I did a flight from Casablanca passing above Gibraltar. Running along the Morocco’s shorelines, even at 10,000 fts i didn’t see closest small (fishing or sailing) boats ; and waves of tankers accross Gibraltar only appear/disappear at short distance (~0.5nm). This should be increased up to 5 or 10nm.
AI planes appear/disapear at ~10nm which is quite low. Please increase distance view to 30nm and contrails lengh !
I’ve noticed that the draw distance (the distance at which I first see the actual lights or aircraft) of other players is extremely low lately. I either have to be right on top of other aircraft to see them at all, and often times they don’t even appear until they have passed me. If I didn’t have nameplates turned on, I wouldn’t even know I was flying near anyone. From an immersion standpoint, this is a little lack luster when we expect to see live player air traffic without having to use nameplates. This is mostly when airborne. Aircraft don’t usually appear until I am within a mile or so of them. Please increase draw distance or give us a slider option.
Same on PC (2D/VR)
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I constantly look around at how empty the skies are and turn on the nametags welp, there’s dozens of people around me that I cant see.
Then I remember how hideous the player tags are compared to AI’s and I throw up and turn them off.
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I would like to see other players on the screen like the real-life traffic and then visually see them when they are close.
I would really like a slider for this, I’ve always thought the render distance was too low.
It’s annoying to lose friends when flying with them after straying slightly away from them.
Edit: I just had a thought: I wonder if other aircraft are tied to the Object LOD graphics slider?
Other aircraft render distance (distance at which you see other players’ aircraft, especially strobe/becon lights at night) needs to be increased significantly on Xbox.
The actual hulls of aircraft rarely show up until you’ve almost passed them, but especially at night I should be able to see at least lights from other aircraft from dozens of miles away in all directions, but instead, they magically appear at ridiculously close proximities.
Without nametags on, it just looks like I’m flying in offline mode.
Can this be increased?
Can I also add that I have never seen another aircraft’s contrails at proper altitudes either.
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This needs more attention. Must be an easy fix for the devs. Like 2min job.
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Bringing back this subject to life. I think this problem is better viewed at night flights. I zoomed to AI traffic at a certain distance and didn’t see it because it was not rendered, but yet definitly saw distant city lights far behind it.
Whilst lights and contrails can be visible from a large distance, other traffic’s 3d model will disappear when they are further than 2km. It would be nice if there could be a slider that increases that distance. sometimes I can’t see other aircraft that are on a 5mi to 10mi final during daytime, as their lights aren’t visible. it’s also weird that i can’t see my friend who spawned on the other side of the apron.
tl;dr: Add Render distance slider for AI/live/multiplayer traffic.
Indeed. If you get too close the shadow names disappear. If you are wondering who is at your airport, the nameplates are not readable because there are nameplates for 20 airplanes in the next county blocking those at your airport.
If would be very helpful if the shadow nameplates grew and shrank with respect to how far away the plane was.
This would help in group flights where I’m the last guy trying to pick who to chase among the mass of nameplates.
Voted!
Pop-ins, switching to lowest quality LOD´s in way too short distance (and of course graphics culling) is an absolute immersion breaker in all games and of course also a sim.
A free to choose render distance beyond ultra, instead of everything set to ultra and still having things switching to lowest-quality low polygon LOD´s in five meter distance or objects airplanes houses etc. fully disappearing while still visible, should be a no-go for real powerful hardware users 
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It would also help to see other aircraft (On a monitor with lower resolution than the human eye, when looking at objects far away), to FAKE the apparent size of the far off viewed aircraft to make it bigger, and thus equally as visible as it would be in RL.
Obviously this should not be overdone … maybe (DARE I say it) as a users adjustable “VISIBILITY” slider !!!
(Keep everyone happy !!)
OF COURSE, this does little good, when ATC tells you to follow the aircraft on Final, (With no TYPE description !! ) and there is no aircraft there, both visually from the cockpit,. when scouting with the Drone camera, or looking at the VFR map.
Then when you are just about to land, TC tells youi to "Go Around " – WITHOUT A REASON / WARNING
Current MSFS ATC really is just unbelievably flawed and a mess !!
What is MSFS doing for me – encouraging me to develop BAD HABITS, and ignore ATC !!!
(In reality NO WAY – but still, it is totally frustrating, unless all you bought MSFS for was “Playing a Flying Game”
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Very good point there, I agree. Often, either for lack of resolution or for lack of good rendering due to the way its rendered making it blur when moving, it tends to be hard to see and loses its contrast/boldness quickly becoming a blur of messy pixels.
Right – Its a SIMULATOR, and should "SIMULATE: what you apparently see in RL – and in RL, a plane a couple of miles away is a lot clearer to the human eye, whan 2 pixels on a computer screen.
As an example, in the last Pilot Edge Oshkosh event, I set all aircraft to be A320s, so when observing at Fish, I could actually see the planes approaching and rocking their wings.
Yes, a Little EXTREME, but it did clearly demonstrated that the correctly scaled aircraft were unrealistically unable to be seen on the Computer Monitor, when they would, in RL, be visible to the naked eye.
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The method they chose to render planes is horrible. In daylight and a clear sky I can spot a single light fighter at 30+ miles in the other sim. It’s not easy to spot but they are definitely visable.
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Made a DevSupport ticket of this: How edit radiation of distance injected AI aircrafts - Questions & Community Discussions - MSFS DevSupport
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Well, AIflow is going to release update with this feature. Called AI Cull method. Release is very soon, i am beta testing it currently.
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