6 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

But I've always been honest.

True.  But you're the only one who has admitted this.

7 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

I just like to use the best tool for the job. MSFS was that tool.

For you.  Which is fair enough.

7 minutes ago, jarmstro said:

A pity.

I have to say, yes it is.  I enjoy competition.  Keeps me on my toes.  I also have an opinion on what is going on and how I see this happening, but again, I'll leave that alone for now.

I'll just say that Microsoft did the same thing with MS Flight.

3 minutes ago, GoranM said:

I'll just say that Microsoft did the same thing with MS Flight.

No not quite. I'd say they are now on a roll. An XBox roll which will exclude me. 

Well, now that I have 58 payware scenery addons that may or may not work in MSFS, random CTDs and the fact that ATC reads wrong altitude above FL180, I am finished purchasing anything for that platform until that sim stabilizes more. Time for some more X-Plane aircraft. For now, I downloaded the excellent freeware I found - Ryan Navion, C-47, An-24, and a couple more. Gonna investigate some payware classic airliners next. Thank god I have XP and P3D so I don't have to be completely grounded while Microsoft gets their stuff together. It's beyond irritating right now. 

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

Well you could still switch.

Personally Im waiting for a v1 of the sdk, sometimes its good to sit back and let others do all the hard work and take all the risk, then step in a reap their rewards.

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

MSFS is now an XBox game and that's that. A pity.

It was never a secret though, I never really understood the grief I got for pointing out 90% of the marketing material was targeted at XBOX and subscriptions, it was always the only way them pouring so much money into it made any kind of financial sense. Windows is a walking dead OS and has been for years.

The only pity is they don't allow weapons on the in game store, of all the really stupid decisions Ive seen simulator developers make over the years that takes the biscuit.

LRs plans have pretty much always been well thought out, main reason we are still waiting for a more detailed plan, not so much they are holding out and more just because they dont know or havent decided. 

3 minutes ago, mSparks said:

It was never a secret though, I never really understood the grief I got for pointing out 90% of the marketing material was targeted at XBOX and subscriptions, it was always the only way them pouring so much money into it made any kind of financial sense. Windows is a walking dead OS and has been for years.

I'd agree that the XBox was always the cash cow and the end game. However I think that what has transpired wasn't intentional. They achieved some optimisations but they were not enough to get a cooking XBox to run at 30fps. They couldn't quite get there even though they really really tried. So they downgraded the graphics. They will not now have two branches for the code so I think that PC users are basically stuck with XBox graphics forever.

 

 

1 hour ago, jarmstro said:

They achieved some optimisations but they were not enough to get a cooking XBox to run at 30fps. They couldn't quite get there even though they really really tried. 

OTOH, if they couldnt get it on the xbox, I really doubt they were getting it on the PC either.

Even 30fps is well below industry standards, I'm sure youve read me whining like an 11 year old girl (fresh in my mind at the nieces bday party) about XPs frame rate issues in the past, VR needs 90fps for a flawless none puke inducing blast around London village.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by mSparks

4 hours ago, GoranM said:

I have an opinion on this whole mess that has the label "SU5" on it, but I'd rather not discuss it here, for what could be considered obvious reasons.

Let me tell my opinion instead, then: It is currently a buggy mess - lots of CTDs, broken live weather, altitude bug, controls not moving while the camera is being panned, ESC key not unpausing the simulator, broken multiplayer & AI traffic, missing light shafts / volumetric lighting and more.

I didn't have any visual degradation like some people did (in fact, I had visual improvements), but Asobo really needs to improve their quality control and Microsoft should stop pushing Asobo to unrealistic deadlines. I love MSFS and thanks to add-ons like PMDG Boeings and Fenix A320, it will likely have the most accurate (not talking about visuals) modern airliner experience compared to other simulators, after all X-Plane is rather behind when it comes to modern airliner add-ons.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

1 hour ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Let me tell my opinion instead, then: It is currently a buggy mess - lots of CTDs, broken live weather, altitude bug, controls not moving while the camera is being panned, ESC key not unpausing the simulator, broken multiplayer & AI traffic, missing light shafts / volumetric lighting and more.

I didn't have any visual degradation like some people did (in fact, I had visual improvements), but Asobo really needs to improve their quality control and Microsoft should stop pushing Asobo to unrealistic deadlines. I love MSFS and thanks to add-ons like PMDG Boeings and Fenix A320, it will likely have the most accurate (not talking about visuals) modern airliner experience compared to other simulators, after all X-Plane is rather behind when it comes to modern airliner add-ons.

That's my thing too. It's not the graphics that are the issue (though the clouds took a major hit) - all the landscape and stuff looks as good as it always has for me - it's the OTHER stuff - crashes, weather, altitude, ATC.... You know... the SIMULATION part that's making me take a break right now. I still love it and I think it will eventually be fixed. For now though... it's not worth my frustration to try flying anything serious there. 

I am actually taking a little detour with X-Plane right now - for modern airliners I have all the P3D stuff (plus FlightFactor A350 on XP)... BUT!!! I just discovered XP 11 versions of some Russian planes - Felis' Yak-40 and An-24. Also found IL-76. AND a DC-3 which I haven't flown in any sim (I fly PMDG DC-6 in MSFS quite a bit). So I am kind of in that whole vintage space right now and exploring some Eastern European aircraft... Oh yeah and I found a Turbo Let! And a Piper Aerostar with a G1000.... all for free! Hey! I buy LOTS of payware, but it's kinda fun to explore some freebies once in a while too! 

6 hours ago, GoranM said:

I've always said it.  Every single one of us is entitled to enjoy what we want to enjoy, without negative and derogatory comments from the "other side".  Personal choice!

