Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020

[Richdmoore]

I just installed the closed beta on my 2019 27" iMac i9 w/Vega40 & 40 GB of ram. With the graphics settings at medium the computer was running with the fans at full blast. I don't know if it was the frame rates of the graphics settings but I was a bit disappointed in the clouds and the way the planes handled. I may need to do some tweaking or it could just be the beta. Either way if I purchase the sim I will need a to purchase more monthly data from my ISP.

That's good to know. I was going to try the release version on my 2017 iMac with bootcamp, but I will temper my expectations as the radion 575 probably isn't as powerful as what you have.

Since you have the beta, I am curious about the avionics. Are the Garmin 530/430 modeled well in the avionics? (Xplane has them, but they are missing lots of features vs the real unit.)

I saw the G1000 is included in some of the aircraft (with terrain), but I wasn't sure how complete of a system is included?

Can the Garmin 530/G1000 be popped out to another screen like Xplane allows?

The aircraft I currently fly for work has G3000 avionics, with touch screen controllers. Do any of the aircraft have that system included?

Thanks for any answers.

 

[dimme]

That's good to know. I was going to try the release version on my 2017 iMac with bootcamp, but I will temper my expectations as the radion 575 probably isn't as powerful as what you have.

Since you have the beta, I am curious about the avionics. Are the Garmin 530/430 modeled well in the avionics? (Xplane has them, but they are missing lots of features vs the real unit.)

I saw the G1000 is included in some of the aircraft (with terrain), but I wasn't sure how complete of a system is included?

Can the Garmin 530/G1000 be popped out to another screen like Xplane allows?

The aircraft I currently fly for work has G3000 avionics, with touch screen controllers. Do any of the aircraft have that system included?

Thanks for any answers.

I don't know enough about the sim to answer your question. I have been debating if I should run the beta again because of the heat issue on my iMac, but from what I saw and my little knowledge of the sim right now there seems to be not much customization available (for now). For instance the beta only ships with 3 views (that I can find) and if that's what is to be expected I won't be going for the final version. It is very pretty to look at but I my very limited use it felt like more of a game than a simulator. But it's only a beta.

 

[rick3000]

I've been using Mac's exclusively for 16 years, I've converted everyone in my family, and this week I decided to build a gaming PC. I have zero intention of switching to Windows, but my '14 dGPU MBP cannot run MSFS2020, and when I tried X-Plane it sounded like a leaf blower. I will only be using it for games and as a Plex server. This way I can reclaim my Boot Camp partition, and get more life out of my '14 MBP, which I plan to run until it dies.

My original budget was $400-600, it quickly became clear $600 was more likely, then once I decided I didn't want parts that came out 2-3 years ago, it ended up being $750 with tax. I opted for a AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and GTX 1660 Super GPU. CPU is probably overkill, but this way I can upgrade only the GPU in a few years and not have to change anything else.

TBH, I feel dirty owning a PC, but I've never had an Xbox, so I'm looking forward to MSFS2020 and the Halo Collection. I would just like to see some cockpit views so I can decide which version I want to buy, I want to practice ifr approaches in similar planes to what I normally fly.

 

[maflynn]

One troubling thing when I booted up the sim twice my iMac shut down, I am fairly sure this was due to some component getting too hot

Sadly the iMac isn’t known for its thermal performance and headroom. I think this will be a common occurrence as the machine overheats

 

[garnerx]

I've just commenced Operation Upgrade My Old Flight Gear At Enormous Expense, in preparation for FS2020.

This one is the VKB rudder, and it's a world of difference from my old CH Pro pedals. It's small, all metal and incredibly smooth. Vertical movement rather than sliding, so not like a real aircraft but at least it won't move around under your feet. There are no toe brakes. If proportional braking is required it has to be done in software, via a modifier button on another controller. The cam can be changed to give no center detent, which is the first thing I did, and the spring has two strength settings.

I also pre-ordered a stick and throttle from Virpil, so some time in the next few months for that, I guess.

 

[maflynn]

Here's a nice retrospective of flight sim

 

[jsavvy]

Hey everyone, MS Flight Simulator has been our for a few days now. Anyone have it up and running? If so, what hardware you running and how well is your hardware running the Sim?

 

[garnerx]

It's taken me a while to get it working - I ran out of storage so I had to get a new SSD, then it didn't come with a sata cable so I had to order one of those, then the installer took hours...

What I've seen so far is pretty amazing though. I haven't messed with any settings, the game suggested one notch below ultra for me and it just looks incredible. It runs at a much higher framerate than Prepar3d ever did on this PC, yet it's on a different level as far as graphics go. The cities are very high density but it doesn't seem to slow down at all when they come into view.

