Contents and Latest News

June 2019 Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios and video game developer Asobo Studio announced their partnership to work on a new installment of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

As an enthusiast I follow the news on the new MSFS. The amount of information is rapidly growing and lately I often asked myself “Wait, where had I seen this?” or “Where have I read that?”. To cope with this memory loss I collected the core pieces of information and gathered them all in one place, easy to find.

Feel free to comment, add new content and share answers to unresolved questions to make this THE source of information for MFS.

Note: Links to pages inside the Microsoft Flight Simulator website will only work when you have created an ‘Insider’ account and when you are logged in.

RELEASE DATE: August 18 2020.
Prices … have a look at the Pricing page for more details:
Standard: $60 / Deluxe: $90 / Premium: $120
Where to buy: Microsoft or Steam.
There also are ‘in app purchases’ in the menu ‘Marketplace’.
In Europe MFS will also be available in a boxed version, 10 DVDs with a booklet.
Word is though that you need to insert the DVD to be able to play.

Latest updates on the MSF official site:
September 03, 2020: Patch 1
August 27, 2020: Announcement of patch to solve download and install issues
August 20, 2020: Bing Maps and Around the World Tour Episode #1.
August 17, 2020: MFS IS LIVE!!!!
August 13, 2020: Interview with the developers

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ISSUES AND BUGS: invitation to POST THEM HERE.

Microsoft Flight Simulator known issues and work around / solution.
AVSIM forum: Tips & Tricks thread.

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CONTENTS / FAQ / WIKI:

Addons / PMDG / ORBX / SDK
Air Traffic / AI / FlightAware
Airports / Ground Handling
Asobo Studio
Bing Maps / Scenery
Development Roadmap
Development Updates (links to the latest 10)
Feature Discovery Series Videos
Feedback Snapshot
Flight Model / Plane Behavior
Frame rates / 4K / 1440 / 1080 / UtraWide
Hardware Requirements
Image Gallery
Internet / Streaming
Home Cockpit / Interface
Liveries / User Editing
Living Planet /Animals
Multiple monitors
Navigation Data / Charts / NavBlue
Partnerships
Planes (confirmed)
Planning / Release Date / Roadmap / Feedback
Pre Order and Installation
Pricing
Runway Slopes / Undulations
Rail Traffic / Trains
Road Traffic / Cars
Trees / Size / Shape / Color
Videos
VR
Water Traffic / Boats / Ships
Websites / Links / Articles
Weather / Seasons

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Flight Model / Plane Behavior

In Feature Discovery Series 3 about Flight Dynamics Asobo mentioned they use a new model that continuously calculates airflow and the resulting forces on 1000 surfaces all over the airplane.

When a larger stream of videos came available on YouTube when the beta test period started June 30 2020 it could be seen that some airplane’s behavior look like they have too little inertia, they are too shaky, as if they are RC planes.

There’s a long thread about the subject on AVSim, and also a shorter one where it was mentioned that a French blog moderator and MSFS tester found out that this new flight model is not in use yet … more info after August 18.

(Translated from French to English by Deepl.)

I’ve just browsed through the latest SDK (0.4.1.0) where the doc part has been deepened: it’s edifying.

The model based on more than 1000 points that we were presented during this promotion campaign only exists for the moment… on paper. Variables for the future have been created, empty for the moment, nothing has been used yet.
For all those who have already modified a plane under FSX, you only have to read this doc to get a precise idea of what is in this simulator.

I’m not saying that in 10 years, it will not have evolved but at the moment apart from a breakdown of the data used in the FSX flight model (model based on the aircraft.cfg file and the .air file of the aircraft) in editable files that’s all that has been modified compared to FSX/P3D. I even found a redirection to … the ESP v1.0 file from FSX, to say the least.

From the 18th, I’ll make a specific post on the subject.

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Pre Order and Installation

Microsoft Flight Simulator for PC can be pre-ordered as of now.

It’ll also be available via XBox game pass for PC.

Here’s the official Microsoft pre-order FAQ.

It’ll also be available for Xbox, a release date for this has yet to be set.

In Europe MSFS is also available as a DVD box which contains 10 double density DVDs and a hard cover booklet that a.o. shows the included planes. A drawback is that word is the DVD must be present to start and run the sim.

