11 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Last World Update release notes : Several terrain spikes have been fixed, including incorrect cases of water elevation issues.

Yeah, right ! Several 🤣. Like in 2 or 3 ? The world is  still covered with artifacts, spikes and the like. we find them everywhere.  My last "finds" in the upper Amazon , PNG and Borneo...  

 Why is so that a Mom & Pop businesses like Pilot's or Toposim have been able to cover the world with good and clean meshes and that you, Microsoft, can't ? Instead of cranking out new regions, can't you do the job and erase these warts first ?  And if you can't do the job, isn't it the time to open the sim (SDK) to mesh addons ?

Well MSFS is a work in progress, but if a single freeware person can remove the spikes from a large area of the US by himself, I would think that Asobo/Microsoft could do the same for the world, but it might not be as simple as that.

I think the latest update was the best so far as it improved quite a lot of things (clouds, sawtooth water and spikes) and „only“ introduced 2 new issues which appear to be easy fixes. 

Having said that, I agree with the OP that mesh is one of the biggest weak spots of this sim. Not only does the overall mesh quality leave a lot to be desired, many other issues seem to be related to mesh as well, e.g. spikes, coastlines, uneven water surfaces, tears etc. Considering the high standard this sim has set, this is a bit of a shame. Other sims don‘t seem to have these issues. I was actually quite surprised that they released it with such poor mesh in the first place.

Anyway, all in all I still think this is by far the best-looking sim available and I do enjoy it a lot. Moreover, the devs seem to be aware of it and one of the reasons is probably because people were complaining, so nothing wrong with that, as long as it is constructive. 

15 minutes ago, desbean said:

Well MSFS is a work in progress, but if a single freeware person can remove the spikes from a large area of the US by himself, I would think that Asobo/Microsoft could do the same for the world, but it might not be as simple as that.

Yes, absolutely Asobo/MS could fix the entire world's mesh anomalies, and I suspect will.  Missing here by all commenters is intimate awareness of their timetable.  It's a giant project and they do have limited resources and target them where they feel they are needed to address the current priorities.

11 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

one of the reasons is probably because people were complaining, so nothing wrong with that,

Hammerotherapy

2 hours ago, Noel said:

...Missing here by all commenters is intimate awareness of their timetable. 

I can accept that actually. I am prepared to wait a long time for extra features as the sim is fairly good in it's present state.  But this has nothing to do with the silly errors they keep introducing.  The pre-release testing is still not good enough.

They said the release date for the update was 'locked-in' and set for Tuesday - They put pressure on themselves.  They should set no more dates until they are happy with their testing.  I would rather wait longer for the updates than have these regressions creeping in.
 

10 hours ago, hjsmuc said:

That's the reason, why the other sims will continue to have customers. It will take years to complete the missing pieces of MSFS and by then, new technology may have pushed the others forward as well. When there are "thank you Asobo" posts I often see that the author is rather new to simming.

Simming since 2002 and want to thank Asobo every day (whilst also grumbling about some things). We should remember the scale of what they’re trying to achieve; an accurate rendition of 1) the whole world, 2) its skies, weather and seasons 3) numerous aircrafts’ interaction with those atmospheres, 4) those aircrafts’ systems, and 5) various features of the world like traffic, animals etc.

No other sim attempts all of them and Asobo is slowly chipping away at the problems, with inevitable hiccups here and there. I’m sure it’ll take a few years to make everyone happy, but I’m sure MSFS has the best chance of doing that. I just can’t see any of the competitors being able to do all 5 elements above although I hope Austin can surprise us with some goodies for XP12.

I haven't seen any spikes since the update.

16 minutes ago, scotchegg said:

Simming since 2002 and want to thank Asobo every day (whilst also grumbling about some things). We should remember the scale of what they’re trying to achieve; an accurate rendition of 1) the whole world, 2) its skies, weather and seasons 3) numerous aircrafts’ interaction with those atmospheres, 4) those aircrafts’ systems, and 5) various features of the world like traffic, animals etc.

No other sim attempts all of them and Asobo is slowly chipping away at the problems, with inevitable hiccups here and there. I’m sure it’ll take a few years to make everyone happy, but I’m sure MSFS has the best chance of doing that. I just can’t see any of the competitors being able to do all 5 elements above although I hope Austin can surprise us with some goodies for XP12.

Msfs 2020 is like the person trying to spin 5 plates at once, and keep them all spinning without dropping one. I think they are doing a pretty good job. 

Edited February 21, 20215 yr by Bobsk8

Looking at the latest issues, this has got to be the most inept group of developers ever put together:

It was not enough that they broke the coastlines, added spikes in different locations, removed watermarks, and now I have to deal with blue taxi lights over many of my payware airports and the above issue. I'm well aware that ASOBO is aware of the issues, but dam, can they please stop breaking this sim?

Edited February 22, 20215 yr by DJJose

59 minutes ago, DJJose said:

Looking at the latest issues, this has got to be the most inept group of developers ever put together:

I agree with you! Now please show them how this is to be done!

It should be as easy as creating your own repo on github and start pushing the first commits of your own sim!. If you need any help, i can give you a few C++ books that i have here.

 

59 minutes ago, DJJose said:

can they please stop breaking this sim?

If you can fly your aeroplane, the sim isn't broken, it just has has some visual issues, and to be fair one of them you list is probably down to your payware developers to fix. These aren't ideal of course, but the sim isn't broken if you can still use it to fly your aeroplanes around.

24 minutes ago, Chock said:

 

If you can fly your aeroplane, the sim isn't broken, it just has has some visual issues, and to be fair one of them you list is probably down to your payware developers to fix. These aren't ideal of course, but the sim isn't broken if you can still use it to fly your aeroplanes around.

One thing I am staying away from is loading the sim up with payware. I remember the horror story that created with P3D, when it turned out some payware was breaking things. Like having too many cooks in the kitchen. 

1 hour ago, xender said:

I agree with you! Now please show them how this is to be done!

It's not my forte, but thanks anyway. 😀

14 hours ago, Chock said:

If you're going to write a 'Hey Microsoft how long the charade will go on ?' question, shouldn't you be sending it to Microsoft?

Yep Chock! It's just another one of these...

2 hours ago, Chock said:

 

If you can fly your aeroplane, the sim isn't broken, it just has has some visual issues, and to be fair one of them you list is probably down to your payware developers to fix. These aren't ideal of course, but the sim isn't broken if you can still use it to fly your aeroplanes around.

They promised awesome visuals, which continue to be degraded by multiple bugs.

There have to be about 5 different ways they could fix the terrain mesh.  I can think of 3 in ~5 minutes. 

-Look at the slope between any mesh point and all adjacent mesh points and flag any point where the slope to every adjacent point is really high.  This would filter out only single-point spikes.

-Diff the output of the terrain mesh against a separate global elevation map like the one the LittleNavMap supports.  Make a list of anywhere where a mesh point exceeds this other model, and then review for removal.

-Since many spikes disappear as you get close, diff the different LODs against each other and flag any point that changes wildly between the LODs.

Obviously someone figured it out for the original release because this wasn't a problem then.  Did that person quit or something and no one else can figure it out?