Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Talk about the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator - MSFS 2020

Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby captjim » Sat Mar 06, 2021 3:05 pm

Captjim here again. This is going to be interesting. I have been a simmer for many years and have lots of programs The problem is that all of these programs have been purchased through many types of stores that had the programs already packaged. So I could take the program home, insert the disks and fly. However, good old MS decided that the new FS 2020 is only available in the disk format in other countries not in the USA. If that isn't bad enough I have no idea how to obtain the program on-line and/or the procedure used to pay for it. If anyone out there can give this old guy some instructions concerning this matter it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Captjim
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby proudarmchairpilot » Sat Mar 06, 2021 10:26 pm

Hey. The easiest way to do it is to go through the Microsoft store. If you are using windows 10 (which is the only OS that FS 2020 will work on as far as I know) then it should be pre downloaded onto your computer at the task bar at the bottom of your screen. You will need to make an outlook account to use it but that is standard. Then once there you have the option of purchasing it outright or purchasing the standard through xbox game pass. There are 3 versions. The standard. The deluxe. And the premium deluxe. I chose the premium deluxe and it's what i would recommend. I don't have xbox game pass and honestly I don't understand it. So I just paid to download the entire sim outright. I believe the cost for the standard is roughly $60. $90 for the deluxe. Or $120 for the premium deluxe. Simply pick which one you want. Put in your card info and your receipt will be sent to the outlook account you are logged in with. Then it will take a few hours for it to download and install. Be sure you have a rocking system with loads of space to enjoy it fully. You will also need to sign into an "xbox" account im pretty sure. If i remember right it should allow you to once again use your outlook account for this purpose. But someone might need to double check me on this. Any add ons you purchase from the included store will be downloaded and installed as soon as the purchase goes through. And once again, the receipt will be sent to your outlook account.

Hope this helps! I agree, I would rather have the disc but I can understand why they didn't use one this time.

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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby captjim » Sat Mar 06, 2021 11:01 pm

Hi Matt, really appreciate the quick response. When I decide on the program I want I will follow your advice and see what happens. Thanks again Matt. Captjim :clap:
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby hertzie » Sun Mar 07, 2021 7:53 am

MY advice: keep your money in your pocket. It's a complete waste of money. I bought the deluxe version and wish I never did. And the "fixes" are horrible.

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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:29 pm

hertzie wrote:MY advice: keep your money in your pocket. It's a complete waste of money. I bought the deluxe version and wish I never did. And the "fixes" are horrible.

hertzie.


My advice: take your money out of your pocket and spend it on MSFS. It's a complete blast for its price. I bought the standard version and I wish I did it sooner. And the "fixes" keep making it better and better :)
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Sun Mar 07, 2021 1:42 pm

captjim wrote:Captjim here again. This is going to be interesting. I have been a simmer for many years and have lots of programs The problem is that all of these programs have been purchased through many types of stores that had the programs already packaged. So I could take the program home, insert the disks and fly. However, good old MS decided that the new FS 2020 is only available in the disk format in other countries not in the USA. If that isn't bad enough I have no idea how to obtain the program on-line and/or the procedure used to pay for it. If anyone out there can give this old guy some instructions concerning this matter it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Captjim


There are a few important things you need to know about MSFS, although ProudArmchairPilot already provided most of the useful info above :)

First of all, don't be sad about not being able to buy MSFS on disks. These DVDs contain only the very original version of the sim, so after installing the sim, you would still have to download several Gigabytes of data to get all of the updates that were released by MS/Asobo since release. Also, it is required to keep the first DVD in the DVD drive to launch the sim, which is very annoying, to say the least.
By buying MSFS online directly, at least you get the latest version directly :)

About the versions of the sim, as already said above, there are three versions: the standard, deluxe, and premium deluxe.
I would recommend you to keep with the standard version. The reason is simple: all planes included in the deluxe and premium deluxe versions have their files "encrypted" by DRMs, which makes them impossible to edit. That means that the community addon creators are not able to provide modifications to these planes (to fix their problems, or just improve them...).
On the contrary, all planes included in the standard version have fully accessible files. As a consequence, there are already a lot of free addons (called "mods") to improve their instruments or flight model, add features etc...
The money you will save by buying the standard version instead of premium or premium deluxe will be better spent on a payware addon of your choice ;)

Concerning the place to "buy" MSFS, there are two choices:
- the MS Store
- the Steam shop
I frankly do not know which one to recommend you. I would say, if you are already using Steam for other games or simulators, then I would recommend you to buy MSFS on Steam. Else, it might be simpler to go through the MS Store.

