The Flight Sim Doctor

Yeah let's just get an A220 that doesn't stutter before we worry about Clive and Sue getting their Werther's Originals in at the BP garage.

A terrain LOD of 300 is pretty high and you shouldn't be seeing this. It could be related to server problems if it's not what you usually see. The terrain res has been dumbed down in recent years, but you shouldn't see it loading up. It does sometimes quickly sharpen when you change views.

Apart from no landing gear visibility with AI aircraft, and having to use Rex Atmos and a bit of minor sharpening on Reshade, the sim is looking and performing astonishingly well. 9/10

Does raising OLOD help at all?

I have no interest in Vatsim, I run SayIntentions, and just have to live with aircraft floating around.

I did notice the Alps looking like a pea soup of green and grey today, sort of FS98 level of texture. I cranked up my Rex Atmos to hide it away and focused on the gorgeous foreground scenery. Ah the joys of flying in perpetual Indian smog :D

For someone who is pretty happy with SU5 and doesn't want to upset the apple cart, are there any things worth upgrading for? I know about the default airport lights. Terrain resolution enhancement? Better performance? AI aircraft landing with their gear visible?

Oh great day!

I am a proofreader for an expert network, so I listen to a lot of discussions between CEOs and industry experts and analyse the (AI generated) transcripts. Nearly every single call is about cutting workforce in order to "leverage the benefits" of AI. I'm talking every industry. Drivers, analysts, doctors, receptionists, radiologists, warehousing, logistics, legal, administrative, accounting, marketing. And that's just what I can remember in one minute. Every single call is about it, and I listen to about 10 a day.

So you wanted IFR and VFR ATC without any traffic? What's the point in that? I agree BATC has been really lacking but I never understand the desire to have air traffic control, but not any traffic.

It's improved a lot, despite all the extra "fluff" they add. I wasn't happy with it last summer either and also cancelled my subscription. I've had no conflicts at all on taxiways for months now. I get told to hold for traffic on the taxiway, to watch my taxi speed. I get given permission to cross runways. I get put in holds. I get a speed for separation on approach, I get a warning for late landing clearance. I get given shortcuts on approach. I don't think I've even had a go around for a month or two. There is the odd airport where something weird might happen, but that is the exception rather than the rule. I do go back and try BATC every once in a while and every time it justifies why I pay the subscription for SI.

It's great that people are waking up to this massive downgrade. I can't believe more isn't made of it. I guess we are just beholden to how the Xbox performs now.

I had to get rid of BATC. It was on rails and often just didn't get the basics right. As for its very expensive competitor, I'm now very impressed. Separation, traffic alerts, taxi conflict avoidance, near immaculate routings, holds, shortcuts. It's amazing, and worth the money.

Thanks. I'll take another look at it. You are blessed if you are sticking to the USA though. Fly around Pafos in Cyprus, or even Athens in Greece, and it's not high res at all. Two fairly well known places. Cape Town in South Africa.

I thought that NVCP sharpness regedit got nerfed by Nvidia, if I'm thinking about the same one. Remind me a bit about it and how it's working for you?

Absolutely. I don't do any VFR flying any longer and have consistently been disappointed by what I see out of the window in MSFS 2024. Flying into Pafos just now looked very disappointing and low res. Yes there are global variations in terrain texture quality, but Cyprus isn't exactly Timbuktu is it. I've got Rex Atmos going so I can't see the rubbish very distant terrain, as it creates a bit of a haze. I also zoom out loads to make things fairly acceptable. Very disappointing. The sim has never looked worse in my opinion, (since 2020). I've been tempted to get X-Plane, but then that has poor autogen and SayIntentions wouldn't work properly.

Thank you sir. I was under the mistaken assumption Navigraph and Simbrief were not related.

I spent about half an hour trying to get it to read my simbrief flight plan using the new EFB and then gave up. Any ideas where on earth I go to log in?

This guy has released a legit product called SimPassengers that does what it says. I've bought it, have been using it, and getting rapid support. He even reached out to me to say I was running the wrong version which is pretty amazing. I'm not using said product simply because I have sayintentions giving me cabin crew vibes and for no other reason at all, not that I was upset with the product. Perhaps he can pause this thread, or lock it, and quell any of the negativity with some actual meat on the bones of a product in working order. People want something to see or try out. I would pay a subscription, but only if it was very good. Every time I see a SI plane disappearing or smashing into the runway, I think about giving them my $20 a month. It does always get my from start to finish in a far more authentic and better way than BATC does. I get reroutings for traffic, different speeds, get put in holds and all sorts. It's just about passing the test. The thing with subscriptions is, we can always say no, and stop them, if the product stops being worth the money. Subscriptions exist now because we are flying over a photorealistic, evolving world where we are routed from start to finish with near Vatsim levels of skill, by an always on intelligent agent that covers the entire globe. In P3D we didn't have this, which is why software was a one off $14.99. You get way more now and pay way more for it.

If you can make the landing gear visible (I know this isn't ATC's problem) and not have planes slam into the runway and disappear in 2026 for less than $20 a month, I'm interested.

Oh, so ME is still a big gamechanger in 2020 but not 2024? Can you still get good results using the Bing option in ME with 2020? Might tempt me into a reinstall.

I landed at Bari (LIBD) on SayIntentions today, I think the airport is taxituned. And yet arriving aircraft just disappeared as soon as they contacted the runway. I generally like SI, but this has happened a couple of times. Although Bari is not a major airport, it's still got a fair bit of stuff going on. What could be the problem here?

It's definitely been a retrograde step and a sim we didn't really need. I'm pot committed to 2024 now, and I generally like it, but it's like we've added better lighting and taken away the terrain quality. I don't see it as a massive progression.

Any visuals from Asobo are heavily "marketed", while not fake, you always see their arty screenshots focusing in on some high fidelity engine cowling or a random piece of scenery with a massive depth of field. The fact of the matter is terrain resolution has been nerfed and there is nothing we can do about it. It's still passable and the best of what we have, but a definite degredation. If you sit at Malpensa and look north, northwest, the Alps in the distance just look like a white blob. Also consider that Mount Rushmore is going to be far more high fidelity, than some random mountain in Croatia. Bing imagery plays a huge role, as does their decision to lower resolution to improve the load on their servers. I use Atmos to give a bit of haze, that looks natural anyway, and it means I can't actually see the distant ugliness. Some stuff close to the ground doesn't look that sharp either. Highly annoying given how during the MSFS 2020 heydey, we know how sharp this terrain can be. Running in 4K with a couple of ReShade sharpening shaders helps too.

I fired it up now, my distant mountains at Malpensa still looked like mushy slop, and everything streamed in slowly, replacing previous tiles as I flew, even though I have fast internet.. Bijan's mod also stopped working. Going to uninstall and give it a wide berth. Doesn't seem to help with the resolution degredation.