MS Flight Simulator 2020

[malchior]

Yeah give it a try, no point spending the big bucks if you aren't going to make use of it all!

It isn't working right - some people have been talking about how the LOD calculations have been broken. The "percentage" slider actually is a power function instead of a linear ramp. I played around but didn't find it helped much. I'll have to wait until someone figures out a way to optimize this thing.

In other news, FlyByWire this morning put out an announcement that they do not think they can fix the A320nx AP issues after the patch. There is the workaround posted previously but they have prioritized writing their own AP in the meantime.

[Paradroid]

Well, unless I can rekindle my enthusiasm for GA flying I guess I'm shelving this game for a good while then.

[malchior]

We are happy to announce that we have finally resolved the lateral autopilot bug introduced in the last sim update. Following the extensive work by the community in identifying the issue, we forwarded these observations to Asobo Studio, who corroborated our findings and provided a temporary fix for us to include in the A32NX. The fix completely addresses any autopilot banking issues, course deviation, and localizer alignment issues. We have been informed that a permanent fix will be included in an upcoming update to MSFS. Thank you for your patience!

Good work identifying the issue by the FBW team and shows that MS/Asobo was serious when they said they wanted to work closer with FBW. In reality, Asobo should really consider stopping updates on the plane and let Fly By Wire take it over.

[Paradroid]

Well I guess this is playable again - for now. I successfully completed Heathrow to Geneva this afternoon. A rather pleasant flight actually, with the sun setting over the horizon as I flew 38,000 feet above Europe. My landing was particularly good now that I've accepted how ridiculously floaty the A320neo is in this game, and adjusted my flare accordingly. Unfortunately I don't bother to check for active runways so it was quite possibly my fault that the A320 landing in the opposite direction decided to go around at the last moment.

I really wish the hold functionality could be added soon, so that I can start flying on VATSIM. Frustratingly, you can enter them just fine in the MCDU; it just doesn't actually do anything. According to the github discussion, FlyByWire are waiting on autopilot enhancements from Asobo.

[malchior]

It's update day and....they broke a bunch of planes again. This simulator so badly needs a stable/beta branch system.

Edit: Also broke in-engine live weather, Rex weather, and about half my add-ons including one sold in the MS store. This is easily the most love/hate product I've ever used.

[Paradroid]

In better news, FlyByWire have just said that the EFB is coming soon!

[Paradroid]

So that last update was rather a large one, and allegedly included lots of fixes that would affect the stock 747. So this evening I thought I'd take it for a quick spin from Heathrow to Paris (a ridiculously short route for a 747, I didn't even get to cruising altitude).

Incredibly, it worked fine! I can scarcely believe it. I literally did not have a single issue (that I was able to blame on the game). The aircraft performed exactly as I expected for every phase of the flight. Even the FMC works a lot better than it used to. It still has the limitations of being a stock aircraft of course, and I really hope Salty's mod picks up the pace soon, but right now I'm just overjoyed that I can finally fly the 747 again!

The flight was marred only by the fact that I forgot that, unlike the Airbus, the 747 needs the autothrottle to be disconnected separately from the autopilot. Thus, while my touchdown was perfect, I remained at 140kts until I remembered to disconnect it, resulting in a very comical roll-out. Oh, and I didn't bother checking for the active runway again so I ended up rolling through several aircraft taking off in the opposite direction.

I really ought to start listening to ATIS as I approach the destination.

[malchior]

This last update has absolutely killed performance for me. My 3080/i9-10900 combo runs fine for about 30 minutes and then the whole simulator goes to hell. I found other people talking about it on the forums. I'm pretty fed up with this and think I'm shelving it for a few months. I was thinking I was just going to drop to the minimum for my virtual airline but I can't even complete flights right now. The last 3 attempts to just complete a short-haul saw the simulator drop into the teens and then hard locked the simulator on final. I have to kill it. It is stuttering with CPU load at 10% and GPU running at 25%. There is some serious issue.

I've dropped out all the mods, settings back to default, etc. This is a brand new computer. In the end, I see enough people talking about it that I'm pretty sure there is a nVidia/MSFS issue. In any case I'm seeing the same pattern over and over. It works for a few weeks and then Asobo breaks it, the modders fix Asobo's mess, rinse, repeat every 3-4 weeks. It's absurd.