How to install MSFS in a specific folder is described here.

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Issues and Bugs: Post them here

Now that more and more videos come available, more and more eyes do not only see the sheers beauty that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 has to offer, but we also probably see flaws and room for improvement. Even more so after the release at August 18, 2020 when thousands of people start to use MSFS.

I invite everyone to post here the things they came across that the software team should look into.

It helps a lot if we add a classification to the issues:
Critical: any issue that make flying the sim impossible or makes the system hang.
Major: a function that does not work or work well.
Minor: something is annoying, but it does not stop us from flying.
Cosmetic: a flaw in the visual representation.
Change Request: an idea to do things in a (much) more convenient way.
Feature Request: a function that is missing and that would be nice to have.

Let me start off by adding a cosmetic issue that I found somewhat of an immersion killer: the sometimes laughable road traffic. See the comment below.

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Living Planet / Animals

A flight sim of course first and for all should fly realistic and the scenery should look good. Besides that, “Immersion” is a term also widely heard. VR enthusiasts know all about that, but also without VR Microsoft / Asobo intend to immerse us in a ‘living planet’.

In the interview Jörg Neumann, Asobo Project Leader, had with Der Standard, November 2019 (in German), it was said like this: “Wir wollen den Planeten richtig machen”.

Attempts will be made to present us with all kinds of details, trees, a lot of trees, cars, maybe trains, ships, airport activity and crew, and even animals.

The flock of flamingos we’ve all seen … and there were more examples in released videos:
Dynamic Airport Crew
Elephants
Giraffe

August 2020 this video on the subject was posted on YouTube:

Thanks go to Bram Stikkel for the detective work.

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The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Frame rates / Stutters / 4K / 1440 / 1080 / UtraWide

Will I get 4k / 60fps? Well … since the release of MSF August 18 2020 there are mixed signals on FPS, but this much is clear … with a 4K monitor 15 – 30 FPS are more realistic values than 60.

MFS is not a first person shooter, it doesn’t need high FPS to look fabulous. FPS values around 30 will give very satisfying results. How much FPS you get on your system highly depends on three parameters: the CPU and GPU processing power you throw at it and the pixel size of your monitor.

Several well known hardware review sites have performed benchmarks, like:
Toms Hardware / TechSpot / Guru3D / PCGamesHardware (German).

There’s info on how to tune the settings for optimal results. Consensus seems to be that putting the game preset on high and then tune just a couple of parameters to Ultra, like terrain and building details, and maybe tune back the rendering detail to 80 or 90 (in stead of 100) renders a good visual result with pleasant FPS. Here’s a site that gives comparisons of all the possible settings and also lists the ‘cost’ in FPS: Game Debate: MFS settings.

Alas many people experience stutters, micro-stutters or sometimes longer hickups. Many attempta have been undertaken to reduce these stutters. The success of these tips seem to vary, but who knows one or more may help in your individual case:
– 50 ways to reduce stutter … or not.
– Reduce glass cockpit rendering frequency
– Process Lasso for MFS 2020

nVidia supports DX12 with ray tracing, but will MSFS? The current consensus is: not yet. MSFS runs on DX11. DX12 with ray tracing may or may not be introduced some day, but anyhow, it’ll be later.

What size of monitor to choose? The table below is a relative comparison between different monitors. If you get 100 fps with full HD, these are the roughly estimated frame rates for higher resolutions:

H pixels	V pixels	Name	FPS
1920	1080	FHD	100
2560	1440	QHD	66
3440	1440	WQHD	53
3840	2160	UHD	37

Estimeted Frames Per Second for Different Monitor Sizes (FHD = 100)

An Ultra wide monitor could very well be the sweet spot. The 1440 vertical pixels get you finer detail than full HD and it is doubtful if 4k would make a hell of a difference, unless you use a very large monitor, say more than 34″, while the cost will be you get half the frame rates. Use a second monitor, FHD, below the ultrawide to show the instrument panel and you might have the ideal setup.

This is a video on monitor sizes. Yes, it’s from the competition … but it’s an OK video.

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The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Internet / Streaming

We’ll probably need an internet connection for starters to download the MSFS program, it’s highly probable it won’t come on hardware media. Well … who doesn’t have an internet connection nowadays? Most of us do … but not all connections have high speed.

