Maybe it's just me, but I feel like MSFS2020 + Update 5 need a fair review.

All we see here is so much negative. 

This is a lot like wanting to purchase something on Amazon and after reading all of the negative reviews about that product you want to change your mind.  What I've come to learn is that happy and satisfied people are less likely to expend energy coming back to leave a positive review.  Some do... Most don't.  It's the same in this case.  There are thousands of people enjoying their MSFS2020 right now... Simply too busy barnstorming, buzzing the White House, or whatever else they do while using their sim to come back and leave a review.  Yet... Any outsider coming to this forum and reading complaints from a few dozen posts would think that MSFS2020 is an outright abomination.  Not the case!  I for one after minimal tweaking have got my sim running just the way I want it.  In fact I downloaded and flew the Solo 103 last night and I was quite impressed.  Very realistic... Still runs smooth for me. 

Also... So much hate about the brightness and washed out colors.  I'm not sure why everyone was hung up on the over saturated graphics prior to the update.  While pretty... It was kind of unrealistic.  I have a lot of hours in the air as a flight medic and most of the time due to air/moisture density and many other atmospheric factors, the colors were never close to what we were presented with prior to the update.  The real world IS very washed out from the air especially at higher altitude.    For example... here's an actual photo over Pittsfield Maine I took after a patient transport to Boston.   I actually complained to Mother Nature about her washed out scenery, but she wasn't hearing any of that!   LOLOL!  Point is... If you are looking for realism... IMO, Update 5 got it right!

Did  we really need another thread about this? There are at least 4-5 all discussing the same topic

A bit harsh. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and if 4 or 5 other people have posted on it, so be it.

Edited July 30, 20214 yr by RichD
Mistake

5 minutes ago, RichD said:

A bit harsh. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and if 4 or 5 other people have posted on it, so be it.

Opinion is great that's why we post in an existing thread on the topic but starting a new thread covering the same topic comes across as elevating your opinion over everyone else as your the topic starter.  

I like the fact that someone used a real world photo to show realism.  Yes, I can speak to the washed out effect too...though I don't have a photo.  Summer is often hazy and things do get washed out and visibility goes downhill.  Also, windshields and windows are often not so clean.  If we went for full atmospheric realism we might wrinkle our noses...the real world isn't always as clear as we see it in the sim.  That said, from high up there's no pixilation (which is largely fixable) and you can actually see larger buildings jutting up.  It ain't perfect but, it's pretty good and, most especially, down low.  In terms of washed out colors, people are finding ways to adjust them through:

• Config changes
• Nvidea Ansel
• Nvidea Desktop Color Settings
• HDR settings on monitors and in Windows.

In case you want to.  

17 minutes ago, Matt B said:

  I have a lot of hours in the air as a flight medic

 

It'll be 5 minutes before some guys with "30 years of experience flying desktop sims" is going to start lecturing on how wrong you are. Ha ha ah.

It was much more realistic with SU4. 

18 minutes ago, Matt B said:

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like MSFS2020 + Update 5 need a fair review.

All we see here is so much negative. 

This is a lot like wanting to purchase something on Amazon and after reading all of the negative reviews about that product you want to change your mind.  What I've come to learn is that happy and satisfied people are less likely to expend energy coming back to leave a positive review.  Some do... Most don't.  It's the same in this case.  There are thousands of people enjoying their MSFS2020 right now... Simply too busy barnstorming, buzzing the White House, or whatever else they do while using their sim to come back and leave a review.  Yet... Any outsider coming to this forum and reading complaints from a few dozen posts would think that MSFS2020 is an outright abomination.  Not the case!  I for one after minimal tweaking have got my sim running just the way I want it.  In fact I downloaded and flew the Solo 103 last night and I was quite impressed.  Very realistic... Still runs smooth for me. 

