Really? I mean any flight simmer with half a brain would know that the Xbox experience would be vastly inferior to the PC experience. Considering flight simming has been relying on 3rd party content for decades now, why would anyone assume that the Xbox version would offer the same 3rd party content that is available on PC?
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I remember them coming on and saying it would be the same.
Ps. I don’t have half of a brain.
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The core sim IS the same. That has never changed. The only differences lie with the range of 3rd party content and peripherals available. What exactly is it that they said that makes you believe they “missold” it to Xbox users?
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Ok I know what you mean. Yes go ahead “enable” it. 
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That’s what I do fully quit the SIM and wait till the console cools before shut down. I don’t have photogrammetry turned on, I never use it. I only have Bing maps turned on and I don’t have rolling cache turned on either. I’m only running the base Premium Deluxe. So far its working good but still no sound on the flash screens and the update icon doesn’t spin anymore. Best I can ask for if its working as it should.
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The clouds issue is often cited as being the fault of the sim being released on Xbox, and “evidence” of the sim being “dumbed down”, but no actual evidence of this has ever been forthcoming… It may be related, but it could also just be coincidental. A search of the forum shows that there were rumours of the clouds being in need of optimisation on the sim in general, not because of the Xbox release.
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Me too (Xbox Series X)
This isn’t really the case anymore. Prices have fallen such that you can now configure a really nice gaming PC with a latest generation CPU and a 3000 series Geforce for about a grand. Albeit twice the cost of a Series X, it will fly circles around the Series X, which is using a processor that’s already a generation behind (or two depending on brand), and shared memory that’s split between the CPU and GPU. And those are two areas that seem to really matter with Flight Simulator: singled-threaded CPU performance to crank the main thread and RAM to hold the vast amounts of dynamic content.
The RAM situation is probably what most folks are referring to when they say the sim was “dumbed down for Xbox”.
The primary goal of SU5’s “performance plus” update was to get the sim running similarly on both platforms and came with several trade-offs that were acknowledged by staff on this forum. One prime example was the extremely aggressive view frustum culling that was implemented:
A boon for lower end hardware that struggled with stutters managing and drawing too many assets under constraints, the performance of PCs with graphics processing and memory to spare was compromised instead as every time the camera moved the sim was now doing many more slow load operations. The answer was a PC only hotfix with an option to basically disable the culling.
Users pointed out numerous other changes in level of detail, draw distance, texture tile size, shader issues. Some were accidental bugs during the port I’m sure, others were intentional trade-offs to increase framerate, but either way, it was done for the sake of getting the console experience on the same level as that of a higher end gaming PC.
Whereas most folks with a low to mid-range PC acknowledge that they are on such, and dial their settings down accordingly, Microsoft wasn’t cool doing the same to their latest flagship console. The appearance had to be that this was a high end gaming experience, and users who were sold on this probably wouldn’t be cool with knowing their settings would be dialed down either.
Asobo made a valiant effort and opened the door to many more players. And that’s a great thing! But PC users were right to point out that their performance or experience was compromised during the expansion to the XBox platform and ask for a change. Lots of console players took this personally, as if the sim was “dumbed down” not because of the hardware involved, but the because of the players that were involved. The computer doesn’t make the sim pilot of course.
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I will keep it disabled the guy who made that Xbox settings video said he keeps it disabled.
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mind linking that video?
How do you clear the rolling cache on Xbox? I’ve never knew about this.
Just go to general options, then Data. Scroll to the bottom, you’ll see it.
Remember, after deleting it, hit Y to save the changes and then manually set a size. Anything between 32gb and 100gb is good, IMO. The larger the better. Mine’s at 100gb, no complaints.
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The link you posted acknowledges that the issues with shaders and low resolution ground textures were bugs and not intentional changes. The introduction of culling was not popular but was addressed immediately.
Odd that you don’t mention things like improved night lighting or the ability push your terrain lod to 400 instead of the previous 200 or the improved draw distance of photogrammetry or any of the other numerous improvements that have to come to the PC version after the Xbox version was already out.
I play on PC, I don’t own an Xbox, my experience has only improved with each update. Have their been bumps along the way? Sure, that’s game development for you, but I find this idea that the PC version was somehow “compromised” because of the console version completely laughable.
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Of course the sim improved in other areas, and I didn’t say it’s not on the path forward. The sim is in a good place now and getting better, but it was indeed compromised at times.
It’s nice the issues didn’t affect you as much, but you are being inconsiderate, ignorant, or both to other’s experiences and that’s why this has to be spelled out for you. The culling was implemented to improve performance on lower end machines, including and especially the Xbox. I’d dig up quotes from the Dev Q&A sessions if I had time. It was more of a “bump in the road” than a lasting, major issue simply because of the large outcry on this forum, and for that I’m thankful and will point it out every time I see this dismissive handwaving from the apologists.
Or maybe I just don’t have a chip on my shoulder and blame every issue with the sim on the console version?
Culling was fixed what, a month after it was introduced? So you had to compromise for a month? How else was the sim “compromised” because of the Xbox release?
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I don’t blame the Xbox for every issue. I blamed it for those particular issues. I also didn’t say they were never fixed. Please pay attention and don’t put words in people’s mouths.
Some of the changes were lasting, including changes to the draw distance, LOD, shaders and lighting. There were workarounds and partial fixes for many, and the sim is more than usable.
But the quality of the sim was reduced for the Xbox release, even if some of the issues were temporary. That’s all I’m pointing out here.
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A reminder about the Code of Conduct on this forum.
Please be civil toward each other.
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Can’t seem to link it but it’s post 202 of this thread.
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Learning so much from this discussion.
Someone mentioned Bing Maps on Xbox? Is that the maps the game uses or is this some kind of add on or feature I dont know about. The only map I have is the in-game map that you turn on to see where you’re going in flight.
The global terrain you see in Microsoft Flight Simulator comes from Bing Maps. The aerial/satellite imagery is then run through an AI machine learning alogorithm (created by Blackshark.ai) to convert flat 2D maps into 3D objects in the sim. All of this mapping data is streamed to your device (PC or Xbox) in real-time from Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
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