MSFS Downgrade

[TheFamilyMan 287]

Flew in VR at about 10k' in the Mt. Fuji area of Japan yesterday, and I must say the sky's light cloud cover there looked splendid.  But something didn't seem right...then I noticed that the ground was completely devoid of any noticeable cloud shadows.  Dang, on other flights in the past I would have sworn I've seen those shadows.  Needless to say that omission sort of wrecked the rest of that flight...such a first world problem, I'm almost embarrassed to mention it.  BTW, with no success I tried every possible setting to conjure them.

Edited January 7, 2022 by TheFamilyMan

[March Hare 722]

2 hours ago, The Moose said:

Must have been hell of a sim for those first few months i wasn't around.

It really wasn't. Performance was far worse than it is now, for one. More bugs too.

[March Hare 722]

2 hours ago, SubtotalGuide said:

There is without a doubt a downgrade in the weather and clouds, it's not even matching the METAR data. The same weather pattern appears all around the globe, like a variation on a theme. I find it highly suspicious when the same ones that rooted for the SU5 (ie Xbox) downgrades are doing the same thing now with the new SU7 weather system. How anyone can see this as an improvement is beyond me. I fear this is going to take another year to solve.

I flew in various locations this morning and there was no pattern of weather around the globe. Firstly, the local weather here was accurate, with totally different cloud types and weather from other parts of Europe: one location was overcast, came across sleet elsewhere... No pattern to it at all.

[March Hare 722]

2 hours ago, TheFamilyMan said:

But something didn't seem right...then I noticed that the ground was completely devoid of any noticeable cloud shadows. 

Interesting. I saw cloud shadows on a flight this morning, so they haven't been omitted from the sim, if that's the suspicion. Must have been a glitch.

[March Hare 722]

2 hours ago, Rockliffe said:

I have to say, I have always been amazed and I use the word amazed very conservatively, that there isn't two separate versions of the sim. One for XBox and the other for PC. For me, as someone who is completely word not allowed about the inner workings of sims and PC games, it comes across as a bit of a compromise. I find it difficult to see how you could have a perfectly successful sim that is also being used as a game with Xbox. I mean, even down to the absolutely dreadful interface and clunky menus, IMO they are clearly designed for the Xbox with very little consideration of PC users. 

I don't think the UI design really has to do with the console; I think it's just a more contemporary design philosophy, for better or worse. The Train Sim World end of year Q&A touched on this topic, as many don't like the modern, more graphic-oriented UI (including some console users, I gather), and the dev team member on the video chat seemed puzzled by the negative feedback. He said he personally liked the new interface.

To be honest, I don't think, if you were designing the flight sim UI specifically for console, it is all that user friendly for someone with a controller; I think it would be done differently. I mean, I haven't used the console version, but it seems to me an efficient interface for a mouse user, to quickly see and click on things. I can't imagine the world map is user friendly for console users with a controller... But I'd have to try it.

Edited January 7, 2022 by March Hare

[Tuskin38 7,097]

yeah the UI really isn't that controller friendly.
And I'm pretty sure the UI was similar back during the first public reveal before they decided to make a console version.

Edited January 8, 2022 by Tuskin38

[TheFamilyMan 287]

21 hours ago, March Hare said:

Interesting. I saw cloud shadows on a flight this morning, so they haven't been omitted from the sim, if that's the suspicion. Must have been a glitch.

Had a 7k' flight yesterday valley hopping in central south island New Zealand.  This time the cloud shadows were present though I was flying just below the cloud layer.  Seems that the shadow modelling is subtle and effected by ambient light, perhaps making them less noticeable when flying well above the cloud layer.  I can't say what to expect IRL since I'm not a pilot and only rarely been flying in private aircraft.

[Noel 4,611]

On 1/6/2022 at 10:33 PM, abennett said:

I wish I hadn’t seen it because it’s just made me so depressed and angry at how the sim has been downgraded graphically since release

Yes cloud rendering detail has degraded and this has been discussed ad nauseum.  This just in:  we're in a period of focus on the weather system since the initial integration of METAR.  The rest of the sim hasn't downgraded in any meaningful ways.  Meanwhile, since release night lighting and performance have improved dramatically, and the initial stab at METAR integration is improving some.

