Yeah, it seems Asobo/Microsoft have no shame when it comes to promotion. I remember back in 2020 how the key promotional media showed Bora Bora with a beautiful tropical water mask, but that wasn't in the sim either. Did it ever make it into the sim?

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Virtual-Chris

8 hours ago, flyingscampi said:

On the bright side, FS2024 has achieved the level of detail shown in the FSX DX10 promotional screenshot from 2006 🙂

Ironically, there are no ships in that screenshot either. so...

2 minutes ago, Mike T said:

so...

so?

Well, as usual when I see reports/threads like this, I got curious and flew off to Vancouver to see if I could (in this case) find sum ships.

Interestingly enough, I think I found lots of them. I never fly in Canada but the PG seems great and the area quite pretty. Think I'll explore the area!

In the meantime, I wonder if the OP has the latest version of Gaist, and has the proper settings.

 

The Freeware AI Shipping we used in P3D was EXCELLENT!

 

3 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Did it ever make it into the sim?

Yes, not that long after the image

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Tuskin38

4 hours ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

he created a brilliant list of all of the things that are still broken

Some of those things aren’t broken. I’m also not sure what that list has to do with the Dev Q&As

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Tuskin38

45 minutes ago, DaveCT2003 said:

The Freeware AI Shipping we used in P3D was EXCELLENT!

 

The one by Henrik? It was officially ported to 2020 a couple years ago. It was also updated for 2024. The models will also spawn in live ship traffic if you have that enabled.

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Tuskin38

Hi @Virtual-Chris,

My condo in New West overlooks the Fraser River. I snapped these photos just now (top), which seems to match the live ships as seen in the sim (bottom, screenshot captured shortly after the real photos were taken).

I then flew near Stanley Park and saw plenty of ships in Coal Harbour:

As for cruise ships, I don't know if there are any in port today, but keep in mind that only ships with a transponder enabled will appear in the sim. Does anyone know if cruise ships leave their transponders on while they're docked?

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by SeedyL

Some of the default AI ship models do have LOD issues and either won’t appear or only appear when couple KM away.

I made a bug report thread months ago. (though it was the merged into an existing thread)

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/live-ships-not-showing/671045/39?u=tuskin38

IIRC Jorg said during one of the Q&As that Gaya would be taking a look at them after they finished their airport optimizations.

Edited July 18, 2025Jul 18 by Tuskin38

6 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

Some of the default AI ship models do have LOD issues and either won’t appear or only appear when couple KM away.

Considering that we have an MSFS Community Manager here, maybe this would be a good time to mention that AI ships are not the only models that suffer from LOD issues in MSFS. Whilst the GAIST ships are perfectly fine in MSFS 2020, I think that there is universal agreement that we really need the "disappearing AI plane undercarriage" LOD issue sorting out. That really is an immersion killer, and should have been corrected years ago.

13 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

Some of the default AI ship models do have LOD issues and either won’t appear or only appear when couple KM away.

I made a bug report thread months ago. (though it was the merged into an existing thread)

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/live-ships-not-showing/671045/39?u=tuskin38

IIRC Jorg said during one of the Q&As that Gaya would be taking a look at them after they finished their airport optimizations.

I don't understand the OP post either. I see 100's of ships movement especially flying around Hawaii Islands. No Lod issues here.

13 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

.....Jorg said during one of the Q&As that Gaya would be taking a look at them after they finished their airport optimizations.

Can you ask Jorg to tell Gaya to "optimise" ENCN Kristiansand at the same time? Cheers 👍

Edited July 19, 2025Jul 19 by Christopher Low

19 hours ago, SeedyL said:

Hi @Virtual-Chris,

 

As for cruise ships, I don't know if there are any in port today, but keep in mind that only ships with a transponder enabled will appear in the sim. Does anyone know if cruise ships leave their transponders on while they're docked?

Thanks,

SeedyL, MSFS Community Manager

Since you live in Vancouver, you know that a dozen cargo ships or more are anchored in English bay at any given time waiting for a berth. I see one small vessel in your last photo… and it doesn’t look like any kind of cargo ship.

There are cruise ships at the Canada Place terminal every day from May to Sept. your photo looks like mine… zero cruise ships. 
 

And you probably didn’t look for them but in several flights, I’ve seen zero ferries which is completely off as well.

Yes, there are a few small craft in Coal Harbor, but where are the freighters, bulk carriers, and container ships for Western Canada’s busiest port?

The feature they promised of live ship traffic is an epic fail. 

Edited July 19, 2025Jul 19 by Virtual-Chris

if you used Little Navmap, you would see that MSFS2024 often feeds hundreds of ships on lakes and rivers into the simulation, but because of the LOD problems you often can't see any of them. you would have to get within two hundred meters of some of the vessels for them to suddenly pop out of nowhere. 
I don't understand why MS lets us see every little house and tree from FL300, but doesn't let us see big ships on the oceans that are hundreds of meters long.

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