I'm basically a big fan of 2024. I still have a full 2020 setup on my system but I don't use it much anymore, having pretty much fallen for 2024 since the first week it became available. I grimaced my way through the new menus, controls setups and the whole streaming/my library thing and am now at the point where I feel uncomfortable trying to use 2020 as I've gotten used to the 2024 way of doing things.

And in general, when (and where) 2024 is good, it is absolutely amazing. I tend to use KSFO and the Bay area for quick runs with any new aircraft, and as a base area for a quick blast up and down, and apart from some of the ever-present PG tree-obelisks the scenery and atmospherics there are totally breathtaking. I would say life-like but as I've never been up in the air apart from at the back of a tin tube I'm probably not qualified to make such statements, but I certainly come away from a session flying around there feeling like I've actually been there.

But  .   .   .

2024 strikes me as way more inconsistent than 2020, in lots of ways. Go to some other areas and the visual quality of the ground layer is truly appalling, way worse than I remember 2020 being. And my understanding is that now 2020 also uses exactly the same base layer as 2024 and so I can't go back and make comparisons any more. I just bought the newish Baku packages (UBBB and Landmarks) and that new addon really does stick out like a sore thumb against some really awful ground imagery - real old FSX/P3D level stuff.

But what triggered this post was this. For no particular reason I decided to try a flight out of Birmingham (UK) yesterday (Sunday) to try out another new aircraft (Piper PA-20 Pacer - rather nice) and just took off and flew towards the city centre. And the image below me was terrible. PG was truly in melty mode, and was popping into view what felt like just a few hundred yards ahead (flying at about 1000 ft). Now I often find the PG is rubbish over the weekend evenings here, as I guess the servers are at maximum load then, so I gave up and thought I'd try again today (Monday).

And when I did the same flight today, the results were the same. So I tried the same thing but out of Manchester and flew again towards the city centre. Now if you know the UK, you'll know that these are very similar environments. Same sort of buildings, density of buildings and general environment, and also not very far apart. And the flight into Manchester, which I did immediately after ending the Birmingham flight was absolutley fine. The PG was much better looking, no melties, and zero popping.

Both flights with the same settings, and all with default scenery. And it's this sort of thing that really disappoints me with 2024. You really can't rely on anything about it. Even the good bits will suffer occasionally due to server load. It's never consistently bad enough to make me stop using it, but it's also never consistently good enough to make me remove 2020 (or XP or even AeroFly). And each new update, while mostly being a big improvement, seems to bring in new problems as well.

Don't get me wrong, 2024 is where I live now, but it's still very much a love/hate relationship.

Normally PG is bad for the following issues:

• ISP having issues
• You are on Wifi and getting interference
• Something else on your PC is downloading in the background (OS updates, Steam updates, etc.)
• Someone else in your household is watching HDR 4K movie or downloading files
• Server (this is pretty rare and you seem to be in a non-rural location)

You might want to log you network performance over time and see what the loads are and if there are any issues.  From my understanding, pending location and your graphic settings, PG can consume 100Mbps to 180Mbps of bandwidth … also log latency.

Edited September 29, 2025Sep 29 by SayAgain

Same thing happens to me!

One flight using a stored flight plan is crisp, detailed, smooth scenery.  Hours later same flight is melted buildings at departure and a nuclear holocaust scene approaching the destination.  Identical flight plans, settings, hardware

I use OOKLA download to test network connection during distorted flight - never less than 900Mb/sec
Hard wired ethernet 
I use System Informer to verify NOTHING is running except in support of FS2024
No one but me here
900 Mb/sec

During the either flight - I see almost no network activity and very little load on any of the three NVMe devices supporting the sim.  GPU loads, CPU loads, memory usage seem to be identical in both flights.  

 

1 hour ago, SayAgain said:

Normally PG is bad for the following issues:

• ISP having issues
• You are on Wifi and getting interference
• Something else on your PC is downloading in the background (OS updates, Steam updates, etc.)
• Someone else in your household is watching HDR 4K movie or downloading files
• Server (this is pretty rare and you seem to be in a non-rural location)

You might want to log you network performance over time and see what the loads are and if there are any issues.  From my understanding, pending location and your graphic settings, PG can consume 100Mbps to 180Mbps of bandwidth … also log latency.

I have a 1,000 Fibre connection and use a wired Ethernet connection. I don't know why you're putting Server as a "rare" reason but in my case I have the same inconsistency with PG where sometimes it's simply breathtaking and other times all I see is melted buildings. The first four on your list have never ever been a reason for me to have poor PG - it is 100% server related for most people.

2024 scenery is fantastic in PNW!

dd

I stopped using PG, and I'm more than good with default streamed scenery... Performance also got evem better than it already was when I was using it...

