I wanted to make this post to highlight several issues with Sim Update 5 that are significantly affecting the enjoyment of the sim.
I am very disappointed with the implementation of the performance “improvements”. This update feels like a huge downgrade in visual quality with the constant pop-ins and scenery re-loading. Keep in mind, I am running a top spec PC (10700k, 3080, 64gb ram) and had no major issues prior to this patch.
However, visuals are not the only issue with the update as described below. I’d like to mention that I have over 1,350 hours played in MSFS as of this posting so I have extensive experience in this sim.
Top Issues:
- Pop-in when moving the camera view. It’s especially bad in VR since your view is constantly moving as you move your head. This is by far the biggest issue with the latest update. It has significantly decreased the visuals of this sim, at the gain of some FPS. For those of us with no FPS issues pre-update, this really sucks. It’s extremely immersion killing to constantly watch the scenery re-drawn in front of your eyes. This new render method needs to be optional, or completely redone.
- Switching views and/or translating the camera in VR using a gamepad now causes the mouse to pop up, double vision, front and center of your view until you move it away. It’s very distracting after a couple of view switches.
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Slew mode controls are now inversed (left on the joystick moves the plane right)
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Tooltips are now enlarged and obtrusive, even after reverting to legacy mode. Tooltips now unnecessarily show the eye with arrow letting you know where the knob is, even in legacy mode. The tooltips also appear too quickly even with “delayed” mode enabled.
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Draw distance significantly reduced (especially noticeable in VR)
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Anti-Aliasing worsened even with TAA setting. For example, the Navigraph charts panel in VR is now hard to read, due to anti-aliasing flickering. No issues with readability pre-sim update 5.
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Switching to VR takes 3x as long as before
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External View rotation speed significantly reduced even after changing the sliders from 50 to 100
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Ground textures at higher altitudes look blurry to the point where it’s hard to distinguish roads from terrain.
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Long stutters during the flight (5+ seconds at a time)
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Unable to adjust time of day precisely as Asobo removed the +/- signs on the weather toolbar
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Clouds decreased in quality even at Ultra settings
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Vatsim altitude reporting is now incorrect with Live Weather, making platforms like these unplayable until fixed
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Airport terminals are missing walls (experienced at KBOS, but it’s affecting other airports too)
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Obtrusive white dot in the center of the screen when a gamepad is connected that cannot be disabled
I really hope Asobo fixes the pop-in related visual issues and the other issues mentioned above that appeared as a result of Sim Update 5.
274 Likes
It’s the culling. Spin your camera rapidly in a circle in third person mode to see what I mean. Your FPS will plummet. This because it’s constantly loading new assets that it wasn’t before the new culling system was implemented. After a bit, stop spinning the camera. Your FPS will rapidly stabilize. So if you like to fly straight and never turn your camera, you get an FPS bump. If you like to fly in third person mode and move your camera often, the performance got worse in that respect.
24 Likes
In my opinion, reducing what’s drawn when not in view is a pretty reasonable optimization. This is very common in the gaming industry. For eg: in gran Turismo if you look enough the part of the track behind you crumbles out of rendering so the game is constantly only rendering what you are looking at. This keeps quality high without stressing the CPU. Same thing happens in almost every open world game. I’d rather have a smooth FPS and deal with slight popup. A flight sim is rendering 100x what most games render so if they use this optimization some popup is reasonable. You see the same kinds of pop-in in gran theft auto, assassin’s Creed etc.
Xplane handles this but only rendering a small circle of autogen and adding haze all around to hide it. I prefer this method.
It would be nice to have high quality and zero pop-in but you only really notice this on small scale games like FPSs.
My issue with sim seems to be that for some systems there can be full sim freezes for 5 seconds plus. Now that is not a good experience.
13 Likes
It’s a great idea on paper, but the way it is implemented in Sim Update 5 is not great. When implemented corrected, the user shouldn’t see the pop-in. Given the fact that the sim ran just fine before allows me to believe that a better implementation is possible.
35 Likes
Well Asobo did what they had to do improve performance and the XBOX machines are not as powerful as a high end PC and keep in mind the guys with high end PCs are in the minority.
Just don’t pan around too fast.
And of course the sim ran fine before for you but how many people are running 3080s and 3090s probably a very few.
13 Likes
The clouds… look awful now…
Color banding like hell
Exactly the same settings as before the update
Almost everything on Ultra, RTX 3090, I7 9700K@5,1, 32 GB DDR4, 4k, 1 Gbps internet speed
42 Likes
They had to lower the standard to match Xbox…I called it
64 Likes
That’s clearly what happened… they even promised us multiple times that they wouldn’t do this, but they still did.
80 Likes
I appreciate what you’re saying but “panning around fast” was one of best things in the sim for me. I would fly GA low and slow, and pan around constantly. I understand not everyone flies this way, but I did. So for me, the performance is worse.
44 Likes
After less than a year, MSFS 2020 became a huge mess
I’m losing interest for it, I’m really dissapointed
49 Likes
The photoreal images from 27,000 feet are low res and look awful. This was a huge step backward.
62 Likes
This was 12 steps backwards…
43 Likes
They shouldn’t.
For Xbox, they should add different sliders for graphics settings, etc.
Simple.
14 Likes
I don’t know fellas, I just did a quick traffic pattern around my home airport (Third party payware) using track IR, panning constantly and switching views. I was at a pretty steady 50-60 fps. This is a huge improvement for me.
I understand that all our systems and ways of flying are different but guys, just relax, take a chill pill, and if you really think it’s that bad, go play a different sim. They’ve done some fantastic work here (in my opinion) for our community. Give it some time.
42 Likes
The update hit me all over the system everything went wrong and I think the changes are just for the worse Every change you go back in time and I think you’re not threw with the simulator it’s probably big on you and it’s a shame I’m very disappointed in the syme
13 Likes
Indeed a very big disappointment A lot of disappointed people see that the company is lost and selling a damaged and inappropriate product and all the update of the situation will get worse
16 Likes
same here big improvmenets for me
6 Likes
Well I just completed updating Sim Update 5. Performance is solid but the game keeps crashing and there are graphical bugs. The help that pop ups when you hover over something is indeed annoying. There doesn’t seem to be a way to remove it even with legacy as you said. I knew this would happen when they have to cater to Xbox new simmers and legacy users on PC. So annoying especially when the performance is so good now but I can’t do a flight cause the game constantly crashes. Sometimes before the flight finishes loading. Oh well!!
17 Likes
Speak for yourself, I see happy people all around with a immensely better performance than before. It’s a flight simulator, not a “panning around fast” sim.
33 Likes
So basically we now have the worlds most expensive screensaver? e.g. it’s fine, so long as you don’t move 
I’m getting the same thing here - nice FPS boost, but the stuttering is awful on view change and VR is a non-starter, as everything beyond the nose of the aircraft is a blurry mess.
18 Likes
