Actually….it’s looking REAL Good! The updates from Microsoft over the past few weeks have been extraordinarily awesome. Just this week more news was made available to us regarding the Airbus A-320 and the Boeing 747-8i which will be just two of the default aircraft made available in the new simulator. You can read more about this here.
Video Killed the Radio Star
Yes, it’s time for one of my 80’s music references which I do tend to use from time to time and also time to interject my opinion. Remember, my opinion is just that. It’s my opinion! It belongs to me. We may or may not agree and that’s OK. I’ll respect you and your opinion and likewise, I hope you’ll do the same.
I’ve been discussing MSFS2020 on this blog site since the news first broke almost a year ago. As a matter of fact, this news surprised absolutely everyone in the flight sim community. No one saw this coming. At the time Microsoft made this announcement the FlightSimExpo in Orlando was taking place and before we learned about MSFS2020 the community had two clear (and mostly equal) platforms to saddle their horse to and of course I’m talking about Prepar3D and X-Plane. But should we begin planning the funeral of these two major players?
Rock You Like A Hurricane
I personally believe Microsoft learned a very valuable lesson from their “Flight” experience, or should I say fiasco from 8 years ago. I believe Microsoft knew in order to truly catch and captivate the attention of the flight sim community they needed to step up to the plate, swing and hit the ball out of the park. They did just this and they’ve kept hitting home runs since.
Is This Love?
The “Flight Fiasco” I mentioned earlier scarred the community. Many of us we were wondering what the heck was Microsoft thinking? I will also admit that I too was first skeptical about MSFS2020 when I learned MS also planned to make this available on the Xbox platform. But over time we’ve heard from add-on developers like PMDG, FSLabs and Aerosoft have plans to release add-on aircraft for the new platform. I’m sure others like A2A, TFDi, QualityWings etc. will follow suit.
Only time will tell exactly what the impact will be to both Prepar3D and X-Plane. After all, there are still a lot of FSX and even FS9 users in our community. I personally believe the impact won’t be known until we learn more about the pricing strategy with MSFS2020. Many (including myself) believe there most likely will be a base price cost along with a monthly subscription. As I’ve stated in previous postings about MSFS2020, the monthly subscription doesn’t scare me away pending it’s reasonable. Of course what is reasonable to me, may not be so to others. But as I’ve also pointed out before, I don’t expect any add-on from FSX –> P3Dv5.x to be made available for MSFS for free (as we’ve seen in the past). I believe any add-on developed for FSX –> P3Dv5.x will require a significant amount of re-development efforts to justify a fee of some kind. We’re even seeing some developers take this position with their P3Dv4.5 –> P3Dv5.x work. Anyway…..
Feels Like the First Time
While my journey from P3Dv4.x –> P3Dv5.x hasn’t required any hardware upgrades, I do remember the days where each time Microsoft released a new flight simulator I was always a day late and a dollar or three short when it came to hardware requirements. However, most who have built systems over the past few years and beefed them up should be OK when it comes to MSFS2020. After all, so much of the underlying code of even P3Dv5 is still built on the original FSX code. So I’m hopeful my hardware will allow MSFS2020 to perform even better than how my P3D versions are performing.
Final Thoughts
There’s still so much we really don’t know about the Microsoft Flight Simulator. While I’m not sure COVID-19 will play a part in the release schedule, I would estimate a late fall/early winter release to coincide with the 2020 Christmas holiday. As for everything else, I believe Microsoft will continue to release chunks of information over the next several months and build up the anticipation and hype.
Of course, much like my current experience with P3Dv5….after initial release of MSFS2020 I would anticipate it will be a few weeks (or even months) before study level aircraft are available and it be ready for VATSIM use. But I’m sure I’ll do exactly what everyone else will do within 5 minutes of install. That is to fire up the sim, load myself up near my closest airport (KAPA) and fly over my house. 
Until next time…
Happy Flying and be safe in all that you do.
Jerry