Clearly, the question of whether to MSFS or whether to not MSFS is a "to each his own" situation, but there are a couple of things I struggle to understand. First; why does this have to be such a polarizing, all or none thing for some? Second; why does every post about a simple thing have to turn into yet another ad nauseum discussion about why MSFS is complete crap and there's nothing good about it?
There have always been and there will always be different levels of flight simulation, so I think the "game vs. simulator" thing is ridiculous. We've seen Second World War pictures of JAF pilots in stick and rudder boxes, I've actually flown a Link Trainer in Air Cadets (look it up if you're not old enough to remember...
), I've flown no-visual twin simulators during Multi-IFR training, the first jet simulator I flew was the Jet Commander, which was a no-visual, no-motion simulator and I've flown early generation full motion Westwind and Citation simulators with monochrome visuals for windshield only. Guess what the common characteristic of all those simulators was? Literally NONE of them flew exactly like "a" real airplane or "the" real airplane.
It all brings back a conversation I was privy to during my first sessions in the full motion Westwind simulator at Flight Safety, Wilmington. Our block-headed Chief Pilot got into a "discussion" with the sim instructor about how our Westwind 1123 with turbo jet power flew differently than the the turbo fan Westwind 1124 modelled in the simulator (exact same airframe btw...a much longer discussion than it should have been
). That discussion led into one about how the simulator does not fly like the airplane regardless, to which the instructor replied that, "Yes, the simulator does not fly "exactly" like your airplane. Just as different models of the same airplane may not fly exactly like another, so the simulator may differ in some respects. It is your job as the Captain to figure that out and deal with it." Made sense to me......
The bottom line is that this discussion was had 40 years ago inside a multi-million dollar simulator...MSFS Standard is still below $100 USD last time I looked, it is only 9 months old and there are scads of free and very effective upgrades available to improve the experience. I'm thinking if you can't find something to like in MSFS, then maybe you just don't have enough imagination...
By the way, the idea that all MSFS airplanes are crap is also ridiculous. I am having a blast with a few of them and I almost hate to even pull this card, but please note that the most experienced instructor we have here on this forum, in the person of Dudley Henriquez, has apparently been primarily flying MSFS for a few months now...with nary a peep about how bad the sim is...just sayin'...
Cheers,
Rob
EDIT: was typing this while the previous four posts were in progress...