Simple questions from my side:
- In the past, for FSX or P3D (I don't remember which one you were using until now...), have you ever bought any payware addon online ?
- What kind (speed) of internet connection do you have ? That sim is heavy, it will download several tens of gigabytes, and expand into something like 100 Gbytes on your hard drive. If your internet connection is really slow, it will take several ours, or days...
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby striker » Sun Mar 07, 2021 3:20 pm

To be honest I bought it and use it occasionally but it's no match for P3D in terms of depth and options.

Ouside cities the terrain is basic but otherwise fictional. I will post a picture of a place I know on google earth and MSFS2020. MSFS2020 is fictional in this area,. Nothing is right. there is water where there is none. Trees where there are non and no trees etc

The updates are a huge PIA as you load up for a quick flight and have to wait hours . In other words you can't use it regularly.

And setting up the controls, and pause, change airport or change aircraft mid flight? Forget it. A complete PIA in this aspect
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby papituwall » Mon Mar 08, 2021 2:37 am

MSFS is mainly a scenery program, in this side is fantastic. But as per today, aircraft are the main problem and seems that Asobo is focused in sceneries.
Default aircraft have good visuals (maybe they bought to Dovetail the FSW planes), many of them are are a repetition made as "copy-paste", buy the basic edition. If we think in defaults of P3D or Xplane they look good but the flight model (particularly in ground) and avionics need a lot of work.
Not to say that they are adding towers, castles, etc. and still have not added a relevant number of important airports in the base program.
As somebody said: "we have paid for a beta of Bing moving maps". If you like VFR is the best. If you like feel the aircraft, not.
Finally if your internet is a problem, note that the program runs connected if you want to run the complete scenery and that the program is updated monthly.
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Mon Mar 08, 2021 4:28 am

striker wrote:To be honest I bought it and use it occasionally but it's no match for P3D in terms of depth and options.

The plane addons in P3D are indeed superior in terms of realism and depth of the systems/avionics for now.
However, some of the default planes are very nice out of the box, and many freeware mods are available to improve the avionics and flight models for other default planes. The TBM 930, the Airbus A320Neo and the Citation CJ4 are probably the best examples to show how good the improvements can get :)

Ouside cities the terrain is basic but otherwise fictional. I will post a picture of a place I know on google earth and MSFS2020. MSFS2020 is fictional in this area,. Nothing is right. there is water where there is none. Trees where there are non and no trees etc

You must have a configuration problem because this is completely wrong.
I agree the placement of the forest is not always 100% correct, but I remind you that we get full photorealistic textures everywhere on the planet, with quite accurate autogen for trees and buildings on top of it.
The only places where you get "generic" ground textures are the places where the ground photos were covered by clouds. For these places, the Azure system tries to "guess" what kind of terrain is hidden, and puts some generic textures on the groud at these places. This happens a lot in Switzeland around Sion, for example.
MSFS uses the photo pictures from Bing Maps, which is unfortunately not as nice as Google Maps in many places. However, we also get some automatic color correction of the terrain tiles which makes them look much better than what you see in Bing Maps :)

We should also mention the differences between photogrametry cities and non-photogrametry ones.
With photogrametry, you get the real 3D buildings as showns in Bing Maps, but this feature is only available for a very small amount of cities.
Without photogrametry, you still get photorealistic (satellite or aerial pictures) ground textures, but with generic buildings on top (still with quite accurate placement though).

The updates are a huge PIA as you load up for a quick flight and have to wait hours . In other words you can't use it regularly.

The updates are announced a few days in advance, so you can organize.

