29 minutes ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

But I guess what's done is done, there is nothing else we can do to get an answer for this.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting nothing can be done. Just that the probability is high that it was done to fix another terrain issue that was likely just as apparent (potentially the scenery spikes). I don't know, I wasn't there at the time. Sometimes these are just the best engineering compromises, and engineers look at the same scenery you do and because they understand the algorithm limitations it doesn't register to them as a critical issue.

If I get a chance I can certainly forward a question.

-Matt

Edited April 14, 20215 yr by MattNischan

14 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

To be clear, I'm not suggesting nothing can be done.

I know, it's just that I felt this Q&A was our only chance for acknowledgement, and it is unlikely that the question will be raised again in another one. I am almost afraid of asking Jayne for a follow-up because she has already done her part and it seems her hands are full at the moment, so if you do get the chance to ask them it would be greatly appreciated.

17 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

it was done to fix another terrain issue that was likely just as apparent (potentially the scenery spikes)

USA World Update (November): Terrain morphing, coastline glitch

Sim Update 2 (December): Terrain spikes

UK World Update (February): Fix for spikes, coastline adjustment/workaround

I was flying a lot the first few months after launch, before the flickering clouds and LOD regressions, so you can take my word for it. 1.10.7.0 did not have any outstanding issues.

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

All I have to do is remember one hotkey, which isn't really hard, and I can see all relevant hotkeys on the frequency I am on. The three hotkeys I use all the time are assigned to my yoke buttons. PF3 does use whatever is in the sim. I just updated it after installing the MSFS update. 

If you only use one hotkey for PF3 that is the same as assigning the ATC to AI in the default ATC with the only difference that it doesnt advance if you don't press that button. Yeah sure that works. What do you press in case of an emergency? How do you request a different altitude? 

And now remember: I fly most of my time in VR and can't see my keyboard. But the missing integrating with Navigraph is a dealbreaker anyway so the rest doesn't really matter.

Edited April 14, 20215 yr by kakihara123

3 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

If you want to use MCE with PF3, it works very well. I hate wearing headphones when flying a sim

MCE is a must for me to make my desktop "flying" experience as close to the one I had for years "up here", it does interface very well with PF3, and wearing a headset is necessary for me to hang my Track IR detector, so it's a very satisfying setup that allows forgetting the keyboard!

4 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I'm just saying, whatever system they had before the USA World Update worked a lot better than it does now

That‘s exactly my layman‘s observation as well. Whatever it was, something must have been changed back then. It looks as if we were given better mesh in exchange for those new issues. I just took the c152 for a flight around Mt Blanc. It does look better than before but there was not a second without any morphing going on. What‘s more there were loads of tears. Especially in VR this is incredibly annoying and it just spoils the enjoyment. 

30 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

 there was not a second without any morphing going on. What‘s more there were loads of tears. Especially in VR this is incredibly annoying and it just spoils the enjoyment. 

I totally agree.

I just tested the new LFHM airport.  The continuous morphing that is going on on the mountain face behind the airport when approaching runway 15 is completely breaking the immersion and is turning the whole scene ridiculous.

The terrain morphing seems to have become worse with every update beginning with the USA update. By now the severeness of the terrain morphing has reached the deplorable level of P3D. Disappointing.

 

44 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

That‘s exactly my layman‘s observation as well. Whatever it was, something must have been changed back then. It looks as if we were given better mesh in exchange for those new issues. I just took the c152 for a flight around Mt Blanc. It does look better than before but there was not a second without any morphing going on. What‘s more there were loads of tears. Especially in VR this is incredibly annoying and it just spoils the enjoyment. 

If only it was just the USA affected by these gnarly terrain issues, and not the entire world. Japan got some crazy good mesh with its own update, but now it's yet another morphing mess. I wish I would have spent more time flying there before the USA update, but I was waiting for the flickering clouds to be fixed. Oh well.

The mountain seams is also another massively underrepresented issue. Quite oddly, reducing the Terrain LOD value actually seems to help eliminate the seams at medium to long distances, which reinforces my opinion that the LOD rings are like totally broken indeed.

8 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

The terrain morphing seems to have become worse with every update beginning with the USA update. By now the severeness of the terrain morphing has reached the deplorable level of P3D. Disappointing.

What's odd is that the terrain LOD system in FSX/P3D from 15 years ago, even if it suffers from the extremely aggressive LOD switching, actually has better shape retention than the new simulator. Turn down the Terrain LOD value enough and it will look even worse than the legacy simulators. The return of the dreaded sawtooth pattern does not help matters either.

6 hours ago, MattNischan said:

To be clear, I'm not suggesting nothing can be done. Just that the probability is high that it was done to fix another terrain issue that was likely just as apparent (potentially the scenery spikes). I don't know, I wasn't there at the time. Sometimes these are just the best engineering compromises, and engineers look at the same scenery you do and because they understand the algorithm limitations it doesn't register to them as a critical issue.

If I get a chance I can certainly forward a question.

-Matt

Hi Matt

It has been encouraging reading your well thought out posts. You seem to have a great understanding of MSFS and the complexity that the developers are contending with.

