Hey Everyone. I am trying to get back into this crazy hobby and am looking for some pointer/tips etc.

I was wondering is it worth it to invest into the higher levels of MSFS or would the base level of the game be enough for enjoyable flights? I know it wont have the same eye candy with the additional airports, planes but is there decent freeware out there that can be downloaded that would make up for the missing eye candy? I will be looking into getting flytampa's cyyz once I have everything setup on my end.

I am also trying to finalize the graphics card I am looking to purchase. I've been looking at the Radeon 6700 card with 10 gb of memory. Would MSFS take advantage of the extra memory over the standard 8 GB that can be found on most cards?

Last question, I noticed that there isnt much in the way of aircraft on this VA's download page for MSFS as there is for the earlier versions of flight simulator. Is there not much selection of quality freeware out there at this time?

Thanks

Brett.

Hi Brett,

Welcome to the VA and apologies for the late reply.

Quite honestly the level of detail on the new MSFS is fantastic but if you ar on a budget and looking to get yourself started then FSX is still very doable and yes we have a number of liveries for the older aircraft out there.

Part 2 of your question is correct there is not as much freeware out there for the newer version but also it takes quite some time to get repaints of the fleet done on the newer version. MS does not exactly make it easy to simply go and paint aircraft and we have been lucky enough to have a talented fleet painter in the past who spent many hours doing the older fleet aircraft.

Cheers!

Hi Darryl

I was able to pick myself up an Amd XFX RX6700 video card over the weekend and got it installed in my computer. I do have FSX plus a few old addons that I had to dust off to take a look at to see how my computer handles it. FSX looks ok but obviously I want to get up to date with the new FS as the graphics etc just is so much further ahead of what FSX has.

I know the joys of painting aircraft being the former aircraft painter here at CVA but of course being out of the loop for such a long time basically has me back at learner status again. My old CVA number was CVA752.

Now to wait until payday to buy the new FS software.

Welcome back for sure!!!

Yes I hear you on the hardware side. The new FS was one of the main reasons i had upgraded my video card a while back. Currently I run the following for my main specs:

Intel I7-7700K
NVidia RTX 2060 Super (6 GB Card I think)
32 GB ram
Samsung 970SSD for FS storage

It runs pretty good with most of the settings on high or ultra so I'm happy. When the new FS first came out it was not so great but they've done a lot of work on the frame rates over time so things have gotten much better. Others on here can likely comment as well on their typical setup and how they find things.

Cheers!

Thanks for the wb. I was wondering if it is possible to get my old id back?

These are my specs of the computer i've been building

AMD Ryzen 7 5700x
32 GB ram
AMD RX 6700 10GB video card
500gb ssd dedicated to FS
several other drives for whatnot.

I'm not an AMD fanboy, I've just been trying to look at a cost to performance level. NVidea seems a little pricy for similarly capable videos cards.

Would there be much of a value to going with the premier deluxe version in order to get airports that I may not fly into much, although I would probably use the B787 if I got that version over the standard or deluxe versions of FS.

Unfortunately the old pilot ID's changed when we converted to the new platform so there is not a way to recover the old one. It was unfortunate but we didn't have a choice and so we all were assigned new ID's.

The CPU is a decent one for the AMD platform and if I remember correctly actually outperforms some of the intel processors of similar generation. That CPU is on part / better than my Intel I7-7700K I believe taking a quick look online for comparison. The memory you are fine on however I'd recommend the SSD if you have the option to make it a minimum 1 TB. The current MSFS is a MASSIVE data space hog! I have a 500 GB SSD a the moment and it's almost full and it is dedicated only for MSFS!

The video card looks to be decent as well in terms of speed (at least looks faster than my Nvidia 2060 card) but I've never used AMD for video before so not sure. on paper it looks good and you probably will be in good shape for MSFS with this rig setup! I'd be curious to know how the performance is once you get it running!

For the Deluxe vs Standard package trust me there is plenty of eye candy alone even in the standard version, some of the free airports, etc to keep you going for quite some time. If there is one or 2 specific airports you might want you can buy them individually. For me i bought the full deluxe package even though I rarely fly into those (or even fly nowadays LOL!) but that was me. You'll be fine with the standard for the cost difference.

Cheers!

So I got myself setup and installed the Standard version of MSFS and I am in awe of how much better it is graphically over FSX. Since I have been away from the sim its like starting fresh and without some easy to use turbo props its making things a little harder as I'd prefer to go from the turbo props to get my feet wet again. I was always a fan of the Dash's to learn on vs going into the big jets. I have downloaded our freeware airplane reprints so I'll have to give them a go. I do plan on getting that ATR at some point once I feel I'm a little more ready for the challenges of what that package brings. I will say that I HATE the camera angles and I still have to learn the drone... its on my to do list.

As for my rig. I think its doing ok. If I dont have the AI traffic loaded I am averaging about 45 fps on Ultra but do take a hit when I start up FSLTL and lose about 10 to 15 while on the ground in CYYZ. I will probably be trying to tweak things as I go to find that "sweet spot" in the settings without doing any overclocking.

The one thing I dont preticularily like is how this sim seems to be more "payware" oriented and not freeware. I'm sure it didnt take 3 years to get decent models of different aircraft into peoples hands in the last few versions of FS.

Hi Brett,

I agree with you. The default aircraft in MSFS 2020 was / is sub-par if you are looking for a more immersive experience. I had stuck with XP11 for a long time before shifting to MSFS. The only reason I went for the Premium Deluxe was because of the Citation Longitude which I had good reviews of. I mostly fly third party payware other than the longitude. Here are some of my preferred GA aircraft which I bought and have no complaints:

1. JustFlight Turbo Arrow III/IV
2. Simworks Studios Kodiak 100
3. Black Square Analog King Air 350
4. WB-SIM Cessna 172SP
5. Kitfox Speedster Series 7

Also install the mods from Working Title - they improve the experience a lot.

Indrajit

Hi Indrajitsg.

Well I had the joy of my first almost complete flight... Taxi fine, takeoff fine, cruise fine but then I realized the hard way that MSFS is much more advanced than the old FSX and FS98 days when it comes to landing. I wasnt expecting to have to have to worry about SID/STAR vectoring... Needless to say it wasnt a successful landing.

I'll probably be using the small jets so I can get my bearings on using the FMS systems as I am completely out of touch on using those.

Off to the youtube videos.

Cool! Then you would probably using the CJ4 which is a pretty decent aircraft with FMS (After the modifications from Working Title were incorporated). Also one more tool I can definitely recommend - that is Little Nav Map. Its a free and very sophisticated flight planning tool which I can't do without these days (since I don't subscribe to Navigraph all the year round). I find myself using Simbrief much less since I am not flying the big jets.

All the best on getting back on air!

PS: My next aircraft might possibly be the Milviz Cessna 310R

Regards,
Indrajit