For serious IFR-practice you need to wait for the addon-acft.
I have no personal experience as I’m on Mac, but in our club several people have tried FS2020. The general verdict is – nice toy, unusable for IR or any other training, more of a game than anything else. Only useful thing might be to ‘fly’ into airports you’ve never been to, but then again you can do that in the top version of FF or simply in Google Earth. They’ve all switched back to X-Plane.
172driver wrote:
I have no personal experience as I’m on Mac, but in our club several people have tried FS2020. The general verdict is – nice toy, unusable for IR or any other training, more of a game than anything else. Only useful thing might be to ‘fly’ into airports you’ve never been to, but then again you can do that in the top version of FF or simply in Google Earth. They’ve all switched back to X-Plane.
This appears to be the dividing line – what does the individual want to do with the simulator? Simulate IFR then X-Plane seems to be the way to go. If it’s VFR flying, then FS2020. What I’m also seeing is that people are slightly put off by the hardware requirements and thus sticking with x-plane but speaking for myself, I’m sticking with FS 2020 because I can easily navigate via local landmarks. I’ve noted there are a few issues but with all new releases, you’d expect the same….
I’ve completed my PC upgrade, here’s a pic showing what can be achieved – this is my home town, pretty accurate too; I can see my parents house easily….
with clear skies, running ultra settings on a resolution of 2560 × 1440, I’m seeing 47 FPS (Ryzen 3700x, RTX 2070, 32GB DDR4-3200 RAM, 1TB SSD) but as clouds can impact the system, here another when flying in weather – here it will drop to around 36 (but still usable).
I’m now eagerly awaiting the VR update because the resolution for each eye is 1440 × 1600 so 2880 × 1600 in total – with pics like the above, it should be breathtaking….
I am awaiting delivery of FS2020. A clever-clogs teenager I know, has already downloaded a pirate version but I want the discs. If I have problems in the future, which is for sure ,I want the discs to re-install.
I am still using FS2004! Never got on with FSX. I find FS2004 Ok for instrument approaches. Tried X-Plane a couple times but maybe my PC hardware was not as required, as the whole thing took too long to load.
I am in the hands of Amazon!
Propman wrote:
I am awaiting delivery of FS2020. A clever-clogs teenager I know, has already downloaded a pirate version but I want the discs. If I have problems in the future, which is for sure ,I want the discs to re-install.
I am still using FS2004! Never got on with FSX. I find FS2004 Ok for instrument approaches. Tried X-Plane a couple times but maybe my PC hardware was not as required, as the whole thing took too long to load.
I am in the hands of Amazon!
Bearing in mind the setup is anywhere between 97 and 127 GB, how many DVDs will you get? How long will you sit there, waiting for the message ‘please insert Disk 22’…..
I’d prefer to just download it overnight……
To test MSFS 2020, one can download and use it using the £1 Xbox Game Pass: https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-game-pass/pc-games?xr=shellnav
No PC that still accepts disks can run FS2020 
wbardorf wrote:
To test MSFS 2020, one can download and use it using the £1 Xbox Game Pass: https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-game-pass/pc-games?xr=shellnav
This is what I have done for testing, I’m still not sure to buy it afterward,, but for 1€ 1 months this is nice try.
What is a good simulator program for a LAPTOP?
A friend of mine is looking for this. The laptop is a Dell XPS 13 (i5) so fairly high-end as laptops go.
He is a ATP/CFII and wants to do both VFR and IFR.
As long as you accept graphics worthy of 1999 (which is fine for IFR) Xplane should work, and the good thing is he can download it and try it for free.
The key element is actually not the processor but the GPU, especially the memory.
