games run great. Still going to do a full windows reinstall to see if that solves anything. Very disappointing

Edit; Turns out that was a a separate download. Makes sense I guess, but it'd be nice if it just said 'click here to download training packs' instead of presenting me with a dead menu... Or maybe add things to pick from during install. I have now just installed everything. 150gb is doable