2 minutes ago, bailout said:

"Serious simmers" only care about the wheels. Nothing else matters.

Absolutely. 💯 😂

7 hours ago, Matchstick said:

You are going to have to back that up with some evidence as MSFS 2020 was "E for Everyone" as is X-Plane
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/36840/microsoft-flight-simulator/
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/6005/x-plane/

-- edit --
Even CS3 was E
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/23911/combat-flight-simulator-3-battle-for-europe/
So ESRB is going to allow you to shoot down other planes and keep an E rating but they would have a problem with ending a flight with a "You Crashed" message if you hit the ground too hard ?

Such a strange hill upon which to plant your flag.

Y’know, corps are allowed to set their own standards, right? And some of them choose to be more conservative than any official ratings systems?

In any case, there are people with money out there who don’t want their children (or themselves) exposed to any sort of perceived “violence”.

And so since there’s nothing to be gained from crash animations and money/market share to be lost, it seems like a decent call to make.

It’s also consistent with Asobo’s standard of “no weapons” in the Marketplace.

I don’t agree with it myself, but again, I’m always working towards the IRL standard of never crashing in the first place. And when I do, I don’t need a voyeuristic animation to help me work harder to avoid future errors. 🤷‍♂️

So, 10 pages in, is SU7 beta any good?

9 hours ago, Matchstick said:

You are going to have to back that up with some evidence as MSFS 2020 was "E for Everyone" as is X-Plane
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/36840/microsoft-flight-simulator/
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/6005/x-plane/

-- edit --
Even CS3 was E
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/23911/combat-flight-simulator-3-battle-for-europe/
So ESRB is going to allow you to shoot down other planes and keep an E rating but they would have a problem with ending a flight with a "You Crashed" message if you hit the ground too hard ?

CS3 was released in 2002.

How about some recent examples?
IL-2: T for Teen
DCS: T for Teen
Ace Combat: T for Teen

And that doesn't even include PEGI ratings, which X-Plane hasn't been rated by since v10:
IL-2: PEGI 12
DCS: PEGI 16
Ace Combat: PEGI 16
MSFS: PEGI 3

I am guessing X-Plane no longer bothers with PEGI ratings because a plane that can erupt into a fireball crashing into the ground is not suitable for a 3-year-old and they can't get that PEGI 3 rating like MSFS. A plane realistically breaking apart (especially when you throw in fire) is considered "violence" in these ratings.

I don't get your last sentence though? With crash damage enabled, the screen goes black if you do something that would damage the aircraft. Just like MSFS 2020. But it's overly sensitive and people just turn it off.

20 hours ago, MarcG said:

I have no interest in what other titles had or had not, your constant need to bring up that argument it's extremely redundant. This is solely about MSFS and in this instance the lack of improvement of Live Weather + the visual degradation around SU5 (2020) which was the Xbox release and SU7 with the ill fated METAR update.

Here's what they promised remember;

I watched this video again... this is like MSFS 2020 initial release. You know, back in covid when the sim was selling reallllly well because everyone was indoors.

And I look at what we have now in 2024 - it's quite decent. We know that some stuff had to be downgraded visually due to console support. But you get turbulence in storms, you get lighting, varying levels of precip (including virga, and weather radar with tilt etc). You get God rays, cloud shadows, you get icing, (and when coded correctly by aircraft devs, it can be detrimental). That's a lot of solid aviation-related weather phenomena. Could it be better? Sure.

I just don't think its in the scope of the sim anymore for them to go insanely in-depth with weather. It's pretty decent in 2024 as of today.

Without console support, there wouldn't be a msfs version at all. So even though I'm annoyed (a lot) by texture reductions and aggressive LODs (it's been a tiny bit better of late), it is what it is.

I think for you, XP12 would be the sim you'd want to pursue. You'll miss the really amazing quantity of addons we enjoy in msfs, but XP12 focuses on aviation, period. It's really good for weather, flying, systems, etc. The atmospheric lighting is better than 2024 by a bit as well. You can use ortho for free for medium resolution (great for high altitude flying, passable for general aviation stuff). Just pick a few payware addons and you're set. You'll miss out on airport scenery - MSFS has a plethora of that, payware and decent freeware. XP12 really lacks but there are some gems.

11 hours ago, lwt1971 said:

As for the culling issues... I understand their aim to improve performance for both lower-end PCs and consoles, and ideally the performance and visual quality should be able to scale across various hardware capabilities via user settings (with consoles of course being frozen on specific settings). That's the part that could be complex to implement well, and I wish they could get right.. so that those with higher-end hardware can benefit, and those with lower-end can also benefit (i.e. not at the expense of each other).

I cant imagine showing landing gears from a further distance should impact performance at all. In other simulators you can see them as far as the eye can see, even in good old fsx this was not a problem as i can remember. Almost 500 votes on the forums must have gotten their attention. As it also is marked as bug logged.

