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Modded X-Plane vs Stock MFS...for what it's worth.
I fly cities I visually know well:
San Diego
San Francisco
Tampa
Orlando
New York
Orlando is one of the designated hand detailed airports for MSFS2020, and it shows, but the area around it including my house is less than impressive. MSFS2020 does have the best implementation of Disney. But other than the airport tower and Disney, I would put the Orbx Orlando mod for P3d up against FS2020.
Because I lived in San Diego and San Francisco as well as flew into and out of those cities, I look for specific details. Orbx for San Diego looks awesome. I have free mods for San Diego for X-Plane that are also very good. Aerofly FS2 has a very good implementation San Diego as well.
I don't care for the way FS2020 implements Manhattan at all. When you get up close, the buildings are very accurate, but as you approach them, the lower level of detail models do not get the famous skyline right at all. New York looks very good in Aerofly FS2, but doesn't have the correct details when you get up close and compare it with actual photos.
The only area that really impresses me out in the ones I have flown in FS2020 is Tampa. I have the best Tampa International mod I can get for P3d and parts of it are very nice in the immediate area around the airport, but FS2020 is the only sim that makes MacDill AFB look anything close to what it should be like and the rest of the surrounding area has the colors and textures it should have rather than some generic FSX or Orbx textures/colors.
The key advantage to FS2020 is that you don't have to buy addons, almost the whole globe is at a level of detail that rivals many payware mods for the other sims. But if you are only interested in specific areas, there are almost always mods for the major locations that will make them look as real as you want including photoreal texturing that rival FS2020 quality, even in some of its best locations. It is just a matter of cost: time to find and install the mods, money to buy some of the payware, and frame rates because aside from Aerofly FS2, all of the sims even FS2020 pay a price for high resolution terrain meshes with his resolution textures and large numbers of 3d modeled objects with decent textures.
For me, Orbx is the benchmark for FSX/P3d/X-Plane terrain/airport mods and they even have some Aerofly FS2 addons. But they are also among the most expensive in terms of money and frame rates. Their TrueEarth line is exceptionally good. FS2020 doesn't really beat the TrueEarth areas at all. The TrueEarth line has a few problems: tremendous hard drive space for relatively small areas compared to the FS2020 option to "stream" the entire globe and inconsistency about which sims are supported. I prefer flying VR and Aerofly FS2 is THE sim for flying VR, but the only TrueEarth release is the Netherlands. Apparently, it didn't sell so well and they haven't released any more Aerofly versions. They did finally release TrueEarth for Florida, which is a big deal for me, but I haven't gotten it yet.
I don't really fly civil sims that much. To be fair, I don't fly Aces High that much, but I have far more hours in Aces High over the years than all of the civil flight sims combined. I own them primarily for the sake of trying out their technology. At least FSX/P3d has VRS TacPack so I can fly F-4 Phantoms and T-38 Talons at nearly DCS World level of systems modeling with some combat capability. I am not impressed with the VR performance of P3d and X-Plane isn't that much better. FS2020 struggles for performance on flat panels, I presume its VR performance certainly won't be any better than P3d and X-Plane. So, it doesn't really matter too much to me which one comes out on top, just as long as there is competition to keep the tech moving forward and keep the prices as low as practical for the work that has to be done to improve the level of detail when modeling the world.
