Does MSFS do anything really well?

[Virtual-Chris 682]

3 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I don't get the the severe melted buildings that you get for downtown Vancouver up close.  And I have flown through downtown Vancouver multiple times up close, even closer than the picture you posted, and the buildings for me in downtown Vancouver look way, way better than your picture.

My guess is there is something with your internet connection that is preventing MSFS from downloading the data quickly enough so that's why you get the melted building look.  You may consider using manual cache, and saving downtown Vancouver in high detail as manual cache.

If your internet connection is causing you to get the melted building looks for downtown Vancouver, I wouldn't be surprised that's also why you get bad textures for the mountains.

That's interesting... I should do some more comparisons and dig into it.

[ShawnG 1,823]

37 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

But I believe they are trying to be all things to all people.

It's a bit baffling to me that they are working on scenery upgrades a country at a time or now shifting focus to Avionics (which are already being modded by community developers).  Their release of Japan scenery upgrades, and now the USA, indicates they are not happy with the scenery rendering.  So why not work with the AI company or Bing to improve the data rather than hand-crafting a country at a time.  How old will we all be before they are done your fav country?  

Why not work on the engine? The flight models? The weather? Something that everyone cares about, no matter what they fly or where they fly?

I think we're actually saying the same things, except you seem to be perfectly happy with the status quo and I'm not. 

No, I'm saying your expectations are ridiculous, but before we get back to that, lets address the rest.

The "world updates" are not the only upgrades for the scenery.  those are primarily meant to be just packs of additional airports and POI.  According to Jorg in a podcast, they already have planes flying over many different parts of the world taking new photos.  Those will be rolled into the game.  Personally, I think that's the main deal for MS with this, they're treating this as an opportunity to upgrade Bing's mapping and ortho potential.  We will get better scenery, but MS has a different goal at the end.   And of course they are a big team, so they can work on many different things at once.  And of course, nobody else can do the scenery like this, other than maybe Google or Apple, and they haven't ever tried.  ORBX gave a shot to being a global scenery juggernaut, but they can't stream petabytes of data to millions, or even pay for the data to begin with.

But, no they are not trying to be all things to all people,  they are just trying to establish a really wide base, since they learned from MS Flight that the last thing the community wants is an overly focused sim.  So they are trying to create an accessible base sim that touches on the major facets of aviation, not a be all and end all.

What I am happy with is the ambition.  This isn't a safe play like the incremental upgrades that p3d and XP have been hammering out forever.  This is an attempt to go big, and I give that respect.  For years we've been dealing with rehashed old sims, this is a chance at better.  I'm not "perfectly happy" but I'm also not overly critical of minor imperfections on what is overall a huge leap forward.

 

[ShawnG 1,823]

18 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

I don't get the the severe melted buildings that you get for downtown Vancouver up close.  And I have flown through downtown Vancouver multiple times up close, even closer than the picture you posted, and the buildings for me in downtown Vancouver look way, way better than your picture.

My guess is there is something with your internet connection that is preventing MSFS from downloading the data quickly enough so that's why you get the melted building look.  You may consider using manual cache, and saving downtown Vancouver in high detail as manual cache.

If your internet connection is causing you to get the melted building looks for downtown Vancouver, I wouldn't be surprised that's also why you get bad textures for the mountains.

he's cropping a pic taken further away and zooming in.  and he has a 75 inch TV as a monitor that he is probably sitting too close to.

[abrams_tank 7,424]

36 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

That's interesting... I should do some more comparisons and dig into it.

Hi, here is what downtown Vancouver looks like for me:

You can see it's not near as melted as your picture, and the CIBC logo is even recognizable on the building.

I am using high settings at 1080p (I'm not even on ultra settings so ultra could possibly give even better detail). My computer specs are in my signature. In addition to the problem with internet download speeds, make sure that your graphics settings have not been reverted. For one of the MSFS updates, my graphics settings were set to low (maybe MSFS changed it, or NVidia changed it).  I had to change my graphics settings back to high again and then everything looked as good as before.

Edited October 9, 2020 by abrams_tank

[Ricardo41 5,949]

Keep posting those screenshots. They show how far flight sims have come.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

8 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

Hi, here is what downtown Vancouver looks like for me:

You can see it's not near as melted as your picture, and the CIBC logo is even recognizable on the building.

I am using high settings at 1080p (I'm not even on ultra settings so ultra could possibly give even better detail). My computer specs are in my signature. In addition to the problem with internet download speeds, make sure that your graphics settings have not been reverted. For one of the MSFS updates, my graphics settings were set to low (maybe MSFS changed it, or NVidia changed it).  I had to change my graphics settings back to high again and then everything looked as good as before.

Yeah, I will look into this. Thanks. Although looking closely at some of the buildings in the distance in the upper right area of your screen... those are also much lower res and suffering from the same melted issue, although maybe not as bad.

The buildings within a km or so of my position, are very good, but they quickly deteriorate and I sit close to a large 4K screen which makes it more obvious.
 

I have all settings maxed on a 9700K/2080Ti/32GB system and have a 600Mbps cable internet connection.  But I will do some digging. Try manual cache for sure. 

[abrams_tank 7,424]

Just now, Virtual-Chris said:

Yeah, I will look into this. Thanks. Although looking closely at some of the buildings in the distance in the upper right area of your screen... those are also much lower res and suffering from the same melted issue, although maybe not as bad.

The buildings within a km or so of my position, are very good, but they quickly deteriorate and I sit close to a large 4K screen which makes it more obvious.
 

