Crippling updates and disappearing features

[Kilo60 660]

Well, we all know for a fact they are rushing the VR update for Christmas so it would make sense if they already tested it in VR and got sub optimal performance.  Regardless of lowering the sliders the sim my have needed further optimization to get decent frame rates in VR on mid range PC’s...

Just my thought but seems to make sense...

 

 

[wthomas33065 994]

2 hours ago, MatthewS said:

No.... IMO this is exactly what is happening! 

I think that as they work on the Xbox version they are finding incompatibilities, and the quickest (cheapest) fix is to take a "lowest common denominator" approach rather than have maintain separate "branches" (Xbox and PC) for specific features. They simply don't have the resources, IMO.

That is ludicrous.

There are countless games that are released on both PC and Xbox 

Name ONE game ONE in which the PC version was specifically dumbed down or compromised to accomodate a console version.   You can't be cause it doesn't happen.

And there is no reason to think that it's happening here, other than to engage in hyperbolic conspiracy theory filled conjecture.

If I were to "gander" my own baseless conspiracy theory, then I would say it's more due to the FS community who has always been trying to go sliders right since Day Zero of any flight simulator. release.  Pushing for "Ultra" has been a goal of flight sim community since they were made available.

When this game was first announced, it was hinted that "ultra" settings were pretty much designed for those systems that were currently unobtainable.   Yet now, I can run 30fps 1080p in High End with clouds on ultra and 150 draw distances on an i7-7700 and gtx 1660 super.   I'm not sure I call that High End anymore.  

If I were to believe any reasoning for decreased graphical fidelity, it's to satisfy owners of current PC hardware seeking to get higher performance and lowering the threshold of what each graphics setting represents, not some mythical xbox compromise.

But of course that's just conjecture on my part.   

Edited December 9, 2020 by wthomas33065

[wthomas33065 994]

36 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

Well, we all know for a fact they are rushing the VR update for Christmas so it would make sense if they already tested it in VR and got sub optimal performance.  Regardless of lowering the sliders the sim my have needed further optimization to get decent frame rates in VR on mid range PC’s...

Just my thought but seems to make sense...

 

 

but if you look in the UserCfg.opt file, there are two sections.  One for VR and one for normal screens.   There is no need to neuter graphics for normal screens when you can simply change those settings specifically for VR.

Edited December 9, 2020 by wthomas33065

[G-RFRY 1,708]

The XBOX version will only be released when MSFS is DX12 next year, and see what that does to your PC it`s needed to implement the full PBR and RT which can only be full used on DX12 this is why games are now using it.

[desbean 357]

2 hours ago, Jeeper said:

Sorry but this is hard to believe when Asobo themselves have acknowledged that they have reduced some visuals to improve performance. Perhaps your performance has improved, but visual quality at similar settings cannot have improved. 

I don't recall Asobo ever saying they had reduced some visuals, where can I find where they said that?

[erick 86]

6 hours ago, ADamiani said:

Two open questions: 

1) Do you agree that each update is reducing the visual quality of MSFS? I have four main issues:

I agree and disagree. Every update thus far has, for the most part, improved visuals for me. There was a small "setback" with the water a few builds ago, but it was subsequently corrected and otherwise it has been improving with each build. That is until now. This most recent build with the US update has been a "setback" as far as I can see. I agree about the water masks, the terrain lod, popping, etc and I would add the asset loading as well as shoreline elevations and so on. Since we are only discussing visual quality I won't mention the other performance related "concerns" or the a/p stuff, etc. with this latest build. It has been a bumpy ..but slowly improving situation up until this point. I hate to say it, but this latest build has not been good. I still remain positive and genuinely hope that Asobo is able to right the ship once again.

6 hours ago, ADamiani said:

2) Any idea on what the reason may be? Is it to improve performance on low end machines? To keep compatibility with XBOX? To reduce data transfer? To reduce server workload?

