I kind of came to the same conclusion. Especially so if they are flexible on payback time, i.e. if I pay back early I get lower interest.
Versus leasing, which has advantages as well but also some caveats. It seems some require you to return it to home airfield after lease or if you want to terminate. You also take care of any fees/maintenance in addition to your lease fee, so if you lease one near it’s 100 hour … ouch.
I feel like if I’m not sure, leasing is the way to try it out. If I think I like something, financing isn’t bad.
Here’s a summary on an interview by the Head of Microsoft Flight Simulator Jörg Neumann. Bulleted summary below by PineappleFlight on the Official Forum. Unfortunately the actual interview (linked at bottom of post) is in German. The summary matches what I’ve seen elsewhere on future plans but this seems to go more in depth than anything I’ve seen elsewhere
Here’s the original interview for any German readers:
Many thanks for the translation! Sounds like a lot of fun headed this way. I passed my 50 hour mark today enjoying the hell (maybe) out of some dynamic weather that rolled in off the coast of North Carolina.
I asked a while back about if it was possible to move instruments to a second screen and I have since found an answer — which is “kind of”. Here’s an article that describes how to do it. A few key notes, first of all you have to use the “Right-ALT” not the “Left-ALT” (which seems rather odd to me, maybe Left-ALT is used for something else?) Second only some instruments can be popped out. For example using the Cessna 172 Skyhawk (the non-Glass Cockpit version) I was not able to get any of the traditional basic T instruments to pop out (e.g., the altimeter or airspeed). But I was able to get the little Garmin 430 navigation computers which are to the right of the traditional instruments to pop out. I could pop one or both of the Garmin 430s out. I was also able to pop out the little items underneath them out as well (I think one of them is the squawk transponder frequency device, not sure what else was down there). I could move them either into a shared window on another screen or each in their own individual windows. Also you can only get the display part of the panel to pop out the knobs do not come out. (You’re also not really popping them out, you’re actually duplicating them and moving the duplicate to a new window as you’ll still see the original displays in the 3D cockpit if you’re camera is in the right direction to view them).
I can’t see it from here - is this the AFP95 video? If so, I love how they just sit on the runway like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets in their little biplanes, and mock all of the people trying to take off in jetliners, haha.
That looks like a really old model imported into MSFS 2020. Be aware there is a lot of that going on currently, even with landscapes/scenery. They don’t show the cockpit, which makes me REALLY think that’s the case. Most of the older FS models have bmp based 2-D cockpits and nothing works quite right.
The sounds are also waaaaay off from standard F-22, I’m thinking they reused a commercial airliner sound:
Gave this a try for an hour or so last night via Game Pass.
Download/install took forever of course. Once loaded up, the initial experience was really hitchy and not very impressive at the high graphical defaults. I assume that’s because it was getting some wind in its sails for the streamed data? It smoothed out and got pretty jaw-dropping. Flying around the PNW is basically what I’ve see from the air on commercial flights.
The UI is simultaneously vastly improved over previous versions, and super frustrating. Took me forever to figure out that I needed to zoom way in to get smaller airports from the flight selection. There’s a pop up with a view of your controller and some numbered buttons, which seems handy, but there’s no tooltips or info to see what those buttons are assigned to. So, you still have to crawl through the long config menus.
Despite some janky bits, however, it’s pretty much what I’ve hoped for in terms of visuals for a civi flight sim since I picked up Sublogic on the C64 a LONG time ago.
But not being in VR feels like looking at the world through a pinhole. I just don’t know if I can do it. Hopes and prayers that it becomes Index-compatible and performance is reasonable.
I’m on a pretty beefy gaming laptop and it still will chuck for me at times. The biggest slowdowns for me are when in or surrounded by those big, puffy, gorgeous cloud formations. They are awesome to look at but wow do they hit my frame rate. Squirrel’s video covers performance tuning really, really well.
From about here on in this video (17:10):
As for controls, I’m still lost, just throwing caution out the window and flying around AS I pick things up. The Garmin G1000 is intimidating for me and I have low confidence finding what I need on it.
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. According to the nVidia frame rate counter I’ve got up, the frame rate is always just bouncing all over the place in MSFS so it’s hard to tell if variations are due to the extra windows or are just MSFS’s normal variations.
In terms of my perception, I’ve never noticed MSFS to have any frame rate problems (although I’m not very frame rate sensitive). In terms of the actual numbers, it’s possible the frame rate drops when I move the mouse outside of the main MSFS window and start tweaking with the popped out windows (there’s not a lot to do with them once you get them setup, since they don’t have any buttons or knobs on them). But once setup, and I’m back to interacting with the main MSFS window, things go back to normal. I did notice I was getting highs of around 50 fps with the windows popped out in my second monitor – that’s on the high end of what I usually get in MSFS, so I don’t think it’s particularly costly. I think generally I’m getting between 35-50 fps (running Intel i9 with RTX 2080 at 1440p on High settings).
Not a tooltip as such, but you can search by input, so just click on the box and press the button in question. I have to say, with the one downside of having it default to “Assigned”, I think the controls UI is the best in any game I’ve ever played, let alone a sim.
Ah … hmmm. I was clicking everywhere and pushing everything, and nothing was happening. It felt like a map without a key. Must have been operator error. Thanks.
What isn’t clear unless you look is that the airspeed and attitude gauges on the right of this dashboard are actually reflecting the airport and weather from outside my cockpit window, as well as the light source glare bouncing light off the control yoke just below them. That is flipping amazing detail.
Yep, drone camera. You fly the drone camera with left hand on WASD and right on numpad+8426. WASD translates horizontally; R/F translate up/down. Numpad 8/2 do pitch, 4/6 yaw, 7/9 roll. (5 will recenter your view behind the aircraft, which I have pressed by accident many many many many times.) I increased the drone speed in the camera settings to about 50% and it’s easy to zoom around and get the shots you want.
You can also lock the drone to the aircraft, which keeps the camera pointed at it and the translation controls will rotate around it. And you can fly the drone miles away from your aircraft, but it always moves with your aircraft as if its fixed frame of reference is the aircraft.
