45 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

That is an interesting statement. Are they suggesting that AutoFPS or Dynamic LOD are actually illegal mods??

That’s my take on it, but I guess it’s open for interpretation. I tried to start a discussion about this in the AutoFPS thread, but that ran the risk of derailing the thread.

What’s even more interesting is this comment from a mod in this thread https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/dynamic-graphics-settings-expose-tlod-olod-clouds-etc-via-simconnect-l-vars/634075?u=cptpiett8113

…contradicting the forum policy of discussing these types of mods. Which probably caused some confusion among the forum moderators: do we censor a mod.. or not?

 

In the same thread, my comments needed moderator approval before being shown 😅 Just shows how paranoid “they” are about this type of topic…

Edited April 3, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

1 hour ago, Christopher Low said:

That is an interesting statement. Are they suggesting that AutoFPS or Dynamic LOD are actually illegal mods??

That's not what they're saying....

9 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

That's not what they're saying....

Holding my breath for the rest of that sentence…

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Holding my breath for the rest of that sentence…

My take is that it simply goes against the terms of the licence agreement, which we all know, as we knew the lighting mod did also, but as I have said previously, we all benefited from it (including Microsobo ), and sometimes you have to push the boundaries a bit to find the improvements.

If it wasn't for Biology and a few others working the magic and proving it with a proof of concept realistic lighting hack, I think we would still be stuck here now with our beautifully over-vivid purple and orange sunsets.  
They said the same things back then, but they eventually adopted it.

Sometimes, when you 'do better' than the developers with their own software, it can embarrass them a little bit also.  I think most developers would react the same.
It won't stop us being slightly bad boys anyway will it?  I hope not! 

Edited April 3, 20242 yr by bobcat999

34 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

Sometimes, when you 'do better' than the developers with their own software, it can embarrass them a little bit also.  I think most developers would react the same.
It won't stop us being slightly bad boys anyway will it?  I hope not! 

That's right, it won't stop us! 😄 Just like it didn't stop Maverick from buzzing the tower 😎 It might stop us from sharing about our amazing experiences on their forum though.

36 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

proof of concept realistic lighting hack

Hey, what's this? First time I've heard of it. Please share 🙂

Anyway, Seb alluded to the fact that they're looking into the concept of dynamic LOD, and I'm sure they'll change their viewpoint on this as the idea has the chance to "mature" a bit 🙂

21 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Re:  Realistic Lighting Mod

Hey, what's this? First time I've heard of it. Please share 🙂

It may have happened just before you came back into the scene last year, and discussion on the official forum followed a similar line to this one, meaning we all had to decamp to here to discuss and help test it. (Good old Avsim!) 

Someone called 'Biology' found there was a mistake in the coefficients Asobo were using to generate the sky colours at different times of day, resulting in the overly orange and purple colours at sunset in particular (remember them?).

He developed an injector to push the correct coefficients into the sim - it worked really well! 

There was a bit of tweaking of course to get it to look right, but in the end, it caused such a lot of a positive commotion that Asobo put the corrected figures into the sim themselves; that is why we now have much better sky colours, especially at dusk and dawn. 

The general consensus is that it has all turned out very well - credit to Biology and the people that wouldn't stop banging on about it to Asobo.   I bet you wondered what I was going on about!  

Edited April 3, 20242 yr by bobcat999

1 hour ago, bobcat999 said:

There was a bit of tweaking of course to get it to look right, but in the end, it caused such a lot of a positive commotion that Asobo put the corrected figures into the sim themselves; that is why we now have much better sky colours, especially at dusk and dawn. 

That’s excellent. I’ve noticed the improved sky colors, and don’t see the need for ReShade any longer. Sunsets look spectacular!

I think something similar will eventually happen re: dynamic LOD implementation, as both Seb and at least one community mod seem to have a positive attitude towards the idea 😊

Edited April 3, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

3 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Holding my breath for the rest of that sentence…

Lol, sorry. There is no hidden meaning and there’s no question of legality at all. It’s simply a breach of their terms of service.

The clue as to the motive is the notice on their website about ‘cheating’. It’s wholly inappropriate for this game as there is no element of online competition ( yes, I’m overlooking the DOA air racing ) just an example of corporate clumsiness when it comes to wording. However, for other online games that might cost millions to develop, a reputation for their online content to be hackable could be the kiss of death. It’s a constant worry for all developers of online competition.