This is just my own speculation and nothing more. I don't think its for performance on low end machines, compatibility with xbox or for data reduction. I think it was just an unforeseen side effect of changes made and the lack of adequate testing prior to release of the update. Just my opinion. Hopefully that will change with the addition of a beta branch or something similar sooner than later.

Thx

[MatthewS 761]

5 hours ago, wthomas33065 said:

That is ludicrous.

There are countless games that are released on both PC and Xbox 

Name ONE game ONE in which the PC version was specifically dumbed down or compromised to accomodate a console version.   You can't be cause it doesn't happen.

Presumably you're not saying that XBox hardware is 100% compatible (both in capability and performance) with PC hardware, because, if so, why then was a XBox version not released at the same time as the PC version?

So you're agreeing with me that the XBox is different to PC.

Thus, as I said, I think due to lack of resources Asobo is taking a "least common denominator" approach and dumbing down how they resolve issues to save effort. Not in all cases, but a lot.

All IMO of course.

Edited December 10, 2020 by MatthewS

[Ricardo41 5,936]

10 hours ago, ADamiani said:

I'm opening this thread because I don't want to hijack the other one already opened with a different purpose.

Two open questions: 

1) Do you agree that each update is reducing the visual quality of MSFS?

Quick note: this is not whining: this is an opinion based on facts.

1) No, I don't agree. 

2) Your opinion might be "based on facts". but you do realize that there are about 678 threads talking about how the sim "gets worse after every upgrade".

Raise the issue at zendesk and report it on the msfs forums. 

[Virtual-Chris 682]

There’s definitely something strange going on.

No one can dispute the water masks being removed. There are threads elsewhere I’ve seen that also show LOD reductions since launch. And there’s no disputing that night lighting has changed... whether you like or not is subjective. The clouds also often have pixelation that I don’t recall noticing until about a month ago. And the waves in the ocean, if you can call them that, have never looked good, but I’ve not seen any conclusive evidence they are worse now, but I might have just missed it. 

I don’t know why. It’s very bizarre.

[Virtual-Chris 682]

5 hours ago, MatthewS said:

Presumably you're not saying that XBox hardware is 100% compatible (both in capability and performance) with PC hardware, because, if so, why then was a XBox version not released at the same time as the PC version?

So you're agreeing with me that the XBox is different to PC.

Thus, as I said, I think due to lack of resources Asobo is taking a "least common denominator" approach and dumbing down how they resolve issues to save effort. Not in all cases, but a lot.

All IMO of course.

I think this is likely the most reasonable explanation. However, they should be able to reduce visuals without forcing a downgrade on the PC. But perhaps it’s not just settings that have to change... there may be architectural coding changes being made to shoe horn this sim into the Xbox. The Xbox does have a very different architecture using a SoC with shared RAM between the CPU cores and GPU. Just looking at how much memory and CPU resources MSFS takes up on my system to game at 4K makes me wonder how it will not be a slide show on the Xbox. I’ve seen my system RAM hit 20GB utilization and my VRAM is regularly around 10GB. How are they going to cut this in half for the XBox and still enable 4K and not make it a slide show or a pop-in scenery nightmare? 

[devgrp 1,233]

The ones who's saying Asobo is reducing the visuals, are probably not even flying, just looking around for something to complain about. I've had fsx, p3d and xp and none of them comes close to the visuals of msfs on my med/high settings. LOD might be lowered, I dont even notice because I'm busy enojying the scenery and flying. Some of you guys are like drama queens.

Every other day, its "update broke my sim", "no shadow in the cockpit in the hanger" etc, some of the stupidest posts I've seen. One post some guy said Asobo is activating the plan flaps when you switch to a new program and come back smh

[devgrp 1,233]

19 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I think this is likely the most reasonable explanation. However, they should be able to reduce visuals without forcing a downgrade on the PC. But perhaps it’s not just settings that have to change... there may be architectural coding changes being made to shoe horn this sim into the Xbox. The Xbox does have a very different architecture using a SoC with shared RAM between the CPU cores and GPU. Just looking at how much memory and CPU resources MSFS takes up on my system to game at 4K makes me wonder how it will not be a slide show on the Xbox. I’ve seen my system RAM hit 20GB utilization and my VRAM is regularly around 10GB. How are they going to cut this in half for the XBox and still enable 4K and not make it a slide show or a pop-in scenery nightmare? 

