Microsoft flight simulator 2024 set up

[Judge]

My nephew became a private pilot by sheer force or will and love of flying. All my mother's fault when she gave him a free ticket to fly in a glider as a teenager.

Sadly however, so many barriers shot up over 9/11 restrictions he eventually gave up flying.

 

[Nitro]

I still have programs like "European Air War", "Red Baron 3D" and "IL-2: Sturmovik" as combat flight simulators, but in no way are they intended like MSFS to be like the real deal.

However sadly the versions I have were ported for Windows 98 and XP. Though IL-2 has been ported for use on current PC platforms through Steam. But these are intended for entertainment purposes only. Not true simulations by any stretch.

Though I still have fond memories of fun playing them all. Recalling my very first one, a DOS program from EA called "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat". Primitive looking for 1991, but I had a blast with it. Especially dogfighting with Korean War era jets F-86s and MiG15s.

I also had LucasArt's "Battle of Britain" and later "Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe", both fun but primitive DOS combat flight programs.

I still have my Gravis Blackhawk Joystick, but its proprietary port fits only an ancient Soundblaster Pro audio card. And my legacy computer running offline Windows XP no longer runs because of a dead power supply. Not many power supplies out there with Molex connectors now.

Ironically had I not ventured into these kind of programs early in the PC era, I probably would never have become a computer geek, as these programs required "tweaking" to run at a time when I knew very little about software, let alone hardware. Having to master "conventional memory" requirements steered me into a very different direction when it came to computer gaming in the 80s and 90s.

Got involved in my first MS sims during my windows over-clocking days just to get them to perform with less lag.

Some of my systems ran smoking hot...

 

[Judge]

Got involved in my first MS sims during my windows over-clocking days just to get them to perform with less lag.

Some of my systems ran smoking hot...

Indeed. I was forever chasing those required framerates to get the most out of my flight simulations. Which seldom happened as time and technology marched on.

But the experience helped me as a computer builder to be extremely aware of thermodynamics.

 

[grommet]

Your project is coming along nicely, Captain Grommet!

You are silly, you made me laugh. Now I picture myself with a captain's hat. I do want to put a place on the stand for Buzz to sit. He is already a pilot but I still think he will like being around flying.

 

[grommet]

I think you are talking to me.

So, tell me:

Has it been working right? The sim?

It has worked great. Problems at first and some small bugs like live traffic reports don't work and some button and keyboard functions do not work but I think they are fixing things quickly. It took terribly long to load at first but now it is pretty quick. Still a while but not 15-20 minutes any more.

My i7-12700KF, RTX 3070 Ti and 32Gb 3666MHz CL18 RAM surprised me. The game looks almost flawless. I thought it would be hard for my PC with FS 2024 but it seems perfect. I would like to get a faster PC but I spent all my money and cannot buy it now.

I dont actually have it yet, I basically put buying it aside for a bit after it had a very rough launch (if you didnt see that, basically it was HORRIBLY buggy right after launching).

I think most of the problems, the big ones, are worked out. It flies great and all the features are there. No crashes. It crashed a lot on Xbox, horrible but I am only playing on PC now and no real problems. I think you would love it.

If it seems to be working now though, I might go ahead and give it a go. If I can somehow squeeze more space out of this PC. Heck if I know how I'll do that.

I do not know your PC specs but I am guessing they are faster than mine and mine is doing great.

Also heyyyyyyyyy, you bought the same yoke I have.

Yay. I just started using it. It feels great but connection problems when I tried using a USB 3.0 extension cable. The PC would not recognize it. It did the Honeycomb throttle quadrant but not the yoke. I connected it directly and it works but now the lights on the throttle went out. Honeycomb will not write me back. I wrote them twice. The lights on the throttle look very good when they are on and they help me see things.

Though I dont have the same throttle unit, I've got a Logitech one. Not quite as good. But upgrading that aint happening any way until I have a working sim here.

Granted I also have to deal with the hard drive here, always out of space. Though, last time I said that I then found 100 GB on it somehow, so...

It is on 10Gb now. The old one was very large. This one they make you play in the cloud. Longer to load but you need very little storage.

