2 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

So, yes? Or no? 

No way to know with that guy. 

7 hours ago, HiFlyer said:

It seems to be a matter of completely opposing perspectives. When I "grade" Asobo and MSFS, I do it with a very keen remembrance of what came before.

The years of "Lipstick on a pig", and flight Sims that changed at a glacial pace over literal decades. Years of no updates, and what did come out was payware. We complain about bugs, yet these very forums are full of problem help queries for our legacy sims that have been around forever, and these requests very rarely show the level of insults, conspiracy theories, and general disrespect heaped on Asobo, who included things in its sim that were formerly paid addons in our previous sims.

We get pretty much monthly updates, worldwide photo scenery which we are not paying the bandwidth for... (remember paying for relatively tiny swatches of regional photoscenery, usually of much lower resolution?)

Not to mention free planes, and much lower prices generally for existing addons.....

And a sim much more beautiful and technically advanced then we ever dreamed of having at our disposal. (remember all the threads where it was opined repeatedly that there was nothing but a niche market for sims, it was all too complicated for gamers, the general public, and varius inferior knuckle draggers, and so we should thank our stars that Lockheed Martin was letting us tag along with yet another version of FSX?)

Remember when 30FPS was the standard, and we constantly paid through the nose for the latest graphics cards to try and maintain that? And now we blithely fly over the type of scenery that many informed us was in fact technically impossible for numerous reasons, at framerate's that were only dreamed of a short while ago, and while doing so we seemingly nitpick with not the slightest apparent memory of our past....

No, I don't  think MSFS is perfect, and yes there is much room for improvement. I only wish that as we call the developers every name under the sun, accuse them of dishonesty, incompetence and outright lying: call them greedy, insult various individuals by name, etc.

That we at least sometimes keep in mind that these supposedly inept developers have somehow managed to provide us with likely the best simulation we have ever had, while somehow also making simming more popular and relevant, as well as profitable, than it's probably ever been.

(For anyone who made it to the end of this wall of text, thank you for reading!)

 

 

 

Absolutely, and I was as critical as anyone when 2024 came out.

I remember a bunch of us standing around the one screen playing the teaser for MSFS 2020 at Cosford one year.  

If you'd been offered this environment during 2018 when we were still using P3D, would any of you have seriously turned all of this down?? Do you remember paying £30 for a third of England's scenery from Orbx?  Do you remember getting OOMs when you tried to crank things up above looking like brown mush, well after games with the visual quality of Red Dead Redemption 2 got released?  

The ATC is an utter mess, there are VRAm stutters, night lighting from high altitude looks absolute garbage.  But I would take the situation we have now.  Fire up frame gen, fire up the sim, step into one of the reasonable Inibuilds aircraft, and off you go from clean install to 10 minutes in the air? 

Edited April 11, 20251 yr by Langeveldt

Mr. Austen Mayer:

It's working 🙂 

The msfs guys on Avsim are fighting again. I helped to stir things up like you assigned. Now I"m awaiting your payment for my efforts. Please don't share this message, I don't want the guys on Avsim to know of our X-Plane schemes, he he.

 

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

Mr. Austen Mayer:

It's working 🙂 

The msfs guys on Avsim are fighting again. I helped to stir things up like you assigned. Now I"m awaiting your payment for my efforts. Please don't share this message, I don't want the guys on Avsim to know of our X-Plane schemes, he he.

 

What is this X-Plane you speak about Mr Meyer?

5 hours ago, GSalden said:

Hi David,

Here I use a 2 outside views. 

With 1 screen I do not have the melting issue too.

My point was that with 2020 I do not have the issue, but with 2024 I do.

Thank you for posting the screenshots 😄

Do you have dynamic settings on in 2024? Not sure if that effects photogrammetry, but I know it can cause blurry imagery.

Another perspective on the topic of buggy releases... Back in the days from FS3 to 2004, we had to install from physical media (disks). The developers had no way to update the products, so the releases had to be bulletproof. These days, it's simple to push out a new version or a fix.  For better or for worse, I think this just means that developers are more comfortable releasing something that they can update and refine.

Clearly, to survive as a company, a developer has to balance the flexibility of online updates with customer irritation at getting a product that needs updating, but I think this is just the world we're living in. No release will ever be as solid as they were back in the days when you walked home from a store with a finished piece of software on disk.  

Advantages of the current world: frequent updates. In the early days of MSFS, it was three or four years before any update was available.

Disadvantages: the product on initial release isn't as polished as it once was.

17 minutes ago, prolixindec said:

Another perspective on the topic of buggy releases... Back in the days from FS3 to 2004, we had to install from physical media (disks). The developers had no way to update the products, so the releases had to be bulletproof. These days, it's simple to push out a new version or a fix.  For better or for worse, I think this just means that developers are more comfortable releasing something that they can update and refine.

