MultiMediaWill

Agreed. After a nightmare experience with the CRJ customer support forums (multiple threads locked, and staff blaming users for coding issues), it was a huge breath of fresh air when my DC-6 problems were well received and addressed on the PMDG support forums. I understand now why PMDG has the reputation that it does...

Agreed 100%. Based on the fact that the sim now doesn't use more RAM/VRAM than the Xbox speaks volumes to why these changes were made. To say it has nothing to do with Xbox would simply be a lie. Now time will tell whether this was deliberate or if they just ran out of time and pushed a really buggy update. Either way, PC users need a way to access the full extent of their hardware again.

I understand that. The point you're missing is that whatever they changed in Sim Update 5, made the culling way too aggressive. In prior updates, the scenery may have culled, but it was likely hundreds of miles out in the distance in a way that the user never noticed. Now, it's all I see when I change views which bothers me to the point where I don't really want to fly anymore. So for me and my setup, their 'optimization' was a big downgrade.

That's how this game engine works as of July 27th 2021. Before that we had something much better in my opinion. Glad the sliders are on the way at least.

It doesn't matter what I do and don't know about rendering development. What I do know is that for 11 months, I saw one thing, and them BAM Sim Update 5 I am now seeing something downgraded compared to before. That is all, don't over complicate it.

Conspiracy theory? To me this is a fact. What I see in Sim Update 5, to me, is unequivocally a downgrade. That's with over 1,300 hours logged on MSFS since release so I have seen A LOT and not just making baseless theories.

It's both. It's certainly a visual downgrade for me compared to what we had for the first 11 months of the sim.

That's where I believe that you're wrong. Asobo 'optimized' memory by reducing the amount of scenery stored in RAM when not viewing it directly with the camera. Therefore, when I quickly change my view (to see down the wing for example), the scenery now has to load in for the new view. So in this case, their 'optimizations' certainly changed what we see.

From Asobo's own mouth, “We tuned the distances, the draw distances, of objects and the way the LOD’s are being used in order to minimize the number of meshes and textures in memory at the same time.” Doesn’t get more clearer than that. A literal and deliberate downgrade for anyone who owns a PC more capable than the Xbox.

This has nothing to do with PC elitism. I could care less about the sim being on Xbox, in fact, before sim update 5 I was in the official forums advocating to the community that flight sim expanding to Xbox is a great thing for the community. However, the fact is that Sim Update 5 downgraded the visuals. In prior updates, I could swap to my wing views and pan around outside and everything was loaded in no problem. However, now every time I switch to the wing view, pan around outside, and even move my head in VR, I am forced to watch the mountains and scenery constantly morph into existence. Not to mention the significantly reduced VR performance. I am now forced to watch entire cities spawn in right before my eyes due to the pop-in and drastically reduced draw distance. This is enraging when just a week ago the sim was running smoothly without any of these new issues. For people like us, the latest update was a huge disappointment.

The problem comes in for those of us who were already playing on Ultra settings. We only saw a visual degradation, at the gain of some FPS but those FPS were not worth the visual downgrade for us. That combined with the fact that we were promised no 'dumbing down' results in the outrage we have seen. Also, when a new 'update' comes out with more bugs than initial release, 11 months later, you're bound to upset people. I'm not quite sure how this update passed QA with the amount of new bugs it has... that alone is enough to outrage people even if it weren't for the downgraded visuals issue.

My experience is exactly like you described above. Point 5 happened to me as well and was super annoying. I ended up just ignoring ATC and riding the ILS in without clearance.

I am a real life PPL and feel that the 172 in the game is under powered. I find myself having lower than expected air speeds especially on takeoff. Anyone else having this issue? Lowing the weight doesn't seem to really help.