31 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
2
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 155.1 hrs on record (42.1 hrs at review time)
Posted: 2 Sep, 2020 @ 1:57pm

A very polished and well-made simulator. Not sure if it is 'next-gen' because I haven't played any current-gen flight games, but the graphics do look phenomenal.

Now, many of the negative reviews here have to do with the performance. I'm running it on a 2080 and Ryzen 7 2700 on a 3440x1440 monitor, and I never had any game-breaking problems whatsoever aside from minor stuttering when loading big airports. Sure, the frame rate is pretty low (50-60 mid-flight, 20-30 in big cities and airports), but you have to know this is one of those games that doesn't really require a high FPS because most scenes are pretty static and not particularly motion-intense. The game is perfectly enjoyable for me at 30 FPS or even lower. So, my advice, turn off the FPS counter and just enjoy the beautiful sceneries.

"Is the world as detailed as the game advertised?" is another question you might ask. In general, yes. But really, it depends. Some parts of the world are stunningly beautiful and realistic whereas others are less impressive. Certain localities, for example some major cities, famous attractions, landmarks, etc, are clearly handcrafted and manually modelled, and when you fly over them it's truly amazing. Other places are, however, more generic and simply generated from satellite images. Can you see you house? I couldn't...Well, I could see a house at that location, but it was not my house but just a generic 3D house model. Another example, if you go to the Giza Pyramids and land right next to it, you can see it's highly-detailed to the point even individual bricks are 3D modelled, but right next to it the buildings of Cairo are really low-quality. Also, the game covers the entire world, so there certainly are graphic bugs and such. The other day I was flying over London, and saw half of the parliament building submerged in the Thames river.

As a complete noob in flight sim, I can't say much about how good the simulation side of the game is. I haven't flown any of the big airliners yet, but I've been flying the Cessna Grand Caravan for quite some time, and I think I'm managing it pretty well. One thing I do want to bring up is that the in-game tutorial is garbage. It teaches you things that you don't need a tutorial for, such as how to turn left and right and up and down, and how to increase and decrease speed. I mean...come on. I spent a lot of time doing research on my own, reading manuals, asking questions in the forum to figure out things like autopilot, mixture control, IFR flying, approach mode, radio configuration and all that, which the tutorial touches nothing on.

This is a pure 'simulator' so there is no game in this unlike, say, Euro Truck Simulator series where there is a progression system and a career mode. There are some activities like landing challenges, but otherwise you just make you own flight plan and fly, basically.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with FS 2020, definitely worth the price in my opinion.
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1 Comments
fruity_hippo 6 Oct, 2020 @ 8:47am 
do you play it on mouse and keyboard?