cobalt

As is well known to everyone who has actually compared these sims.

An astonishing statement, to say the least. You cannot be serious.

I have only one Drzweicki pack, the one for D.C., and it works as well following the updates as it did before. Some, such as Shift-Z, do require updating after MSFS updates, but they are not thereby "rendered useless". Of course it is recommended to empty the Community folder before updates, but many of us use Addon Linker which places only links in there, and the files themselves are stored out of reach of updates to MSFS and cannot be affected by them. In any case, your statement that "many add-ons are rendered useless" by add-ons is different from saying that one should empty Community as a precaution. Perhaps you would agree that this is a bit misleading?

My experience is entirely different with respect to "most updates rendering many add-ons useless". I have hundreds of add-ons, and none have been rendered useless by updates (or anything else). Which add-ons are you talking about?

There is a persistent and seemingly widespread misunderstanding about the size of updates -- some people talk about 170, 200 Gb or more! From my experience, the net increase in disc space for updates is typically just a few Gb each time, because most of the update content overwrites existing files. So, the actual demand on disc space by updates is modest and gradual.

A great video of an MSFS aerial tour of the Wright memorial, accompanied by the clearest Wright brothers 1903 photos I have ever seen, and including some I did not know existed. Wow. Many thanks!

Why on earth would anyone need 140 GB loaded in their community folder? If you use Addon Linker, which places only links in Community, the requirement is far less. Using that app, even with many active scenery files and other stuff in Community, for me it typically is about 1.9 GB, and the load time is a couple of minutes. 140 GB, I don't understand at all.

Yes, flightsim.to has several excellent Hawaii freeware upgrades -- I recommend those for Oahu and Waikiki in particular. There are a number of others also.

There should never be a need to go into development mode in order to install add-ons (or to do anything, in normal operations). Most add-ons are designed to simply place the unzipped file into Community. That's it! Use of an add-on manager such as MSFS Addons Linker, a free program available at flghtsim.to, is highly recommended for convenience, and to enable an orderly management of add-on files. A great advantage is that it loads only links to files, rather than the actual files, into Community; the files themselves can be stored anywhere, preferably on a different drive from MSFS. I believe that Addons Linker automatically finds your community folder during the installation process.

Are you sure they are bush trips and not flight plans? I have had the experience of downloading and installing what I thought were bush trips from flightsim.to, not finding them in MSFS, and then discovering they were actually flight plans. Just a thought.

I totally disagree. While the frustration of some users with the constant update problems is understandable, for others this sim is running better than ever, especially after re-setting some of the options which has been necessary following the latest update. Overall, MSFS is a fantastic achievement, going far beyond what any other sim has to offer. The notion that "Microsoft is allowing to get so bad that users are uninstalling and/or returning to other sims" flies in the face of the evidence, as many more people in this (and other) forums say exactly the opposite: they are leaving other sims en masse for MSFS. Further evidence is there in the marketplace, where third-party developers are now heavily focused on MSFS vs. the older sims. All the stuff about "corporate mindsets" and so forth is nonsense as far as I'm concerned.

In the weather drop-down menu there is an option to set snow level. Very good for creating wintry ground conditions. But there is no way to select "seasons" per se.

Your winter pics look a lot like the snow that you can select in the MSFS weather menu. Did you by chance have this turned on? To repeat -- MSFS currently does not change with the seasons; you have to make the changes manually.

I don't see the basis of your concern. Currently my MSFS with all updates through SU7 takes up 171 GB on a 500 GB drive. Moreover, the last three updates combined have produced a net increase of less than 10 GB. So far, I have not deleted anything from my MSFS installation. I should add that all my add-ons are stored on a different drive from MSFS, and I use Addon Manager to provide links to them.

I am well acquainted with the seasons in New Zealand -- I lived there for a year. You are correct that spring there is September - November (not April). However, it doesn't matter what month you pick, because the textures in default MSFS are all summer ones -- currently they do not change with the seasons in any part of the world, NZ included. I don't understand your original post in which you said that late spring in NZ looked like the dead of winter -- I see only summer there regardless. Are you using an add-on that might be the cause of this?

Which part of New Zealand are you looking at? It's a thousand miles long from north to south, with climate varying from subtropical to sub-antarctic. I just checked the North Island in April and it appeared as green as Ireland!

The whole point of MSFS is to be connected to the internet, which allows streaming of real-world satellite imagery of terrain and buildings as well as weather data. This is what distinguishes MSFS from its predecessors, giving it a whole new look. Yes, you can run it without the internet, but that would be pointless -- like driving a sports car in low gear on level ground.

I will echo the last post. Though I have had to turn off photogrammetry since SU5 (for reasons yet unexplained), since SU7 I find MSFS to be better than ever in performance and other aspects as well (new planes, etc.). Daspinall, I am surprised that MSFS doesn't run well on your system. Have you tried turning off photogrammetry? Alienware Aurora R11, 32 GB ram, Intel i7-10700F, GeForce RTX 2080 Super, Ultra graphics settings

Just to be clear: the 787 is in the Deluxe edition and has been since the start of MSFS.

You mean your car doesn't already have that?

OK, try this (works for me). During the download, go into File Explorer and open the folder Official/OneStore/fsbase../ into which the files are being downloaded, which should be easy to find while the download is going on. Find the file whose name ends in "part" and delete it -- this is the one getting stuck in a loop. Close MSFS and re-start. This should do the trick. (If the download still gets stuck, repeat and delete a few more recently downloaded files (which will rewind the download to a slightly earlier stage) and re-start MSFS.

The backslash key toggles it for me, before and after SU7.

If your download gets stuck (which happens occasion during updates), close the program and restart -- it will pick up the download where it left off.

Yes, that occurred to me too. I will see what it's like in a day or two.

The latest update (SU7) has unfortunately not only failed to cure the earlier problem of ground stutters when photogrammetry is turned on (which started with SU5, and which a number of us have reported). It has made it much worse -- the sim is now unflyable with photogrammetry on. With it turned off, performance is fine as far as I can tell. This is unfortunate since I am now unable to use photogrammetry at all; earlier the problem was just at or near ground level. I will be interested to learn how widespread this issue is.