I have all settings maxed on a 9700K/2080Ti/32GB system and have a 600Mbps cable internet connection.  But I will do some digging. Try manual cache for sure. 

It might be because I am only on high settings.  So perhaps the game is reducing the detail further out.  Ultra may give better results (unfortunately, my computer cannot handle Ultra, even at 1080p).

Also make sure Bing data is enabled.  There is a setting options for enabling/disabling Bing data in MSFS. If Bing data is disabled for you, it can reduce the visual quality of the scenery.

I will say though that while it looks quite good in downtown Vancouver, outside downtown Vancouver, it doesn't look as good because there isn't any Bing photogrammetry for outside downtown Vancouver (you can verify this if you go to Bing maps to check which areas of Vancouver have photogrammetry).

[Ricardo41 5,949]

So you frequently see little Cessnas buzzing around downtown Vancouver? Got it.

This thread's getting funnier by the minute.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Ricardo41

[ShawnG 1,823]

for a 75 inch 4k tv, if you sit closer than about 6 feet, you will increasingly notice the pixel structure.  if you insist on that size you may need an 8k tv to be happy, but good luck finding a graphics card to run that beast at 30 fps.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

40 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

No, I'm saying your expectations are ridiculous, but before we get back to that, lets address the rest.

The "world updates" are not the only upgrades for the scenery.  those are primarily meant to be just packs of additional airports and POI.  According to Jorg in a podcast, they already have planes flying over many different parts of the world taking new photos.  Those will be rolled into the game.  Personally, I think that's the main deal for MS with this, they're treating this as an opportunity to upgrade Bing's mapping and ortho potential.  We will get better scenery, but MS has a different goal at the end.   And of course they are a big team, so they can work on many different things at once.  And of course, nobody else can do the scenery like this, other than maybe Google or Apple, and they haven't ever tried.  ORBX gave a shot to being a global scenery juggernaut, but they can't stream petabytes of data to millions, or even pay for the data to begin with.

But, no they are not trying to be all things to all people,  they are just trying to establish a really wide base, since they learned from MS Flight that the last thing the community wants is an overly focused sim.  So they are trying to create an accessible base sim that touches on the major facets of aviation, not a be all and end all.

What I am happy with is the ambition.  This isn't a safe play like the incremental upgrades that p3d and XP have been hammering out forever.  This is an attempt to go big, and I give that respect.  For years we've been dealing with rehashed old sims, this is a chance at better.  I'm not "perfectly happy" but I'm also not overly critical of minor imperfections on what is overall a huge leap forward.

 

Good articulation of the situation I think. I agree. Although I think we’re starting to get into the minutia of semantics... being all things to all people and pursuing a wide base etc. But I think we agree for the most part. 

I’m going to drop my participation in this debate here. My take away is that my expectations are too high. I’m going to take a break from the sim and come back to it in a month or two. In the mean time, I’ll be on the lookout for mods and add-ons to fill the gaps. 

38 minutes ago, ShawnG said:

he's cropping a pic taken further away and zooming in.  and he has a 75 inch TV as a monitor that he is probably sitting too close to.

I’m about 6’ from a 75” 4K monitor. Which is close but not too close according to recommended viewing distances. It provides for some spectacular visuals when things are rendering properly. 

[Virtual-Chris 682]

22 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

It might be because I am only on high settings.  So perhaps the game is reducing the detail further out.  Ultra may give better results (unfortunately, my computer cannot handle Ultra, even at 1080p).

Also make sure Bing data is enabled.  There is a setting options for enabling/disabling Bing data in MSFS. If Bing data is disabled for you, it can reduce the visual quality of the scenery.

I will say though that while it looks quite good in downtown Vancouver, outside downtown Vancouver, it doesn't look as good because there isn't any Bing photogrammetry for outside downtown Vancouver (you can verify this if you go to Bing maps to check which areas of Vancouver have photogrammetry).

Thanks. I will definitely be looking into various ways to optimize things and see if I have any issues to address. 

[andysim212 16]

Flying the Flybywire A320 into Lowi last night, was glorious.  Just have to try and overlook the issues that hopefully will get fixed.  Having no elevator authority at 145 knots full flap is "a bit off"

[tweekz 2,165]

One thing MSFS does really well is producing such threads. 😄

[dtrjones 356]

On 10/9/2020 at 4:08 AM, Virtual-Chris said:

What I am disappointed with is that mods and add-ons are required for nearly every aspect.

Haha people were so worried this wouldn't be the case. Of course this is reality and there is always a way to thankfully improve scenery - even scenery which is pretty good. I like the 3PD cityscapes coming into MSFS as these add PBR and night lighting and I think you start to see some great results when applying some of these models to existing photogrammetry cities like we've already seen for Tokyo which means night lighting looks as good as the day. Very excited to see what 3PD and Asobo bring to the table going forward. Wonderful times!

Edited October 10, 2020 by dtrjones

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

6 hours ago, dtrjones said:

Haha people were so worried this wouldn't be the case.

I think people were mislead (myself included) by the quality of Google Maps' 3D data. I just assumed that MSFS would look just as good, but then again, I can't say that I ever looked at Bing Maps' bird's eye view all that much when browsing. Now that MSFS is out, it's clear to me that there is a quality gap between what Google has and what MS has, especially for certain geographic locations. For rural and slightly developer areas of the globe, MSFS looks fine. But it fails in center city areas where well-known landmarks exist. Even there, it's not terrible, but its does leave room for 3PDs to improve the sim.