Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 - FS2024
This will show the pros and cons of the simulator and how to accomplish tasks most often found to be hard to accomplish by new players.
Note: this is written for the PC game players and not for XBOX users.
Removing chocks, engine covers, (pitot) air speed indicator covers correctly
Aircraft A330-RR used and should work on all the aircraft.
This guide is not about running down a flight sim. It's about disclosing the pros and cons of each which, hopefully, aids you into making an informed decision without losing a lot of money as done by me.
These are the steps for how to remove the wheel covers, remove chocks, remove engine covers and the pilots (Airspeed indicator covers). Finally, enter the aircraft and quick start the engines.
To move around the aircraft use the WASD keys on the keyboard. Right click your mouse to allow your left mouse click to work. Failing to right click first will not allow you to click later.
How to see other players in your flights in FS2024 answered
I searched the so called A.I. on Bing, Google and duckduckgo and all three proved they are not even close to Artificial intelligence. They have a long way to go and claiming to be A.I. is the fakest statment I have seen this century.
A human will always be smarter than an A.I. and I know why. Humans can think outside the box, tinker, not be swayed by google adds, have emotion, and far greater intelligence. OKay A.I. will think faster than a human but will never match our intelligence.
So here it is: This is how you are able to see other game players in FS2024 and they will be able to see you.
I hope this helps. Stop your dependance on A.I. to find the answers to your questions. (It's) are a long way from being intelligent and influenced by top rated sites and Google adds to provide your answers. Top listed sites are often very wrong and fail to provide answers you want. dig deep into search results and you will find real intelligent answers to your questions from a human, not a fake A.I. Most acurate information come from page 2,3 4 and beyond as they don't usually have Google adds ;)
Here are some screen shots for you
Click on 'Flight Conditions' as shown:
Make sure In live weather and time you have a tick in 'LIVE'
Now in multiplayer where I have circled it you select either 'LIVE' or "All Players'
Provided you have live weather active and don't accelerate time you will see other players and they will see you!
Don't worry about activating LIVE air traffic. It's pretty dumb (D.A.I for dumb A.I.) like in FS 2020 and if you are into ATC IFR flights it will spoil your flight. TIP: If ATC tells you to decent to say 6000 and you are still 200NM from aiport respond OK but don't decend as that is far too early to decent. In an A320 at 38,000 you should not commence decend before 120nm from the runway!!! Ignoring the decent in 2024 will not have ATC nag you as was done in FS2020. Golden rule of thumb with the ATC D.A.I. (Dumb inteligance) is to ignore any stupid directions it gives you on the decent.
Comparing X-Plane 12 with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 - FS2024
I flew the X-PLANE 12 for around 4 months and gave up early April this year due to a number of factors and, returned to the Microsoft Flight Simulator (FS2024). From personal experience as a user of the simulators I rate the Microsoft Flight Simulator as far more superior than the competitor. I should point out I am a user of the sims and I am not employed by any company, business, or have associations with any magazines or review forums. Hence, no momentary gain making for a honest, none biased comparison of the two flight simulators.
Here are the pros and cons of both
Although x-plane cost less, you have to pay around 9 euro monthly subscription to Sim brief to obtain the latest AIRAC data for the MCDU (FMS) as x-plane provides you with one that is 3 years out of date. The FMS is the, flight management system. X-plane had never updated the AIRAC while I played the sim. You also have to obtain special software to install and maintain the AIRAC in the X-PLANE MCDU (FMS). This would prove a complicated process for some users. Without the AIRAC updates the MCDU (FMS) will nag you and your flight experience will be less enjoyable, more so frustrating.
Microsoft / Osobo's FS2024 provides you with the latest AIRAC and updates the FMS, flight management system for you, without you obtaining third party software or paying a monthly subscription for the updated data. FS2024 takes care of maintaining the MCDU (FMS) for you without obtaining third party software. Unlike X-Plane 12 you don't pay monthly subscription to Microsoft for the AIRAC update. If you don't know what the AIRAC data is than I'll briefly explain it contains all of the current way point data, in short, navigation data used by aircraft to navigate the world.
In a nut shell, the scenery in x-plane 12 is visually unappealing. It's ugly and a huge number of players complain of glare and visibility issues. Personally I found runway visibility poor, often could not see the runway farther than 3 NM, even on clear days. You need to download and run a third party plugin to get photo realistic scenery. Even then, runway visibility is not the best making hard for visual landings.
X-Plane 12, Out of the box, you get poor scenery, outdated AIRAC navigation data, no multi player mode, no real aircraft interface. Essentially, you are alone in the game. Just you and nothing except poor ground scenery.
I recommend you download their demo. Use it for a couple of days to get a feel of it. Important notes about the demo. It's restricted to 1 hour flight. That's not enough time to test ATC with IFR which will reveal the ATC is very flawed. You will get one small area of terrain in the demo which is better quality than you will get in the purchased version. In my opinion that's deceptive. If they were an Australian company I would file a written report to the ACCC. The ACCC may fine them, also allow all customers wanting a refund to be given one and force them to withdraw the demo or have it reflect what customers will get in the purchased version.
