The XBOX version makes Asobo's platform preference obvious

[enright 496]

After playing the XBOX version, anyone that says Asobo is designing the application with a "console first' mentality is out of their mind.

The XBOX version is a technical masterpiece, but it is obviously an application that was designed for a PC and ported to consoles. The UI requires you to move a cursor over a little "X" in the top right corner of many of the menus to close them. The camera system and many system functions require more button combos than most of the super-secret fatality moves in mortal kombat - those same functions are a single key on a PC keyboard. Even basic flight control can be quite frustrating with a gamepad - I immediately wanted to hook up a mouse, keyboard, and flight-stick.

I also found myself wondering how the average "gamer" would react to the experience since it isn't much of a game - just as on the PC, it's a simulator. There's little to no instant gratification or reward system - you have to invest time to get some enjoyment out of it. In other words - they absolutely did not "dumb it down" and develop a basic "MS Flight" type of experience for XBOX, and then port that to the PC. They developed a fairly hardcore PC simulator, and ported that same advanced experience to the XBOX.

They did pretty much exactly what everyone on this forum (myself included) hoped they would do.

Because of all of this - if you have an older PC and can't afford a $3,000 gaming rig, or if you are somewhat tiered of dealing with drivers and OS Updates - an XBOX Series X is a great option, as long as you hook up a mouse, keyboard and flight stick.

Final thing to note: the sim looks absolutely stunning on an OLED TV screen - makes it hard to go back to a LED monitor, even thought he PC experience is far better (VR, etc..). LG / Sony need an affordable <= 40 inch OLED PC monitor option. The improvement in quality is so drastic, it offsets some of the downsides (e.g. long-term burn-in risk, etc...).

Edited August 9, 2021 by enright

[Tuskin38 6,526]

That was not what I was expecting from the thread title haha.

[Fielder 3,679]

Yeah, I thought the thread was going to be how FS was designed to run mainly on surface Pro white boards, not! 🤣

 

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

1 hour ago, enright said:

Because of all of this - if you have an older PC and can't afford a $3,000 gaming rig, or if you are somewhat tiered of dealing with drivers and OS Updates - an XBOX Series X is a great option, as long as you hook up a mouse, keyboard and flight stick.

As long as you are aware that you cannot download free content from the flightsim.to site etc..

[Noel 4,503]

2 hours ago, enright said:

Final thing to note: the sim looks absolutely stunning on an OLED TV screen - makes it hard to go back to a LED monitor, even thought he PC experience is far better (VR, etc..). LG / Sony need an affordable <= 40 inch OLED PC monitor option. The improvement in quality is so drastic, it offsets some of the downsides (e.g. long-term burn-in risk, etc...).

I have a 5y/o Dell U3415W 34" 3440x1440 curved LED display.  I'm holding out for a curved OLED PC monitor 3440x1440 to 4K, prefer the ultra wide aspect ratio for flying.  I'm in no hurry and sounds like it's best I'm not, but it's a foregone conclusion we will see this very soon, then prices will drop in a couple of years.  I really don't want anything bigger than 34", and am happiest w/ a 30Hz refresh rate, which I understand is easier to find in OLED.

[enright 496]

1 minute ago, Noel said:

I have a 5y/o Dell U3415W 34" 3440x1440 curved LED display.  I'm holding out for a curved OLED PC monitor 3440x1440 to 4K, prefer the ultra wide aspect ratio for flying.  I'm in no hurry and sounds like it's best I'm not, but it's a foregone conclusion we will see this very soon, then prices will drop in a couple of years.  I really don't want anything bigger than 34", and am happiest w/ a 30Hz refresh rate, which I understand is easier to find in OLED.

I have the exact same monitor. It's certainly been a good investment - having lasted 6+ years - and I agree about the ultra-wide aspect ratio - definitely more immersive. Someone made a good point that you can have the exact same effect with black bars on a 4k 16:9 monitor. On an OLED, those bars would be pitch black, unlike the black bars on an LED screen that are greyish with distracting bleed-through. You'd also have the option of using those extra pixels if/when needed. 

To me, OLEDs are the only display technology that comes close to replicating the sense of depth that the old CRTs gave you. Most LEDs, including ours, just have a flat, washed out appearance by comparison, IMHO.

Why the 30Hz refresh rate? Doesn't that produce noticeable flicker? Do faster refresh rates (60, 120, etc...) cause you discomfort?

[Dillon 2,197]

2 hours ago, enright said:

.Because of all of this - if you have an older PC and can't afford a $3,000 gaming rig, or if you are somewhat tiered of dealing with drivers and OS Updates - an XBOX Series X is a great option, as long as you hook up a mouse, keyboard and flight stick.

