Honnli

Though it seems that quite a few people encountered the download looping the same files over and over again during the installation of patch #2. I myself also encountered such loops and on the same files that others were stuck on. So perhaps some of the update files were a bit problematic in their deployment or download/installation which could've caused some of these issues if the client were to be confused and simply treat them as installed for whatever reasons when in fact they were not updated or installed properly. @Moria15 Did your installation of patch #2 on your first PC encounter the download looping issue by any chance? Or PC #2 encountering it while first PC went smoothly? Though since you installed the whole sim from scratch on your second PC it's harder to observe the installation process I suppose.

I'm with you Larry! The stock scenery in MSFS is simply amazing for me so far. Just the other day I was having a flight in Melbourne (where I live in), flying to one of the popular mountains further out from the Melbourne CBD, and while that looked stunning, it was what happened afterwards that was quite magical. It was getting late that night and I thought lets wrap up the flight and head back to Melbourne Airport, and thus I flew in the direction of the airport not following any roads in particular. But then I came across this stretch of road and shops that I thought looked very familiar. "It looks like the shopping strip that me and my dad used to browse at (pre covid)" I thought. Then I continued following that strip of road and sure enough, I came up on my local area! What a magical moment that was, given that I didn't plan to specifically go there. And what's even more amazing is that this is suburban Melbourne and something that hasn't been well represented in past and even current sims (not sure if the ORBX Australia V2 covers suburban Melbourne as I don't have that). Not to knock on X-Plane, but after that flight I took a similar flight in X-Plane 10 (I don't have X-Plane 11) for a quick comparison and Melbourne in X-Plane 10 doesn't look at all like the real thing and just looked bland and doesn't have any recognizable areas! Yes Melbourne CBD in MSFS doesn't contain any landmark buildings which is unfortunate and the whole of Melbourne is AI generated, but it is the most convincing Melbourne I have ever seen as a whole in a flight simulator! Not to hijack the thread but below is my local area (suburban Melbourne 15km out from the CBD) in MSFS compared to Google Earth (hope you don't mind Larry!). 😄 MSFS: Fun fact, the AI even got that tall apartment building in the center of the image in (which actually is there and just finished construction fairly recently) that isn't in Google Earth yet 🤣 Google Earth:

A peculiar problem indeed. Reading all these accounts of the avionics shutting down, lights flickering on and off, and fuel valves turning off by themselves is quite the horror mystery that's even scarier than most horror mystery movies! 😂 Jokes aside, I've flown 11 flights since updating to patch #2 and I have yet to encounter these problems myself. Now post-patch I have only flown in the Cirrus SR22, Diamond DA40 (both TDI and NG), and the Diamond DA62 and I've only flown within Australia in both daytime and night time. I hand flew the TDI since it doesn't have AP and used the AP on the rest. Not only did the avionics and AP stay on and fully operational during the entire flight, the AP even tracked quite precisely to my VFR flight plan even in winds up to 20+ knots (Melbourne has been quite windy these few days!). No zig-zagging and no severe unexpected pitching up or down. I even switched from my usual south-east Asia server to one of the US servers today to see if I might encounter these problems but so far nothing. Granted my flights have all been short flights within 30 minutes, some 10-15 minutes some 20+ minutes but from what some people have reported, they even encountered the problem shortly into their flight, some even soon after taking off. So yeah, not sure what the common denominator is to this problem. Could it be a location thing that only affects certain parts of the world like the 225/3 wind issue? (I was getting winds other than 225/3 even before patch #2 flying in Australia) I'll fly in other parts of the world and on different planes and servers to see if I can encounter this problem, but otherwise can't be of much help sorry. 😕

Why not. Go for it I say! 😆 Thanks! It's so hard to stop myself from taking pics every time I go flying! The pics might end up filling up my HDD lol Woah, it really is quite surprising how it can run on these weaker hardware! And hey, Medium looks much better than low and still looks reasonably good, so it's not all bad. From the sounds of it, your laptop seems to be as fast as my desktop! Now the bigger problem is how to travel with the joystick indeed 😂

Now that's pretty impressive! If it's around the performance of a 1050, then it should still be able to do some rather pleasant GA flying I think 🤣 Ah that's right, there's the 2GB variant of that card available. 1GB VRAM would be quite the unpleasant experience! But yes my VRAM is the same, absolutely used up at all times. But luckily the medium texture setting isn't too bad with my 12GB RAM so I will keep it at that. Just have to avoid visiting larger cities in complex jets, those HDD disk thrashings are an absolute no go. The 30% internal resolution is way too blurry to be enjoyable!

