The only thing hardcore XP users tend to say is that the only thing that matters in a sim is flight physics, and that scenery and graphics aren't important. lol. I bet you anything, if LR were to pull some sort of miracle and acquire a service similar to bing for their scenery, that a majority of their users would change their mind and be like yes, scenery and visuals are important. They just follow their leader Austin. Whatever he think is right, they will follow. If Austin says graphics and visuals aren't important, then so will his users.

I'm sorry but I cannot go back to X-Plane if the scenery isn't realistic. Even with their future of the 'plausible world' with autogen. The hardcore XP user kills me with their reasoning. They're all living in Austin's bubble.

 

Edited September 29, 20214 yr by captain420

1 hour ago, Bdub22 said:

I just hope they fix the tree draw distance and the scenery popping. Oh, and the sim has been washed out since SU5 as well. Either way, I'm incredibly happy with this sim. I have several "pinch me" moments during every single flight.

I agree!

The expanded LOD to 400 should help with some scenery popping. (You can already do that today by changing the UserCfg.opt file). 

I didn't hear anything about fixing the washed out effect since SU5, but maybe someone else knows. Sim still looks good though. 

They talked about expanding the trees, but in the somewhat convoluted explanation in the video, they said they changed trees many times, going from both LOD 13 and 15, to only LOD 15 and then back to LOD 14 in SU5.
What worries me though, is that he also said they expanded the trees further in WU6. But that's not what happened. What happened was the tree distance bug was back, and the tree distance was horrible again.
I don't understand how he can claim to have expanded the tree distance further in WU6 but what actually happened was the opposite. So I'm not that optimistic about them fixing it with the next update. 
Right now, in my simulator the tree distance is too short many places in the world, and that is with LOD 400. 

It's in the VOD between about 10 and 13 minutes mark. 

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1162688828

 

Edited September 29, 20214 yr by Republic3D

It was a great stream. Only thing they didn't discuss to my disappointment was the autogen houses in some cities looking like boxes. eg Stockholm and certain areas completely missing autogen altogether, like Dublin, where you can only see the orthos in certain sections of the city with. I think Edinburgh has the same issue. 

Ah well, hope it's sorted soon. 

41 minutes ago, pmb said:

Locate the file UserCfg.opt in the MSFS configuration directory, in my case (Steam) under

C:\Users\[your profile]\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator

The "{Graphics" block has two entries

    {Terrain
        LoDFactor 2.000000
    }

and

    {ObjectsLoD
        LoDFactor 2.000000

(given you set them to 200 in the UI). You can raise them (or one of them) to whichever value you want, 400 would correspond to 4.000000.

Keep in mind:

- Make a backup first

- Do NOT make the file write-protected, as some people suggest.

- Instead, change the preset entry to "Preset Custom", otherwise the entries may be overridden.

- The "{GraphicsVR" block has similar entries for VR, don't use these (unter VR I can't go higher then 200).

Finally: This is by no way my invention, you will find it in several threads. I can't guarantee it works and has no side effects, but I have been using it with several different values for weeks now myself. 

No stuttering in my case, if I don't go higher with the values. I tried higher values, too, but at a certain value (I think GPU memory-dependent) fps start to tank indeed and stuttering starts.

Kind regards, Michael

Where is this  "Preset Custom" selection? I don't see it.

27 minutes ago, captain420 said:

The only thing hardcore XP users tend to say is that the only thing that matters in a sim is flight physics, and that scenery and graphics aren't important. lol. I bet you anything, if LR were to pull some sort of miracle and acquire a service similar to bing for their scenery, that a majority of their users would change their mind and be like yes, scenery and visuals are important. They just follow their leader Austin. Whatever he think is right, they will follow. If Austin says graphics and visuals aren't important, then so will his users.

I'm sorry but I cannot go back to X-Plane if the scenery isn't realistic. Even with their future of the 'plausible world' with autogen. The hardcore XP user kills me with their reasoning. They're all living in Austin's bubble.

 

It's not like Xplane doesn't do some things right.  I know it easy to go and point out flaws in flight simming. MSFS sure have a long list of outstanding issue to be resolved but when I look at the frequency under which Asobo deliver fixes. I am wait more optimistic about the future of MSFS than I do for Xplane 12. But hey Austin can surprised us and I would be happy if he does

46 minutes ago, Fielder said:

Microsoft knows when a user online CTD's in the sim. They keep stats.

They do.   I see them routinely.  This is why I'm comfortable stating over and over that CTDs are not the widespread, all-encompassing problem that some folks here make them out to be -- it's not just me being a shill.

