1 hour ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

I have just spoken to a friend who has worked as a game developer for some of the biggest gaming studios over the last twenty years and after telling him about the patches and the effects on graphics he said there is only one reason why that would happen; Server bandwidth is having to be restricted at the servers due to too high demand.

It's one possibility, but I'm skeptical and here's why. When I first tried the patch, I thought they had done some further frame rate optimization because I was getting a very slightly higher frame rate according to the built-in developer mode display.

Then I started seeing how weird the scenery looked in my flying test area after the new patch, with objects popping in near the plane, and blurry terrain in the middle distance.

So I went into Graphics options and saw my object LOD slider had been moved from 100 to 25. I moved it back to 100 and the frame rate was back to where it was before when flying over the same area -- low 30's to 40 fps. Then I tried setting LOD to 200, and my frame rate dropped down to 30 fps max, with no significant improvement in how the scenery looked. 

No significant scenery improvement suggests server throttling, but then what was eating my frame rate with those different LOD settings if more data wasn't being loaded? It's like the data was there but it wasn't actually showing up in the scenery. So I suspect it might be a coding bug in the sim itself. 

1 hour ago, gore54 said:

I agree I believe this is a server issue and microsoft trying to save bandwidth

Now THAT is something I can believe, not some xbox/pc nonsense.  Narrowing down LOD ranges would affect the amount of bandwidth per flight hour.  Thus limiting the amount of bandwidth they need to provide for a given user.  

If Microsoft wanted to trim those costs, then narrowing down LOD radius would be an obvious way to do so.  This would also explain why users are saying that the sim ignores any LOD factors higher than 2.0. in the configuration file.

This would make some folks very annoyed, but it's their servers. and their data.  

I suppose they could offer a "premium" subscription model that would allow you to have higher LOD settings if you were willing to pony up for your additional bandwidth usage.  But how many people would scoff at that?  

Edited September 30, 20205 yr by wthomas33065

19 minutes ago, Paraffin said:

No significant scenery improvement suggests server throttling, but then what was eating my frame rate with those different LOD settings if more data wasn't being loaded? It's like the data was there but it wasn't actually showing up in the scenery. So I suspect it might be a coding bug in the sim itself. 

Not sure. I will put your comments to him. He's going to take a look at the whole MSFS thing.

 

I love people complaining about "it's being optimized for Xbox" so Asobo is dialing down the graphics etc. I bet the new Xbox is more capable than most of the people on this forum's PC lol. 

If the issue is at server side any flights over already cached scenery (rolling cache - assuming it's content is maintained after exiting the sim) should be not affected.

Edited September 30, 20205 yr by Steku

3 hours ago, Colonel X said:

Explain to me why Asobo would alter the PC version now just because an XBOX version is to be released sometime in the future?

Personally, I don't think has even a hint of conspiracy to it on Asobo's part. I wrote in another thread that this change must have something to do with the testing of the HP Reverb G2 VR headset.

8 minutes ago, wthomas33065 said:

Now THAT is something I can believe, not some xbox/pc nonsense.  Narrowing down LOD ranges would affect the amount of bandwidth per flight hour.  Thus limiting the amount of bandwidth they need to provide for a given user.  

If Microsoft wanted to trim those costs, then narrowing down LOD radius would be an obvious way to do so.  This would also explain why users are saying that the sim ignores any LOD factors higher than 2.0. in the configuration file.

This would make some folks very annoyed, but it's their servers. and their data.  

I suppose they could offer a "premium" subscription model that would allow you to have higher LOD settings if you were willing to pony up for your additional bandwidth usage.  But how many people would scoff at that?  

This isn't really the case though. Trees and buildings all have their textures stored on the local disk. Reducing the LOD would have zero impact on bandwidth used.

Now photogrammetry? That is a different scenario and there are some clear issues going on with how those cities are loading but how much that is due to trying to reduce server load vs improving performance is unclear.

4 minutes ago, Steku said:

If the issue is at server side any flights over already cached scenery should be not affected.