[Paradroid]

Have you disabled the VFR map? There's a specific option to do it in one of the hotbar icons at the top of the screen in-flight. The problem you describe sounds exactly like the one I had a few months ago - performance absolutely fine to begin with but steady degradation to the point of unplayability. Disabling the VFR map not only solved the problem but also gave me a generally considerable performance boost.

[malchior]

Have you disabled the VFR map? There's a specific option to do it in one of the hotbar icons at the top of the screen in-flight. The problem you describe sounds exactly like the one I had a few months ago - performance absolutely fine to begin with but steady degradation to the point of unplayability. Disabling the VFR map not only solved the problem but also gave me a generally considerable performance boost.

i did that ages ago. This is new since the update. I see the exact symptoms as other people with Ampere based Nvidia cards.

[Paradroid]

So I guess you're in the unenviable position of waiting for a fix from Asobo then. Damn.

[Isgrimnur]

[WYBaugh]

That's some tall grass!

I'm very impressed. I cant even land on the tutorial.

[mcdog512]

My double the price Honeycomb Bravo Throttle Quadrant show up from ebay. Super cool, works great and I highly recommend but I still crashed an a320 trying to park the damn thing. I need a taxi tutorial.

[Hrdina]

As I mentioned in the New Computer Rig thread, last night I flew in MSFS for the first time since my new PC arrived (i9-10850K, RTX 3080). I left it installing the sim overnight, and after the download finished I was pleased to see that it had pre-set almost all of the graphic settings to "Ultra".

I took off from the last place I had landed (KDTW), flew over and around downtown Detroit. The city looked amazing, even though it apparently was not on of Asobo's hand-crafted airports from the initial release or the USA Update. The two stadiums and Joe Louis Arena were all right there and looked great.

Then I flew up the river and landed in Windsor, Ontario.

My last flight with my old PC was around Thanksgiving; at the time my PC said it was getting 9 fps at Medium settings as I flew into KDTW, with no other aircraft in the completely cloudless sky. I didn't measure the frame rate with the new PC, but didn't really feel it was necessary.

I had a couple of other pleasant surprises:
* When I installed MSFS on the new PC, it remembered all of my configuration settings (even my logbook) without me having to do anything.
* All of my CH Products controllers and my TrackIR3 worked immediately after I installed them. That was definitely not a given.

[Hrdina]

I decided to try out my new rig in MSFS the way that I assume everyone does, by taking a short flight from Cleveland Lakefront KBLK to Erie, PA.

I'm still getting used to seeing clouds and other aircraft.

[malchior]

Did you run into any low-altitude clouds/fog? I'm only asking because I'm curious if Nvidia/Asobo ironed out the really bad cloud bug. I referenced it above but my system which is similar to yours. The only real difference is a 10900 and 64 GB memory. It would sometimes go sub 1 fps on approach in any sort of increment weather. Sometimes it'd CTD. If I switched to Clear weather...no problems at all.

[Hrdina]

Did you run into any low-altitude clouds/fog? I'm only asking because I'm curious if Nvidia/Asobo ironed out the really bad cloud bug. I referenced it above but my system which is similar to yours. The only real difference is a 10900 and 64 GB memory. It would sometimes go sub 1 fps on approach in any sort of increment weather. Sometimes it'd CTD. If I switched to Clear weather...no problems at all.

No, I don't think I've seen what you've described. I had clouds at about 3K feet, but never had my frames drop that low. I've only flown a couple of hours with clouds, though.

[Hrdina]

Did you run into any low-altitude clouds/fog? I'm only asking because I'm curious if Nvidia/Asobo ironed out the really bad cloud bug. I referenced it above but my system which is similar to yours. The only real difference is a 10900 and 64 GB memory. It would sometimes go sub 1 fps on approach in any sort of increment weather. Sometimes it'd CTD. If I switched to Clear weather...no problems at all.

No, I don't think I've seen what you've described. I had clouds at about 3K feet, but never had my frames drop that low. I've only flown a couple of hours with clouds, though.

...of course having written that, it was foreordained that I would have CTD issues. Two of my last three flights were interrupted by a CTD. The first time I just started a new flight at roughly the same place where it died, and reached my destination. Tonight I decided that it was too late to do that, so came here to vent instead.

I still haven't seen my fps dip below 30, though, so it might not be the same issue you had.

