I think we’re making a lot of assumptions. We have to assume noble intent. It’s not in their interest to intentionally render a bad looking sim. 

11 hours ago, Mike T said:

The sepia crappy fighting has been updated - roads are more prominent, the city lights are much more variable, so instead of a sepia blob it looks really believable.

Wow, that would be great as I mostly fly at night,,,,the sepia mask really needed to be improved and radius made much more distant.  I agree with your other points about the atmospheric lighting, etc.  It's the reason I have not touched 2020 since 20204 was released....

Deleted...

Edited December 21, 20241 yr by Flic1

3 hours ago, Sethos said:

Probably tuned the server settings in time for the holidays, allowed for higher bandwidth allocation and stream capability for each user to make it look its best when it sees a big influx of new users. 

When Christmas sales are over, we're going back to 'normal'. 😆😆

Been noticing this as well.  Crisper textures, smoother performance, increased LOD with no scenery pops, I actually commented the other day that my departure from KEWR was so smooth I forgot to even launch Lossless Scaling and that is at Newark which is as bad in the sim as it is in real life 😂 😂 

Seeing ZERO improvement. Nice placebo tho!

Took off at night in PANC. Anchorage area looked no different to me. But I’ll hold final thoughts on this when it gets dark again later tonight over US East coast.

1 hour ago, UAL4life said:

Seeing ZERO improvement. Nice placebo tho!

Depends where you are I "think" which I always point out is dangerous for everyone involved and could produce a slight burning smell. 😉

For example though, the Allentown PA-Newark NJ area has clearly had upgraded textures and upgraded DEM.  Just takeoff from KEWR, turn left and head to Allentown.   That area really stands out.

That's where I fly in/out of the most so it was very noticeable.  You can see the hills just off to the west of Newark now and the roads in/out of Allentown are much better.  You can actually see where the upgraded textures end to the southeast of Allentown.  This is just one area but I am "guessing" there are other areas like this as well.

The performance gains "might" just be a byproduct of the user population now being almost split between 2020 and 2024.  Like I said, I personally didn't even need lossless scaling it was so smooth leaving KEWR and that is traditionally as bad in the sim as it in real life LOL.

Now in full transparency and in "my" case I also think the performance gains are coming from using FSHUD for traffic injection opposed to AIGTC.  FSHUD only loads 50 parked aircraft and 50 active.  MORE than enough for an immersive experience, packed tarmac and constant flow of traffic.  AIGTC would load 190 aircraft at KEWR because it was ALSO parking aircraft at KJFK and KLGA.  So I think the FSHUD traffic management is having a huge impact on my performance as well. (To the positive)

why is no one posted images of this apparent change

7 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

why is no one posted images of this apparent change

There was no change.  I just departed out of KMCO and the sepia mask has not been improved at all.  Maybe the area the OP was in was an area where this sepia mask is not as noticeable...??

Just flew over Oklahoma City at FL340 in FS2020. No change at all. Big orange blob with the sepia mask overlay that continues to look terrible 4 years later.

There has been no change whatsoever.  Sunrises still look like the world is on fire.

Regardless of if these observations are placebo or not, in a developer stream prior to the MSFS2024 launch Jorg did mention that the 2020 Bing imagery  would be updated to be the 2024 imagery around 2 months (from my memory) following the 2024 launch. The impression given was the lag in deployment was a technical timing reality.

He wasn't talking about 2020 receiving the same amount of terrain polygon resolution as 2024, he was talking about the Bing imagery, the ground textures placed on the planet would be the same in both sims. I assume this is a practical decision - serve both sims from the same texture source.

So it will be interesting to see how much of a visual impact (I assume improvement) this will be.

I wonder if this will be impacted, delayed, due to the amount of effort being focused on to tame 2024 at the moment.

Edited December 22, 20241 yr by mfahey
typos / clarrity

Whenever it happens, I hope that they can replace the burnt wasteland textures in many parts of southern England. William Blake did not refer to "England's beige and not so pleasant land" in his poem.

Edited December 22, 20241 yr by Christopher Low

So...I just flew cross country from JFK to Las Vegas and none of the city night lighting I saw last night was apparent tonight—same orange blobs for cities. *sigh*