If the update patch has changed the code our side; our PC's - then whatever's in our cached areas is still going to be subject to the LOD loading problem because it's now hard coded in the program so that when we fly over a 'new' area - not in our cache - we don't make huge demands on the server bandwidth.

So it's basically taking a big stick to trying to solve a complicated problem/ issue.

Edited September 30, 20205 yr by Will Fly For Cheese

1 hour ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

I have just spoken to a friend who has worked as a game developer for some of the biggest gaming studios over the last twenty years and after telling him about the patches and the effects on graphics he said there is only one reason why that would happen; Server bandwidth is having to be restricted at the servers due to too high demand.

Well, then they should make precaching scenery work. 

1 minute ago, L3m0n said:

This isn't really the case though. Trees and buildings all have their textures stored on the local disk. Reducing the LOD would have zero impact on bandwidth used.

Now photogrammetry? That is a different scenario and there are some clear issues going on with how those cities are loading but how much that is due to trying to reduce server load vs improving performance is unclear.

I agree with you about the objects, but a lot of people are not taking into account photogrammetric areas in their analysis at all.

I think I'll fly around South Florida with Photogrammetry on and off and see if I can see a difference.  

And even if there is no difference, they might have put a cap on globally so that users have the same relative experience regardless of what areas they are in.  Because even with Photgrammetry off, you are still downloading high resolution satellite textures from Bing, and that might affect object placement.  

All I know is that no matter what LOD settings I use im only seeing about 25% of what I used to see before these patches. which is in line with another posters comments about finding his LOD settings at 25 instead of 100 after the patch

7 minutes ago, Will Fly For Cheese said:

If the update patch has changed the code our side; our PC's - then whatever's in our cached areas is still going to be subject to the LOD loading problem because it's now hard coded in the program so that when we fly over a 'new' area - not in our cache - we don't make huge demands on the server bandwidth.

So it's basically taking a big stick to trying to solve a complicated problem/ issue.

Now that's a tinfoil hat I can proudly wear (grin).  Because that actually makes some sense over the Xbox/PC conspiracy.  Either sales are stronger than they expected, and demand is greater, or it's weaker than expected and they are trying to control costs.  But I think we're on to something here.  And I know I'm being a hypocrite because I have no proof whatsoever, but it sounds a lot more reasonable than wanting to make the PC look worse compared to Xbox.  

3 hours ago, snglecoil said:

Since we all seem to have an overabundance of tinfoil...maybe they didn't reduce the LOD radius. Maybe they just made the trees that everyone complained were too big and too pervasive at launch smaller with less coverage. (gee thanks @MatthewS 😉😂)

I'm with @Colonel X, I'm not seeing a drastic reduction in LOD and I'm not seeing any mass pop in. Occasionally I'll see some terrain morphing into greater detail. I do see the trees in particular appear to fade in starting at some distance out (maybe 15-20 miles?) and become gradually thicker starting at maybe 10 miles out. I'm willing to concede that this may not be as noticeable at 1080p. I'm not saying that people aren't having issues, but I don't think that a simple "They nerfed LOD...'cause Xbox" is a viable explanation.

 

Up to patch three I never saw degraded scenery.  I had Lod at 200 and was happy with sharpness out to the horizon.  After patch two I changed LOD to 500 to get the same distance of buildings and trees.  Now after patch three I need LOD at 900 just to get trees out to half the distance I was seeing before.  This is the first time since release I'm feeling the sim is going backwards.

2 hours ago, Carlosx said:

Oh come on. The official forum shows before after screens. Just go and fly, look at the water.
Waves are dumbed down (you need way more wind to get the same level of detail compared to release version).
And with the latest patch they also reduced reflection quality of the water.

Either this is done intentionally or by mistake.
But it is real.

Agreed.  For the first month I was excited to load MSFS.  After the latest patch I am feeling frustrated at what I'm seeing. Blurry ground textures close to the aircraft, Trees that only display a short distance from the aircraft and water that was amazing is now dull and flat.

Just watching the live stream now, they've admitted they have regressed. They hope to have it all resolved in  the first major update due in November.