 

[grommet]

I think you must be one of the best pilots ever to fly in the game. Those are amazing things you have done. It was fund hearing about your family history. My friend who got me the game and I am playing with was an amateur pilot and his brother is a professional who flies commercial and flew Army planes. He has lots of stories and he says FS is very accurate.

I see a lack of rudder pedals on your rig, something necessary for proper coordinated turns.

I use a wheelchair and cannot use rudder pedals. I have to find another way. If you think you can help please tell me.

Generally the throttle quatrants are mounted in the center of the panel so that both the pilot and co-pilot have access to them.

Yours is on the wrong side in favor of a location for your mouse.

They are in the right place. I need them on the left so I can use the mouse on my right, I do not bend as well on both sides.

That won't teach you how to fly properly since it is not how a real airplane is set up.

I will never fly a real plane. This is for fun so if I am having fun I will be fine. There is a very good motorcycle game called Ride 5, great realism. No one could learn to ride playing it. I was a good rider so I can imagine a lot in that game though the handicap they add to the joystick makes it too hard for me to play. Since I do not play it I am glad I got it on sale. Maybe one day I will be able to. I do not like and do not understand the delay all games add to the joystick movement. It makes no sense to me but I have to adapt.

Not sure what is available now since I lost interest in it and never moved forward.

I did not know about the version you talked about. The 2024 version is sold in levels, I do not remember how many. My friend bought $200 version with every aircraft and feature and bought it for me too. I have spent so much money on the desk to hold everything, cables and the Honeycomb throttle quadrant and yoke. My friend said he has spent more than $3,000, he also paid for online flying lessons. Right now he is practicing inputing flight routes into the MFD. He is also doing a lot with autopilot. I am just starting and trying to get the keyboard and controls mapped. Right now I have no braking and cannot change views from cockpit to exterior easily. Today I continued working on the desk. I cut out the section of the perimeter frame on the floor near me so I can get my chair in. I also moved my PC so I can use controls with USB extensions, which did not work, I cable managed them and I am pretty sore.

I am making myself remember I do this for fun so if I keep having fun it is okay.

One of the things I was working on was a rig that involved multiple monitors so I could simply turn my head to see what was going on around me as you would in real flight.

I would love that but I have a great place to live but in an apartment. I do not have a separate room for FS or I would do that.

MS never made that an option back then, and I have no further interest in working with the latest version of it.

I think companies are working on selling feedback controls, people want that. Virpil is coming out in May with their yoke. That is what I wanted but I could not wait until then. If I did get it my friend says he would buy my Honeywell. What Virpil makes is incredible. They make metal replicas joysticks that weigh 9lbs so I think their yoke might be amazing but I really like the Honeycomb I have now.

 

[grommet]

Indeed. I was forever chasing those required framerates to get the most out of my flight simulations. Which seldom happened as time and technology marched on.

But the experience helped me as a computer builder to be extremely aware of thermodynamics.

The Nvidia RTX 5090 has been announced at CES and it is being reviewed. I could never pay $2,000 for a graphics card but the frame rates are triple of anything before in some games.

 

[Misery]

Microsoft flight simulators are not video games in any way.

It's been interesting watching the community talk about this part, everyone seems to have a different opinion on whether it's a game, or a sim. And by "talk" I mean "yell at each other".

Like, the devs went in a wildly different direction with this new sim from what it used to be, back with 2020 and earlier. There's all the usual flight sim stuff and whatnot (duh), but now there's also stuff like the racing modes, landing challenges, all with leaderboards, the career mode where you go and earn things like licenses and buy aircraft and do other things, or the bit I'm personally looking forward to the most, the photography mode. You can even land and get out of the plane/whatever and walk around. There's photography challenges to do and whatnot.

And of course there'll likely be events.

At the same time though the underlying sim is still what you'd expect.

Overall though, their idea was to make the whole thing a lot more approachable for people who were new to it, something that the 2020 version was not good at. And something that the versions before that were DEFINITELY not good at.

I still remember this from when I was a kid:

Good grief I looked it up and this version (3.0) only took up 370 KB.

But yeah, remember playing this one, it DEFINITELY had no "game" elements. Had a big awkward manual though. Honestly I kinda miss big awkward manuals, they were part of the experience with software like this. With nobody to teach me anything I could never land anything. But it was still a good time. Even if the computer always felt like it was on the verge of exploding while running it.

