AndrooC

My 2 cents. MS offered a deal for MSFS2020, and oldest son was interested, so have the Premium Deluxe version now. A week in, and I'm not sure this thing is ready for prime time. 1. There is a bug that stops the version I paid for being installed from the MS App Store. So paid for DL, got Standard. No response from support - but it's a known issue. 2. Got a Windows update today, now FS2020 will not get started. Crashes mid-startup. (was due to scenery download!) 3. When it was running earlier in the week, we managed to get it running somewhat reliably: a) It is quite gamified - various gaming bits built in b) Slightly annoying pop-up windows everywhere, but we'll figure them out eventually c) Built in store is quite nice d) Scenery is very good - some airports out-of-the-box are very high quality e) The actual flight part of the flight sim does not feel very realistic. Yet. f) Built for online multi-player - haven't tried that yet though f) Add-ons easy to install App Store install was 2GB initial download, then a further 210Gb download for MS2020 Standard, and a bunch more downloads for various updates. As mentioned, the Deluxe/Premium Deluxe refuses to install, and I imagine that will be more downloading. In summary, at this moment I'd say if you like flying, use X-Plane. If you like eye-candy, FS2020 has it in spades ... if you can get it working!

I have to say I was very surprised to see MS FS2020 released so quickly. My take on it's progress was that it would be a 2021 release. However, there is a lot to be said for putting things out early, if you can handle being beaten up a bit. The thing that concerns me about MS restarting FS, is that it is not core business, and is easily discarded when they feel the need. This is a major point of difference to me. Many a MSFS enthusiast were left with a large investment in a rapidly aging flight-sim the last time MS ditched FS. Then along came MS Flight, a short-lived experiment. Will it happen again? What happens in 2 or 3 years when something else becomes the focus?

Yes, I think we all know flight sim is difficult. I wouldn't expect MSFS to be amazing in what is essentially version 1. It's going to take a couple of years of dedicated building to get all the nuances sorted and performing. They have the means, so I'm sure it will be amazing one day. Are people who have invested hugely on MSFS addons etc over the years able to use their aircraft/plugins etc on the new MSFS? I would be a little surprised if plugins would work as-is, but some backward compatibility would seem prudent.

The first quiz was a very nice combination - a bit of something for everyone. Flight sim related for sure - history, technical, flying skillz, even a bit of real life/sim, (ie which airports require an RNP approach (a,b,c,d)) etc. I think a bit of googling is good sometimes - a chance to learn something!

9/10 - guessed 1998 for first X-Plane. Good idea - a weekly quiz or crossword?

Quite a long time ago I wrote an app called OrthoMagix, which combines a set of orthos into one big ortho, then cuts it into tiles with associated .POL files. It then injects them into WED. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the GDAL toolkit at https://gdal.org/ . In particular, it uses the Windows binaries in the GISInternals project (http://www.gisinternals.com/) You may be able to find the tools you need there?

I find that if I want to fly x-plane in a night-time scenario, I need to do it in a darkened room so that my eyes adjust properly. Balancing screen for night flying in a normally lit room is a nightmare.