Also... So much hate about the brightness and washed out colors.  I'm not sure why everyone was hung up on the over saturated graphics prior to the update.  While pretty... It was kind of unrealistic.  I have a lot of hours in the air as a flight medic and most of the time due to air/moisture density and many other atmospheric factors, the colors were never close to what we were presented with prior to the update.  The real world IS very washed out from the air especially at higher altitude.    For example... here's an actual photo over Pittsfield Maine I took after a patient transport to Boston.   I actually complained to Mother Nature about her washed out scenery, but she wasn't hearing any of that!   LOLOL!  Point is... If you are looking for realism... IMO, Update 5 got it right!

The realism, foggy day or not, starts to go away when you can start to count singular pixels at FL 360 because they have decided to reduce LOD for ground textures even further.

As usual after playing around a bit on my mid range PC the performance improvements have been huge.....but yes at a cost of some visually fidelity.   Its a tough trade off and I get that some would rather have more performance issues then a cut in visual quality.  Its just in my case they arent deal breakers..... And yes the new bugs introduced are annoying as heck.

But I am sad we are going to clawback some of the performance gains - dreading what the next hotfix will do to that......

 

1 minute ago, Fiorentoni said:

starts to go away when you can start to count singular pixels at FL 360 because they have decided to reduce LOD for ground textures even further.

Did you do a flight today? It seems that this issue is gone and it was probably just because the servers were overloaded...

In VR I haven't yet seen the characteristics in these photos. 

 

It almost looks like noise reduction

Edited July 30, 20214 yr by dogmanbird

34 minutes ago, AnkH said:

Did you do a flight today? It seems that this issue is gone and it was probably just because the servers were overloaded...

Gone? Not here it isn't.

Wait! It does look better now!

Edited July 30, 20214 yr by jarmstro

1 minute ago, AnkH said:

Did you do a flight today? It seems that this issue is gone and it was probably just because the servers were overloaded...

Yes 6 hours ago, it was still absolutely FS9-level. I'd be glad if it is only a server issue. Will see tonight I guess.

4 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

It'll be 5 minutes before some guys with "30 years of experience flying desktop sims" is going to start lecturing on how wrong you are. Ha ha ah.

I actually do have 30 years of experience flying desktop sims! A few more than that, in fact.  But I agree with OP. Super-saturated graphics look pretty, but they also very rarely look like the real world. I don't like everything about SU5, but moving the look closer to reality is one of the things I do like.

I haven't had all that much time to test this SU, but from what I've seen so far, I'm pretty happy. I'm one of the ones who started experiencing terrible performance issues after SU 3 (or maybe it was 2 - cant' remember now). I had been running everything on high, and sometimes ultra. I had to knock everything down to medium, and sometimes high just to get decent framerates after the update. Now I'm back to high and ultra. That's a solid win in my book. 

I hate the new clickable cockpit interface, but fortunately I can turn that off and make things work the way they did.

I like that you can now have a dedicated button/axis to move the TBM throttle from idle to flight. That's a good improvement over the previous scheme, which used the throttle axis to move from low to high idle, then over to flight where you then had to quickly slam the physical throttle control closed so that you weren't suddenly at full throttle. And then you had to click the throttle back over to the idle side.  This new way is much better.

One thing I dislike in general that I wish they'd do something about is the live player pop-in issue. It's always been an issue, but with the massive influx of Xbox (and Steam) players after this update, it's gotten a lot worse. It's very annoying to be on short final and suddenly a plane blinks into existence on the runway in front of you. It'd be nice if players were restricted to starting in a parking spot if they're playing in a live environment. 

 

 

9 minutes ago, marcg11 said:

As usual after playing around a bit on my mid range PC the performance improvements have been huge.....but yes at a cost of some visually fidelity.   Its a tough trade off and I get that some would rather have more performance issues then a cut in visual quality.  Its just in my case they arent deal breakers..... And yes the new bugs introduced are annoying as heck.

But I am sad we are going to clawback some of the performance gains - dreading what the next hotfix will do to that......

 

So then if someone has a 9 year old PC. it is OK to roll back graphics so the 9 year old PC has acceptable frame rates, and the people that just bought a PC  in the last year or two for MSFS should see degraded visuals. I am on a fixed income and scrimped and saved to get a new PC, and now I have to look at something that isn't as good as it was a few days ago. 

Edited July 30, 20214 yr by Bobsk8