Are clouds the best ever now? I'm impressed.

[CFIJose 5,485]

What really ticks me off is that in order for me to get a reliable live weather generator for MSFS, I have to buy REX WF. It's pathetic that after almost 2 years, ASOBO can't bring us 3 cloud types, but a payware add-on can do it.

[Gazzareth 808]

54 minutes ago, CFIJose said:

What really ticks me off is that in order for me to get a reliable live weather generator for MSFS, I have to buy REX WF. It's pathetic that after almost 2 years, ASOBO can't bring us 3 cloud types, but a payware add-on can do it.

I find it amazing how little interest they seem to have in working with the likes of REX & HIFI to allow proper use of external weather engines.

That said I think the weather in MSFS can be very immersive, probably as much due to the lighting as weather itself...

G

[CFIJose 5,485]

3 minutes ago, Gazzareth said:

I find it amazing how little interest they seem to have in working with the likes of REX & HIFI to allow proper use of external weather engines.

That said I think the weather in MSFS can be very immersive, probably as much due to the lighting as weather itself...

G

I have the SoFly themes and they are the most immersive you can get. I can't trust that live weather will work. Maybe ASOBO forgot about flight planning 101. Weather is so essential, that without it, there is no flying.

[HiFlyer 9,358]

2 hours ago, GSalden said:

In my opinion because of the XBox we will not get that as the XBox is less powerful than high end pc’s.

Don’t get me wrong : I like what I see but there is room for improvement.

But.....

How large a percentage of users are rocking 3090's?

That has to be a niche of a niches niche.

I think the only reason we even have a DX12 option is because of the Xbox, and that Asobo/Microsoft, seeing that the majority of users have Dx11 cards of mid-level provenance, would not have gone there otherwise; A case of the sim actually becoming (theoretically) more advanced, rather than less, because of the console connection.....

I would hazard a guess, that the majority of systems out there are probably roughly equivalent to an xbox.

I think the navigraph survey mentioned a large amount of users that wished they could afford better GPU's

[lwt1971 7,348]

16 hours ago, GSalden said:

Just as it is my opinion that the development of MSFS for the XBox has caused some drawbacks for people with pc’s…

Each of my 3090 cards costs more than 4 XBox consoles. So if the XBox was more than enough than MSFS would be a simple game … (again my opinion)

Well, allow me to vehemently disagree with your opinion, in my opinion 🙂

Quite obviously MS/Asobo feel that XBox-X is enough to use MSFS at 4k/30fps and XBox-S is enough to use MSFS at 1080p/30fps. How does that reflect on if MSFS is a "simple" game or not just because you have GPU hardware that's four times the cost of an XBox lol? Let alone XBox, if a PC that is lesser than the XBox (i.e. lesser than intel i7-9700K and Nvidia 3070) is "more than enough" to play MSFS at an appropriate resolution, therefore MSFS is a "simple game"? 🙂

The key here is to understand how software scaling and settings work, where a piece of software can be designed and implemented to increase or decrease visual fidelity depending on hardware resources and screen resolution... kind of like, what MSFS provides currently funnily enough, to cater to both low-end hardware and high-end hardware and everything inbetween.

In any case, I posted earlier about how MS/Asobo have said multiple times themselves already that XBox is *not* the factor here. The initial visual degradations post-SU5 were due to MS/Asobo not doing as good a job in reworking the codebase for performance, which was mainly motivated by the requests to improve performance from lots of PC users at that time which was at the top of the wish list. The current issues of clouds variety and the like are due to them having not done METAR inclusion properly. Take for example SU6 (this was after the initial performance rework and then subsequent fixes to allow proper scaling according to hardware)... in SU6 clouds variety in live weather were still good. After SU7 when they introduced METAR blending then clouds variety goes down, only in live weather, but is still available via manually configured weather.  So all these points and more, leads me to conclude that it's silly to keep thinking that XBox is the dark evil behind any current visual degradation... oh, in my opinion of course 🙂
 

[Noel 4,494]

55 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

So all these points and more, leads me to conclude that it's silly to keep thinking that XBox is the dark evil behind any current visual degradation...

It's not that Xbox is the dark evil behind degredation it's that it was considered at all.  Were MSFS developed exclusively for PC whose hardware development pace is arguably greater than console hardware development things would have been different. But, that is a fantasy world because MSFS was always going to be developed for Xbox.

[lwt1971 7,348]

10 minutes ago, Noel said:

It's not that Xbox is the dark evil behind degredation it's that it was considered at all.  Were MSFS developed exclusively for PC whose hardware development pace is arguably greater than console hardware development things would have been different. But, that is a fantasy world because MSFS was always going to be developed for Xbox.