Woah looks like quite a few of you also have rather old and "under powered" rigs like me and are still enjoying the sim nonetheless! This is very encouraging to see indeed, and hopefully with the performance being worked on by Asobo in the coming months, it will perform even better in the future. Yeah my 2GB VRAM is definitely the biggest bottleneck in my system with newer games where loads of textures are being used, leading to stutters that are sometimes unbearable. I actually have my texture setting set to medium though, as I find the low setting to be a bit blurry for my liking and without that big of an improvement with the stutters in the heavier areas. But the fact that my GPU can run above 30FPS when it's not stuttering suggest that it's the VRAM that's the bottleneck. Your i7 920 should do fine as my CPU generally sits around 40% usage while my GPU is pegged at 97-100% usage. And that GTX 1060 with the 6GB VRAM should be able to run the sim with a lot less stutter and at a higher setting and/or performance than my system! I haven't made any videos but I could try to make one or two if it's helpful, but judging by the experience by the other potato peeps, you have nothing to worry about. 🙂 Yeah exactly, my GPU and specifically the 2GB VRAM is the limiting factor indeed. With the developer mode monitor turned on, the sim is almost always limited by the GPU with the GPU being used at 100% while CPU sits around 40%. I'm thinking of just getting a new rig sometimes next year, but I'll see how it goes I guess. If it's too expensive then maybe I get a cheap 1060 or something. Ha, the battle-scared i7 that should be given its recognition huh 🤣 Yep, sounds about right with the more powerful GTX 970 and its higher VRAM. Should still be quite a pleasant experience for you too. Go potato! Ha good on you with your still kicking potato! 😆 Indeed, the sunset shots looked so stunning and even magical to me (even with the lower settings)! And the fact that it all works and looks great right out of the box is just impressive indeed. I saw your pics of the TBM icing up and those looks simply amazing and so realistic! Could've fool me that they are the real thing if you didn't say they're from the sim! ( I guess I'm easy to impress too 😂) That's pretty good performance with your rig! I set my terrain and object sliders to 100 though, and it looks and performs quite alright. I guess those two sliders have more impact on the CPU than the GPU. Same that I have to wait a couple of moments in the cockpit for the scenery loading to settle down before I go flying, but it's generally quite usable and quite enjoyable and definitely much better looking than FSX! You might end up with an accelerated ripening process a bunch of overripe potatoes though! 😂 Wow and you could still run the sim on your even older rig! And that GTX 750 only have 1GB of VRAM? That's impressive. Yeah that might be the case that the more cores/threads you have, the better it is for this sim. I guess the 2GB VRAM, 8GB RAM and HDD requirements are just enough to do GA flights in the less dense areas hence still flyable given some concession. But yeah, complex situations like the 747 JFK landing challenge is pretty much unplayable for me as it would stutter and freeze so much that it becomes unflyable and unbearable. The A320 Sydney landing one is still okay though once the scenery loading calms down. Regarding the loading time, I also get about 7-8 minutes just to get to the main menu, and another 3-5 to get into a flight depending on the location and plane. My Internet connection is around 40Mbps which is good enough for the streaming I guess, though I also use the rolling cache on my HDD. Using an SSD should help a lot in that regard but unfortunately I don't have an SSD so have to make do with HDD. But echoing what you said, it really does perform similar to the older flight sims but it does so while looking heaps better. Haha that might just be the next thing, everyone competing to see who has the weakest rig and can still run the sim! 🤣

