As described briefly in the title, I’ve got this weird issue with multiplayer. We can both see the other players and live traffic around us, but my friend has apparently become a ghost.
I’m on xbox, my friend is on pc. We made sure we are on the same server, and we tried several different servers. The issue occurred on every one of them.
My friend was always visible in the world map, but once I spawn in the world, he’s gone on my screen, but he sees me.
I tried multiple things to fix the issue:
respawning next to my friend → he sees me spawn, I still do not see him
he tries respawning → instantly sees me after spawning, I see nothing
restart the sim, and spawn again next to my friend → he sees me spawn, I still don’t see him
we both restart the game and spawn at the same spot → he sees me, I don’t see him
My friend also told that my aircraft didn’t lag at all or disappear in any occasion, and he also reported seeing me appear next to him the exact second I spawned in the cockpit, so I guess the problem wasn’t my internet connection at least.
Here’s all the details I could think of for now, if I left something unclear, ask away, any help is much appreciated.
I have also gotten this problem before, I think mine got fixed by restarting the sim but obviously that doesnt work for you… Ik this might sound basic but make sure in your multiplayer settings that your set to “all-players” and not live players. Im interested to see if anyone else can find the solution to this…
I had my multiplayer set to live players, that was the case for my friend as well. We already gave up for today, we might want to try all players next time we play.
Yep, had that happen multiple times, even entire hordes of players in a group flight just disappearing around me and only being left with just 2 out of twenty… sometimes it just feels like the bubbles created for multiplayer, just cannot be lined up for some reason…
Just pick a point on the map to fly to, away from the airport you started at, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to pop back in.. it’s not a 100% proof method, but at least it’ll get your mind off of not seeing eachother but instead enjoying the (sim)world around you and, it’s also a great game to play “i see what you can’t see and it’s (yellow/brown/green)” ..followed by a general heading you are flying in, instead of delving into frustration over the headaches that this title throws up into your spinner every once in a while.
This has been an ongoing occurrence for a long time. Coupled with multi-player aircraft popping into and out of existence. Check out these threads and add your voice to them, so this longtime issue can be resolved:
In case you‘re flying in an area with many online players (e.g. popular airport(s) nearby): MSFS limits the number of live players to N, within a radius of R.
Where N is somewhere between 50 and 100 and R around 300 miles (maybe anyone remembers the exact numbers?).
Of course one would expect that players nearby have priority, but essentially it seems that MSFS randomly picks the first N players.
You can make „friends“ wirh other players in MSFS. One would again hope that this would positively impact the selection process, but due to lack of experience with this I can‘t tell.
Try to fly somewhere remote together and see whether that makes a difference. I for one do all my test recordings with Sky Dolly somewhere in Africa
With many things and functionality I am very happy and would say fs2020 is a great game. But when it comes to multiplayer and compare the fs2020 to other games, than I am not trying to imagine what would be in E-sport games, when these have the same problems like in Fs2020. So in the case of multiplayer functionality it seems some tries to invent the wheel as new. The best is to calm down myself when thinking about that part of FS2020.
Regards Ralf
From my extended experience (I fly with friends every week since the start of MSFS2020) I can assure you this is not the case. Friends are sometimes invisible while others are visible.
The problem is more complicated than just the selection of N aircraft. Sometimes all friends disappear (while they can still see me) and then suddenly pop all up again.
Our group flies about three times weekly, we experience this issue all the time - some days are better than others but always an issue that pops in and out. Aircraft selection does not seem be an impact. Something we kinda live with. Sad we can’t fix this issue.
Multiplayer visibility is something that doesn’t always work even if you have all your settings done correctly with the person you want to fly with, are on the same server, etc. The same can be said of each individual options in the “Online Services” section at the top of the General Options / Data page. Bing imagery, live weather, photogrammetry, etc.
Basically, online MSFS isn’t a single-source stream. Live weather comes from MeteoBlue, the terrain comes from Bing (part of the MS empire but still), multiplayer comes from MSFS itself, etc. It sometimes happens that 1 or another of these sub-streams are down or slow for whatever reason while the others are fine. Even live weather isn’t a monolithic stream because sometimes you can get the clouds and temperature but not the wind.
So yeah, often you get everything (or at least everything your usual bandwidth can handle), sometimes you don’t get 1 or part of 1 service, and sometimes you get nothing. This is most likely to happen if your baseline bandwidth is relatively low to begin with. Thus, you’re more vulnerable to disruptions.