Well that's where I guess we have to agree to disagree... given that XBox is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of the PC hardware combinations that MSFS aims to support (again, with all the controls/settings to tweak visual fidelity along with screen resolution), then how is XBox being considered even such a factor? I think usual misconceptions about consoles are seeping into coloring some PC users about the quality of software/sims/games that support both PCs and consoles.  The consoles of today are not the ones from yesteryear, they are pretty d*mn powerful, and the "low-end" of hardware that a game/sim developer tries to cater to is actually still a certain class of PCs. Regardless of PC hardware advancements pace, MS/Asobo are always going to also cater to many who stick with old PC hardware.

Keep in mind that the core OS and frameworks that MSFS is built on (i.e. windows-based, directX, etc) are all pretty much the same between PCs and XBox.. it's not like they are maintaining entirely two different sets of codebases.

Edited June 24, 2022 by lwt1971

[GSalden 4,656]

40 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Well, allow me to vehemently disagree with your opinion, in my opinion 🙂

Quite obviously MS/Asobo feel that XBox-X is enough to use MSFS at 4k/30fps and XBox-S is enough to use MSFS at 1080p/30fps. How does that reflect on if MSFS is a "simple" game or not just because you have GPU hardware that's four times the cost of an XBox lol? Let alone XBox, if a PC that is lesser than the XBox (i.e. lesser than intel i7-9700K and Nvidia 3070) is "more than enough" to play MSFS at an appropriate resolution, therefore MSFS is a "simple game"? 🙂

The key here is to understand how software scaling and settings work, where a piece of software can be designed and implemented to increase or decrease visual fidelity depending on hardware resources and screen resolution... kind of like, what MSFS provides currently funnily enough, to cater to both low-end hardware and high-end hardware and everything inbetween.

In any case, I posted earlier about how MS/Asobo have said multiple times themselves already that XBox is *not* the factor here. The initial visual degradations post-SU5 were due to MS/Asobo not doing as good a job in reworking the codebase for performance, which was mainly motivated by the requests to improve performance from lots of PC users at that time which was at the top of the wish list. The current issues of clouds variety and the like are due to them having not done METAR inclusion properly. Take for example SU6 (this was after the initial performance rework and then subsequent fixes to allow proper scaling according to hardware)... in SU6 clouds variety in live weather were still good. After SU7 when they introduced METAR blending then clouds variety goes down, only in live weather, but is still available via manually configured weather.  So all these points and more, leads me to conclude that it's silly to keep thinking that XBox is the dark evil behind any current visual degradation... oh, in my opinion of course 🙂
 

Thanks for posting .

MS surely feels that the XBox should be capable of running MSFS without issues.

But do they test with Addons ? Airports like Heathrow or Brussels ? Or ac like the Fenix or PMDG 737 ? 
Most of us have purchased multiple Addons.

To me it looks like they knew absolutely that with METAR blending the overal quality of clouds would go down, which gave extra breathing room for the XBox…

We can only wait and see what will happen in the future…

[Kilo60 660]

18 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

On this whole topic of XBox and MSFS, some perspective:

PC equivalent of XBox-X = Intel i7-9700K (or Ryzen 3700X) with an Nvidia 3070 (or Radeon 6800), or thereabouts (i.e. https://www.makeuseof.com/xbox-series-x-vs-gaming-pc/)

For the XBox-X Asobo has configured MSFS to optimize for 30fps @ 4K, for the lesser Xbox-S it is 30fps @ 1080p (by "configured" I mean to set visual settings in MSFS for that X-Box version of the software, not globally force it on all MSFS versions). Also note that on the XBox the OS is highly tuned just to run the one application/game unlike Windows where multiple things are going on and is not tuned to specific hardware since it needs to support all kinds of hardware.  So given all that, it is safe to say a good portion of MSFS users have PCs that are lesser than the XBox specs. 
 

 

You forget the MSFS Needs to run smoothly and Stutter Free on the XBox so there's only so much headroom to add anything which further taxes graphics...

 

I'm still looking for a 30 FPS, stutter free experience, on my PC, with an i-9 9900K OC @ 5.0, 32 GB or Ram, and a O/C 2080 Super...  This is with no regional add-ons, everything on High/Med and AI traffic only!

 

[lwt1971 7,348]

47 minutes ago, Kilo60 said:

You forget the MSFS Needs to run smoothly and Stutter Free on the XBox so there's only so much headroom to add anything which further taxes graphics...

