Shimmering/AA downgrade since SU5 (in-game, not menus/overlays)

Bug Reporting Hub Install, Performance & Graphics
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48

Voted it up myself again. If you voted before please vote again on this topic…

I agree it would be great to have a developer chime in on this bug and confirm its existence and where it’s coming from…

Windows store apps games such as Roblox (which I tested today for my son) work perfectly fine in Fullscreen (AA doesn’t work in windowed mode however)… but that’s the problem, it seems MS has tweaked the OS in a way that makes it so Store Apps have priority over traditional Fullscreen games.

As I’ve mentioned before it’s been affecting a majority of my regular games. I stopped playing altogether on my PC due to this broken AA bug. It currently looks like I’m playing on an Xbox 360…

On the other hand I’m glad the bug is “Logged” now…

Let’s get this fixed Microsoft, please…

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49

I’m pretty sure it’s not a bug, and I’m 99.99% certain it’s nothing to do with Windows. I downloaded MSFS on Xbox, purposely to test and compare the AA, and it has the same exact same issue. They’ve simply just downgraded the AA so it can run better on Xbox, I don’t think there’s anything more to it than that

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Hate to break the 0.01% to ya, but every game’s AA is affected due to this AA issue.

Here’s a picture of Rocket League’s terrible AA as well in Windows.

I’ve done a lot of testing and am actually compiling some feedback for Microsoft on this issue, since I’ve been able to rule out the issue as being a hardware problem. I’ll post the feedback here once it’s complete.

EDIT: You say it’s the exact same result on Xbox… know why? Because Microsoft purposely downgraded the PC graphics to allow for Xbox support. That’s why you don’t notice a difference. PC should still have superior quality vs Xbox.

Be sure to click the image and enjoy all that jaggedy goodness on what’s supposed to be max settings… lol

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I think you need to read my post again. In your edit you just repeated what I already originally said. I’m agreeing that there’s an issue with AA in MSFS, and I’m agreeing that that it has been downgraded to allow support for Xbox. The point I’m making is that if it was Windows specific, as you’re suggesting, then the Xbox version wouldn’t have the same horrible looking AA, but it does, so it must mean that it’s an issue with the game rather than Windows

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I also have the same issue as PilotRaider and it went from great to What the… on two systems. First my old and then a completely new system that was fine for about 6 months. And Xbox is made by microsoft so im guessing they share a lot of the same tech

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What I was getting at in my edit is that PC should still be capable of looking better than the Xbox edition of games. PC should be able to force higher AA than Xbox. Yet the thing is Xbox runs on Windows 10 Core, and this AA issue as I pointed out happens in many other games too. Therefore it can’t just be the game itself. It’s more than likely the OS itself causing the problem. It isn’t a hardware problem as I’ve already swapped every single piece of my computers out, even using new parts.

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Same thing that happened to me, I just woke up one day, powered on my PC and then I was like “hey who turned on these garbage graphics?” lol.

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Fair enough, I just find it really hard to believe that it’s a Window’s issue rather than them just downgrading the AA to be able to run on Xbox. Surely more people in the PC community would have picked up on it? For me, MSFS is the only game that has worse AA than before, and it seems like it would be a bit of a coincidence that a Windows-wide downgrade in AA would occur at the exact same time that you download Sim Update 5. I’m not saying you’re wrong, it just seems highly unlikely to me

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Yeah I know what you mean, it’s still a mystery at this point but everything so far points to Windows being the problem. Here’s a quick video I made a while ago regarding this issue:

Also check out this video playlist from another user:

Edit: Corrected the link, be sure to watch in fullscreen.

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I also just stumbled across this:

It’s unlikely this is the reason for the AA problem we’re all experiencing, but it’s worth noting.

Edit: I’ve also re-flashed my GTX 1080Ti GPU BIOS a while back using NVFlash to be sure it isn’t affected. Still gives the same results though.

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Do we have any clue about this bug is going to be fixed with WU6 ? It really kills the immersion and I hope it will be fixed soon. Kind regrads.

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59

No official word yet, we’re all anxiously waiting to hear what the results are of their investigation.

200% with you on the immersion part.

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60

Are you saying that this is essentially a Windows bug? To me the issue is only in MSFS (Windows store version), and occurred immediately after SU5 update. No Windows updates between playing in SU4 and playing in SU5.

Other VR games (SW: Squadron, X-Plane, HL Alyx, Talos Principle, Obduction, No Man’s Sky, etc.) don’t seem to have any AA issues for me. And I haven’t played non-VR games recently :slight_smile:

It just looks like an intentional AA downgrade specific to SU5 for supporting the X-Box, with Adobo thinking that it would be relatively inconspicuous (and maybe for flat screen it is). My guess is that reverting is not gonna happen in WU6 or anytime soon. Which is sad as it’s really an immersion breaker. I was just flying in the Pyrenees and the mountains are beautiful, the tress are OK (but suffer from AA), the plane nose is jagged, and the worst are the towns that are downright shimmering, or the Pic du Midi which is the same… Having high fidelity landmarks is kinda useless if they’re going to become a jagged, shimmering mess…

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61

Did you not watch the videos I posted above?

Other people are having AA issues in other sims and so am I. That’s why I’m saying it’s probably not just MSFS related.

This is DCS World, look at this mess. You can’t tell me that this bug is only from MSFS.