My frustration and confusion comes from the fact that this morphing issue did not exist (to a detectable degree) anywhere on the planet prior to the USA update. In the first few months after the release I must have covered a million low level miles all over the globe. Prior to that update, apart from a few random (& completely reasonable) glitches spread across the entire globe like raised river beds, a few sinkholes and some stationary elevation glitches in the northern hemisphere, the terrain was great. No morphing, no coastline movement, no transparent tears in mountainsides and so on.  If making the entire globe into a "shape shifting acid trip" was the side effect of a terrain correction to something else, then it appears they used a giant sledge hammer to drive in a very small nail. 

Even after the Japan update which included more detailed elevation maps, everything seemed fine. It was after the USA update when all of this began. Instantly the terrain began "morphing" from one LOD to another right in front and in many cases right beside the aircraft. If you fly along the Colorado River near the Hoover Dam, you can actually watch as detached pieces of mountain tops (that are separated from the base of the mountain by a thin transparent strip) actually attach themselves to the mountain and begin changing shape as if the mountains are being built and reshaped directly in front of the aircraft as you fly along. This is not a small issue.

I am not an engineer by any stretch and if the solution to this issue (at this point) is very complex, I can appreciate that. But the fact that they are not even discussing this issue is very concerning. Also, if we were free to use or revert to older builds, I would happily and immediately switch back to prior to the USA update. I understand that due to the online nature of the program, this is not currently realistic. Nonetheless, I would eagerly forfeit some slightly more detailed elevation maps, for a non immersion breaking and stationary earth surface. 

What you are describing certainly sounds complicated, but what's crazy is that they had it working perfectly fine before.. so what gives? At the very least, I just want to hear them talk about it. Thanks for you time.

 

1 hour ago, erick said:

Also, if we were free to use or revert to older builds, I would happily and immediately switch back to prior to the USA update.

Living on Vancouver Island which got wrecked as part of the USA update, I certainly feel the same way.

I have posted at Zendesk several times, complete with screenshots, but nothing has happened to fix our local shore lines.

Mappamundi has kindly provided a BC/PNW shoreline fix which I use, and which certainly takes the edge off, but before the USA update, I did not experience this problem..

Edited April 14, 20215 yr by Bert Pieke

2 hours ago, erick said:

What you are describing certainly sounds complicated, but what's crazy is that they had it working perfectly fine before.. so what gives? At the very least, I just want to hear them talk about it. Thanks for you time.

I would love Asobo, to get an earlier release just after Japan WU and add in incremental way all the fixes about terrain, LOD, texture, mesh, etc... they developed after. Maybe they will find where the problem is coming from.

As many of you here, I started to see worldwide coastal melting and other problem after USA WU.

Less and less I am trusting Asobo communication. One small exemple is the hybrid units, where are those units you could find in FSX or used in RW aviation, for exemple New Zealand in my case? On a pretty old Q&A, they said it was easy and done, well it's not, And I just can't understand why no dev or tester, some of them pilots, saw that.

 

Edited April 14, 20215 yr by bendead

Why is the new ATR 42-600/72-600 going to take so long to be released? The model looks very near competition from the outside at least, is it really going to take 8+ months to polish that up, model the innards and integrate physics and systems? (Presuming they're not already started on) thanks

On 4/13/2021 at 6:57 PM, ChaoticBeauty said:

Right now they're showing videos on turboprop and rudder improvements in the Cessna 172 (which will also be ported to other planes), and in general Sim Update 4 will heavily improve the accuracy of secondary characteristics like adverse yaw.

Sim Update 4 will also include performance optimisations for glass cockpits and, and in later updates, for memory consumption and GPU usage. They're also talking about improvements to live traffic, landing smoke effects and weather radar that, if I heard correctly, will be included in Sim Update 4.

World Update 5 is the Nordics, coming June. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland.

Just wondering where that landing smoke will take it’s cue from? Will it give a true indication of the wind near ground level, or go completely maverick like the windsocks?

Or is this just smoke off the tyres?

Edited April 15, 20215 yr by Bilbosmeggins

5 hours ago, MarcG said:

is it really going to take 8+ months to polish that up, model the innards and integrate physics and systems?

Oh yes, absolutely. Aircraft avionics and aystems development with sufficient detail is extremely time consuming. The modeling part is the fast part, in comparison.

You're effectively coding a whole entire sim inside the sim. Think of MSFS as Windows (the platform) and the plane as Microsoft Word (the stuff that runs on the platform). It's a huge job, basically at least as much code as writing a whole regular application.

In fact, I've worked on plenty of applications that have less code than some planes.

-Matt

6 minutes ago, MattNischan said:

Oh yes, absolutely. Aircraft avionics and aystems development with sufficient detail is extremely time consuming. The modeling part is the fast part, in comparison.

You're effectively coding a whole entire sim inside the sim. Think of MSFS as Windows (the platform) and the plane as Microsoft Word (the stuff that runs on the platform). It's a huge job, basically at least as much code as writing a whole regular application.

In fact, I've worked on plenty of applications that have less code than some planes.

-Matt

Nice thanks for that, still trying to get my head around the sheer complexity of it all. Coming from a racing sim background i know it can take a few months from start to finish to get a racecar in a Sim, not as much physics involved and barely any in car systems to worry about of course 😄