2 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

A long journey to fix what wasn't broken in the first place.

And the list of broken things in this update, is not a short list, by any stretch. Everytime I fly, I find something else that isn't right. 

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Bobsk8

Its not going to get canned.They are making big coin, and the people getting upset are the die hard simmers. People who are casual gamers are buying it, and doing their thing. What I worry about is if it just continues to get downgraded. But ASOBO has been very open with their development updates, and they continually say they want to make this a great sim. I still believe it, I just think this update has been a bit of a mess. 

2 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

And the list of broken things in this update, is not a short list, by any stretch. Everytime I fly, I find something else that isn't right. 

lol ... yeah there are all sorts of random little things that are not interfering with flying and are too small too actually bother mentioning.

An amusing one I found today is that according to the World map,  Coolangatta which is part of the QLD Gold Coast Tourist mecca has apparently got sick of the sun and surf and moved itself south closer to the NSW snow fields. According to the World map it is now located not far from the Australian Naval base at Nowra where teh Seahawks and Taipans fly from. 

There is also a whole lot of missing airports in far NE Canada in the boondocks (up towards Greenland latitudes), but they were always missing.

 

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

7 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Generally the ranting and complaining eventually settles down, people have had their say - but then someone decides to chip in posting with a  "no idea what you guys are on about this update is totally amazing, patch went flawlessly and no CTDs and the best graphics I have seen EVA .... you guys are imagining things "    sort of comment and it all fires up again.

You have hit the nail on the head here.  This is a significant factor in what goes on here, when people with valid complaints get gas-lighted; I know it sets me off!

It is quite obvious about the clouds, environmental lighting, pop-ups, and something with the ground texture shimmering in the middle distance.  I am not saying these are show stoppers, and they will be different things to different people, but they are there.

But obviously it isn't all negative - here are some positives from me: -

• On a fairly old 1080Ti, I can now hold 30 FPS silky smooth everywhere, absolutely everywhere.  Mainly ultra settings, 4k at 85% scaling.  This is absolutely superb performance for me.
• I now see very little stuttering (virtually non-existent actually).  It has even cleared up when flying around Saltsburg, which gave me persistent bad stuttering / long pauses, - all gone now!
• Did you see I put scaling at 85% above?  Not sure if this has been noticed, but 5% increments are now available on the slider.  A nice touch, as for me, 80% is under utilised, 90 is a bit too far.
• The offline ATC voices are better.  My avatar doesn't sound like a little boy any more!
• The aircraft selection screen is better - slicker, especially now our hangars are filling up more and more by the month.
• Not one CTD for me since the hotfix.  I have had a 90+ minute flight out of it with no issues.  Obviously some people are still struggling, so hopefully Asobo will continue to work on this for them.

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by bobcat999

14 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

You have hit the nail on the head here.  This is a significant factor in what goes on here, when people with valid complaints get gas-lighted; I know it sets me off!

It is quite obvious about the clouds, environmental lighting, pop-ups, and something with the ground texture shimmering in the middle distance.  I am not saying these are show stoppers, and they will be different things to different people, but they are there.

But obviously it isn't all negative - here are some positives from me: -

The ti does the trick for a flight over my region yesterday with my vanilla 1080 was a bit stuttery much more than ever before. I aborted a landing in LFMD. I was not reasonable to try pushing the LOD from 170 to 200 though 😄.

I will give you my feeling about the avatar voice as soon as it gets back on my side as he is a mute now.

Scaling : I have always hesitated to do that with my 2560*1440. Don’t you lose sharpness ?

11 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Scaling : I have always hesitated to do that with my 2560*1440. Don’t you lose sharpness ?

Yes, as with everything, it is a balance.    I had to run at 4k 75% (from the config file) before to hold smoothness, and the instruments were just on the edge of readability.  At 85% they are nice and crisp now (steam gauge and digital).  Sharpening = 1 in the user config file is definitely required, but should be on by default.

On another note, Overkill on Youtube showed off the new G1000 (NXI is it?) available on the marketplace.  Amazing work - it looks really impressive with sharp graphics. 
I am not normal a flat panel guy, but I will grab it and try it in the default C172 tonight.  Still some way to go with development of it, but superb work from Working Title up to now!

