This thread perfectly summarizes why some simmers start to be weary of P3D and look forward with some hope to FS20. Five pages of byzantine tweaks to have (or rather not have) a simple thing like the autogen working.

This is in no way a criticism of the good people of this thread nor did I want to poke fun at them. They try to help.  But I am not sure I want a sim where I need that kind of help .
 

 

 

Edited July 3, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

9 hours ago, FPStewy said:

https://youtu.be/D4jrjdTTFF0?t=4497

If it does it's really not doing a good job of it. This is just one example and there are many more. Show me one YT vid from someone else where it controls ground, Air space and approach.

https://youtu.be/D4jrjdTTFF0?t=625

Here it tells him to taxi to a helipad.

https://youtu.be/D4jrjdTTFF0?t=1210

Here there's no control of ground taxi

Anyone can fool the AI in VOXATC by visiting poorly constructed airports (lack of appropriate parking spots, incorrect runway and taxiway geometry, etc.) This is a flaw in the present approach taken by 3rd party airport developers in focusing on eye candy and creating an underlying ADE file that is garbage. Sims like P3d ignore these issues, as its native ATC and AI control are simple. VOXATC doesn't. BTW I've never experienced any of that with VOXATC. You obviously have never even used even the demo of VOXATC so maybe you might want to try it.

To be clear, the projected ATC and AI traffic in MSFS is better than what's in the legacy sims. It's just disappointing that voice recognition and built in Windows text to speech were not included. It also remains to be seen how Flightaware ADS-B tracking will will be integrated with the ATC. There are add-ons that do this now for P3d5 and XP11 and they don't do a realistic job of providing traffic. Asobo should be able to overcome the drawbacks since ATC and AI are integrated into the sim.

Edited July 3, 20205 yr by jabloomf1230

6 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

This is in no way a criticism of the good people of this thread nor did I want to poke fun at them. They try to help.  But I am not sure I want a sim where I need that kind of help .

I have bad news. That's the nature of the open ecosystem on the PC. As an example, I played Red Dead Redemption 2 on my PS4. You  turn on the console, load the game and play. That's not to say that there weren't bugs in the initial console releases of RDR2, but at least Rockstar Games didn't have to worry about tweaks, cheats, 3rd party DLC, different hardware,  multiples OS versions, video drivers, overclocking and all that other nonsense that goes along with PC gaming. And after about a year after the console releases, Rockstar released RDR2 for the PC. It was a hot mess. Just take a look at the game ratings summarized for all reviewers on Metacritic:

PS4:  Critics 97, users 8.3

XBox1: Critics 97, users 7.9

PC: Critics 93, users 5.3

Note that the critics pretty much agreed that RDR2 was one of the top games released recently, without regard to platform. But look at the disparity in review scores between the PC user base and the console user base. Was that because the game was different on the PC? No, it was because of what I previously stated. The PC is fraught with too many issues to make it a click and go gaming platform. In one sense, I hope that Asobo locks away much of the innards of MSFS from the prying eyes of users and developers.  The best move that LM has made with P3d5 is channeling 3rd party developers to the PDK and away from both SimConnect and calling the P3d libraries directly. I can't imagine what would happen if the trueSky shader source had been included in P3d5. We'd probably have orange skies and purple rain.

51 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

This is a flaw in the present approach

I'm not saying Vox is a bad product on the contrary it's 'looks' like a step above the rest and honestly it's commendable for what it's trying to do.

In my opinion and mine only, the whole P3D has become a mess at, you have AIRAC cycles that change, you have fsAerodata that changes the sim, you have Airports that don't keep up the changes like all the Orbx region airports, you have Zinertek and Rex worldwide airports, I use Zinertek and really like it. You have GNS/GTN's that can't update to the latest cycles and you have UT and TG Live which always seem to be stuck in early access and I understand why because it isn't easy to do. And then you have ATC's that are made by lone entities that have not associations it seems with any Live Traffic, Airport and Scenery Devs or P3D. Then you have users trying to mix all of that together and wondering why it doesn't work properly.