Final thing to note: the sim looks absolutely stunning on an OLED TV screen - makes it hard to go back to a LED monitor, even thought he PC experience is far better (VR, etc..). LG / Sony need an affordable <= 40 inch OLED PC monitor option. The improvement in quality is so drastic, it offsets some of the downsides (e.g. long-term burn-in risk, etc...).

My question is can you access the internet, have access to a file explorer for downloads/community folder management, the ability to download add-ons from third party sites like Milviz, and have the standard peripherals along with Track IR/Peddles/Yoke/ or a VR headset?   If you can do all that it's a great alternative.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Dillon

[Noel 4,503]

53 minutes ago, enright said:

Why the 30Hz refresh rate? Doesn't that produce noticeable flicker? Do faster refresh rates (60, 120, etc...) cause you discomfort?

My particular display generates no flicker, and of course the perseption of flicker is, perception, so subjective.  Thankfully I don't have any problem at all with it, no mouse lag, no eye strain.  I can't tell any significant difference between 30 and 60Hz w/o doing a test to tease it out.  Here's why I will always use vsync to 30Hz until such time it's 100% doable to maintain >=60fps in every conceivable scenario, with all settings at Ultra or beyond, at a minimum of 3440x1440:

This is wide open, no vsync, 60Hz display:

 

This is the same exact scenario, vsync to 30Hz:

What's critical to note here is the subjective experience, all aspects including panning, outside views, inside views, etc, is superior w/ vsync to 30Hz, and it's associated frame rate of 30.  Note GPU load, and CPU-16 loads in each.  I've run the same scenario in a very easy to process area where 60fps could easily be maintained so I could compare vsync to 60hz, or 60fps, and it was absolutely no better than 30, in both MSFS and P3D.  I'm certain in a blinded test I couldn't tell the difference.  The one place it *should* matter is gazing out sideways 90 degrees to the direction of travel at point blank range to scenery, so for example just before take off so you're looking at the runway edges or scenery in the very near field.  But even then, it's just not that bad at all at 30fps.  And gazing out the side at high speed with objects very close to the plane doens't come into play often, actually never does.  I feel for people chasing frame rate.

As for black bars on a 16:9 screen, I don't see the point, especially when you talk about the native resolutions of the textures used in MSFS/P3D.  The problem is this:  4K only matters if your viewing distance is appropriate and especially if the textures really offer that kind of resolution where the extra pixels will matter.  For example, and this is an extreme example to make the point, imagine viewing this image in a 4K screen versus 1080P screen.  Would the 4K screen look better?  Nope, because the quality of the image is too low to bear it out.  I think this is definitely happening in all our flight sims in many textures.  And there is a 36% more processing demand for 4K over 3440x1440.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Noel

[environmental_ice 238]

No mods, No airplanes. Video Game on the Xbox

[Republic3D 1,232]

I think MSFS was built with an Xbox release in mind, in fact we know it was. 

But it's interesting with a different perspective.

[Tuskin38 6,526]

1 hour ago, environmental_ice said:

No mods, No airplanes. Video Game on the Xbox

It's a simulator on the X-Box. It still has all the same simulation aspects that are on the PC version. It's identical.

Also what do you mean 'No Airplanes'? it comes with all the same ones on PC.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Tuskin38

[GCBraun 2,392]

5 hours ago, environmental_ice said:

No mods, No airplanes. Video Game on the Xbox

Well, at least now for you and some others it is a "Video Game" only on the Xbox and not on the PC. 😄

 

Edited August 10, 2021 by GCBraun

[swiesma 625]

5 hours ago, enright said:

Why the 30Hz refresh rate? Doesn't that produce noticeable flicker? Do faster refresh rates (60, 120, etc...) cause you discomfort?

Some people seem to be special.

When I switch to 30 Hz the mouse cursor is jumpy and everything feels like cr*p.

 

I run a 120 Hz OLED and even if I go back to 60 Hz I find it quite annoying. But yeah - some dont feel the difference it seems. For them it's good - you save on hardware and power consumtion 😉

Edited August 10, 2021 by swiesma

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

A lot of "dumb-down" comments were based on the fact the graphics looked much worse then before the update. Because of poor or at least delayed communication from Asobo we couldn't know a lot of the issues were the result of numerous bugs and not a deliberate decision from Asobo to degrade the graphics for some Xbox reasons.

[DAD 2,653]

8 hours ago, enright said:

even thought he PC experience is far better

second that. tried MSFS on our Series X, nice to soar around but that's it, would never ever think about flying a tubeliner on XBOX, way to difficult to handle with just a controller and I am not willing to add keyboard and whatever, that's what my PC is for, including addons and possibly mods. and the worse thing is that once I set up options on XBOX I saw them 5min later also on my PC, MS should offer 2 separate profiles for PC and XBOX instead, while I liked name tags and POI stickers on the XBOX, I disabled them for my "more serious" PC experience