Here's some degradation to help fuel the anger and depression--these from the past week.  Enough to make one commit hari kari right here and now!  I'm poking fun at this because we're clearly in the midst of major work on the weather system, a lot more has been alluded to and we hope it's not hollow, so it seems bizarre to have this kind of angst now.  Some here have claimed it's all been downgraded to 6Gb of ram to cope with Xbox S, but I see up to 11.3Gb of VRAM in use as well as 15Gb of SRAM in use in complex areas.  

 

[PlumCrazy 236]

On 1/7/2022 at 2:15 PM, March Hare said:

It really wasn't. Performance was far worse than it is now, for one. More bugs too.

I think the sim was at it's best - at least in VR - during the period after Sim Update 4.  Graphics were absolutely downgraded with Sim Update 5.  I have never had terrible performance (with a medium-high spec PC) and most performance improvements for me have come from outside the sim (like OpenXR Developer Tool).  I will say 3rd party developers like AIG have made the whole flying experience much better in recent months, despite the downgraded lighting effects and cloud/weather graphics.

[Rocky_53 1,617]

On 1/7/2022 at 5:33 AM, abennett said:

total mess with all the ridiculous towering convective CB clouds

You see, I don't get this, because I remember this with the launch version, to the point where I thought it was so bad, that I almost didn't purchase the sim.

[March Hare 722]

1 hour ago, Rockliffe said:

You see, I don't get this, because I remember this with the launch version, to the point where I thought it was so bad, that I almost didn't purchase the sim.

Yes, I thought they were more pervasive in the launch version. I'm seeing more variety now.

[SubtotalGuide 133]

We keep hearing from some how bad the performance was on release, well that really wasn't so if you had the hardware or turned down the settings.

Then with each update the performance got worse for no apparent reason. The graphics gradually got worse too. To finally solve the performance issues they released SU5 and people were happy again. Problem was the now major graphical downgrade.

Those that complained were told there is no downgrade. Then after comparison shots started trickling in it was because we complained about performance that they had to reduce graphics. Performance issues that didn't exist initially. Thanks to enough complaining and whining we got back some of it. The clouds are still a cartoon of their former self.

Imagine what we could've had by now if they kept building and improving on the base sim. Alas Xbox had to happen and there was no way the release version would have run on it. It was a slow and frustrating process to get us used to the version they had planned for us all along, but Microsoft successfully pulled one off again.

Now a new alpha weather system which is simply a mess was forced upon us.

Always a give and take with no option to refuse.

[MDFlier 2,034]

On 1/7/2022 at 11:30 AM, Rockliffe said:

I mean, even down to the absolutely dreadful interface and clunky menus, IMO they are clearly designed for the Xbox with very little consideration of PC users. 

I always thought it looked... well... French. There I said it. Everything from Europe looks odd to me. Except for airplanes and cars... and birds. 😉 But the rest... Just odd like the MSFS interface.

</sarc>

 

[scotchegg 4,343]

Have to say I haven’t seen any variation of cloud type since SU7 dropped, only variations in volume and height of cumuloforms.

For those who say their clouds are better; are you getting different cloud types? Wondering if there’s something different in our setups.

[Shack95 2,700]

I wouldn‘t say it‘s downgraded visually in general. Some features used to look better at some point and others worse. Imagery, for instance, has been greatly improved in some places. Just look at Switzerland before and after WO6, it‘s like day and night. Then there‘s the bespoke airports and autogen buildings. DEM has also been improved in some places, but sadly at the expanse of more visible morphing. Coastlines looked okay, then bad (water creeping up), now okay again (but too steep). Night lighting looked okay at launch but only from low altitudes, then it got worse and now it looks quite good from both low and high alt (but there‘s still room for improvement). Clouds…well, that‘s been an up-and-down ride too, I can‘t even say whether it‘s improved or not overall.

So while I don‘t think the visual quality has deteriorated in general, I can‘t say it‘s been a journey of constant improvement either, and that‘s a bit of a shame given it’s already 18 months and numerous updates since release. Apart from new content such as imagery and airports, nothing looks considerably better than at launch as far as I can tell, well, apart from the night lighting maybe. I also agree that SU5 was the worst update in this regard.

I still enjoy this sim a lot and I still find myself  amazed at how good it can look at times, but I have to say that progress has been rather inconsistent and much slower than I imagined and hoped for 1.5 years ago.