[malchior]

I have been waiting for the big UK update to come down and then for everyone to fix everything that Asobo broke in the community to give this another run. I fired this up this morning. What a difference a couple of months makes. My frame rate issues with clouds seems to be addressed and I did 3 flights to stress test it. I'm actually doing a long KCLE -> KSLC run to see how if the memory problems I also saw are addressed. 2 hours in and the memory usage is stable so that's a good sign!

[Hrdina]

I have been waiting for the big UK update to come down and then for everyone to fix everything that Asobo broke in the community to give this another run. I fired this up this morning. What a difference a couple of months makes. My frame rate issues with clouds seems to be addressed and I did 3 flights to stress test it. I'm actually doing a long KCLE -> KSLC run to see how if the memory problems I also saw are addressed. 2 hours in and the memory usage is stable so that's a good sign!

So did you finish that flight yet?

[malchior]

Ha - yeah. Those went fine. I've had some weird odd frame rate issues in individual airplanes at times though it isn't related to what it was before. Clouds/memory usage. I actually had a couple of weird CTDs today but think I fixed that (Probable Navigraph issues as it'd CTD while inputting a flight plan).

[jztemple2]

Possibly dumb question, but I'll post it anyway. I've finding as I get older that my knowledge of geography, of which I've been rather proud, has been eroding, especially in the area of all the new "-stan" countries and the like. I find from my fifty(!) year experience of playing games that I tend to learn and retain more from doing things in-game than from just looking at a map or atlas.

I seem to recall from earlier Microsoft Flight Sim editions that the in-game maps you could refer to, the VFR sectional charts, had some political borders and identifications as well as labeling man-made as well as natural features. I'm just wondering if the MSFS 2020 edition has built in sectional charts with that kind of detail. The idea being that if I fly from, say, Baku to Samarkand, I'd be able to not only see the towns, rivers, mountains, etc I fly over, but if I refer to the in-game map those items would be identified by name.

Thanks for any help!

[malchior]

The simulator does still have a floating togglable VFR map. It has local towns, boundaries (e.g. states in the US / provinces in Canada). One note is that early after released it was linked to some performance issues. I have it off for this reason (plus I use Navigraph) so I don't really have any clue if that persists. I flipped it on during my current flight and didn't notice anything weird.

[Hrdina]

I seem to recall from earlier Microsoft Flight Sim editions that the in-game maps you could refer to, the VFR sectional charts, had some political borders and identifications as well as labeling man-made as well as natural features. I'm just wondering if the MSFS 2020 edition has built in sectional charts with that kind of detail. The idea being that if I fly from, say, Baku to Samarkand, I'd be able to not only see the towns, rivers, mountains, etc I fly over, but if I refer to the in-game map those items would be identified by name.

If you don't mind adding a third-party open-source tool, you could look at Little NavMap. I've had a couple of people swear by it and suggest it to me. I've only installed today but not yet flown with it running. My first impression is that it looks very impressive but overwhelming and it is possibly more than I really need (for VFR flying). I'll give it a chance, though. Given that what I currently do is have a browser open on my second monitor with both SkyVector and Google Maps in tabs, I could see replacing those with Little NavMap.

It has so many buttons...



You can't tell from this screenshot, but if you zoom out it does show you the political borders and physical features you want, although not everything is named.

[hitbyambulance]

ahem. +printed manual+

I wonder if you could just order that separately.

i have this on Steam. but ... there's no PDF of the manual?

if this is the case, is there any place to download it? (even a user-created 'scan and upload' version)

i'm going to read the Aeronautical Information Manual and Instrument Procedures Handbook anyways, i guess.

[jztemple2]

If you don't mind adding a third-party open-source tool, you could look at Little NavMap.

Thanks for posting about this. It certainly is a bit overwhelming to look at but it might be something I'd find worthy of putting in the time for.

[malchior]

It's been awhile since I checked in on MSFS. I took some time off due to MS/Asobo breaking functionality with updates but the big issue for me was massive stuttering on my 3080. I had mentioned it here a few months back. They recently released the XBOX version and update 5 simultaneously. The PC version was remarked to have improved performance significantly.

It took two attempts to update the simulator because the update engine is still horrible, slow, and just timed out repeatedly in the middle of 100G+ update. 100 GB+ update. That is a real number. And then inexplicably started over from the beginning. My router reports it consumed 200 GB of data (really). Anyway, after that ridiculousness I did indeed find that the the performance is significantly improved. However, it came at significant cost. It came at the expense of draw distance and a significant degradation in visual quality. I did a flight down the Thames and I was watching buildings popping from an ugly triangle into their downloaded texture right in front of the plane. I just completed a high-level flight and the textures are blurry and muddy now compared to the crisp clean view it had before.

