Virtual-Chris

Haters and fan-boys have been the way of the internet since the first bulletin boards and Usenet came to life. The challenge is trying to remaining objective and keeping an open mind. Someone here said you can't compare MSFS to perfection... only to previous sims. I think that's overly limiting. 2 years after the iPhone was released, you could argue that it should only be compared to the Blackberry... but how relevant would that comparison be? If we are simply satisfied with outdoing the last generation in the most minimal of ways, how will new things improve? MSFS has to be held to a higher standard that older sims IMHO, otherwise, everyone at Asobo could just pack it up and work on something else as we've already bested the older sims. I think we all expect more than that.

Agreed. I guess if it existed, we'd have it by now. 😞

And I thought I was being harsh 😛

Yeah nothing wrong with that. But my understanding is those real world flights you’re simulating don’t have a runway or approach in the flight plan when departing. That gets added enroute after ATC gives you the info. The pilots then add the runway, approach, and transition to the FMC and fly it. So i guess it ultimately depends on what you want to simulate.

That was quite the list... well played sir. Made me chuckle! 😄 However, when you look at what's actually in that insanely long list, it's 99%... "Fixed...<insert bug previously created here>" "Corrected... <insert previous issue here>" "<Aircraft>... fixed <insert issue with original implementation>" I love how one of the items on the list was something like "Weather: Lightning should no longer be triggered in clear skies"... how does that even get into the sim in the first place?! Sorry, but they're not getting kudos for this long list of issues they created then fixed. My question still stands... What area of the sim has improved in a substantial way that wasn't done by a third-party developer like Working Title, Fenix, or FBW? After two years, we still have poor: Flight/ground-effects interaction Flight modelling (if you listen to the Kodiak developers) SDK if you listen to most 3rd party devs Turboprop modelling ATC Weather and clouds Shorelines - everything on shore is either underwater or a terrible texture in port areas Low res textures on many areas and poor mesh resolution (e.g. Canadian Rockies) Main thread limited performance Utterly bizarre AI traffic Ground staff and vehicles that have no consideration for aircraft movement Utterly dark major airports The saving grace here, is that most of those can be overcome with mods and add-ons - but as noted, even the mod and add-on dev community is frustrated. It's also interesting to be excited over DX12 in 2022 but that was five-year old tech when the sim launched.

I don't want to get into a long stupid argument about it... I can be absolutely wrong about Asobo and Nvidia. I may also not be giving Asobo adequate credit for what they've done, but I will NOT change my view that I'm very disappointed with the state of the sim after 2 years. Most of the issues I had 2 years ago have not been fixed. Thankfully the workarounds through mods and add-ons have greatly improved. So it's good from that perspective.

Yeah, I'm sure it's all Nvidia's problem. They haven't done DX12 before like Asobo has. /s

Agreed... default ATC can be frustrating so you really have to pick your poison with them. In the past, I've opted to have them assign me the runway and approach even if it's incorrect just so I'm familiar with the real-world cockpit procedures (and not so much about if it lines up with the actual weather). I'm currently looking at alternatives though so I don't need to compromise.

I think you're already involved in this thread on the official forums... https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/hdr-is-non-functional-in-testing-both-dx11-and-dx12/ And FinalLight has this post on Reddit which is what I also came across...

In a recent dev update the Asobo team said they were getting Nvidia involved to sort out the DX12 issues.

Thanks... I wonder what that will do. Things seemed to be running fine already.

Seriously? That's awesome. I think that's been said about every sim update so far. SU10 was supposed to make the sim truly shine. It's turning out to be "meh" with guarded optimism that they can deliver it without making it worse than SU9. There's always lots to look forward to, but when it actually arrives it's often saddled with some compromise or needs a hot fix to make it work. A lot of what's on your list, is stuff that's just trying to keep the sim running, as every release typically introduces some new compromise with fidelity, night lighting, LOD, performance or something else, that then drives fixes in the next update (if it doesn't demand a hot fix right away). Asobo is constantly fixing stuff they broke last release or two releases ago. I know a lot about software development having worked in that field my whole career, and I can tell you that this sim is a very complex undertaking, but that does not excuse the lack of progress. Microsoft has the all the resources they need, they are just not choosing to apply them here. A good example is Nvidia needing to get involved implementing Microsoft's own DX12 technology in Microsoft's own product.

Well, DX12 and DLSS still aren’t working. Most third party dev shops complain their mods are limited by the SDK. And I’m not sure what they’ve done to improve the core sim or CFD… so that’s a pretty weak list of accomplishments for two years of a studios dev effort. Edit: I guess it’s hard to judge their accomplishments without knowing the size of the Asobo team. If it’s just a couple developers, I guess they’ve done what you’d expect. If it’s a bigger team than that, their productivity over two years seems rather poor to me.