Right so in order to achieve a good enough experience on XBox, MS/Asobo will hardcode specific visual fidelity settings in MSFS for the XBox-X and XBox-S versions, that's all... already there are many many visual fidelity settings/sliders/etc that the PC user can configure. Those settings are not available for the XBox user since MS/Asobo hardcode specific values for them in order to ensure a certain visual experience at the targeted resolution for XBox.  There are also very probably various internal visual fidelity settings (i.e. that even we PC users don't get to set) that MS/Asobo are hardcoding differently for the XBox version. So the point here is that as long as the software allows for such varied configuration (which MSFS does) then it can be catered to a wide range of hardware platforms from low to medium to high hand, without ever compromising anyone.

Again the key is just to think of the XBox as a medium-level PC.  So the actual question is: are MS/Asobo holding something back *for all users*, in order to support low-end or medium-end PCs? I think not, precisely because the software is designed/implemented in a way as to scale to different hardware, with a good amount of external configuration/settings/sliders that are either settable by the PC end-user to satisfy their PCs be they low or medium or high end, or are hardcoded to certain values for the XBox.

Edited June 24, 2022 by lwt1971

[GSalden 4,656]

13 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

Right so in order to achieve a good enough experience on XBox, MS/Asobo will hardcode specific visual fidelity settings in MSFS for the XBox-X and XBox-S versions, that's all... already there are many many visual fidelity settings/sliders/etc that the PC user can configure. Those settings are not available for the XBox user since MS/Asobo hardcode specific values for them in order to ensure a certain visual experience at the targeted resolution for XBox.  There are also very probably various internal visual fidelity settings (i.e. that even we PC users don't get to set) that MS/Asobo are hardcoding differently for the XBox version. So the point here is that as long as the software allows for such varied configuration (which MSFS does) then it can be catered to a wide range of hardware platforms from low to medium to high hand, without ever compromising anyone.

Again the key is just to think of the XBox as a medium-level PC.  So the actual question is: are MS/Asobo holding something back *for all users*, in order to support low-end or medium-end PCs? I think not, precisely because the software is designed/implemented in a way as to scale to different hardware, with a good amount of external configuration/settings/sliders that are either settable by the PC end-user to satisfy their PCs be they low or medium or high end, or are hardcoded to certain values for the XBox.

Very well written. 

In my opinion : if Asobo would make clouds much better with all kinds of cloudtypes and more cloudlayers, then the XBox might lose too much performance and would not be smooth again ….

And using 2 different weather engines is probably not going to happen.

 

[Tuskin38 6,468]

2 minutes ago, GSalden said:

if Asobo would make clouds much better with all kinds of cloudtypes and more cloudlayers, then the XBox might lose too much performance and would not be smooth again ….

They can just lower the graphics on X-Box.

The X-Box version is already running on settings lower than all ultra, so it's not like they can't do it.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Tuskin38

[GSalden 4,656]

4 minutes ago, Tuskin38 said:

They can just lower the graphics on X-Box.

The X-Box version is already running on settings lower than all ultra, so it's not like they can't do it.

That I understand but it might still be too much.

[lwt1971 7,348]

20 minutes ago, GSalden said:

In my opinion : if Asobo would make clouds much better with all kinds of cloudtypes and more cloudlayers, then the XBox might lose too much performance and would not be smooth again ….

I guess I still don't understand this core point you keep making... are you saying that MS/Asobo are *intentionally*  doing less variety of clouds and layers in live weather all just due to XBox? But then that means they are also doing it for the low/medium end PCs right? (since those PCs are <= XBox).  And the fact that we still get more clouds variety and layers in manual/presets configured weather, are you saying MS/Asobo still allows that since they feel that XBox users won't use manual/presets-based weather?

I think maybe you're overthinking this due to your biases against XBox 🙂... this current problem is specific only to live weather, and that is because MS/Asobo didn't do the METAR blending of live weather really well. They have acknowledged this, and have called out how they'll be improving this >= SU10. Let's see.

Sometimes, a spade really is a spade 🙂

Edited June 24, 2022 by lwt1971

[GSalden 4,656]

23 minutes ago, lwt1971 said:

I guess I still don't understand this core point you keep making... are you saying that MS/Asobo are *intentionally*  doing less variety of clouds and layers in live weather all just due to XBox? But then that means they are also doing it for the low/medium end PCs right? (since those PCs are <= XBox).  And the fact that we still get more clouds variety and layers in manual/presets configured weather, are you saying MS/Asobo still allows that since they feel that XBox users won't use manual/presets-based weather?

I think maybe you're overthinking this due to your biases against XBox 🙂... this current problem is specific only to live weather, and that is because MS/Asobo didn't do the METAR blending of live weather really well. They have acknowledged this, and have called out how they'll be improving this >= SU10. Let's see.

Sometimes, a spade really is a spade 🙂

LOL… my son has a XBox so it is present …😁

Live weather is more taxing than static weather. Costs more performance.

I think that we all agree upon wanting improved  weather …

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by GSalden