Thank you, can you please make sure it reaches the 2D engineering department as well?
Thanks! 
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Thank you very much That are good news.
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As Iâve mentioned, talking about AA gives me a headache because it can be such a daunting task to get another person to understand and see the problem.
This is great news however! I hope we can receive a solution soon.
Good job everyone on describing your experiences with AA.
It would be really nice to send this to 2D or whatever the name it is (Non VR) âdepartmantâ as well. Same problem exist on 2D for sure.
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I have stopped flying. I bought the BETA version of another game from STEAM, and this literally feels like that!
Thank you!
It may not be AA. It is most apparent when there are straight lines, like buildings. Any bright straight line will flicker\shimmer. Particularly in bright conditions. So cities in daytime are particularly bad. The thinner the edge - such as wire on bridges etc - the worse. So thin bright edges look like they are aliasing. The image as a whole doesnât give the impression of aliasing to me, just these bright hard edges.
Hope this helps and keep up the good work!
Iâm using Oculus Quest 2.
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In regards to AA in VR, I have noticed the edge of wings etc look very ragged despite my high end PC and G2 headset. It is very noticeably inferior to 2D and frankly not good enough.
I also notice the shimmering in building edges as documented by CptLucky8.
My rig:
G2 headset
Radeon 6800XT
Ryzen 5600X
X570mobo
32GB 3200 CL16 RAM
2x1TB M.2 drives, 2TB SATA SSD
100Mbs fibre to the home.
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Agreed with all this, I wonder if it could be actually something to do with the sharpening filter trying to do too much even at native resolution? Complete speculation though.
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Hi again everyone,
I wanted to update with what I have to be a practical FIX for this problem on my system (GTX 1080 AMD 5600x 32gb ram htc vive steam vr 1080p monitor). This fix works for both 2D and VR.
- Set nvidia global and MSFS settings back to default.*
- Set sharpening values to 0 in userconfig file (this is more a matter of visual preference, but including this step for completeness).
- Disable GPU overclocking â this is the significant one.
*I have since turned back on âPrefer Maximum Performanceâ without detrimental effect.
Theory: Overclocking can cause graphical artifacts, and in this case it was almost certainly the cause of the shimmering in my game. I hypothesize that either SU5, a Windows update, or an nvidia driver update (or any mix of the above) didnât play nice with my overclock settings resulting in the graphical artifact we call âshimmering.â
Test: So how did I come to this conclusion? With overclocking on, I parked my C172 on the runway and shut everything off. No motion in the scene whatsoever and, just as importantly, no high-contrast horizontal lines which typically cause shimmer and we associate with aliasing. And yet! the runway texture itself still seemed to âshimmerâ. This is what led me to think that what I was seeing was not an aliasing issue, but rather a graphical artifact caused by overclocking. So, without changing any other settings, I exited the game, turned off overclocking, restarted the game, returned to the runway, shut plane down and⊠the texture shimmer was gone.
Conclusion: This does not mean that there are no aliasing issues in the game-- there still are, just like in any game and yes they are most noticeable on high contrast, horizontal lines viewed at an âangleâ while in motion. BUT the specific shimmering effect where static objects appeared to be constantly dancing around was eliminated by turning off overclocking.
To get the best fidelity in 2D, I render the game at 150 TAA with settings on High (1080p monitor). For VR, I go for Low settings and able to run the game at 30fps with motion smoothing. This is notably BETTER performance than pre-SU5 and I expect I still have some overhead in both 2D and VR.
Finally, this post isnât to dismiss the shimmer as a non-issue. It kept me from playing for a month! Nor is it to suggest that this fix will work for everybody (obviously, if you experience shimmer and are not overclocking, this wonât help). But I expect there are some users like me who will find that this returns them to âpre-SU5â fidelity with post-SU5 performance. Good luck!
I did some more research and testing today and agree that it might not be an issue related simply and solely to AA (although itâs hard to ignore the issue appeared at the exact time time the major AA issues on menus etc. appeared.)
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I noticed that in 2D, it does not appear to be an AA issue but rather âshimmeringâ and âflickeringâ of distant objects, mostly what seems to be thin lines. This is even apparent while stationary on the runway and not moving the aircraft/view a single pixel. I have recorded a video of this on my iPhone (not that the movement is caused by my movement of the phone in front of the screen. There is no movement whatsoever in the sim:
Pay attention to the marked areas in the video.
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I found some older articles online where people experienced similar issues related to shimmering/flickering (some in other games). And some explaining possible sources of such issues
a) This link provides an image that shows clearly an issue that is similar to what I am seeing in MSFS
"Shimmering" with HP Reverb - #5 by roberteker - XR Development - Unreal Engine Forums
b) Here is an explanation of temporal flickering and temporal antialiasing
antialiasing - What is the relation between Aliasing and Flickering? - Computer Graphics Stack Exchange
c) an old Nvidia thread with users describing similar issues.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/gaming-pcs/8/250636/all-games-to-flickershimmer-when-moving/
I have also tried switching between WMR and SteamVR to see if the AA/shimmering/flickering is only present in either of the two VR modes. At first I thought SteamVR was slightly better (I usually use WMR) but after comparing back and forth a few times, although it might (or might not) be slightly better in SteamVR (potentially due to different render settings), the issue is still clearly visible in both VR modes.