An add-on ATC will never work with P3D unless they have access to the source code, even LM won't even touch it. If ever an ATC will fully work in P3D without the source it will need to disable all default traffic and the ATC will have to fully access/merge with a functioning Live Traffic, even then it will need to be terrain aware which none are capable as far as I have seen.

 

 

1 minute ago, FPStewy said:

An add-on ATC will never work with P3D unless they have access to the source code, even LM won't even touch it. If ever an ATC will fully work in P3D without the source it will need to disable all default traffic and the ATC will have to fully access/merge with a functioning Live Traffic, even then it will need to be terrain aware which none are capable as far as I have seen.

VOXATC requires that the default ATC be disabled and that's how it gets around this issue. I still don't understand why Asobo didn't just buy the rights to VOXATC and then incorporate the code. 

Frankly I haven't heard enough of the MSFS ATC to make any sort of value judgement. Having heard only very brief examples and even then not all that many of them...

15 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Frankly I haven't heard enough of the MSFS ATC to make any sort of value judgement. Having heard only very brief examples and even then not all that many of them...

Your right but I think it's what he said, to be clear...

1) Ground will supervise taxiing considering Live or AI Traffic when giving clearance

2) Tower will handle traffic in the vicinity of the airport for takeoff and landing

3) ATC will vector other planes

4) Landing without clearance will prevent other traffic from landing or takeoff on that runway.

What we didn't see is how Ground supervised the taxi, and we didn't see VFR for example, get in a plane contact ground for take off or landing.

Having said that the default P3D ATC VFR is kinda great for that. Get in a GA at a towered airport request take off and flight following and request landing at another towered airport.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

This thread perfectly summarizes why some simmers start to be weary of P3D and look forward with some hope to FS20. Five pages of byzantine tweaks to have (or rather not have) a simple thing like the autogen working.

This is in no way a criticism of the good people of this thread nor did I want to poke fun at them. They try to help.  But I am not sure I want a sim where I need that kind of help .
 

 

 

Dominque I have to draw the line here.  

For starters, the OP in that thread has one simple problem, which would be a problem in any sim he flew: ... Sliders are too far right for the hardware.

Now, there is a very simple solution to that problem.  Drop the offending setting a bit lower.  Anyone can do that, and no byzantine tweaks are required.

The rest, remainder, and residue of that thread then gets into minutiae which the OP does not have to do, and does not need to do, but certainly can do if he so desires, to get that last 1% of performance out of things.  That last little bit is what people were assisting him with.  I just knew that someone would read that and think, "Gosh, I have to do all THAT?  No way!".  I almost posted to that effect -- that it is for the last bit of performance, and that the fundamental problem with the OP was, overcooking settings, which was an issue in FS2/3/4/ATP/5/6/7/8/9/FSX/P3D/AFS2/XP and yes no doubt will be in MSFS.

1 hour ago, Mace said:

For starters, the OP in that thread has one simple problem, which would be a problem in any sim he flew: ... Sliders are too far right for the hardware.

I’m going to have to politely disagree here. Autogen loading (very) late when set to higher than medium is a well-documented P3D issue. Yes, you can make the issue go away by lowering the autogen slider to medium. Yes, you can make it worse by having your sliders too high. But it’s also a problem for a lot of users even with a well-tuned, balanced set of settings, with very strong hardware. It’s something to do with P3D; this was not a problem in FSX. (I could be wrong, but I believe the issue came in, or got worse, with v4.)

Unfortunately, it’s never been fixed.

James

Evidently the design philosophy of coding for the future is still in effect with MS/Asobo. If it were possible for everyone to run with all sliders right, there'd be no reason for the sliders!

I don’t want to drive this thread off topic, so I’ll try to keep this short. Rob, you’re right that with P3D, FSX, and surely with MSFS also, fundamentally it’s a balance of FPS/performance and processing for things like the aircraft, scenery, etc.