I can probably ramp it up a notch if I'm willing to go back to P3D levels of performance but this really does look great as it is. Specs are 3770K/4.2GHz, 16GB, GTX 1080. So not high end by today's standard. This will probably run well on the new Xbox.

I haven't managed to get any good screens yet, since most of the controls aren't set up and I haven't found the pause button, but here's a bad shot of Vancouver in the rain.

 

[Matt Stern]

I haven't had a great experience yet to be honest. The game is extremely buggy for me (about a 50% chance of crashing at some point within the first hour). I also can't seem to get more than about 8-15 fps on high-end, which doesn't seem right considering I'm running it on an 8-core 3.2ghz/32gb iMac Pro with the Vega 56 8gb graphics card, and the game installed on the internal SSD. It seems to be crashing due to overheating, but its not consistent. All of my Windows drivers and system updates are up to date. From what I've seen, a lot of people are getting varied performance results with it, regardless of how powerful their system is.

 

[garnerx]

I haven't had a great experience yet to be honest. The game is extremely buggy for me (about a 50% chance of crashing at some point within the first hour). I also can't seem to get more than about 8-15 fps on high-end, which doesn't seem right considering I'm running it on an 8-core 3.2ghz/32gb iMac Pro with the Vega 56 8gb graphics card, and the game installed on the internal SSD. It seems to be crashing due to overheating, but its not consistent. All of my Windows drivers and system updates are up to date. From what I've seen, a lot of people are getting varied performance results with it, regardless of how powerful their system is.

That doesn't seem right. It crashed once when I was changing the settings on my pedals but never agin so far. Maybe try reducing the render resolution or dropping the settings a notch. It runs so well for me, no stuttering and certainly no 15 fps. I'm playing it at 1440p resolution.

 

[LeeW]

Would love to give it a go but I suspect it will not be great trying to use keyboard and mouse only and I have no interest in getting hardware just to play.

 

[wardie]

I’ve downloaded it to bootcamp via Game Pass, not fired it up yet to try. Maybe this weekend. I wonder if it will work with my Logitech g920 wheel and great shifter? incidentally it’s a great combo. I play race games versus my son with him on the Xbox one X and me on the iMac.

 

[Kier-XF]

I've been trying to get it running, but I can't even get the pre-installer to install. I'm running Windows 10 fully up-to-date on a USB-C connected Sandisk SSD on my iMac Pro, but both the MS store and the Xbox Game Pass app download several hundred megabytes (about 900?) of data before showing 100% progress for a moment, then erroring and returning to 0% again. This has happened many times, and so far I have no solution at all.

I've seen various suggestions about being unable to run some MS games on Windows installed on a USB drive and some confused reports about admin permissions, but nothing concrete.

Thus far, very frustrating.

 

[Kier-XF]

 

[dimme]

+

I've been trying to get it running, but I can't even get the pre-installer to install. I'm running Windows 10 fully up-to-date on a USB-C connected Sandisk SSD on my iMac Pro, but both the MS store and the Xbox Game Pass app download several hundred megabytes (about 900?) of data before showing 100% progress for a moment, then erroring and returning to 0% again. This has happened many times, and so far I have no solution at all.

I've seen various suggestions about being unable to run some MS games on Windows installed on a USB drive and some confused reports about admin permissions, but nothing concrete.

Thus far, very frustrating.

I was running the alpha and beta on my iMac with windows running on a thunderbolt drive with no issue, except for the machine over heating form the simulator. My boot camp installmhas been on thunderbolt drives for the last Two machines.

 

[garnerx]

Would love to give it a go but I suspect it will not be great trying to use keyboard and mouse only and I have no interest in getting hardware just to play.

I wonder if it will work with my Logitech g920 wheel and great shifter?

You can play it with pretty much anything, and there are people who can land these things with keyboard and mouse - just as there are guys in racing sims who will beat you with completely inadequate controllers. But you only really get the best out of it if you use the right hardware.

A cheap HOTAS is less than the (non-Game Pass) price of the game and makes a huge difference. A steering wheel wouldn't get you too far because you'd still need an extra axis or three, so you'll have to be reaching for the keyboard for pitch/yaw/throttle.

 

[Richdmoore]

I thought I would write a quick update to save some others frustration trying to install Microsoft Flight Sim 2020.

I have a windows 2 go installation of windows 10 pro on a thunderbolt external drive. (That way I don't have to take up valuable space on my main apple SSD drive) but after a frustrating 6 hours, I discovered game pass games don' t work when using win2go installations at all.

Grrr....

EDIT: It may be possible on an external drive, but it will have to be made without win2go. I will have to explore how, too bad as the win2go option is relatively easy.