Voice of reason! The fact that we even have to talk about this is upsetting. One might not prefer other options, but this does not mean they should just annoy others and constantly mention how "terrible" others' choices are.

Overall, simulator wars really should end. Everyone has different interests and priorities, giving each simulator a unique attractiveness. Not even mentioning the fact that aircraft add-ons essentially eliminate the realism gap (not talking about visuals, but procedural realism and aerodynamics) and visual add-ons eliminate the graphics gap, which means the choice between simulators rather comes down to their exclusive add-ons, along with the different ways they are built. Also, for the people who care more about the default experience, currently X-Plane excels in aerodynamics and procedural realism (thanks to default avionics like G1000), while MSFS excels in graphics, though the gap between the two will likely shorten in future.

I love X-Plane for its classic airliners like FlyJSim 737-200, FlyJSim 727 and ini A300/Beluga/A310, along with GA aircraft that utilize X-Plane's flight model like the Hot Start TBM 900. Similarly I love MSFS for PMDG DC-6 and upcoming modern airliners like PMDG Boeings and Fenix A320. Lastly I love P3D for its modern airliners like PMDG Boeings and FSLabs A320.

With that being said, I really like upcoming X-Plane's procedural approach to visuals - I care more about having beautiful and consistent visuals at all altitudes than having all buildings placed exactly the way they are in real world, to the degree that I can find my house. In other words, I would happily give up on building placement accuracy for not having satellite imagery artifacts and things not looking weird at low altitudes. I already prefer the upcoming X-Plane's trees to MSFS ones, X-Plane ones are true 3D and they move with the wind, making them especially better for low altitude flights. Combine these visual improvements with X-Plane's true-to-life flight model, and we have another great simulator for ourselves.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

43 minutes ago, BostonJeremy77 said:

That's my thing too. It's not the graphics that are the issue (though the clouds took a major hit) - all the landscape and stuff looks as good as it always has for me - it's the OTHER stuff - crashes, weather, altitude, ATC.... You know... the SIMULATION part that's making me take a break right now. I still love it and I think it will eventually be fixed. For now though... it's not worth my frustration to try flying anything serious there. 

I am actually taking a little detour with X-Plane right now - for modern airliners I have all the P3D stuff (plus FlightFactor A350 on XP)... BUT!!! I just discovered XP 11 versions of some Russian planes - Felis' Yak-40 and An-24. Also found IL-76. AND a DC-3 which I haven't flown in any sim (I fly PMDG DC-6 in MSFS quite a bit). So I am kind of in that whole vintage space right now and exploring some Eastern European aircraft... Oh yeah and I found a Turbo Let! And a Piper Aerostar with a G1000.... all for free! Hey! I buy LOTS of payware, but it's kinda fun to explore some freebies once in a while too! 

I also gave up on MSFS for now, mostly due to lack of add-on aircraft and many bugs introduced with Sim Update 5, especially live weather bug, altimeter bug and crashes, which are major deal breakers for me.

Also if you like classics you will be delighted in X-Plane. There is also upcoming Felis 742, which looks beautiful. Don't forget FlyJSim stuff too, both 727 and 737-200 are great.

Edited August 3, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

Lastly I really hope we get improvements in weather simulation too. I really miss being able to simulate predictive and reactive windshears like I could in P3D.

7 hours ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

I didn't have any visual degradation like some people did (in fact, I had visual improvements),

Unfortunately I do have a severe visual degradation. Nothing looks quite as good as it did. There is now nothing special about the visuals at all.  And the graphics were the one big Ace the sim had over X-Plane.  With X-Vision and OrbX on a clear day XP looks far superior imo.

You only have to look at the loading screens to see what they have done. Check out the blurry cartoon textures on the rhino one!😂 The sim is now coded for a console plugged into a telly. But it does have elephants, bears, hippos, flamingos, seagulls, whales........

Edited August 4, 20214 yr by jarmstro

8 hours ago, jarmstro said:

Unfortunately I do have a severe visual degradation. Nothing looks quite as good as it did.

Maybe I am one of the lucky ones. I have always complained about how MSFS blurry was and how terrible the drawing distance was (in fact we had a discussion about that long ago), and since Sim Update 5 I am getting so much better drawing distance with a lot less blurries. What annoys me is not the visuals right now, but rather the bugs. Everything is quite buggy.

Also, don't underestimate Xbox! Both Series S and Series X have more processing power than most PCs (look at Steam charts, GTX 1060 is still the most used GPU), so the "visuals are being degraded for Xbox" conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense to me.

Edited August 4, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

36 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

look at Steam charts, GTX 1060 is still the most used GPU)

But is Steam population and stats representative of Avsim population for example?

I'm not saying it is, but just perusing flight simulation forums for more than 20 years is telling me there is a higher chance simmers are using higher end system on average.

18 minutes ago, RXP said:

But is Steam population and stats representative of Avsim population for example?

I'm not saying it is, but just perusing flight simulation forums for more than 20 years is telling me there is a higher chance simmers are using higher end system on average.

It is indeed likely that simmers are using higher end systems, but how higher? The RDNA 2 GPU on the Series X seems to be equivalent to an RTX 2080, which was a top-of-the-line graphics card 1-2 years ago. It also has a Zen 2 CPU equivalent to Ryzen 7 3700X, which would similarly count as top-of-the-line 1-2 years ago. I can easily guess there are a lot of simmers who are well below this.

In fact, I would definitely upgrade to a Series X if it allowed me to run X-Plane and P3D, as it is much cheaper to get Series X than equivalent hardware, and I'm currently not in a great financial state.

Edited August 4, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot