31 minutes ago, orchestra_nl said:

• "lower image quality". We were promised higher performance and we assumed that would be without reducing the image quality. Personally I am not yet convinced the image quality has suffered, apart from the over saturation issue, but if that is indeed the case, they should have given us sliders to make the choice ourselves.

They actually added lower res Lods to some models that were missing the LODs before, this also improved performance on hand placed bushes and grass by quite a bit. They actually changed some of the grass as it is taller than it used to be. They also changed the LOD renderer, all this is known and nothing secret about, how much effect that has had to the actual visuals is subjective to a degree. One of the reasons the download was so big was at least in part because of some of the new graphics files.

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

So what´s the consensus on the real culprit of visual degradation?

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Aristoteles

On 7/31/2021 at 7:13 PM, Ixoye said:

I had a nice flight with JF Warrior II around Trondheim in Norway tonight, this aircraft works very well with SU5, some small glitches, but very nice to fly, so I feel much better now, what bothers me the most right now are the ugly clouds and the washed out colors, I have a HDR compatible monitor so it helps, but I would prefer to get back the color scheme as it was before.

As I understand it, the washed out colors can be upgraded by editing a single line in a text file. I saw that somewhere, I forget where. I have not tried it.

12 minutes ago, Aristoteles said:

So what´s the consensus on the real culprit of visual degradation?

General lighting changes and LOD renderer changes to the ground textures is the main thing, but there are other minor issues.

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

OK, here it is, I copy and paste. This was posted today but I think its old news. You can see the screen shots in the links.

WORKAROUND FOR THE OVEREXPOSED SKY AND CLOUDS: To disable the unrealistic overexposed sky and clouds effect seen from the cockpit view, if unable to use the HDR10, is to edit one value in the UserCfg.opt file. To find this UserCfg.opt file, go to your Community folder, and then “Go up” by two folders. Open the UserCfg.opt file with the Notepad and search for “ColorGrading 1”. Change the ColorGrading (in both Version 66 and GraphicsVR sections) value from 1 to 0, then save and close the file before launching the MSFS. Check out the before and after screenshots to see the difference. If changing the graphics settings via in-sim, it might set the ColorGrading value back to 1, so you’ll need to apply this workaround again then.

It helps, but a bit painful because I have to keep changing it everytime, as the sim overwrites it.

17 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

It helps, but a bit painful because I have to keep changing it everytime, as the sim overwrites it.

The only way it will get overridden is if you keep switching presets in the settings 

What is actually sad is that we are now  unable to push FS to a level beyond Xbox capabilites, when, in fact, we know there is a diamond hidden beyond those settings. It is an accomplishment for Asobo to have reached that goal as MS wanted, but I am sure, they feel the pain to see their product downgraded anyway due to marketing reasons. Let´s just hope they can refine the code so that we get Su4 level of quality and..more.

I see that MSFS resets ColorGrading right back to 1 as soon as boot up the sim. So you have to set properties to Read Only for the change to work.

You also need to change some text in UserCfg.opt from Preset Ultra to Preset Custom.

Changing any file not in the community folder will probably make any Asobo update for instance download a 20 GB update instead of a 2 GB update. So you should store a copy of the original UserCfg.opt somewhere safe to put back before any update.

I just tested and do not see the change making any difference. Other posters online says it does make a difference.

like here, they say it makes a big difference:

https://www.flightsimulator.blog/2021/08/02/best-graphics-settings-guide/

===========================

top screenshot I just right now flew in Paris and captured is ColorGrading 1

================================

bottom pic is ColorGrading 0

I see no difference) so maybe I'm not doing the text edit correctly or something, who knows?

I did reboot the sim in between using color grading 1 and color grading 0 and double checked it was indeed set to color grading 0. I don't see a difference, maybe I'm doing something wrong.

 

It´s just inevitable that someone comes with tweaks and tricks after the downgrade, but, I am afraid, we are in Asobo´s hands now...

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Aristoteles

15 minutes ago, Fielder said:

I see that MSFS resets ColorGrading right back to 1 as soon as boot up the sim. So you have to set properties to Read Only for the change to work.

You also need to change some text in UserCfg.opt from Preset Ultra to Preset Custom.

 

Have you tried making a change to the settings inside the MSFS graphics options so that MSFS recognises it as a Custom instead of Ultra Preset? When I do this, I don't have any problems to make my changes to UserCfg.opt persistent, otherwise it gets overwritten at start. And just to be sure: have you changed it in both sections, for Graphics as well as for GraphicsVR? 

So, you guys constantly fiddle with core sim files, and then you complain that your sim CTDs all the time. Too funny.

19 minutes ago, Ricardo41 said:

So, you guys constantly fiddle with core sim files, and then you complain that your sim CTDs all the time. Too funny.

UserCfg.opt a sim core file? You're funny... 

Edit: btw, no complaints about CTDs from my side...

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by pstrub

2 minutes ago, pstrub said:

UserCfg.opt a sim core file? You're funny... 

Edit: btw, no complaints about CTDs from my side...

now  thats  funny 🙂