[mazug]

I tried the latest MS Flight Simulator on X-Box. It was incredibly difficult to figure out how to set things up to reasonably simulate something like flying an ILS approach. Maybe on the PC it's better, but it just didn't seem to be the focus. And there's background music playing like it's an un-serious video game. X-Plane seems much more oriented towards realistically simulating the tasks involved in actually flying aircraft. Microsoft's seemed more oriented towards having pretty dang spectacular graphics and providing a fun experience for people who aren't really that interested in the rest of the minutiae of piloting aircraft. It's pretty cool that you can see your actual house on the Microsoft one though.

[gburdell3]

I've found that MSFS works much better when you turn off all the "fun" stuff and use add-on aircraft. I enjoy flying Airbus planes, so using mods like FlyByWire (free) and Fenix (paid) can drastically improve the experience since the built-in A320neo is pretty barebones. Those mods can also load flight plans straight from SimBrief so I avoid ever using the built-in flight planner. I just load up at the gate with an empty flight plan, load in my real plan from SimBrief, and pretend I'm flying a real A320.