7 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

Laminar Research has been clear they are not looking at ground textures based on satellite imagery.  

I'm looking forward to their next X-Plane release.  Improved lighting and weather is promised.  As long as ground features are in the right place, VFR flight will still be realistic without satellite imagery.  I spend most of my time in MSFS, especially after SU5 with hotfix 2 and WU6.  When I want to fly an aircraft only available in X-Plane, I still get a great feeling with the flight.

But they won't be. Without satellite imagery, buildings and other features, except for a few hand-crafted cities, will mostly not be in the right place or have the right footprint. For those don't care about realistic scenery, this is no problem; but for those who do, it is.

I am very happy at this point with MSFS. I have yet to suffer a single CTD since WU6 (knock on wood). Settings back where I had them before SU5. Fluid, smooth, immersive and gorgeous. 
 

I am still getting ctd. Everytime I try to disconnect from xbox live my sim crashes. 

No CTD's here; only 4 items in the community folder.  Windows 10 install from early July 2021 and FS 2020 from early July also.

51 minutes ago, simon747 said:

No CTD's here; only 4 items in the community folder.  Windows 10 install from early July 2021 and FS 2020 from early July also.

Also this is for me, no CTD's a long time now would say since SU5 Hotfix 2 nothing ( but i didn't had mutch since ages now.. )

And that with my complete community which is at the moment at around 430 gig !

cheers 😉

Edited September 12, 20214 yr by pmplayer

3 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

I am very happy at this point with MSFS. I have yet to suffer a single CTD since WU6 (knock on wood). Settings back where I had them before SU5. Fluid, smooth, immersive and gorgeous. 
 

Great to hear you're back to flying happily, after all the troubles you had with SU5! 

1 hour ago, pstrub said:

Great to hear you're back to flying happily, after all the troubles you had with SU5! 

Thanks! Yeah, up until I started messing with certain settings SU5 was unusable for me. After WU6 I'm back on my old settings so I guess they managed to fix what got broken with SU5. Still have a bit of CTD angst TBH.. But after, I think, six flights (with the WT CJ4 and FBW A320 dev version) ranging from 100 to 1800NM I am getting my hopes up.. 🙂

 

Took the CRJ for a short IFR flight from Geneva LSGG to Samedan LSZS today. To me, this is one of the best flights you can do in an airliner in Switzerland, so I thought I’d share some impressions. I let Simbrief do the planning and it spat out a pretty scenic route. After climbing over Lake Geneva, with the Mont Blanc massif to your right, you fly along the crest of the Alps to the very east of Switzerland where you descend into the Engadin valley. The approach is quite spectacular as you have to be really careful with the altitude and speed so that you don‘t crash into a mountain. The RNAV into runway 21 is offset and you can only see the runway relatively late which was pretty scary the first time I flew it, especially because there were some clouds obscuring the mountains at the FAF. There‘s an excellent freeware scenery of LSZS on flightsim.to that makes the this flight even more rewarding. 

Here's are some screenshots. I didn‘t take them during the actual flight but later using slew mode.

Takeoff at Geneva (payware scenery):

Cruising altitude, Bernese Oberland:

Approaching the FAF:

Descending into the Engadin valley:

Final and touchdown:

Safely arrived:

Edited September 12, 20214 yr by Shack95

They have worked wonders on the performance, and the standard of visuals we can now get, even on lesser systems. We just need to start seeing some of these more complex airlcraft  and their systems operating as should, and this will really take off (No pun intended)

15 hours ago, cobalt said:

But they won't be. Without satellite imagery, buildings and other features, except for a few hand-crafted cities, will mostly not be in the right place or have the right footprint. For those don't care about realistic scenery, this is no problem; but for those who do, it is.

I am more referring to villages, towns and cities being in the right place, not individual buildings.  Roads, railways etc will be accurately placed.  An accurate VFR flight just requires things to be in the right geographic place.  MSFS already does individual buildings accurately placed so I personally feel Laminar Research doesn't need to match that.  Realistic mesh and landclass is good enough if the next X-Plane excels in other areas like weather.  If it doesn't then I will not purchase, but the previews so far look promising.