So uh, with some of the negativity around here lately and especially in the official flight simulator forums, I thought I'd post something a bit more positive and potentially helpful to others who also have an older rig and are on the fence about this sim's performance. My rig is probably ancient by today's standards and will probably shock and horrify some of you 😂. First-gen i7 950, GTX960 2GB, 12GB RAM, and HDD instead of SSD. Pretty potato compared to what many of you are using. I have been following MSFS since it was announced last year and prior to it being released, I was worried about how well it will run as my rig runs vanilla FSX at around 15-40FPS depending on the plane and location (most settings set to high though). I was expecting it to run between 5-15FPS on low settings (granted, more complex aircrafts coupled with high density cities and complex weather patterns does still do this). Come release day, I just thought why not and went ahead and bought the premium deluxe edition (which is $180AUD here in Australia). With the ambition that Asobo and Microsoft are going for, I thought I'd want to own everything available to go on the ride (pun not intended). And I gotta say, I don't regret this decision at all. I bought this edition mainly for the 787 as I used to fly tubeliners in previous flight sims (PMDG and the like) and not much GA flying, but I ended up staying for all the GA planes it offers. They're just so much fun to (hand)fly with the stunning scenery down below! I think it has really brought out another side to flying that, in the past, I didn't think I would enjoy that much. Anyway onto the performance, and note that I am running it in 1080P with 100% scaling. I was pleasantly surprised that with everything set to low, I actually got around 35-38FPS in not too cloudy weather in the daytime in moderately dense suburban cities. I slowly increased the settings until I settled with a low-medium-ish combination which while not looking as nice as nice-ultra, still looks quite good and even quite realistic and immersive while still generally running between 25-33FPS. And even with those FPS, it still felt smooth enough and perfectly flyable to me. As I said above, flying the more complex planes like the airliners and ones with glass cockpits into dense cities and complex airports with lots of cloud can still reduce the FPS down to single digits and a stuttery slideshow, but as long as I stay with the lighter GAs and fly in not so complex weather and in less dense locations, the performance generally stayed between 25-30FPS. And when I'm up there flying, it felt so real and enjoyable to the point that I almost forget that I'm flying with low-medium settings! I've never had such a realistic and immersive experience out of the box before. As another member said, in this sim it feels like I'm actually there flying in the real world. Having said all this, I know the sim is currently still incomplete and there are still quite a number of bugs and issues present. And like most you, I also want the bugs to be fixed and the sim improved. I guess being more of a glass half full kind of person, I try not to let the bugs get in the way of my experience and I am happy to give Asobo and Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and the time to fix the bugs. After all, MSFS has already been a very enjoyable and even special experience to me, bugs and all. If the autopilot flies you into the ground, then you just hand-fly the planes right? 🤣 Anyway, enough with my experience. To those of you who also have a weaker rig and are still unsure about the performance you might get, just give it a try especially if you can get it on the $1 game pass. You might just be pleasantly surprised too. 🙂 I will leave you guys with some screenshots from some of my flights as reference (I capped my FPS at 30 for a more consistent feel). Happy flying!

Just a video of my recent landing at Sydney Kingsford Smith International Airport in a Boeing 767-300. P.S. Wow, it's been a while since I last came on here...

Ben, if you're still having problems with the Seattle CBD not showing any autogen, I think I know what's causing that. Your plane is probably too far from the CBD. I think there is a limit to how far from your plane the objects are displayed. This is not the world detail setting in the rendering menu. That specifies how far from the camera objects are displayed. Rather, it might be the visibility setting in the weather menu which determines the distance from your plane at which objects are displayed, I'm not sure. Last night I was looking around Melbourne in XP10 with the free cam while my plane was parked on the runway at Melbourne International Airport, and I had exactly the same problem that you were having. The Melbourne CBD, and the surrounding suburbs, just won't show any autogen no matter what setting I change it to, and I was dumbfounded. But then I decided to take my plane up for a spin, and lo and behold, the autogen started to appear as I flew closer to the area. So yeah.Anyway, on another note, I have received my XP10 discs two days ago, but unfortunately, one of the discs appears to be defective. Some of the files on that discs just can't be read no matter what I tried. I've tried it on two other DVD drives, and even on two laptops to no avail. I have contacted the LR tech support already and fortunately, they have agreed to send out a replacement disc free of charge, which is great.Regarding my Seattle pack, I don't have much to share at the moment. I've been preoccupied by some other games recently, and haven't really done much work on the pack. And Larry is still busy with work, I think. So yeah, nothing to see just yet. =P

Ha, I was finishing off the Wells Fargo Center when you posted those. Nice videos btw. And thanks again for your compliments. They certainly do provide some motivation. :)

Benny, that is absolutely incredible! Seattle looks a lot fuller with those shapefile buildings! Hopefully shapefiles for other countries that are lacking osm buildings are available (will be very handy). As for why downtown Seattle is that empty, I'm not sure why that happens, but that sometimes happens to me as well. Might be the gpu running out of vram? I dunno. Does it happen every time?@Steve, yeah, those flytampa converted sceneries looked stunning! I was drooling at those pics. lol

Well, I don't really have anything major to report or share just yet, but don't worry, Larry and I are still working on adding more buildings to Seattle. ;) It'll probably take a bit longer though, since he's been busy with work lately and I've got some other things to do as well.P.S. I gave in and finally ordered a copy of XP10 the other day. Have to wait a few weeks till it arrives though. =P

Impressive work, Benny! That looks amazing!

Thanks Steve. I guess I should continue working on the project (took a bit of time-off from it). As for why developers can't/won't do the same, it comes down to the time and budget constraints, I guess. LR only have a dozen or so people working on XP10 IIRC, so doing cityscapes at this level of detail, even if only for major cities, wouldn't really be feasible and would delay the release by quite some time. Also, the usage of google warehouse stuff (like my Seattle pack) would mean you can't sell it commercially (unless you "partner up" with Google, which might be expensive and complicated), so if LR wanted to do scenery at this level, they'd most likely have to look else where for the source/reference, or make it themselves. But I agree, they should've at least given the demo area some more attention so that it shows what the sim is capable of (though this could end up misleading people to think that the rest of the world is as detailed =P). That would be good news indeed.