What’s off with the autogen in P3D is that everything else can be loading with time to spare, and FPS can be rock-solid consistent with no spikes, but the autogen loads really, really late. And it only happens sometimes, maybe every fourth flight, so it’s not clear exactly why it happens, although cities seem to be the worst (or maybe just the most obvious to the eye). My suspicion is this issue affects a lot of users who just don’t notice because they set their upper visibility very low.

In FSX, slow autogen loading in the case of trying to maintain too-high FPS would be paired with blurries. For those of us who experience this slow autogen, that’s never the case, which also points to this being a distinct issue. My very layperson impression is that the processing priority division between textures and autogen is imbalanced too far in favor of the former (and differently from FSX), but what do I know.

James

When I’ve seen autogen loading in blocks, CPU generally isn’t even close to 100. My system seems to be taking everything in stride, moderate CPU and GPU usage and high FPS, crisp scenery textures — but late autogen. 

As I’ve said, something is clearly off, I’ve never been able to fix it, and I’m not the only one seeing this puzzling behavior. Oh well.

It does seem very strange. Whilst I always fly with clear skies and calm weather, and my screen resolution is standard 1080p, I never have any problems with photoscenery terrain textures or autogen loading (and that is at Extremely Dense at all times). Maybe it is because my flights are always relatively short, so the autogen does not have time to "fall behind"? I fly the PMDG 737 NGX, but I fly it "low and slow". The highest altitude that I get to is 6000 feet, and the highest speed is 240 knots (which equates to almost exactly 300mph ground speed at 6000 feet).

I did have a "blurred terrain texture" problem in P3Dv3 in a handful of locations (close to EGPH Edinburgh springs to mind), and that was when I used the PlayHorizon UK VFR Photographic Scenery with Earth Simulations TreeScapes. My big problem is major stutters in specific locations, although I suspect that a lot of these are caused by the large number of AI planes that I have active in UK airspace. I am currently flying with all AI planes disabled to test this.

My PC is nothing special by today's standards (i5 7600k @ 4.6Ghz/32GB DDR4-3600 RAM/6GB GTX 980Ti/Toshiba 7200rpm HDD)

Edited July 4, 20205 yr by Christopher Low

Goodness, my point was not to rekindle the embers of the autogen thread 🤣 ! 

Whatever the solution, from dumbing down your visuals to tweaking a mask or the FTFF to avoid this dumbing down, my point was that good standing simmers were a deep technical discussions to improve something as basic as having a decent autogen.This is considered as normal here.  I'd  say that scares off any reasonable wanabee simmer who want...to sim.  

Will FS20 have sliders ? That can be expected. Will we have to tweak its innards instead of simming. Hopefully not. The OP question was, do I go v5 or wait for FS20 ? There is a beginning of an answer here. 

Does it come with the territory of the PC open ecosystem ? I've played over the recent months with FO4, DA Inquisition, The Long Dark, Space Engineers and doing now a rerun with good ole Oblivion (under W10 !). I don't see that these games need  the technical contorsions shown in the P3D forums.

In my uninformed opinion, it has less to do with the PC as such than with an older software architecture patched, repatched, patched again with now additional modules grafted on top (WW, TS).   

 

Edited July 4, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

11 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

 

Will FS20 have sliders ? That can be expected. Will we have to tweak its innards instead of simming. Hopefully not. The OP question was, do I go v5 or wait for FS20 ? There is a beginning of an answer here. 

 

In my uninformed opinion, it has less to do with the PC as such than with an older software architecture patched, repatched, patched again with now additional module grafted on top (WW, TS).   

 

FS20 has tractors not sliders. I am sure that, with your uninformed opinion, you are not aware that FS20 is a Farming Sim, not a thumb-sucked self-created abbreviation for MSFS/Microsoft Flight Simulation.

Consider yourself now informed!