5 hours ago, Speedbird 217 said:

I don't know why you're putting Server as a "rare" reason

For me anyway, server performance has never been an issue.  But another reason is I believe the servers are load balanced and there will be several servers available to serve data.  

It’s possible that my proximity to Seattle (about 3 hours away from Portland) has helped keep data flowing, but MS Azure is massive in scope across the entire globe.  Its serving capacity will be dynamic and fluctuate with demand to ensure consistent level of output.  

Microsoft is not new at serving data, they have an Azure infrastructure that frankly boggles my mind with a level of scalability that is beyond impressive.

It’s possible to see performance issues with Azure, but A LOT of servers, switches, routers, infrastructure  would need to go down or fail … not just one or two or 10 servers, but 100’s … the total number of Azure servers is around 4 Million globally.  

It could be a server issue, but it would be the last thing I would suspect, hence “rare”.

Edited September 30, 2025Sep 30 by SayAgain

Is anyone else suffering from setting being reset at every run time?

I had this with the NVidia app resetting stuff before because it was 'optimising' my settings, but its started again and the NVidia app is showing it isnt optimising settings?

 

Not experiencing this and I am on wi-fi. Every flight is the same. 

9 hours ago, andy1252 said:

 

Both flights with the same settings, and all with default scenery. And it's this sort of thing that really disappoints me with 2024. You really can't rely on anything about it. Even the good bits will suffer occasionally due to server load. It's never consistently bad enough to make me stop using it, but it's also never consistently good enough to make me remove 2020 (or XP or even AeroFly). And each new update, while mostly being a big improvement, seems to bring in new problems as well.

MS/Azure servers do have a fairly frequent overload issue, mainly at weekends and there's often times some sort of server related area is "down and we're investigating it" nonsense. Happened quite often with 2020 but after the initial release of 2024 I believe these have become less often, which is a good thing of course but they still happen as it's a server related product so it's bound to suffer. That could easily explain why two flights can be so vastly different, another one is the coding of the product overall where the servers are running just fine. I've seen this loads in the past, never known a product like it.

And yes to your last point, well that's Asobo/MS all over, they have no quality control whatsoever and this is proven every single time they release an update. Better simply get used to their backwards way of development, only way around that unfortunately.

8 hours ago, Speedbird 217 said:

I have a 1,000 Fibre connection and use a wired Ethernet connection. I don't know why you're putting Server as a "rare" reason but in my case I have the same inconsistency with PG where sometimes it's simply breathtaking and other times all I see is melted buildings. The first four on your list have never ever been a reason for me to have poor PG - it is 100% server related for most people.

It isn't your Internet connection this is a Microsoft/Asobo Server thing and probably ever will be..

cheers 😉

Be aware that whilst Birmingham does have PG, Manchester does not.  I doo also find that sometimes the PG looks better than others when flying in the same areas and can only assume that it is either the MS servers or my ISP taht ae sometimes faster than others.  I do fel that the MS servers certainly get overloaded and slow down moer than they ought to.

I wouldn't expect any sim to ever have beautiful scenery for every square inch of the world at all times. It's an impossible goal with current technology and infrastructure. My problem with Asobo is they pretty much 'imply' this is what you get in their sims. 

We've ALWAYS had sims where (with addons especially) some areas look impressive and some just plain awful but we've been able to plan our flights to suit as this inconsistency has been, well, consistent. 

What has kept me from 2024 and also away from 2020 recently is the seemingly complete randomness of the experience regardless of whether you use default or payware scenery addons. It absolutely has looked jaw droppingly amazing for many flights but then you end a good flight into your home town looking like a nuclear test site and addon airport with the buildings missing. 

2 different simmers can fly the same route in the same plane at the exact same time and get 2 completely different experiences. 

My non PG scenery in MSFS 2020 is amazingly consistent. I may grumble about various issues from time to time, but I never have to suffer from melted PG buildings, and any terrain issues are either because there is a dodgy spot in the base image, or a section of DEM data fails to load until I am almost right on top of it (you know what I mean.....the odd island or section of coastline). Other than that, I am generally confident that the view outside my cockpit windows will be excellent.

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

Birmingham does have PG, Manchester does not.

Hi, yeah, I think I'd noticed that before in terms of city centre stuff and I usually have an addon in place for Manchester centre (although not on these flights). But in this case I was really talking about the outlying suburbs, which certainly seems to be PG and look to be exactly the same stuff as that surrounding Brum, but without the post-apocalyptic look. If I get time I'll probably go back again today and have another look to see if it's still the same. My net access is good (Gbit) and I don't use wi-fi, just wired Cat6 so I'm fairly comfortable with my end of the connection.

I don't like the non-PG look in MSFS, and I'll live with the flaws if need be, but it is frustrating sometimes. But hey, lots of stuff is these days (frustrating, that is).