So today I was fortunate enough to be invited down to XO19 and given a complimentary ticket (thanks to the team if they’re loitering I’m this group)
Below I have summed up 8 main points and m'y overall opinion of what I went for, which was to get m'y hands on Microsoft flight simulator 2020.
Bare in mind I am no mainstream reviewer and I don’t write but find m'y own experience of the sim below and points I took away from it.
I had 4 total main gs and spent quite some time chatting to the team also.
1 go on free flight over Italy in the 172
1 go on free flight over Renton in the 172
2 gs at the robin mission to land at courcheval.
A mixture of weather was thrown to me as I requ'ested, from clear no wind, to major rain and pitch black with strong wind.
The overall take away was that this is a completely different beast from what we are used to, but we all already know that.
The guts have already been leaked and they also freely told me what they were hiding behind the solid black locked boxes.
RTX 2080 Ti
32 GB ram
Intel i7 but didn’t get the model, I assume a 9700k
As you can see in the picture also, we were given a few patches with sticky backs to take too so that was a lovely touch from them.
It was very enjoyable seeing so man'y different people try the sim, what you expect to be the underdog at XO19 because it’s not so mainstream actually had the biggest queue while I was there. It was incredibly popular and the team were loving the positive feedback from everyone.
The setup was the thrustmaster pedals, along with saitek throttle quadrant and the honeycomb yoke.
Thank you to Shaun who sneakily took some pictures of m'y ugly ass self while I was on the sim.
Sadly those are the only photos I got as I was so bus'y And overwhelmed and talking so much that I didn’t take an'y.
Please read below for some further detail.
1. Graphics
The sim was running on 4K monitors, having tried all 3 scenes in different weather and lighting I can safely say the preview videos such as the trailer do not do it justice to what it really is.
It was noted to me that we were of course as you can guess running on the highest detail, and it really did show.
My favourite part of the entire thing was actually the lighting on the ground and the clouds from below.
The detail was the highest I’ve ever seen across an'y game or platform and the detail really was in the small things.
2. Dynamics
Having only flown the 172 and the robin there, the aerodynamics were quite hon'estly on point, very lifelike the aircraft is never still as we expect from the FSX/P3D rail s'ystem. It was a constant battle on the hard dynamic preset to keep the aircraft in a straight line much like in real life.
Having only flown a pa28 and Cessna 152, plus an xa42 for real, the dynamics were all close enough to understand an'yway comparatively.
The way the aircraft behaves in all weather s'ystems was quite mind blowing because we really aren’t used to that at all.
You can absolutely feel the different points at which the aircraft is hit by wind etc.. and so it affects that section of the aircraft only as was explained to us.
One point to mention also is the use of ground effect and wind which was demonstrated to me very very well.
I was told to aim for 65 knots on the courcheval approach and they said wait for it.. so I approached at 65 on approach and over the trees, now on reaching the trees the wind actually fully threw m'y wing over and at such a low speed this resulted in a full crash into the ridge line of course, there was no possible recovery which is part the reason they said why this airport is of course so dangerous.
3. UI
Not much to say here of course except it’s crisp and clean and was still the same as in the screenshots that were released from the Seattle trips.
The same gs for the slider to select weather.
4. The live weather slider
So this to me is one of m'y favourite additions to this sim, although still only a very early build the slider to select time of day works very efficiently although ds lag at points on their 2080 ti machines but this will of course be optimised as expected.
On this section also above the slider comes a preset selector, this one is for weather to be live fed, the presets as I remember were rain, clear, cloud, live data I can’t fully remember them all.
On switching these though, the aircraft will react instantly to the change and will at this point be quite an issue to some as it throws the aircraft about quite abit (this should also be fixed).
5. Missions
Now, we can’t say much on this of course because we know they will be coming, however the Courcheval landing challenge was definitely set out as a mission and had a very good scoring s'ystem.
The devs stated to me that it will score FPM on descend, touch down zone placement, landing rate fpm, speed.
It also had a leaderboard there showing everyone’s scores built in and that was quite nearly displayed.
6. Cockpits
All cockpits were fully functioning, the devs stated for example the G1000 was fully functioning however I didn’t get to use all of it at the time.
A nice feature I don’t think I’ve seen is in fact the swinging of the compass and misalignment actually occurred also at one point I noticed compared with m'y DI.
7. Sounds
Although the sound was at a fairly low level (gotta protect the younger ears of course) I could clearly hear the dimensions of rain hitting the aircraft at different points of the aircraft and a mixture of the sounds together for example the glass and aluminium surfaces have different pitches and this was distinctive.
8. Overall opinion
I BLOODY LOVE IT
p.s I’m still shaking the adrenaline off and I mean that! My excitement levels have never been so high and m'y expectations have never been shattered so much as today.
I can’t wait for this to be in everyone’s hands (machines)