I would like to get a faster PC but I spent all my money and cannot buy it now.

Honestly, you'd eventually hit a point of diminishing returns.

Like, I was actually going to consider an upgrade myself... I'm running an RTX 3090, i9-12700k, some unknown amount of RAM and other things I'm too lazy to look up, and I'd had the thought of upgrading to a 4090 or something. But it actually would have zero effect on any games at all. Obviously I play games on it but it's actually built as a workstation PC, everything was chosen for fractal rendering (which is really, REALLY draining and intensive). I think when I start messing with animating stuff, I might upgrade, because right now animation rendering takes like 5 billion zillion years. But for games and whatnot? Wouldnt do anything whatsoever (that I could actually perceive). Everything already runs flawlessly.

The sim might prove to be an exception to that I suppose, wont know till I try it. But even that, an upgrade would only do so much (probably). The jump from my previous PC to this one was pretty big, but each jump seems less impactful than the last.

That's just my thoughts on it though. Listen to the community talk (scream) about it and you'll get all sorts of different opinions on specs and whatnot.

I think most of the problems, the big ones, are worked out. It flies great and all the features are there. No crashes. It crashed a lot on Xbox, horrible but I am only playing on PC now and no real problems. I think you would love it.

Ah, yeah, I'd heard the Xbox version had "issues", so to speak.

It is on 10Gb now. The old one was very large. This one they make you play in the cloud. Longer to load but you need very little storage.

Ah! That's right! I forgot about that! It doesnt need to eat half the hard drive and then complain about needing more! Granted that also means it wont be playable if the internet goes out, but... if it eats more drive space than I have, it wont be playable period, so...


On a side note, your setup in your photos is really nice. I'm stuck with this:

No way to set anything up permanently, I have to move the yoke and such every single time, and it's kinda heavy. Bit of a problem, actually, as I have trouble lifting stuff.

 

[Judge]

Honestly, you'd eventually hit a point of diminishing returns.

Well said. Reminds me of seeing a recent YouTube presentation on "Jayztwocents". In discussing the advent of Nvidia "5" series video cards, he points out the escalation of what's been happening in game development for decades now. How developers and manufacturers continue to up the system requirements to promote endless software and hardware sales.

Where a lot of people like myself reach exactly such a point. Where it begins to seem like a "wild goose chase" just to keep up with the latest products hitting the market.

And of course, astute techies are already all over Nvidia for selling some "5" series cards that produce specs that are no better than some of the "4" series cards. Same old nonsense. Whatever it takes to get gamers to upgrade their hardware....even when it works just fine in most cases with many other games.

Unless of course you have money to burn. Which if the case, forget everything I just wrote.

 

[Nitro]

It's been interesting watching the community talk about this part, everyone seems to have a different opinion on whether it's a game, or a sim. And by "talk" I mean "yell at each other".

Like, the devs went in a wildly different direction with this new sim from what it used to be, back with 2020 and earlier. There's all the usual flight sim stuff and whatnot (duh), but now there's also stuff like the racing modes, landing challenges, all with leaderboards, the career mode where you go and earn things like licenses and buy aircraft and do other things, or the bit I'm personally looking forward to the most, the photography mode. You can even land and get out of the plane/whatever and walk around. There's photography challenges to do and whatnot.

And of course there'll likely be events.

At the same time though the underlying sim is still what you'd expect.

Overall though, their idea was to make the whole thing a lot more approachable for people who were new to it, something that the 2020 version was not good at. And something that the versions before that were DEFINITELY not good at.

I still remember this from when I was a kid:

View attachment 138911

Good grief I looked it up and this version (3.0) only took up 370 KB.

But yeah, remember playing this one, it DEFINITELY had no "game" elements. Had a big awkward manual though. Honestly I kinda miss big awkward manuals, they were part of the experience with software like this. With nobody to teach me anything I could never land anything. But it was still a good time. Even if the computer always felt like it was on the verge of exploding while running it.



Honestly, you'd eventually hit a point of diminishing returns.