Clearly, to survive as a company, a developer has to balance the flexibility of online updates with customer irritation at getting a product that needs updating, but I think this is just the world we're living in. No release will ever be as solid as they were back in the days when you walked home from a store with a finished piece of software on disk.  

Advantages of the current world: frequent updates. In the early days of MSFS, it was three or four years before any update was available.

Disadvantages: the product on initial release isn't as polished as it once was.

Spot on.

 

This beta testing by companies is out of control.

 

But hey, we are programmed to accept mediocrity these days.

On 4/10/2025 at 4:22 PM, MrBitstFlyer said:

The ground terrain is much more detailed, plus the world no longer has a green tint.  Atmospheric colours are more accurate due to an updated lighting engine.  I have nothing bad to say about 2020, but to suggest 2024 is not more advanced in many areas is just plain silly.

The vast majority of the 'more detailed' is when you are very close to ground objects, trees, displacement mapped ground and so forth.  Once up in the air a few thousand feet it can be better, and can be worse in my experience now of probably 60 flights all over the world.  Flying into NZQN last night (daytime there) I was struck by just how bad it was coming into Rwy 23.  The mountain faces to the south looked strangely blurred and these are quite close.  A lot of the time looking at mountains it reminds me of the old 'paint-by-numbers' paintings which is not a good thing.  I get less of this in 2020 for sure.  The fall colored trees from a few thousand feet up during approach looked not so good and I swear reminded me of...vomit on the ground all over!  I know that sounds crazy but I didn't create that impression it just appeared in my consciousness, like all thoughts do for everyone!  Once down low and on the ground trees and everything else looked marvelous and realistic.  Sometimes 2024 just looks different, by no means always is the gestalt impression better.  I believe they made a mistake by removing Texture Supersampling which I have set at 8x in 2020.  I  find there is a subtle blur to edges in 2024 that is not present in 2024.

1 hour ago, Noel said:

The vast majority of the 'more detailed' is when you are very close to ground

These screenshots are 8,000ft over California - all looks sharp (at full size of course it looks sharper than here).  I'm not seeing what you describe as 'vomit' 🙂, certainly not a 'painting by numbers look'.  I know texture quality around the globe varies in quality, but I'm not seeing it how you describe.

55 minutes ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

I'm not seeing what you describe as 'vomit' 🙂, certainly not a 'painting by numbers look'

Here's a paint by number image of the mountain face mentioned.  Same graphics settings in both sims.  Why there is so much reflection in the 2024 such that many details are obscured I'm not sure why and that was true the entire flight over extensive snowcapped mountains.  The GFE Details filter was turned off and that did not improve the image.  I'm sure there must be some settings I can play with to help with this and this is probably a great spot to adjust for this in.  The vomit reminder scene was on approach to this airport so unless you looked at the exact top down view I referred to you're not going to see it.

2024:

2020:
I just went back to this view and opened NCP's desktop color control and ran thru the range of contrast, gamma, brightness, digital vibrance and even change time of day and none of these things impact these highly reflective faces you see which again was happening over NZ over these ranges.   See if you can go there and display something without the highly reflective faces you see in the 2024 image.

Edited April 13, 20251 yr by Noel

This is what I see there not using any sharpening or other filters, but I'm using Bijan's Seasons (you can click on the link to see it with higher resolution):

 

https://postimg.cc/LYBYsMd6

Edited April 13, 20251 yr by Alvega

I can max out my settings in 2020 now, and it looks absolutely stunning. However, where 2020 lacks is in up close detailed textures and lighting. We're very lucky as simmers that we have two incredible sims we can switch between.

 

Did sime testing above Amsterdam again with 2024.

The melted buildings only appear when using 2 views.

And it are only certain building blocks that show up melted. 

I will need to do extra testing to be sure, but I get the feeling that MSFS only can render a certain amount of PG objects.

And that it loads them in a certain order. Once the maximum amount of object is reached all extra PG objects appear melted and unfinished.

Even pausing the sim or remain put in slee above those building blocks for 30 minutes does not help.  And both the cpu and gpu are not maxed out at all.

Therefore, as you could see in my vids, melted building blocks exist next to sharp and finished building blocks.

If I switch of PG and the general building blocks appear they show up razor sharp and perfectly built.

Switching back to PG ( while in fixed position in Slew mode ) again the issue.

If someone knows a “hack” to try I certainly will try it.

Edited April 13, 20251 yr by GSalden

Whatever the case on other PCs, the 2020 version of that mountain range in Noel's screenshots definitely looks better than the 2024 version.

1 hour ago, GSalden said:

but I get the feeling that MSFS only can render a certain amount of PG objects

I use AutoFPS with 2024 SU2.  In the image above showing objects, the TLOD was 1080 as chosen by AutoFPS. No impression of reduced objects.