Are you an engineer or a programmer? I'm sure they'll get it done considering the new xbox is more like a high end pc whose one function will be gaming smh

PROCESSOR
CPU. 8X Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.66 GHz w/SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU

GPU. 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU

SOC Die Size. 360.45 mm

Process. 7nm Enhanced

Memory. 16GB GDDR6 w/320 bit-wide bus

Memory Bandwidth. 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s.

Internal Storage. 1TB Custom NVME SSD

I/O Throughput. 2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)

Expandable Storage. Support for 1TB Seagate Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S matches internal storage exactly (sold separately). Support for USB 3.1 external HDD (sold separately).

[Virtual-Chris 682]

20 minutes ago, devgrp said:

Are you an engineer or a programmer? I'm sure they'll get it done considering the new xbox is more like a high end pc whose one function will be gaming smh

PROCESSOR
CPU. 8X Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.66 GHz w/SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU

GPU. 12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU

SOC Die Size. 360.45 mm

Process. 7nm Enhanced

Memory. 16GB GDDR6 w/320 bit-wide bus

Memory Bandwidth. 10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s.

Internal Storage. 1TB Custom NVME SSD

I/O Throughput. 2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)

Expandable Storage. Support for 1TB Seagate Expansion Card for Xbox Series X|S matches internal storage exactly (sold separately). Support for USB 3.1 external HDD (sold separately).

I am an engineer but I don’t think that’s necessary to see that they have a very bloated inefficient program that’s largely main thread limited, using massive amounts of RAM and VRAM, running on a code base that still has remnants of FSX, using a last gen graphics API, and struggling to get that to work on a console system that has just 16GB of memory that has to be both a 4K frame buffer, and system memory. It will be very interesting to see how it works on the Xbox. I think it’s a crazy ambitious project. The tech in the Xbox is already last gen (PC tech) and the sim barely runs well (IMHO) at 4K on the best hardware money can buy right now. 

Edited December 10, 2020 by Virtual-Chris

[devgrp 1,233]

3 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I am an engineer but I don’t think that’s necessary to see that they have a very bloated inefficient program that’s largely main thread limited, using massive amounts of RAM and VRAM, running on a code base that still has remnants of FSX, using a last gen graphics API, and struggling to get that to work on a console system that has just 16GB of memory that has to be both a 4K frame buffer, and system memory. It will be very interesting to see how it works on the Xbox. I think it’s a crazy ambitious project. The tech in the Xbox is already last gen and the sim barely runs well (IMHO) at 4K on the best hardware money can buy right now. 

I have it running at 4k on high/med settings. Perfomance is great. There are already console games running at 4k, so I do see why this is different, but then again everyone on avsim is an expert in sim or hardware development lol

[Jeeper 74]

27 minutes ago, devgrp said:

The ones who's saying Asobo is reducing the visuals, are probably not even flying, just looking around for something to complain about. I've had fsx, p3d and xp and none of them comes close to the visuals of msfs on my med/high settings. LOD might be lowered, I dont even notice because I'm busy enojying the scenery and flying. Some of you guys are like drama queens.

Every other day, its "update broke my sim", "no shadow in the cockpit in the hanger" etc, some of the stupidest posts I've seen. One post some guy said Asobo is activating the plan flaps when you switch to a new program and come back smh

Uh yeah, we are flying, when the sim isn't crashing to desktop. You might be happy with decreasing quality on a product you paid for, but many of us are not, and that does not make us drama queens. What Asobo previewed prior to release is NOT what was delivered, and to add insult to injury they continue downgrading the fidelity of sim with each patch. I would find that problematic and worthy of complaint for any product I bought. Just because you're happy with downgrades doesn't make everyone else a crybaby for voicing valid complaints.