Disappointed in Sim Update 5

People need to vote here if you are not happy or want better.
Separate versions for PC and XBOX

3 Likes

That’s the first thing that’s made me smile today :slight_smile:

So, in order to improve the fps we are back to fsx
The constant morphing and the downgrading in the graphic is so evident…I don’t understand how some people don’t see it.

An open letter to Jorg Neumann and Sebastian Wloch:

I was one of the alpha testers and to say that I was excited about this simulator when it was originally announced and released in Alpha was an understatement. I must have been one of Asobo’s strongest ambassadors on how great the prospect of this simulator was going to be for our community.

I had followed all the unhappy comments from the community on how Microsoft were going to betray them like they did with FSX/ Microsoft FLIGHT and Aces Game Studios when they pulled the plug on the community. I was the guy who kept telling my simulator community - please trust them! They have come out with the “next gen” simulator!

Sadly it appears that the last laugh was on me!

I went out and upgraded my PC to be “state of the art” - a 5900x cpu with an incredibly premium priced RTX 3090 graphics card. I then upgraded from the Rift S VR headset to the Reverb G2 because Asobo advised that the Reverb G2 would be their supported VR headset.

Well Asobo/Microsoft, you have let us down!!

Yes, you have improved the smoothness of the sim in the Sim Update 5. However, this is where it starts and ends.

The Sim Update 5 is clearly nothing more than a realignment of a Flight Sim Enthusiast PC Simulator to a general gamer teenager Xbox user. We PC flight simmers have been used as lab rats to get the hype up for Microsoft before it could be dumbed down for the Xbox Community.

Now to the finer details of my complaint:

Asobo/Microsoft :

  1. You released this last update with clearly very little consideration to your BETA testers who warned you of the problems that we are now facing in this update.
  2. You clearly did very little quality control testing on various PCs before releasing this to the public.
  3. The number Crashes to desktop are nothing short of embarrassing for a company of your size and stature to be considered acceptable.
  4. I get crashes to desktop whilst in VR every time I go back to the main menu.
  5. Main menu GUI - There are times where the menu structure goes completely corrupted and you can see multiple settings (repeatedly) in the VR section for graphics options. This creates a slow down in the PC to a crawl and requires a restart.
  6. Significantly reduced LOD - popping of scenery and textures appearing at the last second in flight (In VR). You basically have to be within 200m of an object before the full LOD textures are rendered.
  7. Very poor anti-aliasing issues - It appears as if 100 render scale of SU5 is equivalent to 70 render scale of SU4. Menus AS WELL AS objects in the scenery, buildings etc are very poorly rendered showing flickering textures, shimmering and jaggered lines on edges. Some tiles in the distance flicker to the point where the tiles look metallic as a result of the flickering. How on earth is this not picked up by your quality control team?
  8. Broken 3rd party planes and scenery - Although I can appreciate that this requires the input of 3rd party developers, surely you would allow them to work with you in parallel for them to update their addons at the same time so that it is all in line with the release of the update? What is the point of the community guessing what works and what doesn’t after investing in 3rd party addons only to be told to “empty” the community folder all the time there is an update?
  9. Washed out colours and overexposed clouds in VR - everything in this update is more washed out that Simupdate 4. I am sure you have read in the forums how clouds appear to be of a lower quality?
  10. With a 3090 and a 5900x, I only got 3fps more with the same settings as I had in SU4 - how is this a performance improvement. Sure - mid level machines got big performance boosts - but why would people who have invested in high end machines suffer with very little improvement and quality degradation?
  11. Multiplayer - VATSIM - now unplayable. It is impossible to be on serious multiplayer networks like VATSIM because your altitude readouts do not correlate with VATSIM anymore - there is over 1000ft discrepancy.
  12. Cross Play with Xbox users - Have you ever considered that the flight sim community who take simming seriously might NOT want to cross play with Xbox users that consider your simulator to be nothing more than a global version of GTA V??? At least give us an option to exclude them in our “all players” should we choose to do so.
  13. Switching into VR - the whole sim comes to a grinding halt - your headset goes black and flashes for about 30 seconds before it stabilizes. We never had that in SU4.
  14. Micro stutters for the most part are removed (although in cockpit panning in VR is still stuttery), but they have been replaced with MACRO stutters…stutters so bad that you can pause for between 5 seconds and 20 seconds with a black headset whilst something or nothing is happening in the Simulator. Sometimes, you will get to carry on in the flight and other times it will crash to desktop.
  15. I heard a rumour that in your upcoming Q&A Twitch video that people must not ask questions about bugs etc in the SU5 - Please tell me this is just a rumour - you would not want to “silence” us would you?

