PlumCrazy

Unless someone can do a long-term test using VR, I don't think this is useful advice. The vast majority of people get motion sickness the first several times in VR. The "solution" is to quit at the first sign of discomfort and try again the next day. Generally, each day you can be in VR longer until after a week or two you fully have your "VR legs". I can now fly/drive in VR (Reverb G2) for hours at a time without any sign of nausea/motion sickness (and I will never fly/drive in "pancake mode again!). But had I judged VR on my first couple of attempts, I would have thrown away my headset and never tried VR again...

You never answered to the fact you wrote basically the same "review" of MSFS a couple of years ago - so either you were lying then or you are lying now about trying the sim for the first time... Sorry but you come across more a troll than someone seeking help. In my 2 years of flying in MSFS in VR on a less than high-end system using TBs of add-ons, I have never had an airport disappear. MSFS is absolutely not perfect, and as you get more and more into it (assuming you get that far) you WILL encounter limitations and bugs in the sim - some of which are quite frustrating. But IMO it is by far the best option for us simmers - now and into the foreseeable future. It would appear the vast majority, if not all, issues you encountered in your "first weekend" of trying MSFS were due to your own inexperience with the software. I wonder what your first 2 days were like using P3D...

I use the add-on linker to enable/disable mods when I am trying to identify a "problem mod". But I don't bother disabling mods while going through an MSFS update

I have over a TB of mods in my Community folder and have never renamed/cleared the folder for a MSFS update. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I have yet to experience an issue. Obviously sometimes mods need updating to stay compatible with MSFS updates, but to my knowledge nothing in the MSFS update process ever touches the Community folder.

System: I7 9700K, RTX2070S, Reverb G2, newest nVidia game-ready driver I fly exclusively in VR, so have not tested 2D. Best combination for my setup in VR has been DX11 & DLSS (balanced) Unfortunately I cannot test DX12, as switching to VR mode after loading a flight results in instant CTD every time when DX12 is enabled.

I use the free version and my login is still working and Simbrief appears to be working fine (though I use my phone and stay logged in, so not sure what happens if I log out and try logging back in)

I use a combination of Bijan's 4-seasons pack and the Zinertek Enhanced Airport Graphics add-on and the runways generally look very good in snow conditions. These are payware mods, but might be a viable option for those bothered by snow covered runways.

I have never experienced the late ATC calls that you describe, and I don't believe I have seen anyone else report it. Thus, it seems the issue might be specific to your MSFS installation. I fly the Aerosoft CRJ probably 80% of the time and I do use the in-game ATC. It generally gets me to where I am going without too much drama - though maybe 5% of my flights end up with ATC calls disappearing (audibly and in the ATC dialog box). Only fix for that seems to be a re-start of the sim or flight.

I use all of the available water fix mods and can assure you they have zero effect on performance/FPS. If you did read somewhere they cause an FPS drop, I am pretty sure it is false information.

To answer the OP, no the clouds did not take a major downgrade in SU8. That major downgrade came along with SU5 and the situation has changed little since then.

The ESC key has never been changed with any of the MSFS updates. There is something wrong with your keyboard mapping if the ESC key does not pause/un-pause your flights

Thanks. I actually was able to successfully upgrade to 1.1.0.85 this morning, using the same procedure I was using (maybe a dozen times) yesterday. Not sure what changed, but it is working now.

For those saying you have it updated successfully, is your AIG Manager version now showing 1.1.0.84 or 1.1.0.85? I was able to successfully upgrade to .84. But this is a 2-step upgrade and we are supposed to be able to then extract the .85 .zip file (newly created in the main AIG Manager directory) and use those files to upgrade to 1.1.0.85. But in my case, that file always downloads as a 8192K file and cannot be extracted due to corruption (Unexpected end of archive error). So I am stuck on the 1.1.0.84 version and every time I start AIG Manager it tries to update to the newer version and goes through this same process again...

I am getting the same error. AIG Manager goes through the update when loading (about 30 minutes), but when it finally seems to have completed and loaded, it shows version 1.1.0.84 at the bottom of the screen. If I try to manually unzip the new 1.1.0.85 archive file (8192KB) it gives the unexpected end of data error. If I close AIG Manager and restart, it goes through this same process again with identical results. I have never had an issue installing/updating AIG Manager in the past, but this time I am stumped.

With all due respect, there are no "helpful" responses to this post (including the ones not removed). I'm not even sure how one would go about helping, when the OP is simply stating he/she (really) doesn't like the appearance of trees in the sim. I didn't see the removed posts so have no opinion on their quality, but hopefully we are allowed to disagree on these forums. I honestly thought the OP was being facetious when I read the thread title...