Flight sim is not a masterpiece, it's a pretty rough diamond that is very addictive. It's first major patch should be out in the next 7 days, fixing a lot of installation problems and crash to desktop issues. Meanwhile modders have already started to fix the terrain bugs and import more planes from fsx. It also addresses the huge fps drops from live traffic / multiplayer so I might give that a try aftert the update.

PATCH NOTES

STABILITY ISSUES
The title will no longer crash when different input devices/peripherals are disconnected
The title will no longer crash when the TBM 930 package is deleted

INSTALLATION ISSUES
The install process will no longer be blocked after a partial decompression of a package
The install process will no longer be blocked when a local user account includes non-ASCII characters
The install process will no longer be blocked after a failed connection to servers
The install process will no longer display an empty onboarding screen under certain conditions
The title will download a critical missing/deleted package to access the main menu even if the save data preference is set to offline (when an internet connection is available)

CONTENT MANAGER
The title will no longer automatically download packages that have been deleted through the content manager
The content manager will no longer get stuck in an infinite loading state when checked offline
The Creator name of the packages should now be properly updated

SIMCONNECT
Significant FPS drop when using Simconnect should no longer affect the experience

OPTIMIZATION
The performance of the title has been improved when the Display name plate option is set to active

MARKETPLACE
The correct currency is now properly updated in the marketplace

I've been lucky. Some people are still trying to install the game, trying to start the game or crash to desktop every 10 minutes  The game was not ready for release. After they get the installation process fixed and the game not crashing so easily anymore they can start working on fixing the auto pilot, AI, scenery bugs, flight model bugs, missing rain, fuel consumption bugs, atc bugs, missing airports, broken ils approaches, inoperable switches and optimization of course. Some major airports simply crash your system when you try to start there or try to approach them.

The weather system however is a master piece

When it works that is. Live weather has issues as well. Many people are trying to chase Laura bit only few actually get to see some representation of it in game, and very few actually find rain. I've played for 105 hours already (lot of auto pilot let it go on its own in there), all with live weather with plenty clouds and precipitation according to the in game weather radar, yet haven't seen a single drop on the windshield yet.

Hopefully this rocky launch won't put too many people off from the game. After spending CAD 160 on it, I hope it will get good support for a long time.

Thanks for the personal experience. Was merely referring to Metacritic considering everything above 90 a masterpiece but I understand there’s rough patches to be ironed out. The scale of it all still impresses me. Maybe it’s a good thing this was Pc first, by the time it comes to Series X it should be in a much more stable state. 

The popular narrative is that MS has had nothing for 2020 but these four games in August are all good/great and they also had Ori earlier this year, and Gears Tactics got an 80 or higher meta IIRC. Plus Minecraft Dungeons was good. Their only real miss was Bleeding Edge. Overall it's been a great 2020 for XGS.