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by bobcat999

Sorry - trying not to go off topic, but I am also holding 300/300 on the LOD easily, and I have also put shadows to 4k in the user config as well. 

Note that the LOD helps with tree and autogen range (I don't use photogrammetry due to low internet speeds), but doesn't help the pop-in of some objects at close range - which is maybe a different problem.

Shadows inside and out are now lovely and sharp at 4k set in the config file, with seemingly little or no performance hit for me. 

So some positives here from me for people who think I am just a moaning minnie! 

16 hours ago, chickster25 said:

The only alternatives are P3D or X-plane. There may be new versions in the pipeline but how long will they take to come to fruition?

is there a problem with the current .......😗

It's just I never felt the need to mess with settings ALL that much before this update, now it almost feels mandatory, not sure how much it helps, but maybe for psychological intent anyhow.

 

2 hours ago, bobcat999 said:

Sorry - trying not to go off topic, but I am also holding 300/300 on the LOD easily, and I have also put shadows to 4k in the user config as well. 

Note that the LOD helps with tree and autogen range (I don't use photogrammetry due to low internet speeds), but doesn't help the pop-in of some objects at close range - which is maybe a different problem.

Shadows inside and out are now lovely and sharp at 4k set in the config file, with seemingly little or no performance hit for me. 

So some positives here from me for people who think I am just a moaning minnie! 

Hi,

Have to done the test to see if your setting are sticking? people were running Ultra etc but have since found out there not and placing LOD to 300/300 will be shown with trees, you still not on Ultra even if it shows and tells you are. There are people on here that say there setting are sticking and I have no reason to think there not right but a lot concore they thought they where running High end or Ultra and it turns out there not.

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Nyxx

What worries me is that future updates will be bound to whatever the Xbox Series S hardware can handle, which leaves us shackled to substandard performance compared with the cutting edge gaming PCs many of us run. Is SU4 the high point of MSFS development until Microsoft declares the Series S has reached reached end of its life?

17 hours ago, chickster25 said:

The only alternatives are P3D or X-plane. There may be new versions in the pipeline but how long will they take to come to fruition?

Good post. 

The other major question would be what other companies are honestly capable of this?

It requires incredibly deep pockets, a major risk without guarantee or even assumption of profit, existing integration with things like Bing Maps so it's "free", AAA-level gaming developer talent so you can properly handle the eye candy, advanced aviation knowledge so you can make a plausible flight simulator, it just goes on and on.

Let's say Asobo has 200 developers and Microsoft threw hundreds of millions of dollars at them to make this happen.

What about Blackshark AI?  What about everyone on the Bing Maps teams that has had a hand in this?  What about all of the Azure engineers that made sure this could work smoothly with the cloud platform?

It's a lot of people and a lot of money.  Let's try to be thankful for what that has accomplished.

The technology has increased a lot with newer game engines like UE 5, and it's possible to get SOME of the graphics done at a lower budget, but some things are a lot of work regardless.

Xplane will have a chance to try to procedurally render the world to even surpass MSFS visuals eventually. The technology is there now, it wasn't before, it was mostly experimental, but now it's here and almost in the masses. So things are going to change a lot, so I wouldn't be so sure someone cannot beat MSFS visuals.

The problem is there is so much complicted physics involved and systems with Flight Sims that it's a lot more than just the graphics.

I am not sure how much better Blackshark AI was compared to the standard old image recognition routines that people were using for autogen. It does seem Blackshark's worked better, but they also had higher quality aerial imagery for the entire area. Prior to this, people were forced to use only OSM data and similar sources for MOST of the area, and then could run image recognition on the aerial imagery ONLY near the airport. 

 

Edited August 2, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

Let's all face it:  This puppy was nowhere ready to be launched on 8/18/20.  It was and is partially Asosbo's fault, of course, but they were tasked with creating a new and complicated flight sim almost from scratch. 

I believe the real blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the Microsoft Corporation - they wanted to get this product out for XBox as well as pc's last year no matter what - they knew it would be something amazing and unique in the sim community utilizing Bing maps, and that the demand would certainly be there. They set the hook, and all the fish ran with it.  They even said it might be a ten year project.  So now, the endless updates go forth (and update fixes follow that)...