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I watched the videos and I see the shimmering - I just disagree with the logic leading to the conclusion that something in Windows specifically caused this. Your videos show shimmering in other programs (that I haven’t used) that seem to use a completely different AA algorithm compared to Asobo’s TAA. I don’t know when that shimmering started happening.

I observed a change in MSFS as soon as I installed SU5 (flying several times a day in MSFS) without any Windows Update installed in between SU4 and SU5 (as far as I know). That leads me to believe that something specific with MSFS happened - although it could indeed be something else.

It could of course be a Windows update/issue - but what I see up to now doesn’t support such a categorical conclusion.

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Well MS Updates can install in the background without the user even knowing, unless you explicitly pause them and I’ve read somewhere that OneDrive also allows for system changes by MS. Microsoft even patched the ability to disable Desktop Composition for DWM all the way down to Windows 7 as well.

Remember this setting?

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It’s now been replaced with this:

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You used to be able to disable Desktop Composition and it would fix such rendering problems.

Microsoft has been making many changes to the way it renders fullscreen graphics for a while now:

Nothing is certain but IMO, I feel like it’s system related because it happens on 4 of my PC’s and it doesn’t matter if I replace hardware with new hardware, it still does it.

Even people that still use FS2004 years later, saw the changes:
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The compatibility flag doesn’t work anymore unfortunately.

Not sure if perhaps this bug has barely caught up to MSFS users up until just now, but whatever this is, I share in the belief with you that it needs to be fixed.

Edit: These are the systems I’ve been able to test on:

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OS Build Latest 22000.168
ASUS Maximus Formula XII Z490 Motherboard
Intel Core i9 10900K
NVIDIA EVGA GTX 1080Ti FTW3 Graphics Card 11GB
Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 32GB DDR4 3200MHz XMP RAM
2TB NVME Samsung 970 EVO Plus
1TB NVME Samsung 970 EVO Plus
500GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD
2TB WD Caviar Black 7200RPM HDD
1TB WD Caviar Blue 7200RPM HDD
Sound Blaster Audigy FX Sound Card PCI-E x1
LG GL850-B 27 Inch 2560x1440x32 144Hz/60Hz Capable Nano-IPS Monitor
ASUS VP239H-P 24 Inch 1920x1080x32 60Hz IPS Monitor

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OS Build Latest 22000.168
ASUS STRIX Z370-F Motherboard
Intel Core i7 8700K
NVIDIA MSI GTX 1060 6GB
Corsair Vengeance RGB 16GB DDR4 3200MHz XMP RAM
500GB NVME Samsung 970 EVO
250GB NVME Samsung 960 EVO
1TB WD Caviar Blue 7200RPM
ASUS VN289Q 28 Inch 1920x1080x32 60Hz Monitor

Microsoft Windows 11 Pro OS Build Latest 22000.168
Alienware Area 51m R2 Laptop
Intel Core i9 10900K
32GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super 8GB
2TB RAID 0 NVME SSD’s
1TB Samsung 970 EVO
360Hz/60Hz Capable GSync Monitor IPS Level

Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OS Build Latest
ASUS Z170-AR Motherboard
Intel Core i5 6600K Skylake
16GB Patriot Viper DDR4 RAM 3200MHz
EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 SuperClocked 1280MB GDDR5
500GB NVME 960 EVO SSD
ASUS PB328Q 32 Inch 2560x1440 75Hz VA Monitor

64

All very strange. I also believed the timing coincided with SU5. However I do think I notice some aliasing (much less than MSFS) in VTOL VR as well, which I didn’t previously… Not sure if I’m just looking for it now or it really is widespread! If it is affecting so many games I wonder why is it not a huge topic in the Nvidia forums?

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65

If you’re playing FPS games it’s not really as noticeable. My brother even enjoys playing his FPS games with AA all the way off. For flight simulators and racing, AA is important.

I’ve seen numerous posts on the topic in the nvidia forums, NVIDIA doesn’t typically respond though.
Don’t know if perhaps neither company wants to own up to the problem or they just don’t know who is to blame. The OS might be fine but if the drivers aren’t well then that looks bad for NVIDIA.
The graphics drivers could also be good but the OS has bugs, so that looks bad on Microsoft as well.

Might be an internal discussion between the tech companies to figure it out.

Speaking of bugs, yesterday Microsoft released an update for Windows 11 which ended up breaking the taskbar for the vast majority of its Windows Insider users… It broke the taskbar for me as well, no icons, no clock, couldn’t even open settings.

It wasn’t until a user on Twitter found what the problem was… the clock! Ridiculous!
If you change the date by 1 day, your taskbar will come back. I ended up using System Restore from my offline USB and it fixed the problem.

So yeah, bugs can come from either side.

Since there’s reports of both NVIDIA and Radeon users reporting the same AA bug it doesn’t make sense that both GPU companies would purposely release buggy drivers with bad AA implementation, so the only assumption left is the OS itself.

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66

hmmm… I can not see any issue issue with AA. Not in MSFS and also not in P3D, Xplane, DCS…
What ever the root-cause is, in your case, it seems it happens not at my system. But as a user mentioned in your thread in P3D forum: may be there is a difference in 1080p vs. higher resolutions, or old GPU generations.
https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=141801

There are also partly mixed two different things : VR and 2D . I can only speak about 2D and VR drivers are a completly different story. And I also not use Windows 11 BETA.

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Would you mind posting some of your screenshots in those sims?

This happens in Windows 10 as well. Windows 11 is basically the same OS under the hood.