I also checked again that I have the following up-todate:
- Nvidia Driver (RTX3080)
- BIOS (Z490i Aorus Ultra) with Raytracing enabled
- Windows Updates
Finally, I also compared a few screenshots from before SU5 and now. Of course the shimmering/flickering cannot be seen in screenshots as an image needs to be âmovingâ for it to be seen. However, I noticed how absolutely beautiful the sim looked before SU5 (both in 2D and VR). Itâs noticeable how the overall graphics experience was much better. I believe this is mainly due to the AA/shimmering issue and the clouds pixelation.
Before SU5:
Now:
Horrible Cloud graphics
(Above image shows shimmering/AA on runway and taxiway markings, but not visible in just a screenshot)
Thatâs not to say itâs all bad now⊠at least in 2D sometimes everything matches well to produce beautiful views.
I really hope the AA/shimmering/flickering issue can be identified and fixed. It definitely wasnât there before, and it definitely appeared together with the menu AA issue in and overall graphics degradation in SU5. I could also imagine it is the result of some sort of general performance âoptimisationâ introduced due to the Xbox compatibility. Asobo just needs to find it, and solve it. My PC is definitely not an Xbox and my RTX3080 would certainly be insulted being compared to such.
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I appreciate your effort, but my GPU is not overclocked. Everything on default including settings in the NVIDIA CP.
I never had such bad shimmering (or AA) before SU5. I still think it is a issue with the simulator itself.
Edit: Just to clarify, I am not using VR. (2D)
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My GPU is not overclocked either. Everything is set to default as well. I donât OC because of the artifacts.
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But I do have pre-SU5 videos clearly showing the nature of the shimmering, and I believe Asobo must know what are the type of optimisations they are doing with their rendering engine which is the root cause of this.
Here is to helpâŠ
[BUG/FEATURE] TAA is transforming road traffic into ghosts (self-cancelling moving pixels) - #3 by CptLucky8
Look closely at the trees in the 1st video in full screen (donât look the cars):
No AA:
Then with TAA:
To me this looks quite obvious:
It seems theyâre using the principles of PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) to trade spatial into temporal, that is displaying alpha blended pixels as opaque pixels instead, in selecting which to display per frame using a jittering pattern over multiple frame (hence the repeating cycle Iâve mentioned). This is not supposed to be visible when compensated with the TAAU accumulating pixels over time. However even pre-SU5, on the trees in these videos, you can see some jittering still with TAA. Now with SU5 theyâve changed the TAAU accumulation spread (and maybe thresholds) per Lionelâs video, and this most likely to me is the reason from the look of it, but just from the look of it of course and I can be 100% wrong as well.
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One thing that I think this user-end testing shows is that what the eye perceives as shimmer/jaggies/artifacts etc. can be produced by multiple things. Itâs kind of a straw-that-broke-the-camels-back scenario: whatever happened between SU4 and SU5 broke the back for several of us-- But maybe the specific âstrawâ was different for each.
For me, on my relatively low-end rig, something happened with the update that caused shimmer-like artifacts when overclocking my GPU (or that were exacerbated when OCing). So by turning off the overclock, the overall cohesion of the image returns to something that looks ânormal.â Thatâs because while SU5 took some shortcuts with fidelity, it gives much better FPS and that also helps my immersion (esp in VR). Today was the first time since SU5 I actually got to enjoy a flight and get that âwowâ feeling.
But I do very much still have issues with aliasing: there are definitely more jaggies in the cockpit and in menus than in SU4 2D and VR. There is still vibration/shimmering on tightly packed, high contrast horizontal lines (e.g., runway stripes viewed on the perpendicular). There is still some shimmering on distant objects like rivers and some buildings. And finally, as per CptLuckyâs post, the trees look like theyâre at a rave or something. [And this is not even talking about all the other issues, which I feel are OT for this thread].
So I think itâs important for us to keep posting our straws as they come, so to speak. Never know what might help.
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To me it is way more shimmering on buildings, trees etc. outside, but also inside cockpit, especially on EFIS displays.
It looked ok before SU5âŠ
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Hi guys, I was able to take some footage directly from my headset. The resolution does not seem to match exactly 1*1 but is close to what I perceive through the lens if you put the resolution to 4k in youtube.
In order to make exact reproduction as easy as possible I used a flight training scenario (the landing challenges such as Dusseldorf and Rio have much more obvious shimmering but in those I am unable to use active pause to hold aircraft stationary). The shimmering in this location is not as severe as shown in other videos above but it may have some value when compared to footage captured by camera phone as there should be zero additional movement introduced by moving the capture camera or lens effects - therefore the slight twinkling/shimmering of the buildings is purely coming from the rendering. Headset is stationary on the floor. Note there is no twinkling/shimmering at all on other parts of the image such as the aircraft, sky, hills etc.
Reproduction: Flight training - Take off and landing - Downwind - Use active pause to hold plane stationary
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I believe you are 100% right there are different types of shimmering. However there is the type which is expected due to the physical nature of computer graphics and there is the other type which only appeared since SU5 and which I personally find perfectly illustrated in its effects (my video at Santiago Chile) and in its root cause (my video with the cars).
For example:
These are most likely and specifically for a totally different reason than the shimmering Iâve posted videos about. Here is:
And this is another type of visible consequence of the effects of the sample theorem, in a form which is known as Moiré pattern
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1 month to wait ⊠until they fix this issue
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Donât get your hopes up, not gonna lie I expect it to be like this for years to come lol
It would be greatly appreciated if we can get a fix asap to resume our hobby. With the pandemic going on, flying is stress relief (when it works) for many of us.
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