There's zero evidence that weather in this sim was ever downgraded due to consoles. There was only one issue with clouds when SU5 dropped back on 2020 and that was colour banding. Hardly something that would affect performance either way. This issue was then fixed in SU6 bringing the clouds back to normal, then came the METAR update in SU7. This is where things really went south and is came as a result of the requests of HARDCORE, SUPER SERIOUS SIMMERS who fly on VATSim. This created METAR bubbles, and horrific ball clouds that were actually TOO thick! In an attempt to fix this, Asobo actually over corrected and released the current transparent mess in SU10.

Looking back, there were actually people who saw the issues with transparency right away but they weren't taken seriously. It wasn't until someone did the treads with the comparisons to pre SU7 clouds that it became clear that something really was amiss.

In one of the Dev Q&As, Seb acknowledged the issues with transparency and said this shouldn't be a difficult thing to fix because the clouds have LITTLE IMPACT on the sim's resources. He then said we'd see the improvement in 2024 but here we are today.

This is the full timeline of the situation with weather depiction across both sims. This had NOTHING to do with Xbox and everything to do with a bad live weather algorithm that made survived the transition to 2024.

And still not going to fix the culling of objects (missing landing gear and other issues):

Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

Too strict LOD rule on Aircraft landing gears! (Culling o...

Su7 😔

Oh well, back to XP12.4.4 Beta ...

11 hours ago, Funky D said:

CS3 was released in 2002.

How about some recent examples?
IL-2: T for Teen
DCS: T for Teen
Ace Combat: T for Teen

And that doesn't even include PEGI ratings, which X-Plane hasn't been rated by since v10:
IL-2: PEGI 12
DCS: PEGI 16
Ace Combat: PEGI 16
MSFS: PEGI 3

I am guessing X-Plane no longer bothers with PEGI ratings because a plane that can erupt into a fireball crashing into the ground is not suitable for a 3-year-old and they can't get that PEGI 3 rating like MSFS. A plane realistically breaking apart (especially when you throw in fire) is considered "violence" in these ratings.

I don't get your last sentence though? With crash damage enabled, the screen goes black if you do something that would damage the aircraft. Just like MSFS 2020. But it's overly sensitive and people just turn it off.

Just to be clear about this specific issue - On my copy of MSFS 2024 when I crash into the ground, the sim DOES NOT display a black screen and end the flight - it instead triggers the Back on Track mode flinging the plane back into a random position and state in the sky.
I have tried every assistance setting the menu and I have not found a way to turn it off.

Edited September 15Sep 15 by Matchstick

How often do you crash into the ground?

50 minutes ago, St Mawgan said:

How often do you crash into the ground?

When I'm messing around with helicopters at very low level, especially unfamiliar ones, more frequently than I'd like.

11 hours ago, SayAgain said:

And still not going to fix the culling of objects (missing landing gear and other issues):

Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

Too strict LOD rule on Aircraft landing gears! (Culling o...

Su7 😔

Oh well, back to XP12.4.4 Beta ...

This is the most infuriating one for me

13 minutes ago, simsuper80 said:

This is the most infuriating one for me

Those on the developer program with MS/Asobo are just as infuriated because it makes their aircraft look ridiculous and the add-on developers are stuck handling the support emails/posts.

But don't hold your breath for fix, the culling issue will NOT be fixed primarily because it would have to be fixed for consoles also which don't have sufficient video memory and processing power to render all these little objects. MS/Asobo would get trapped in the "why does it look better on a PC than my XBOX/PS5".

This culling issue is "by design" hence why it's being ignored by MS/Asobo. I do keep checking back with each SU, but we're on SU7 now so I think the writing is on the wall.

Do MS/Asobo seriously think like that? Why can't the simulator look better on PC than XBox or PS5? Is little Johnny going to throw his dummy out of the pram if his console version is "limited"?? 🤔

6 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

But don't hold your breath for fix, the culling issue will NOT be fixed primarily because it would have to be fixed for consoles also which don't have sufficient video memory and processing power to render all these little objects. MS/Asobo would get trapped in the "why does it look better on a PC than my XBOX/PS5".

This culling issue is "by design" hence why it's being ignored by MS/Asobo. I do keep checking back with each SU, but we're on SU7 now so I think the writing is on the wall.

But how do you know it's "by design" though? I find it to be a rather silly conspiracy theory that they're sitting there thinking "well we can't allow the PC to look better than the console". They already allow increased visual fidelity for PC via settings while the consoles are locked down to lower visual settings. If there was a way where they could fix the culling issue for more capable hardware platforms (via settings) and then still be performative for lower-end hardware platforms, then why wouldn't they allow that since that's a win-win for all.

I'm thinking the current problem is either a bug they haven't quite figured out a good fix for, or they haven't figured out how to properly scale the visual fidelity and LOD processing/curves across various hardware capabilities (hence the more aggressive LOD processing in order to cater to the lowest common denominator for now). My hunch is that it's the latter, but hoping it's the former so it can be fixed soon.

Edited September 15Sep 15 by lwt1971