I don't think there's currently any way to manipulate XP10's default "Plausible World". You can add stuff to it with the overlay editor, but you can't modify the default "autogen" buildings as far as I know.

Chip sure knows how to take good looking pics! The pic looks stunning!@Simon, welcome back. So I've heard, Wellington isn't all that dense, huh. Anyway, any hints on what your project with Chip is gonna be? ;)P.S. What an awesome epic end to the Australian Open!!

Thanks for the compliments guys! Much appreciated. :) The cranes would perhaps look better with a less vibrant shade of orange. I'll have a play around with it.@Simon, there are indeed lots and lots of sheeps in NZ (I've lived in Auckland for a few years before, though that was over 10 years ago). Perhaps you can bring one back as a souvenir? They'd make a great organic lawn mower, not to mention all the free manure you'd get, all in a cute and cuddly package! XD Hey, I know. Lets model some sheeps and put them in XP10. lol

Alright, an update, finally! I have released an update to my Seattle pack, which now includes, in addition to the aforementioned buildings, the Columbia Center, the Colman Terminal/Pier 52, the Washington State Ferries, and a couple of port cranes, as well as night textures for all buildings. The buildings mentioned here are done by Larry (who I am collaborating with).The new Seattle skyline.The skyline at night.And the cranes.Here's the link to the file.http://forums.x-plan...&showfile=15392@Wolfman and Mike, great to see more people adding to the world of XP10. :) It's not overly difficult, but it can be fairly time consuming depending on the complexity of the buildings.

Yep, trains are already modelled. There are even moving passenger trains, though I think they move too slow . And I concur with the rest of you. I can only see XP10 going up. It's only been a month, and there are already heaps of stuff over at the org. So in a years time, I'm sure the scenery will have been improved immensely.One thing I don't quite get regarding most people's take on XP10's "plausible" world is according to them, the plausible world is not realistic at all, yet in FS2004/FSX, the default autogen (which is also only plausible), is a lot more releastic? Sure, the landclass is more accurate in the default MSFS and it contains some real world landmarks/buildings, but the actual autogen/cities are still only an approximation (hence, "plausible"), right? And I've mainly only used the MSFS series in the past. But hey, lets not go there. Lets just say that given the choice between accurate buildings vs accurate roads, I'd take accurate roads anyday since they're much harder to implement, and any buildings you do get into XP10 will look more natural because of the accurate roads. Ok, end of "rant". @wb5okj, I agree that the cities are overall too green. Grey would make them look a lot more releastic.

That looks like a neon city! lol But it looks amazing! It seems like a lot of work getting them to work though... And I presume that those lights will add to the performance hit?Btw, thanks for the compliments guys. :)

Let there be light.The WaMu Center has been lit! Man, it took me ages to get it lit...I still have to light up the rest of my buildings, which I'm hoping to get done in the next few days.On a side note, here are three recent addition into XP10, one of which is done by the fellow scenery maker, Larry, who I'm currently collaborating with.The 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza. It lacks a lobby/base, but since the original Google Warehouse model didn't come with one, I'm going to leave it as is for now.The US Bank Center.The Escala residential appartment. This one is done by Larry.And finally, a shot of my Seattle skyline.I'm planning to release these three additions, plus the night textures, in the second version of my package when I'm done with the night textures.

Ok, so here's my first attempt at lighting the Washington Mutual Tower.And it doesn't look too shabby. I'm still experimenting with the it though.

There are newer xplane2blender scripts? I'm currently using version 3.09 (from the marginal site) with blender 2.49b, which is working pretty well.Regarding Mike's question, I don't have an answer for your first question as I'm not familiar with reflection properties. With your second question, XP10 will recognize rounded/curved objects, though as you've said, an object with too many polygons will have an impact on the performance.

Yep, Simon has been making some incredible progress with his CBD stuff. Ain't it beautiful? The addition of dynamic lights is most interesting. I'll have to learn that from you sometime. ;) As for me, I'm currently in the process of collaborating with a fellow scenery maker to get some more rw Seattle buildings into XP10, and also working on night textures for my buildings. Don't know how long it will take, but progress is being made. :)

I've been thinking about that too, though it's not a modern city builder but rather a futuristic city building game. It might be interesting, though, getting some futuristic buildings mixed into, say, Seattle. :( About the feasibility of it, all the textures are there, but it seems like the buildings will have to be remodelled as I'm not sure what format they are in.. Yeah, they'll probably reserve the landmarks for their payware packages. And yep, it'll probably take a while just to do Seattle. Hopefully, more people will join in.