glossopj

Consider this. Some (possibly all) of the current batch of addon managers allow you to put your addons into "packages", and when you want to fly, will load as many packages as you think you may want. So, one package for each addon airplane (or for liveries for one of the standard Asobo planes, one package for each destination you use, and one package for any other classification of addon you might want to use. Always load all of your Libraries of objects that are needed by other addons, and at run time, load the "Packages" you might want to use today. Unless they've managed to change load time, you'll find that by doing this you'll optimize the sim load time, without really interfering with your ability to fly multiple flights in one session.

https://www.flightsimulator.com/ (the site referenced by shb7) is the official support site be MS/Asobo for all thinks Flight Simulator 2020, including "wish lists" (that they listen to) for changes to the sim that people want to see.

To be fair, they have included a pretty comprehensive pilot training package with the sim, which, while maybe not as accessible to many, is certainly truer to life for pilot training than a sim manual would be. There are a LOT of videos out there on YouTube covering most aspects of the sim from basic setup, through settings, to pilot skills, that are in some ways better than a paper manual. As this is probably the first truly representative flight sim for the masses that is as realistic as it gets, I think in retrospect that this is a good move - away from manuals. There are already literally thousands of addons available for this sim, which cover all the way from complete cities and complete aircraft, to small iconic sights that were missed in the mapping, plus a wealth of tools to make your life easier with MSFS, and expand your experience greatly. I still think that this site is one of the best flight sim sites available, but for downloads, I use flightsim.to, which is awesome.

Yes - with each update of the Sim, the manual is updated to cover the changes. They've introduced a more complete manual that is about twice the price of the original, but which now(currently) has 282 pages.

My first reactions were the same. However, Microsoft has been delivering commercial software for many years now without including manuals, so to condemn them for doing it with this one is hardly fair. And not only Microsoft have been going this way - many commercial software products arrive with no manual, and no alternative available. From Microsoft; Windows 7, 8 and 10 Office since about 2010 Visio since about 2010 Visual Studio Access from other venders: Adobe Many (if not all) do not boast a manual Most commercial anti-virus manufacturers aShampoo the list goes on. So, I decided early on that I would purchase the SoFly manual, and TBH I've been most impressed with the scope and quality of their publication. And the number of updates, that have tended to match major released of the Sim - AT NO EXTRA COST. Does it cover absolutely everything? No, it doesn't, but it covers the items that are going to be of most interest to the average fan, and also for MOST of the aficionados, as well. As of today's date, it is in release 1.90, and contains 272 pages - well up from the original 120 pages. Is it worth while? Well, it certainly has been for me. The TOC from the latest version will give you a feel for what is in there. I trust that posting this is OK with SoFly. Otherwise, mods please trim this image out. Thank you.

I have an i7 version of the Acer Nitro 5 with 16 gig of RAM, and am getting good frame rates so far. I have another 16gig of RAM on order, but for now, it's fine. Perhaps the 2TB SSD that I'm using for all FS related storage helps somewhat?

at about 4 and a half minutes does it for you. It was loaded up yesterday.

My old versions (including my FSX Beta version) are well and truly parked in a big folder of DVDs, never to be used again! But for all those poor people out there with no sense of adventure, I wish that they'd included a user manual with the Sim! I know, it'll come. In the mean time I'm fencing questions pouring into a thread in the Microsoft Community site under "https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/xbox/forum/xba_wowpc-xba_gowpc/manual-for-microsoft-flight-simulator-2020/f8f1473c-2380-4cb4-b9e5-c3e5bb1b02f2?messageId=048ed538-bb4e-4bbc-868a-034e405b50a4", where there are a number of very distressed would be armchair aviators.

I'm trying to get my Saitek ST290 Pro to work. The sim identifies it fine, and when I select it as the main controller, it even gives me a list of the buttons, POV, etc, so that I can choose what each of them does. The problem I have is that I have no idea which button is which, and there is absolutely nothing that I can find to tell me which one is which. On the problem of no response, have you made sure that you have up to date drivers AND SOFTWARE installed, especially for the older sticks. That's what I'm in the process of doing, on the premise that the Saitek software actually maps the location of each button for me, at least.

I suppose I should come clean and explain my hurry and my motives. I'm currently sitting in front of my old HP Envy, with a 5th generation i7, contemplating the chances of being selected for the alpha or beta testing, and realizing that my current rig just won't impress the judges. I enjoyed participating in the FSX Beta, and would appreciate the opportunity to participate again. So, I'm looking for a machine that will satisfy the tester selectors that I have at least got a rig that will run the new sim. My contributions to FSX after the release of the sim were mainly in the area of AI (I was part of the ProjectAI team for a fairly long period of time), doing repaints, building flight plans, and designing AFCAD files for various airports. I'd like to get a "heads up" on just what is included in the sim, and what is likely to still remain open for third party developers - currently, I'm thinking that the answer is - not a lot, but I remain hopeful.

I'm in the throes of deciding exactly what sort of setup that I will need for this new experience, and am confronted by a baffling conundrum. I don't want a cdesktop PC, and as a pensioner, my budget is somewhat limited. I've been looking at Gaming Laptops and the Xbox One X, and am having great difficulty identifying just what sort of power goodies the Xbox contains. There is talk of the use of "eight Jaguar CPUs", giving it .processing power "in the ballpark of a current-gen Intel Core i3 processor", but I really suspect that an i3 processor will not cut the mustard. Then there is the GPU. It is described in Wikipedia as a "Radeon GPU with 40 Compute Units clocked at 1172 MHz, generating 6 teraflops of graphical computing performance", which is about as useful to me as the proverbial Teats on a bull! Take a look at https://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-1660-Ti-Laptop-Graphics-Card.386426.0.html which is a review of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (Laptop). Nowhere does it mention teraflops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOPS discusses FLOPS all the way from kiloflops to yottaflops, but when it comes to telling me what I'm looking for, presents me with a table of common architectures which show (usually) a single digit for each of Floating Point 16, 32 and 64, with no easy way of determining just what these figures mean in real terms. Now, I'm not exactly a newby to computers, but am getting a little long in the tooth, and I'm just about to give up on this line of investigation, unless some kind soul out there can provide me with a measure (perhaps rule of thumb) to identify how many teraflops a particular GPU can be considered to generate. Thanking you in anticipation.