Keto Ketchup

I went ahead, throwing caution to the wind, and installed the 5.0.9 version of the map replacer, setting it to Bing maps. HOLY FLYING COW - it looks SO MUCH BETTER! It almost brings a tear to my eye, no joke! My only complaint now is that many roofs of autogen buildings retain that terrible green tint, but I might be able to fix that problem myself. I'm going to do some experiments with the sims cache to see if preload all this new "gray road" data and not have to run the proxy software every time I fly.

Is that what updates are these days? As I've tried to communicate, I've been away for awhile, so I can only go by my own experiences from early on, when updates were easily closer to 40-60 GBs per update, which seemed nuts to me at the time when comparing them to the patch notes. If they are now smaller (6-10 GB), that's much more manageable for me personally (my connection is rural wireless that averages 8-10 Mbps down). My internet is good enough to stream the satellite imagery and medium-level photogrammetry, so IMO it's good enough for this sim. Thankfully while my bandwidth is low compared to more urban areas, I do have decent latency. That said, I am keeping a watchful eye on the future XP12, not as a replacement for MSFS, but as an offline alternative / backup. Didn't Asobo recently scale back the frequency of their updates? Perhaps this has to do with the new beta testing phase? Large non-optional updates every month (especially ones that broke things) was not my preference, and wouldn't have been even if I were on gigabit fiber. Quarterly or even bi-monthly updates that are well-tested and not bigger than they need to be are fine (and even welcome) by me. I also am very glad that Asobo separates scenery from mandatory updates, so I can update scenery on my own time frame. The problem with mandatory updates is you need to download them in order to play at all, so reducing the frequency of these "planned outages" to not be too disruptive is wise IMO.

I'm not sure what point the OP is trying to make, but on the topic of MSFS being released "unfinished", my biggest complaint regarding this is that each update tended to be HUGE*, and as someone with limited bandwidth, it's frustrating to have put everything on hold for hours and hours to download yet another update, which were quite regular awhile back. It also didn't help that back then the updater software itself was utter rubbish, often getting stuck in an endless loop while pegging my GPU at 100%. Thankfully this seems to have been fixed since last I played. Add to this the fact that, at least back in the day, updates were just as likely to break things as fix things (to the point where it broke the entire sim for me and I had to uninstall), and I've grown to dread updates rather than look forward to them. I'm hoping, however, that things have improved since my hiatus. * why does some code tweaks require a 40GB download, and has this changed recently?

Especially since TV screens these days tend to be HDR 4K. I fly on my TV (sitting right in front of it like my ma warned me not to do) and I'm a PC gamer. I just find a big screen TV way more immersive that my tiny 15 inch laptop screen. And no, the TV does not make the clouds look better, LOL.

I got MSFS at launch and loved it, but I did have some issues. There were things like live weather (particularly wind) that were totally broken, and the satellite imagery over my state was horrible. Performance was a bit hit or miss. Other things felt unfinished, like cockpit glass and various other INOP buttons. I also wasn't impressed with how photogrammetry handled things like bridges. But all in all, I was pleased. My last sim was FSX, and launch day MSFS was miles ahead of that sim, at least visually, IMO. Then the updates started coming, and for me they broke more than they fixed, to the point where things were so broken that I just gave up and uninstalled the sim. It remained uninstalled for a long, long time. A year or later (it's been so long I can't remember exactly), a friend prompted me to try it again, so last week I reinstalled MSFS. I will say, like an uncle who hasn't seen his brother's kids in over a year, the sim has "grown" remarkably since I last used it. Performance is way better for me, autogen trees are way better, autogen building choices have improved (the local grocery store actually looks like a store instead of a bunch of apartment buildings), and most importantly, Bing has updated the satellite imagery of my home state, so the aerial views have vastly improved (though unfortunately this terrible green tint remains). Oh, and not a single CTD! My only complaint is that clouds feel like they've been downgraded since I first played, but they still look pretty darn good, so maybe "observation" is a better word than "complaint". All in all, I'm very impressed with the improvements made to MSFS since I last used it. It's still has a ways to go, and I'm using some 3rd party addons (of which there are way more since launch) to fill in a lot of missing features from the base sim, but at least it feels like everything is going in the right direction. I'm definitely enjoying flying again!