And in traditional Asobo fashion they unfortunately broke basic features in the simulator. 3rd party developers have been sending me emails about their payware products saying there are significant issues outside their control. One of them essentially sent a rant saying it was working in the 3rd party betas and then Asobo released something completely different at the last minute requiring a lot of rework on the 3rd party developer's part.

A major fundamental and frankly unbelievable issue is that there is a discrepancy between what the API reports is the plane's altitude and what the plane's instruments say. For example, even the ATC is getting bad data. So ATC constantly is complaining you are flying at the wrong flight level. Either the planes are wrong or the API is reporting the information wrong. Ugh. This has broken VATSIM in particular because VATSIM sees the incorrect altitude.

So...back in the cupboard. I have checked in on it over a year and they are still just unable to release software with any semblance of basic QA. That Asobo's stock planes can't report the right altitude? COME ON. It's atrocious. I don't feel ripped off in any way. I've gotten a lot of good use out of it but frankly the frustration of relearning and working around new issues every month or so have made this more something I hate than something I love to hate. It's a shame because it has so much potential.

Edit: Forgot to mention I had 3 CTDs on approaches to airports as well. I don't even know how the simulator works fine up until you are on final. It's like they are just messing with you at that point.

[jztemple2]

I got a trial of Game Pass so I could get MSFS2020. It took a long time to download and install 123+ GB, but I expected that. The graphics defaulted to Ultra with my rig. I did a few free flights and it does look very pretty. I'm impressed with how, at altitude, things look so realistic. I managed to fly over my house and I could pick it out easily. I then flew over Walt Disney World and checked out the parks. They looked pretty good, nice 3D buildings, however near the ground there was some lost of fidelity, not unexpected.

How long I'll be playing this I don't know. I used to be a real devotee of the MSFS series, but eventually I just burned out on the gameplay. So we'll see.

[Blackhawk]

A new free world update today adds Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Just to note - the world updates still require going into the catalog and 'buying' them (for free.)

[Alefroth]

A new free world update today adds Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

What does that mean? Those areas are more realistically modeled now?

[Blackhawk]

A new free world update today adds Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

What does that mean? Those areas are more realistically modeled now?

And more landmarks, better textures, designed vs generated cities, etc. I get the impression that it is a more detailed manual pass over auto-generated terrain. I haven't flown enough to see most of the differences yet.

Here's an before (bottom) and after (top) look at one of the previous ones.

[Alefroth]

Thanks. That's pretty cool they're providing what would seem to be 3rd party add-ons for free.

[Blackhawk]

This was the sixth.

[Unagi]

This looks pretty amazing.

WING42 NEW Boeing 247D PREVIEW - Microsoft Flight Simulator World Update 8 Spain

[Hrdina]

That 247 does look pretty cool.

Edit: Apparently it was just officially released (for $20.47 which seems pretty reasonable for something this detailed).

This is the upcoming aircraft that's currently got my attention ("pretty dang close to release"):

[Unagi]

Oh yeah, that looks amazing too. Looks like they have every single switch working there. very nice.

[Smoove_B]

Available November 11, 2022 the Microsoft Flight Simulator 40th Anniversary Edition will feature helicopters and gliders, the most requested enhancements from our community. This edition will also introduce another long-requested feature: a true-to-life airliner, the sophisticated Airbus A-310.

We are also celebrating the storied past of the franchise and the beauty of aviation with six historically significant aircraft. These aircraft include the 1903 Wright Flyer, the Curtiss JN-4 Jenny from 1915, the beautiful Grumman G-21 A Goose, and the famous Hughes H-4 Hercules, also known as the Spruce Goose.

In total, the 40th Anniversary Edition update will include 12 new aircraft, 12 heliports, 12 glider airports, 6 classic commercial airports, and 20 historic franchise missions, and will be free and included with Xbox Game Pass upon release.

[hitbyambulance]

i might even have my new video card by then. maybe

[Blackhawk]

I don't see pricing yet, but no doubt that the basic upgrade will be $60 for one helicopter and two airports, $110 for half of the content, and $180 for all of it. And if you buy a lesser upgrade, you have don't get credit toward higher tiers.