23 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I am more referring to villages, towns and cities being in the right place, not individual buildings.  Roads, railways etc will be accurately placed.  An accurate VFR flight just requires things to be in the right geographic place.  MSFS already does individual buildings accurately placed so I personally feel Laminar Research doesn't need to match that.  Realistic mesh and landclass is good enough if the next X-Plane excels in other areas like weather.  If it doesn't then I will not purchase, but the previews so far look promising.

Well, this makes for an interesting discussion. I was a huge fan of FSX for years and enjoyed the level of realism you describe, in which towns and cities are located in the right place but their autogen-generated buildings are imaginary and randomly situated. Therefore a non-handcrafted city (most of the world) will look real as you approach it from a distance, but as you get closer you see that it resembles the real city less and less, and when you are finally there, it looks nothing at all like the real place -- even the streets are all wrong. Not very immersive, to say the least. Moreover, in the countryside, the barns, silos, commercial structures, etc. that you see are all fictional, being randomly located autogen.  Before MSFS came along I was OK with all that, but now I am not (I have seen Paree). VFR flight without real-life scenery now seems ancient, and just doesn't cut it any more. It is hard to imagine flight sims in the future being competitive without the "real stuff".

 

 

9 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Well, this makes for an interesting discussion. I was a huge fan of FSX for years and enjoyed the level of realism you describe, in which towns and cities are located in the right place but their autogen-generated buildings are imaginary and randomly situated. Therefore a non-handcrafted city (most of the world) will look real as you approach it from a distance, but as you get closer you see that it resembles the real city less and less, and when you are finally there, it looks nothing at all like the real place -- even the streets are all wrong. Not very immersive, to say the least. Moreover, in the countryside, the barns, silos, commercial structures, etc. that you see are all fictional, being randomly located autogen.  Before MSFS came along I was OK with all that, but now I am not (I have seen Paree). VFR flight without real-life scenery now seems ancient, and just doesn't cut it any more. It is hard to imagine flight sims in the future being competitive without the "real stuff".

I agree.  There is no substitution for correct satellite & photogrammetry now.  Auto-gen doesn't cut it and it's fake.  Auto-gen is just a step down, period, and it's inferior.

10 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Before MSFS came along I was OK with all that, but now I am not (I have seen Paree). VFR flight without real-life scenery now seems ancient, and just doesn't cut it any more. It is hard to imagine flight sims in the future being competitive without the "real stuff".

That's what happens when somebody finally raises the bar.

5 hours ago, cobalt said:

Well, this makes for an interesting discussion. I was a huge fan of FSX for years and enjoyed the level of realism you describe, in which towns and cities are located in the right place but their autogen-generated buildings are imaginary and randomly situated. Therefore a non-handcrafted city (most of the world) will look real as you approach it from a distance, but as you get closer you see that it resembles the real city less and less, and when you are finally there, it looks nothing at all like the real place -- even the streets are all wrong. Not very immersive, to say the least. Moreover, in the countryside, the barns, silos, commercial structures, etc. that you see are all fictional, being randomly located autogen.  Before MSFS came along I was OK with all that, but now I am not (I have seen Paree). VFR flight without real-life scenery now seems ancient, and just doesn't cut it any more. It is hard to imagine flight sims in the future being competitive without the "real stuff".

It will be very interesting how Laminar Research deal with autogen and the sense of immersion.  Roads will no doubt be correctly placed and maybe the autogen will be diverse enough to place realistically textured buildings along the roads.  Landclass should hopefully place industrial areas and housing in the right areas. If there is also realistic traffic, trains and boats, I would imagine the new lighting and weather would make the world immersive enough.

However, with the bar raised so high by MSFS, they really will have to get the next version right to appeal to the general public.  Who knows, the weather & lighting may be jaw dropping, and open to software like ActiveSky,  making the no satellite imagery world still great to fly in.  I wonder how many more advances MSFS makes before the next version of X-Plane appears?  

 

It is amazing for me.  I literally can not get to CTD or freeze.  I have thrown everything at it; multiple chained flights, 50 mods half of which have not been verified for this update, using the internet, streaming movies during flights,  You name it I did it.  I even played ARMA3 during flight - no probelm.