Like, I was actually going to consider an upgrade myself... I'm running an RTX 3090, i9-12700k, some unknown amount of RAM and other things I'm too lazy to look up, and I'd had the thought of upgrading to a 4090 or something. But it actually would have zero effect on any games at all. Obviously I play games on it but it's actually built as a workstation PC, everything was chosen for fractal rendering (which is really, REALLY draining and intensive). I think when I start messing with animating stuff, I might upgrade, because right now animation rendering takes like 5 billion zillion years. But for games and whatnot? Wouldnt do anything whatsoever (that I could actually perceive). Everything already runs flawlessly.

The sim might prove to be an exception to that I suppose, wont know till I try it. But even that, an upgrade would only do so much (probably). The jump from my previous PC to this one was pretty big, but each jump seems less impactful than the last.

That's just my thoughts on it though. Listen to the community talk (scream) about it and you'll get all sorts of different opinions on specs and whatnot.



Ah, yeah, I'd heard the Xbox version had "issues", so to speak.



Ah! That's right! I forgot about that! It doesnt need to eat half the hard drive and then complain about needing more! Granted that also means it wont be playable if the internet goes out, but... if it eats more drive space than I have, it wont be playable period, so...


On a side note, your setup in your photos is really nice. I'm stuck with this:

View attachment 138912

No way to set anything up permanently, I have to move the yoke and such every single time, and it's kinda heavy. Bit of a problem, actually, as I have trouble lifting stuff.

Online communities can argue all they want.

To me a game is something you can gain or lose points.
There are skill levels in a game where you advance to the next level or remain at the same level until you pass muster.

I suppose if you want to argue that the points you score during a session are the ones you need to stay alive, then I suppose they have a strong arguement.


For arguement's sake there is a ton of difference between firing a real weapon and scoring points with one in a game, so there is my arguement that there is an actual difference without all the screaming.

 

[Misery]

Well said. Reminds me of seeing a recent YouTube presentation on "Jayztwocents". In discussing the advent of Nvidia "5" series video cards, he points out the escalation of what's been happening in game development for decades now. How developers and manufacturers continue to up the system requirements to promote endless software and hardware sales.

Where a lot of people like myself reach exactly such a point. Where it begins to seem like a "wild goose chase" just to keep up with the latest products hitting the market.

And of course, astute techies are already all over Nvidia for selling some "5" series cards that produce specs that are no better than some of the "4" series cards. Same old nonsense. Whatever it takes to get gamers to upgrade their hardware....even when it works just fine in most cases with many other games.

Unless of course you have money to burn. Which if the case, forget everything I just wrote.

The specs for AAA games bit is so freaking weird to me.

My way of dealing with upgrades and such has always been the same since I was a kid: I upgrade once I actually witness the current machine not only hit its limit, but get to a point where something is trying to push it past that. My current PC was bought after, on the previous PC, I had 8 hours of "oh god the keyboard is freaking out" during a fractal render (that's for ONE image, mind you, just one, it's that green metal tangle thing I've shown off before); that machine had hit and was being pushed past it's limit to the point where not a single thing was working right until it was done choking on itself (and I didnt dare touch it that whole time). That, to me, seems like a logical time to be like "huh. Might need a little more power".

But I watch gamers, specifically those who are really into AAA games, and they're often like "OH NOES!!!!11! I'm only getting 100 FPS instead of 300 FPS while playing Call of Halos or whatever! I NEED A NEW PC!"

Whereas I'm sitting here playing something like Path of Exile 2 (which is gorgeous), and as long as I cant directly perceive the FPS, it's clearly running quite well. I mean really I cant tell the freaking difference between, I dunno, 70fps and 200, so I've no reason to care. The game is running all maxed out, it's buttery smooth, what the heck else do I need? I dont even look at the specs for games before buying them anymore, because heck with it. And even if I ran into something that, god forbid, dipped down to 50 FPS, well... okay? I'm not sure why I should care.

And then there's other things, like Diablo 4, which is at the very high end of AAA graphics, but it will run on a freaking Xbox? And I'm supposed to believe that I need to upgrade my PC to play it if I wanted to play the PC version? Yeah I aint buying that one.

I know I've rambled about all this before but the bizarre rush to spend thousands on new hardware just "because numbers" for games is so bloody weird to me.

Though there is an argument to be made for VR, which is a bit different. FPS below a certain limit in VR can be a quick path towards having a concussion.