For the initial download this is not really an issue, just have it work overnight to crank in those tens of Gbytes. But when you run the sim, it’s also advisable to have an internet connection … and … the higher the available speed, the higher the scenery details will be.

From what is known so far, there are three modes of operation:

1. Without internet. Yes, the sim can run without internet and there will be scenery available, and which from the sparse pieces of info on this it doesn’t even look bad.
2. Cached Scenery. When you have a flight plan, it is possible to download the scenery needed to fly this plan and cache it to disk. No internet connection is needed while flying.
3. Internet available. See the table below on the advised speed. Scenery streams to the PC while flying. The sim continuously adapts its level of detail to the connection speed available. Also, while flying the streamed scenery is cached, such that flying a next time over the same area no scenery needs to be streamed again. You can adjust the % of disk space you want to make available for this caching.

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Home Cockpit / Interface

Many flight simmers not only have a joystick and/or HOTAS and/or yoke and/or rudder pedals, many also have invested, or plan to do so, in additional hardware for cockpit instruments, some even up to imitating a complete airliner cockpit at home. MSFS does not leave the home cockpit owners in the dark.

In the ‘Feature Discovery Series’ video 4 on Cockpits scroll to 3:10, multiple monitors are mentioned there, as well as support for home cockpits, with even more variables than currently available.

Will the new MSFS support FSUIPC? Or will Microsoft make it even simpler, and have a data transfer available to read and write many or all of the sim’s parameters, compatible with FSUIPC to keep all existing installations working? Many people use Mobiflight or Link2FSMulti to interface with their flight sim, which both are dependent on FSUIPC, but it’s probably these apps will be modified if needed.

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Multiple Monitors

A frequently used setup is to have the scenery on a large monitor, or on multiple monitors, or on an UltraWideScreen monitor and then have the instrument panel on a separate monitor.

At the time of writing (July 2020) not much is known about MSFS’s capabilities to support multiple monitors. But it is almost unimaginable the sim would not be capable of this.

In the ‘Feature Discovery Series’ video 4 on Cockpits scroll to 3:10, multiple monitors are mentioned there, as well as support for home cockpits, with even more variables than currently available. Whether this will be via FSUIPC or directly from MSFS is not yet clear.

So that’s hopeful …

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Liveries / User Editing

OK, so we do know that there will be AI traffic based on real time data acquired via the partnership with FlightAware.

The discussion on the forums now is: what type of planes will be shown? And with what livery?

Will there be a range of 3D models of airplanes that we will see flying around? Will hobbyists be able to create their own liveries? One thing we know … there was an Airbus with Iberia livery in the July 13 launch video.

Click the image to enlarge.

If and how hobbyists will be ably to add scenery, airport buildings, and what have you … there’s not much information about that yet, although July 2020 this article appeared on WinFuture … not sure how legit it is.

Other questions that have been asked about the possibility of User Editing, if it will be available:

• Can this be used to “edit” the default airports, ie add ground clutter, new buildings etc?
• Can it be used to “paint” excludes, eg to exclude trees on approach?
• Can it be used to “paint” areas with new tree/vegetation types?
• Is it a “layer” concept like in FSX/P3D whereby layers of higher precedence override the lower layers?
• Will there be a “repository” (the MSFS “Marketplace”?) of custom scenery that users can share and download?
• Is there a global configuration file whereby a scaling factor can be applied to different tree types?

At the time of writing (July 2020) no one knows.

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki

Road Traffic / Cars

There has not been much car traffic so far, but yes, it’s there. Several MSFS videos show car traffic, for instance scroll to 10:45 in this 4k video and you’ll see some cars.

Whether in future MSFS might even take into account how busy it is on certain roads, data that is available in Bing Maps, remains to be seen.

Anyhow … this is what Jörg Neumann, Project Leader at Asobo, said in the November 2019 interview in Austrian newspaper Der Standard:
“We also collect data from ships and want to take trains and animals into account. We want to make the planet right!”
… and …
“The planet is simply more interesting with life. We are currently also working on trains and ships.”

Click the image to enlarge.

The Unofficial Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 FAQ / Wiki