 

[Richdmoore]

View attachment 946470

Mine did the same thing. I finally figured out that using a win2go install of windows 10 will not work, and no one has a way around it. (If you can get normal windows 10 installed without using win2go, it may work, maybe by doing an internal install then moving it to an external drive?) Very frustrating for sure.

 

[Richdmoore]

For what it is worth, I was able to get the installer working by not using windows to go, but an alternate installation.

Instead, I followed the instructions here:

How to Use Boot Camp on an External Drive to Run Windows on a Mac

Boot Camp and Boot Camp Assistant allow you to install Windows on your Mac. It's a nice capability that lets you select – at boot time – which

blog.macsales.com

FYI: read in the comments below the article about changes you will need with more descent Macs such as my 2017 iMac.

I just started the installer, will check on actual performance (or overheating) the next few days Once I get the chance to try it out after installation (Indy 500 tomorrow...)

 

[garnerx]

With apologies to anyone who's still having trouble getting it working, here's a couple more screenshots. There's a dev mode that you can turn on, with an info window that shows exactly where you might be getting having performance trouble. For me it's generally the main thread, so I'm more limited by CPU than GPU, but it's consistently in the range of 30-40 fps in major cities, which is basically double what I could expect out of Prepar3d.

 

[dimme]

With apologies to anyone who's still having trouble getting it working, here's a couple more screenshots. There's a dev mode that you can turn on, with an info window that shows exactly where you might be getting having performance trouble. For me it's generally the main thread, so I'm more limited by CPU than GPU, but it's consistently in the range of 30-40 fps in major cities, which is basically double what I could expect out of Prepar3d.

View attachment 946893
View attachment 946894

Nice, what hardware are you running? How is the heat?

 

[garnerx]

Nice, what hardware are you running? How is the heat?

It's a Hackintosh I built a few years ago. i7 3770K, 16 GB RAM, GTX 1080. I'm currently running the CPU at 4.2 GHz, so I might see if I can squeeze a bit more out of it. There's no heat problem, this thing has a gigantic CPU cooler and is very stable with the current overclock.

 

[ATC]

None of my mac hardware can run the sim (mostly older or entry-level macs, e.g. 2019 MBA) so I purchased my 13 year old a new windows laptop for school but made sure to get him something that can at least have a chance to run the sim even on low-med settings.

I haven't purchased any windows hardware in years so I was a bit lost but ended up getting him a Lenovo legion notebook from Costco (i7-9750H, 16gb RAM, 15.6" 1080 144Hz screen, GTX 1660Ti/6GB and 512SSD) - FWIW it was quite a bit cheaper than the base entry-level 13 MBP.

I'm happy to say the sim runs great on default High-End settings. Smooth with minimal stutters even with traffic and weather - the visuals are quite stunning. The only thing is when in the game (even when I'm not flying) the fans are running at or near full blast so this is def a very taxing piece of software.

This flightsim has me seriously considering getting or building a gaming desktop PC for the first time since I made the switch to macs back in 2007 (yeah I was a windows vista victim). The sim is that good; Screenshots don't do it justice but here are a couple of lame ones from me.

 

[ipponrg]

None of my mac hardware can run the sim (mostly older or entry-level macs, e.g. 2019 MBA) so I purchased my 13 year old a new windows laptop for school but made sure to get him something that can at least have a chance to run the sim even on low-med settings.

I haven't purchased any windows hardware in years so I was a bit lost but ended up getting him a Lenovo legion notebook from Costco (i7-9750H, 16gb RAM, 15.6" 1080 144Hz screen, GTX 1660Ti/6GB and 512SSD) - FWIW it was quite a bit cheaper than the base entry-level 13 MBP.

I'm happy to say the sim runs great on default High-End settings. Smooth with minimal stutters even with traffic and weather - the visuals are quite stunning. The only thing is when in the game (even when I'm not flying) the fans are running at or near full blast so this is def a very taxing piece of software.

This flightsim has me seriously considering getting or building a gaming desktop PC for the first time since I made the switch to macs back in 2007 (yeah I was a windows vista victim). The sim is that good; Screenshots don't do it justice but here are a couple of lame ones from me.

This game is the new Crysis for GPU benchmarks

Im getting decent FPS on a PC with GeForce 1080 Ti.

 

[garnerx]

Screenshots don't do it justice but here are a couple of lame ones from me.

To get a clean exterior view with no junk on the screen, use the drone camera.

The weather effects in this are incredible. In other sims, even with add-ons to enhance the weather, the clouds are more or less just 2D bitmaps - you can see them rotate like cardboard cutouts if you look at them from the wrong angle. In FS2020, though, they're 3D and you can navigate through gaps in them.