To be clear, for the person it affects a recurring CTD sucks and is a big deal.  I'm not trying to minimize that pain.  But the hysteria over them at times and how "unstable" the sim is is completely out of scale to the actual problem.  The numbers just don't bear it out.

But still, as Jorg said, the ones that do happen still get investigated, they're not being ignored.

Edited September 29, 20214 yr by kaosfere

3 minutes ago, fogboundturtle said:

It's not like Xplane doesn't do some things right.  I know it easy to go and point out flaws in flight simming. MSFS sure have a long list of outstanding issue to be resolved but when I look at the frequency under which Asobo deliver fixes. I am wait more optimistic about the future of MSFS than I do for Xplane 12. But hey Austin can surprised us and I would be happy if he does

And I'm not saying it's all bad. One thing I can say is the overall lights in XP look better. The individual light orbs and how it is attached to an object rather than just floating. I really hope MSFS can address this, it will sure make the lighting a lot better.

17 minutes ago, BIGSKY said:

Where is this  "Preset Custom" selection? I don't see it.

It's not there if you didn't change any setting in the UI, i.e. selected high or ultra or such. My entry is

{Graphics
    Version 1.1.0
    Preset Custom
    {Texture

So, if you selected "high" you should have "Preset High" in this place. 

Kind regards, Michael

1 hour ago, fogboundturtle said:

There is the Austin Meyer cult. A year ago, someone mention ambient sound in MSFS and of course Xplane fanbase go up in arm across the forum claiming that ambient sound was just stupid. Now that XP12 has announced significant ambient sound, it's the most amazing features. Whether Ambient sound in the sim is a good thing or not. It's not relevant here. What is relevant is whatever LR says, it's cool.. Whatever MS does is bad. 

Personally, I am rooting for LR to do some good thing to their platform so it keeps MSFS honest. An healthy competition is always a good thing.

Not even mentioning real weather. So many people hated Asobo using for a hybrid system for real weather (METARs around airports and a forecast system from Meteoblue for the rest) and right after Laminar announced that they are implementing the exact same method, the same people started to love the hybrid system.

Edited September 29, 20214 yr by BiologicalNanobot

1 minute ago, pmb said:

It's not there if you didn't change any setting in the UI, i.e. selected high or ultra or such. My entry is

{Graphics
    Version 1.1.0
    Preset Custom
    {Texture

So, if you selected "high" you should have "Preset High" in this place. 

Kind regards, Michael

Ok,I misunderstood,your talking about in the sim,I was looking for the right click options on the Usercfg.opt file,so you don't have to make read only,on this file,after making changes?

1 minute ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

Not even mentioning real weather. So many people hated Asobo using for a hybrid system for real weather (METARs around airports and a forecast system from Meteoblue for the rest) and right after Laminar announced that they are implementing the exact same method, everyone started to love the hybrid system.

sorry you are right. The weather changes that XP12 has mention is very interesting. I am looking forward to that. I wonder if your plugins will be render useless in XP12 with the new 3d volumetric cloud.

Just now, fogboundturtle said:

sorry you are right. The weather changes that XP12 has mention is very interesting. I am looking forward to that. I wonder if your plugins will be render useless in XP12 with the new 3d volumetric cloud.

It seems to be based on the same principle Asobo uses for their real weather - METARs are indeed the most accurate when it comes to weather, they are literally empirical observations. However they are not very dense (gaps in data can be huge both spatially and temporally) and they do not cover the entire atmosphere. Their (both Asobo and Laminar) solution is filling in the rest using forecast system.

Great Q&A, as always. Hard not to like the team. They genuinely are trying their best to give us a great product. Huge task! I liked the fact that want to dedicate one SU to just bugs, and nothing else. I didn't like to hear that it was early 2022! But still, we are moving forward. 

Just now, RobJC said:

Great Q&A, as always. Hard not to like the team. They genuinely are trying their best to give us a great product. Huge task! I liked the fact that want to dedicate one SU to just bugs, and nothing else. I didn't like to hear that it was early 2022! But still, we are moving forward. 

There is no world update until 2022. From now to SimUpdate 8 , it's only bug fixes and improvement. You can't say Asobo is not listening

23 minutes ago, BIGSKY said:

Ok,I misunderstood,your talking about in the sim,I was looking for the right click options on the Usercfg.opt file,so you don't have to make read only,on this file,after making changes?

You just open the file with notepad (or any other ASCII editor - I use notepad++) and make the required changes. Do NOT use the right click options to make the file write protected. There are reports this may cause CTDs (and isn't required anyway if you set the Preset to Custom).

I have it this way for weeks now and done several changes in the UI and the two named values were never reset.

Kind regards, Michael