The current reaction to encountering low bandwidth is that MSFS automatically disables Bing Real World Graphics. The problem is that this is done preemptively, without user assent and once MSFS has taken away this setting it is very unclear what happens next or how to restore streaming once bandwidth becomes available. If the idea is that users should just restore the setting, that doesn’t work. If the idea is that the setting will be restored automatically, that is never communicated. In my experience, simply reenabling the setting after it has been disabled has no effect. I have sometimes been able to restore my streaming by disabling and re-enabling photogrammetry, but in other cases I’ve ended up in a situation where I have no scenery at all–it is as if I am flying over the ocean. In any case it seems that once streaming has been disabled, it is very difficult to get it back without ending the flight.
My wish would be the following:
Do not display warnings about bandwidth in the middle of the screen–this is extremely distracting during critical stages of flight. If a warning about network connectivity must be displayed keep it discreet–perhaps a small icon in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Provide some UI accessible from the toolbar where I can check network status and confirm whether my selected services are working.
Fall back to lesser graphics as needed, but don’t change my settings. When network bandwidth has been restored, eliminate the icon and restore my desired level of streaming. In addition, give me a manual option to restore my streaming levels in the network status UI.
In my case, I’m currently experiencing some network bandwidth fluctuations of very short intervals. When this happens and I get kicked off streaming the effect is equivalent to a CTD. If I can’t get my graphics restored, I have no desire to continue the flight and I will shut down MSFS and attempt to recover as best I can. What I would like to do is simply pause my flight for a few minutes until the network hiccup is over. Alternatively, I might choose to continue (if I’m IMC, VFR on top, or over the ocean), but I have to know that once bandwidth has been restored there is some way that I can restore my streaming.
I couldn’t agree more.
The various warning messages were obviously designed by someone with no experience of aviation, otherwise why would they all appear in the middle of the screen obstructing your view of the instruments and scenery? What is the point of a massive warning message if there is nothing you can practically do to resolve the situation. There should be a discreet warning message displayed in the corner of the screen, for important messages only, with a keyboard button allocated to acknowledge and remove the messages. The repetitive azure messages could be removed entirely, they seem entirely random and have no impact on the flying or ATC, other than a change of ATC voice.
As far as the bandwidth messages are concerned, sometimes they seem to reset themselves and connection is restored then at other times the scenery disapears and objects leap into the air and effectively the flight is over. Sometimes BING graphics is terminated and can be deselected, at other times I seem to be signed out and shown as offline. Selecting multiplayer back on seems to do the trick. Not sure why though. My guess would be that the Microsoft and Asobo ‘experts’ who designed this system live in a perfect world with fast download speeds and secure Internet connections and give little thought to those of us living in the real world.
I briefly paused the simulator and the scenery restored.
I then went upstairs and shutdown the TV streaming causing all sorts of family mayhem. I have now quietly disabled access to the router (don’t tell them)
In the early days of the sim I think the low bandwidth warning would permanently turn off the bing/photogrammetry even after restarting the sim. Now I think it toggles it off temporarily.
Yes this keeps happening to me. I have a fast connection which I can boost to be faster temporarily, however this requires a resync. This causes MSFS to disable Bing World Graphics.
That part would be fine if only it would automatically re-enable them once the connection is re-established 2 mins later.
It’s very annoying to notice halfway through an approach that the sim has automatically degraded the UX without due cause.
For the past several days (beginning June 25th), I keep getting this low bandwidth message. Sometimes it turns off the Bing graphics, sometimes not. I just did it again. I am in “safe mode” and no flight is even loaded. What gives? There are times I want to switch back to X-Plane.
This is a personal pet peeve for me. I don’t have the greatest internet connection, and it seems like MSFS wants to turn off Bing data automatically at the drop of a hat. I’m one of those people who much prefers to have control over that sort of thing myself, so I get very annoyed when the game turns this stuff off for me, partly because it takes a while to re-enable it half the time. So, Microsoft/Asobo, if you ever do any UI updates for FS2020, I’d like to… slightly aggressively request that you implement something like what the OP suggests, or simply implement a dialog box that asks the user whether they actually want to have Bing data turned off, because it would save users like me some headache.
Thought experiment. You are experiencing streaming issues, the cause doesn’t matter it’s just not working, and you get the pop-up asking you if you would like to turn Bing data off, and you say no. You still can’t stream the data as that’s not coming in, so you either switch to offline data or you fly over a void when the existing already downloaded terrain is exhausted.
The best you can hope for here is by saying “No”, the sim will seamlessly start streaming data again when the issue goes away. When it turns it off without asking, when the problem goes away, you have to manually turn it on again.
This doesn’t sound like a difficult problem to solve, and should in fact be the default state, so we don’t even get asked. In the settings I would expect to see the “On” flag greyed out. It isn’t “administratively down” because you have asked it to be, just merely unavailable until the situation resolves itself.
Just like when the Marketplace was unavailable for me a few nights ago. It was there, just greyed out, and as I was fiddling with my flight plan it silently came back.
For me, sometimes it does that, but most of the time it just gives me a pop-up saying “Your bandwidth is too low for data streaming, you have been switched to offline mode.” That’s the one I have a problem with. Either ask me whether I actually want to turn off Bing data, or don’t bother me about it.
Annoyingly the Sim has just started telling me lies about my available bandwidth. I just ignore it and don’t get asked if I want to turn off the data. I wonder if it’s not an MS ploy to move the user base to the new version but then again if they are aren’t doing a very good job of inspiring confidence in data streaming.