If x-plane allowed you to fly anywhere you wanted in the demo, like Australia, I would have seen how poor the terrain is and, if given 90 minute in the demo I would have seen how bad ATC is. Example of poor ATC is: ATC instructs you to decend to 6000, than 4000 and as you ready your approach ATC ainstructs you to climb to 8000? WTF, Why? no other aircraft, if you climb back to 8000 15NM from the runway you'd never land your aircraft. This is a similar thing done in FS2024 which I'll go into later. Hence, I would not have purchased the sim. When you buy the full version the terrain is lesser quality than the demo. After you play with x-plane demo to see for yourself, download FS2024 via XBOX and try it. Immediately you will be overwhelmed by how more superior the FS2024 is over X-PLANE.
With both FS2024 and X-PLANE there is no evidence of A.I. in the ATC. Calling it A.I. is a misrepresentation. True A.I. learns, learns from mistakes etc. and mostly reflects the personality of it's creator. Such as Google A.I. reported to insult and a hint of arrogance. Which Americans are infamous for. Back on track, the so called A.I. in both simulators make the same errors over and over again. It's just code, not smart code, not A.I. code. Remember true A.I. learns, learns from mistakes, problem solves and similar to a psychopath or sociopath in that A.I. has no human emotions or personality, gut instinct, intuition. A.I. mimics human like qualities. A.I. will never be like humans. They will fool some people all of the time and most some times. As A.I. evolves, Humans too, will evolve further being 1 step in front of A.I. being able to do something A.I. will not achieve and that is, evolve further improving our ability to differentiate A.I. from human. I better get back on track.
FS2024 graphics are brilliant with very smooth game play and very realistic sound effects for the aircraft, especially the A330 which I fly most. The first difference I noticed after switching from x-plane was the realistic smooth turns made by the auto pilot. Just like a real flight. You have the option to see other game players aircraft and see real aircraft flying in the game. Sometimes on a long haul flight you want to speed up the simulator rate. With X-plane 12 I could never achieve greater then 1.5 times simulator rate. They blame my PC, some coders do that. I have a predator games machine 64 GIG ram etc etc. High performance gaming machine. Go figure that out. With FS2024 I can achieve 16 times simulator rate! I prefer around 4x for long hall flights. The higher the sim rate the greater the instability of the auto pilot. You'll know you have set too high of a sim rate when you see your altitude go up and down like a roller coaster. When you see that you know, the sim rate is too high for computer to manage with auto pilot. Just lower it down a notch and find the balance for your computer.
X-PLANE 12 does not have TCAS. Obviously because the game does not have multi player mode or real aircraft. TCAS means, Traffic Collision Avoidance System, it's a safety system designed to prevent mid-air collisions by monitoring the airspace around an aircraft for other transponder-equipped aircraft. When TCAS detects 2 aircraft on a collission course one aircraft will be alerted to climb and the other to decend. Or, either told alert alert maintain altitide. TCAS only operates for aircraft using transponders and, most importantly the transpomder is turned on.
FS2024 and FS2020 have TCAS. It worked very well in FS2020 but there appears to be a problem in 2024. In FS2020, if auto pilot was armed the auto pilot would respond to TCAS. If alerted to decend, auto pilot would immediatly commence a decend or climb. You would see the RED and GREEN light up on the speed indicator. In FS2024, the auto pilot does not appear to respond and after danger has passed will continue to display red and green warning on air speed. Where-as FS2020 the red and green illumination would turn off after collision is avoided. You will only see TCAS alerts when you have multi player mode active and / or real aircraft traffic active.
The only thing I wish FS2024 to have is a zoom hotkey for MCDU. It's a pain, using the arrow keys and shift O to zoom onto the MCDU which, by the way, is a very important part of the aircraft for navigation.
I find as far as visual accessibilty goes, FS2024 is superior to X-PLANE 12. That is because you can open small windows that are very essential instruments which are readable by many low vision simulator players. X-PLANE does allow that to a limited degree. However, FS2024 allows you to do it with all instruments and X-PLANE 12 dev. team should consider that some people, have low vision, and your current flight sim does not meet up to the same high standards of accessibility as FS2024. Infact, FS2020 is better than X-PLANE 12 with accessibility! In my opinion, if you have low vision, don't buy X-PLANE 12, Microsoft and Osobo have far better accessibilty options than X-PLANE 12 for those whom are low vision.
Real-time online traffic with FS2024 is not worth activating. It does not come close to emulating real aircraft. Not sure what goes on with it. You will find, if activated will become more of an annoyance with collision avoidance system malfunctioning and locked in alert mode after a collision avoided.
The X-Plane 12 plugin for real-time traffic is superior than FS2024. This is because it's written by a flight enthusiast. Often we find that free plugins are coded better than that done by, so called, professionals. Don't let the word professional fool you. Professional simply put, means a person receiving payment for service. Like a hooker (pro) paid for sex. I often find game enthusists do a better job at coding than those developing the games. All about money and not quality product, yah!
As far as seeing other game players in any flights with FS2024. I'm yet to see any!!! Some say go to busy airports. Well, if KLAX, EDLL. KSFO are not big enough or interesting enough for flight sim enthusiast than I just don't know where the other game players are? As of April 2024, you are not able to see other game players.