Jorg, I have watched all of your Twitch engagements with the community and needless to say, I always walk away motivated and proud to have someone like yourself leading our simulator into the future. In your videos and interviews you are inspirational and motivating and it is clear that you have a love for the simulation world as much as we do. You speak of transparency with the community - however, unfortunately, the output of this last updates and the quality control is poor. So far, the community is clearly of the opinion that this update has dumbed down the simulator for Xbox. The experience I have had in this update completely confirms this.

You guys had started off so well and had really gotten the whole community behind you. You now have a number of disgruntled people who felt that you have let them down and that their pleas and suggestions and bug testing has fallen on deaf ears. I implore you to please help us restore faith in this simulator and in your hard work. We all want this MSFS to succeed.

Please will you address the above issues in your Q&A Twitch and make us PROUD again?

Thanks
From a Simmer who has been there from the very beginning since FS 5.0!

58 Likes

7710d00f9c3bdbffd1f93b0a0a5e4e916d4e7c04_2_690x388

SU 9 and I see the Trim is still massively overdone and there’s still nothing meaningful on the radar.

6 Likes

horrible ground texture over shanghai
terrain level of detail : 200
objects level of detail : 200
bing map and photogrammetry : enabled



1 Like

I’ve not had a chance to try the sim since the update but I have to say - it looks pretty bad.

Surely these blurry texture issues are some technical problem that needs to be hotfixed. Even an Xbox doesn’t need the resolution nerfed that much,

The pop-in effect is definitely intentional but either bugged or optimised for Xbox and not PC. With the amount of RAM the average PC has now we shouldn’t be seeing this. Culling is used in all AAA and indie games but never before have I been able to see it working. LOD fades yes, culling no.

Fingers crossed they actually have some technical problem (which it surely must be) and this is not the intended result.

4 Likes

Well, when they charge us $60 to be a Beta tester, and then pull the Ole Switch-er-oo on us… I think we have a right to be p*ssed.

8 Likes

We are on Dx11, Xbox runs on a Dx12 build, I have no idea how much that changes things, but that means it’s not the exact same thing, right?, even though it’s probably mostly the same code under the hood. Maybe some dev could chime in and explain the details and differences?

1 Like

I’ve had zero problems other than custom liveries not loading quickly enough (pink aircraft for a few seconds) and the weather bug. All I’ve seen so far are massive improvements. No stutters and I’m consistently getting 50 to 60 fps. If you’re that disappointed maybe you should be patient and go do something else while Asobo fixes this issues you are having. Look I can see being irritated with the issues but you gotta remember how complex the sim is. They rolled out the update and launched on a new system all at the same time, there were bound to be issues. Microsoft is notorious for pushing programs to release before they are ready, so if you wanna complain, complain about Microsoft. Asobo has done a fantastic job with what deadlines they were given.

1 Like

Well so far I have to agree with the negative comments, the tool tip thing over all the controls in the aircraft is highly annoying. I get micro stutter where I didn’t in the previous update (I have a RTX 3090). Not sure what is going on with the clouds now. They also seem to have changed panning around inside the cockpit, which is also annoying. I will have to look at tweaking the graphics options (because my custom settings were changed with the update), but so far its not great. Lots of addons are still not working, plus a 60GB download update is huge.

1 Like

and you don’t see a downgrade in graphic? really?

Not a real issue…that’s normal and to be expected. All other sims go through that as well(p3d, Xplane)

Anyone using an Xbox controller on PC, and getting the camera view drifting down effect? It’s like my right stick is slowly aiming down, but my controller works fine in other games, it’s since SU5.

I’ve tried clearing the stick, adding it again to controls option, and nothing.

Congratulations Microsobo, my first CTD ever. Not to mention the other nonsense I’ve encountered already with this update. I need a day to cool off.

7 Likes

“The pop-in effect is definitely intentional but either bugged or optimised for Xbox and not PC. With the amount of RAM the average PC has now we shouldn’t be seeing this. Culling is used in all AAA and indie games but never before have I been able to see it working. LOD fades yes, culling no.”

The amount of RAM and VRAM usage with SU5 went down dramatically, now I struggle to get the sim to use more than ~7GB of RAM and ~6 GB of VRAM. I have a feeling the severe LOD degradation and autogen draw distance reduction, and the poping is due to the engine is not looking at available system resources and scaling properly. Culling should not be this aggressive on higher end PCs for sure.

They probably designed it to fit within XBOX spec and called it a day. The sim was easily using up 10-12 GB of my VRAM on my 3080Ti, and over 16GB of system RAM in large cities. So now my system resources are not being properly utilized while I end up with garbage visuals. Again, there needs to be a slider for these type of things on PC, so people can choose their own FPS/Visual trade off based on their spec, not a one size fits all.

3 Likes

I do, and I feel like its running at higher detail levels now as well as I tried cranking the options up further. Its very disappointing.

1 Like

The previous update for me at least was far superior than this one.

2 Likes

Agreed…at least it was an update not a downgrade

The tool tip thing is a non-issue… you can turn it off and go back to how it was before. Its under accessibility in the options menu.