This might be a dumb question, but can more than one developer make scenery for a specific airport? You know, like how more than one company can make and sell chocolate ice cream. Or is it "first come, first serve"? EDIT - I'm specifically talking about the official marketplace.

I just confirmed this is an issue. It's not a terrible drop in framerate, but it is noticeable. "Walking around" I see the developer of this airport got carried away, putting way more "stuff" than there needs to be (or even would be IRL). So my question is - can 3rd party scenery be edited with the SDK, or is it locked up with DRM? Worse-case scenario, I could make my own add-on that's basically dozens of exclusion rectangles to remove the extra clutter, right? Though I don't know how well that would work - for example, can I remove half the cars from a parking lot without removing the pavement of that parking lot using an exclusion rectangle? Of course it would be much easier if I could just edit the scenery directly and tap DEL on all the extra fluff I don't need..

That was it!!! Thank you so much 💗 To the OP, I just paid $13 for my home airport (the "big" one). On one hand, it feels kinda steep, but on the other hand, it's less than even a fast food meal these days, and I believe I'll get lots of enjoyment out of it since I very frequently fly into or out of this airport. It may have more than enough detail, but considering how much time I spend IRL at this airport, those extra details helped sell it to me. My only concern is how these details will affect performance (still downloading the airport as I type this). I don't plan on buying any other airports at this time. In fact, I will probably have to make a couple myself as they are not popular enough for anyone else to make (based on experience from FSX back in the day). The airport I did buy actually has a free but less-detailed version. That would be good enough for airports I don't spend lots of time in IRL, since I don't have IRL memories conflicting with what I see in the sim.

How do you guys buy scenery? I've tried to buy an airport via the in-game Marketplace, but it just stalls out at the "buy" button. I bought the game itself through Steam, but I haven't found a way to use Steam to get FlightSim Credits or whatever they are called. I'd rather not give Microsoft my credit card if possible, but it's not even giving me that as an option right now.

Flying for an airline is a job. Flying GA is recreation! (With some exceptions, of course) Wasn't there an economy add-on for older sims that was similar to the Truck Simulator games? The idea that owning and flying a GA plane is expensive (costs of fuel, parking, repairs, etc), so you would fly for an airliner to pay for your GA hobby, which included actually having to buy new planes if you wanted to fly them. It gave purpose to flying airline routes, which made it more fun for those who enjoy "leveling up" progression in their games.

This DLSS is update 10, yes? Do you need a newer card to use it or will an "old" 1660ti work just fine?

^ which is which?

Outside of the cockpit, the only place I see raytracing being a huge improvement over much simpler lighting techniques would be reflective glass skyscrapers, which sadly have muddy baked-in reflections from the time and angle when they were shot for photogrammetry. It'll take an entire rework of the photogrammetry system (using AI to replace what is essentially a height map with actual 3D assets that match the photographed buildings) before I get remotely excited about raytracing. Though I suppose you could argue raytracing through clouds could be amazing, but the expense of that over what the sim currently achieves with traditional lighting tricks seems overkill for all but the most unique situations (those rare breathtaking IRL skies with colors shadows and moving sun beams). I'm not even sure true real time raytracing in that scenario is possible - it's one thing to trace photons bouncing off a flat reflective surface, it's very much another to scatter an insane amount of photons through layers of translucent clouds.

Irony is that I'm one of those extra sensitive people - if there were stutters on my system, I would definitely see them! That's not to say there are never stutters, but it's rare and not jarring to me. Like I said, I'm as surprised as anyone, because MSFS is pulling off some miraculous visuals with complex physics under the hood to deliver such great performance on my very modest system. Back to the topic of DX11 vs DX12, is it Asobo's goal to eventually phase out DX11 for DX12? While I have games that offer a choice between DirectX and Vulcan (or even OpenGL), I can only remember one other game long ago that offered a choice between versions of DX. I don't understand the purpose of providing both if one is inherently better than the other, unless there are hardware reasons (if say, DX12 requires newer hardware to really shine).

But what if MSFS is smooth as butter for me in DX11? Believe me, I'm as surprised as anyone that it's running so well (especially on my hardware), but it is. 🤷‍♂️ Is it because I'm on an older card (NVidia 1660ti)? Historically, later versions of DirectX needed newer cards to truly shine, whereas sometimes older versions of DirectX actually performed better on older cards.