Again, this sort of hacking isn’t illegal either. All the developers can do is stamp their feet, huff and puff and ban you from their own forum or their own servers. They can’t withdraw your access to the software you’ve paid for either. At least not in Europe.

They could in theory give you your money back but the very reason they’re here is to rake in the cash so that’s a no no.

The only thing that rankles me about the official forums is the idea the ‘community’ has reached out to the moderators to have a post hidden. They should at least be honest.

 

If you read those messages from MS closely, it really does look like the "community complaint" is a bot that picks up keywords. They say if you have several community issues in the thread a staff member will intercede. That tells me a bot is handling the first intercepts.

I also feel very sure that Asobo is looking closely at the LOD mods, I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up in a system update in the very near future or at least in MSFS 2024.

On 4/2/2024 at 10:03 AM, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Hello,

This is an automated message from Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums to let you know that your post was removed.

Your post was flagged for moderator attention: the community feels something about the post requires manual intervention by a staff member.

This post was flagged by the community and a staff member opted to remove it.

 

My comment, is it that bad or is it the children can't handle the truth??????

VR is good for military type training since they wear headgear already, VR is not used in Airliner training because it is not superior to a full flight deck with wrap around screens.

Hence why the airline industry doesn’t use VR, they prefer dual trainers.
Please review our community guidelines for details.

That MSFS2020 Forum is a joke. I don't waste anytime over there.

Any criticism you make that someone doesn't like gets removed. Simply over the top moderation.

I think the forum layout sucks as well anyway!

2 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

They can’t withdraw your access to the software you’ve paid for either. At least not in Europe.

This is what I've been most worried about and the reason I stopped posting on the official forum. Their paranoid attitude towards freelance developers has made me paranoid...

2 hours ago, vgbaron said:

I also feel very sure that Asobo is looking closely at the LOD mods, I wouldn't be surprised if they turn up in a system update in the very near future or at least in MSFS 2024.

I'm pretty sure some sort of dynamic LOD implementation will appear in 2024. Apparently it already exists in the Xbox version. 

Edited April 3, 20242 yr by Cpt_Piett

On 4/2/2024 at 8:03 AM, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

Hello,

This is an automated message from Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums to let you know that your post was removed.

Your post was flagged for moderator attention: the community feels something about the post requires manual intervention by a staff member.

This post was flagged by the community and a staff member opted to remove it.

 

My comment, is it that bad or is it the children can't handle the truth??????

VR is good for military type training since they wear headgear already, VR is not used in Airliner training because it is not superior to a full flight deck with wrap around screens.

Hence why the airline industry doesn’t use VR, they prefer dual trainers.
Please review our community guidelines for details.

To be fair, every US airline training department I'm familiar with is currently using VR as part of the training footprint.  It doesn't replace the FFS models later in training, but is a much better tool for early-stage cockpit fam / flows memorization than sitting in front of a poster (the way it has been done until now.). My airline is currently issuing headsets to folks in an initial qual cycle; it's great for giving a sense of cockpit scale and geometry, and actually being able to manipulate switches and see systems operate in flight is hugely beneficial.  It's far superior to the old paper tigers and arguably superior to the fixed-base procedures trainers.

43 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

To be fair, every US airline training department I'm familiar with is currently using VR as part of the training footprint.  It doesn't replace the FFS models later in training, but is a much better tool for early-stage cockpit fam / flows memorization than sitting in front of a poster (the way it has been done until now.). My airline is currently issuing headsets to folks in an initial qual cycle; it's great for giving a sense of cockpit scale and geometry, and actually being able to manipulate switches and see systems operate in flight is hugely beneficial.  It's far superior to the old paper tigers and arguably superior to the fixed-base procedures trainers.

That's cool, would be nice to see some pics.

The "official forums" are weird because of what they'll keep and what they'll hide.  I try to avoid posting there.

1 hour ago, Mike_CFII_MEL said:

That's cool, would be nice to see some pics.

There's this... No imagery of the actual headset, but a bit of talk about how and why it's useful.  I've never heard the fixed base procedures trainers sims called "half simulators" but it's not a bad term.

I agree that the official forums will censor weird things.  In this case, what probably got you is that they are hyper touchy about players telling other players the "right" way to play.  They work hard to keep it inclusive.  So for instance, arguments between real hardware vs virtual, VR vs 2d, PC vs Xbox, they all get shut down pretty quick.  I can kind of see the point... Inclusiveness is good, and in the end this is really play for all of us, but people do get pretty fired up about it.