And setting up the controls, and pause, change airport or change aircraft mid flight? Forget it. A complete PIA in this aspect

Sorry, what is the problem there exactly ?
The "developer mode" lets you change aircraft while in mid-air.
You can change airport in the same way you did in FSX.
Setting up the controls is different, yes, but not that bad.
Pause ? You have active pause with the "Pause" key, or you can also just press "Esc" key...
So your "forget it" is vastly exagerrated here, don't you think ?
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Mon Mar 08, 2021 4:53 am

papituwall wrote:MSFS is mainly a scenery program, in this side is fantastic. But as per today, aircraft are the main problem and seems that Asobo is focused in sceneries.

You are right about the "scenery simulator" thing :D
However let's not exagerrate here: so far they have released three "scenery updates" and two "sim updates", the third sim update is coming next week already (was delayed).
So that will be three updates for scenery and three for the simulator... Can't really say they only focus on the scenery, can we ? ;)

Default aircraft have good visuals (maybe they bought to Dovetail the FSW planes),

Planes were built by Asobo from scratch. They have excellent 3D modeling expertise from their previous games.

buy the basic edition.

Fully agree.

If we think in defaults of P3D or Xplane they look good but the flight model (particularly in ground) and avionics need a lot of work.
Not to say that they are adding towers, castles, etc. and still have not added a relevant number of important airports in the base program.
As somebody said: "we have paid for a beta of Bing moving maps". If you like VFR is the best. If you like feel the aircraft, not.
Finally if your internet is a problem, note that the program runs connected if you want to run the complete scenery and that the program is updated monthly.

A bit harsh description, but not wrong at all.
The remark about the program being online is very important though. If you have some kind of monthly download limit, and/or you have a very slow internet connection, you don't want that simulator at all.
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Awaken » Tue Mar 09, 2021 2:53 am

Sorry for straying from the OP....but, did MSFS fix the bridges yet? I had it early on Xbox gamepass, and all the bridges were like solid walls.

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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Sinkrate » Tue Mar 09, 2021 6:27 am

I can vouch for what has been said about the disc version; it’s a complete con – avoid! :evil:

The remark about the program being online is very important though. If you have some kind of monthly download limit, and/or you have a very slow internet connection, you don't want that simulator at all.


Absolutely bang on the money; you need very high speed broadband to download Bing scenery in real time. I have adsl and it won’t even touch it. I have to make do with default scenery which has many faults, especially with water. :cry:
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Tue Mar 09, 2021 9:08 am

Sinkrate wrote:I can vouch for what has been said about the disc version; it’s a complete con – avoid! :evil:

The remark about the program being online is very important though. If you have some kind of monthly download limit, and/or you have a very slow internet connection, you don't want that simulator at all.


Absolutely bang on the money; you need very high speed broadband to download Bing scenery in real time. I have adsl and it won’t even touch it. I have to make do with default scenery which has many faults, especially with water. :cry:


Well, you don't really need a very high speed broadband. Very high speed will just make the install/updates of the sim more comfortable/fast.
For example, my brother has currently a quite slow ADSL connection at home, with a max download speed around 18 Mb/sec (megabits, not bytes).
Nevertheless, he can fully enjoy MSFS without any problems in flight.
He *does* need quite a lot of time to download the updates, that's a fact. However, he usually starts the update in the morning, and the sim is ready in the late afternoon.
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby captjim » Tue Mar 09, 2021 11:02 am

Hi it's me again (Captjim). I really appreciate all the responses I received from you all. The other issue I failed to mention was (X-BOX). It appears that X-box has become part of the problem. I do NOT use or have X-box. In fact I can't even uninstall the App from my system. Any suggestions concerning this problem would help. Again a BIG THANK YOU to all, Captjim :dance:
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Re: Need some basic help from a fellow simmer

Postby Daube » Tue Mar 09, 2021 1:50 pm

Don't worry, we can clarify everything slowly.

Just one question from my side: When you start your computer and you reach the windows 10 logon screen, do you log on with a "local" user account (like with a user name and a password), or do you log in with an email address + password instead ?
The reason I ask this is to check if:
- your Windows 10 is set to local account or "Live" account
- you have actually have a Live account or not
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