That was an interesting read as I quit the sim back in early 2020 and am just now getting back into it. It’s interesting as it talks a lot about the journey over the last 2 years, perhaps more so than the state of the sim today. My take way is that I made a wise choice to give it time to mature. When I left, releases were typically one step forward and two back, and that’s probably being kind. Currently, SU9 seems pretty solid, and so far, SU10 seems ok, although it too has taken a step backwards in breaking HDR. Let’s hope they fix that and the DX12 issues. But what is in SU10 besides fixing DX12? Of course it makes the G1000NXi default in many aircraft but that’s just a bundling effort as the avionics were vastly improved months ago by Working Title. Im still left wondering what substantial outcomes the Asobo core team has created over the last two years. Scenery packs? Is that it? It seems like all their time has been spent trying to shoe-horn the sim to run on console hardware, and addressing all the issues that came out of that. We’re still forced to use add-ons to get any aspect of the sim up to some semblance of excellence. Even the scenery needs mods for harbours, marinas, and almost every airport as well as trees and seasons. Then you need mods for flight planning, ATC, AI traffic, ground services, planes, flight crew, missions/economy. Many aren’t even happy with the weather and feel the need to mod that. Nothing in the sim is good enough that a mod is not required - except perhaps the weather but that’s probably because there’s no API for weather 🙂 After 2 years, the number of substantial improvements Asobo has made to the core sim is… what? Nothing really. Working Title deserves due credit but Asobo has been chasing their tail for two years. It’s debatable if the sim looks as good as the promotions 2 years ago.

If you’re not getting an approach assigned on arrival by ATC, that’s maybe why you’re not having issues with ToD. The more realistic way to simulate it is to leave the runway and approach out of your flight plan, and to have ATC assign it to you on arrival into the airspace, then add it into the FMC, and fly it.

Yeah, I missed that. Sorry.

I wonder if it's somehow using the calculations you're doing in the avionics to figure out TOD. If you don't calculate it, I wonder what it's using?

So I played around with HDR tone mapping settings over the weekend, and actually exchanged some messages with FinalLightNL over on the official forums on this topic. The problem with Windows and MSFS, is that without an HDR calibration tool, that the TV will either get bad or erroneous meta-data in the HDR stream and apply the incorrect tone mapping if you set it to HGiG. Hence you need to go into the HDMI settings to force certain values. Tone mapping Off, seems to offer a slightly darker picture and therefore less clipped highlights. Tone Mapping On, seems to offer a slightly brighter picture but has more highlight compression so both settings have pros/cons. In the absence of an HDR calibration tool in Windows/MSFS, you need to set the metadata in the HDIM settings. We believe Mastering Peak sets the max luminance of the tone mapping scale for your TV - so should probably be 700 or 1000nits to match the peak output of the display. That seemed to have a noticeable effect for me. I could see that values below 700 caused the highlights to compress, and above 1000, the whole picture became washed out. 700 or 1000 didn't make much difference but I could see a tiny bit more detail at 1000 so I left it there. MaxCLL should be the peak value in the content, which we know to be around 10000 NITS. But honestly, I couldn't find any difference in the picture at various settings. MaxFULL should be the average brightness of the content, and that is probably around 200-400 but again, I found no difference changing that setting. Leaving color on auto is switching to BT.2020 so that's good. I'm curious what differences you see with any of these settings. Related, I noted that there was news back in February of the a beta insider build of Win 11 having an HDR calibration tool that would see the Xbox calibaration app ported to Windows, but it's now been 6 months and nothing. It would be great if we got this, then we could switch to HGiG and forget about it. Lastly, anyone that thinks you should just set your TV to HGiG (like I did until recently) is mis-informed... Until Windows or MSFS gets a calibration tool, the TV won't know how to interpret the signal properly set to HGiG.

Thanks. That’s definitely a mod I’m looking at adding now that he’s back.

Ok... thanks. That may explain why I had it crash shortly after starting.

I'm curious why your guide suggests setting AIG TC to auto injection on startup to off? What's the advantage of doing it manually?

Good question... I wonder if the Google textures might be better than Bing in this area... anyone tested both out using the map data mod?

Does the sim and the Kodiak properly model this?

I'm feeling more optimistic about the sim now than I was two years ago - but that has more to do with the amazing mods 3rd parties have developed. I actually stopped using the sim in early 2021 because it was actually getting worse with every release at the time. It's still pretty sad that after 18 months (since I packed it in) a lot of issues have still not been addressed... ATC, pop-out windows robbing FPS, sunken docks and boats, a line appearing across my horizon, poor turboprop simulation, a huge reliance on single-thread CPU performance, I could go on. Fortunately the 5800x3D and a number of mods have addressed some of the issues. G1000NXi aside, I still feel the progress on the core sim has been rather pathetic, and I think trying to shoe-horn this app to run on the Xbox is probably to blame for a lot of mis-placed dev resources. Asobo as a studio really hasn't done much - or at least enough - in my view for the sim. Almost every tangible improvement has come from third parties, including Working Title. Like I say, I'm feeling guardedly optimistic, but Asobo is not getting much praise from me. This Sim is only great because of the community and the amazing mods they've created.

Of course we've all seen Ryan's Missionary Bush Pilot channel on YT, but has anyone followed in his footsteps? It seems like there's an insane number of bush landing strips there. As an example, this Flightsim.to mod has fixes for over 400 airstrips! Just browsing Flightsim.to I came across three or four pages of freeware airstrip mods. Orbx also has a freeware mesh. Has anyone invested any time there? Are these mods/mesh good? I'm thinking of firing up the Kodiak there and using Neofly... my fear is I will never leave 😄 If you've spent any time there in the sim, I'd love to hear about your experience.