I have to say I am impressed with the new sim. I been flying MSFS since the early 90's. Started with an Atari 8 bit computer game version of it! And MSFS98, FSX. But this MSFS2020 this is pretty impressive. I tried the landing challenges and enjoyed them. I even landed the Caravan in Indonesia, on that tribal village hilltop landing strip, First time! Definitely felt the tension on approach. And they had to helicopter the AME's in to check the air frame for cracks!
The scenery is wonderful and I run it at high end setting with my rig. I tried running the default ultra high setting, but in some city settings, in the dense areas the frame rate slows down. I flew the Airbus from Montevideo, Uruguay across the Andes to Santiago, Chile on ultra high setting. Which worked fine for the most part from take off and cruise, but on the approach to landing the frame rate dropped way down and I had to predict where the plane would go with my inputs. but was able to land it barely. I found I was also able to get the auto pilot working at cruising altitude. But I had to hunt for the hidden spots on the panel to activate it. So it needs some adjustment by the development team. I was able to keep the Airbus on course on autopilot for a few hours. So it feel like the airliners might need further work.
I bought FSX Steam when I upgraded to windows 10 and its o.k. I do have FSX Acceleration in the CD's. As well I got tons of add-ons ie:, global mesh/ texture improvement and planes and I am toying with trying to reinstall it. Then do all the rebuilding and all the work involved. Or hoping FS2020 takes off and we see helicopters and more aircraft. Right now I feel it needs a few more up dates and some things that were in the old FSX brought over.
For example, in FSX you press shift z or shift x and you will get some red lettering your airspeed and wind direction at the altitude your flying, your frame rate. This show up a couple lines showing along the upper border of the screen. Which I kind of used as a heads up display upon approach. Its a little thing but would be nice to have back.
I not sure if I am doing something wrong in my settings for the hat switch. but you only get front views and side views. You cant be able to pan around and hold say at the 10:00 o'clock position when your turning in like in FSX. If you can do that, please let me know what step I am missing.
But again the landscapes and terrain features are awesome. I flew by Mount Fuji and you could see the trails people use to walk up to it. Like wow. Same as flying into areas of the world that I have visited. This sim is amazing for the graphic leap forward. That alone makes it hard to go back to FSX.
So first glance I am impressed, I would be very happy if they add a few helicopters, and transport plane like a C-130 Hercules, VTOL Harrier or Osprey. I sure we all have our wish lists. I understand the developers pushing out the door to make money. But it feels like its 3/4 done, and the last quarter is still in beta mode.
But the scenery and weather effect, I be happy to be flying the Caravan in and out of little strips in Indonesia, or anywhere else for a long time yet. Even if they don't improve it. But if they do listen to real world pilots who fly fs2020 and can spot the issues and errors and then ATTEND to them. Well then they will really have hit the ball out of the ball park with this version of MSFS, IMHO.
My rig:
AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-core Processor 3.50 GHz, 24 GB RAM, 64 bit operating system, X64 based processor.
windows 10 pro, 19042.746, windows feature experience pack 120.2212.551.0
monitor: HP L2245 wg LCD monitor,
graphics card: NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1060, 3GB,