If I think DX11 both performs and looks amazing, would there ever be any reason for me to switch to DX12? I'm asking this as a generic question, but since much of this beta talk revolves around DX12, I just wonder what all the hubbub is about. There are many other things on the list that I'm way more exited for. In fact, I can't say that I care at all about DX12 considering how good DX11 looks to me (except the obvious not-related-to-DX issues). Explain to me why I'm wrong.

I've been trying to buy an airport from the FlightSim Store, but it gets stuck every time I click the buy button. It doesn't lock up the game, it just never progresses past buy. I'm on Steam BTW, and I was told that MSFS would use Steam to pay for FlightSim credits, but I don't see or understand how. Can anyone help me?

A couple things I've noticed that I don't remember from the early days of MSFS (for me, there are "early days" and then "a week ago", with a big gap in between). First, I've seen on a few occasions now where banks of clouds magically disappear or appear out of nowhere. I'm guessing this related to live weather, but "in the early days" I don't remember this ever happening - it was just a smooth transition from cloudy to clear and vice-versa. It doesn't happen all the time, mind you, but when it does, it is jarring. The other thing I noticed is that clouds have no "substance", in that when flying through them my wing is just as visible as when flying on a sunny day. I swear that my wing used to "fade away into the clouds" when flying through them. Is this the case, or am I confusing one memory (perhaps IRL flight even) with another? It's been awhile since I've flown MSFS.

I've been out of the game (quite literally due to one of the earlier update breaking FS on my computer) for quite some time now, finally reinstalling FS only last week. So yeah, I've missed a lot! I'll have to look up this power lines mod, unless someone has a link handy. I wonder if there is a similar thread to this, "Mods that significantly improve MSFS for me." I would definitely check such a thread out!

I just tried it out today. WOW, color me impressed!! Not only did it put towers where they belong, but the towers look just like IRL, and it got other things like a weather radar "ball" that I didn't even think to look for. This is a perfect example of the community stepping in and improving the sim when Asobo / Microsoft fails to do so. A big kudos to the developers of this mod! It really does help improve my flying experience over familiar territory.

This makes sense if the zones to alter are stored in metadata (make grid X-7 green). I say this because the actual satellite imagery IS the new Bing data (it's a pixel-per-pixel match), except for this coloration. It definitely has changed since when I first bought the sim, in regards to being much more recent photography taking in summer rather than Spring, but the green tint remains.

That might be wonderful! I don't know if my little rural area of the USA will have received attention, however. I'll have to try it tomorrow. Next "would significantly improve" request (the OP did say to list ten things, right) - has anyone fixed night lighting in rural areas? All the dark back roads IRL are lit up like downtown Boston in the sim, and it's totally unrealistic and immersion breaking. It's like Borg took over the entire area! I get if there is a rare street light at the random house, but most of these roads should not even be visible from the air at night except for traffic driving on them. Instead they look like strings of Christmas lights everywhere. Ironically the towers are the things that stand out most IRL, and that's the thing missing by default.

I don't want to start a new thread for this, so I'll ask here since it's "a thing that would significantly improve FS". Has anyone made an add-on (preferably free) that adds towers to the sim? It baffles me that my Commodore 64 version of Flight Simulator had more towers (which are kinda important when flying) than this modern sim. It seems to me that someone clever could scrape a database of tower locations and automatically generate generic towers in the proper locations at the proper heights and elevations, if they haven't already.

I have found some places in my State where the roads are proper gray, and boy does it look so much better than this green tint! An interesting observation is that these places had recent summer satellite imagery when the sim released, whereas my neck of the woods was photographed in early Spring with everything brown and even white (snow) in spots. This tells me that Asobo must have metadata telling it which zones to artificially turn green and which to leave as-is. When Bing updated their imagery (my town is now full summer with beautiful proper colors on Bing), Asobo never updated this metadata. I wonder if I contact support and request that they update this metadata file for my area, would they? Hmmm.

So does this latest flight sim allow modders to add their own clouds like the older versions did? For example, high altitude cirrus clouds could be added as simple 2D sprites and still look pretty amazing for those of us flying at lower altitudes.