Hi All. I tried searching in vain for any sort of answer to this but all I could find is some information about third-party mods.
I’m playing on Xbox Series S and in the Traffic options there are sliders for Leisure Boats and Ships and Ferries. I have had these sliders to the maximum since day one of playing but now, approaching 40 hours of gameplay, I am yet to see a single ship or any marine vehicle in motion. The only things I have seen are stationary cruise ships docked at certain ports.
Please can anyone shed some light on this? I think I must be doing something wrong to never see any boats in motion with these options set to 100% density?
I don’t think it’s an Xbox issue, as PC users have reported similar issues as well. Apparently some people are getting lots of shipping traffic (or at least some of it…), but I suspect this only happens at certain areas of the planet.
I was comparing my personal experience with live shipping traffic data (like marinetraffic.com) and the difference was huge. Whereas in the site there’d be hundreds and hundreds of ships/boats/whatever spread across busy seas, in MSFS I’d see 1 or 2 ships at most outside the harbor and then only if I was lucky. I was checking some of the most busy ports of the Mediterranean and the results were similar: MSFS seems to have 1/1000th of actual traffic no matter how high you set up your sliders.
I understand at the moment that there is an issue with the sim (something to do with a sea level bug I think) in that some ships are being generated but can’t be seen because they are under the water. Something like that anyway. Hence one reason for a lack of shipping traffic.
On PC here. Before SU5, I didn’t have any either and Henrik Nielsen’s Global Shipping Traffic didn’t work. No ship. Now, post-Su5, I do ! Why ? I dunno… Some memory management ? SU5 did some optimization and thats maybe why I see them now. But The S box is limited in useful memory to 6 GB so it may explain why you don’t see ships.
I do wonder if it is an issue with Series S hardware limitations. I wish there was a list somewhere of the differences between Series S and Series X versions. The only difference I am aware of (which I learnt from third-party media) is that the Series S runs the game at 1080p, whilst the X runs at 4k.
If anyone can point me in the direction of the official Asobo spec list for either console it would be much appreciated.
However, since people from all platforms also seem to have the same experience as me, I’m not sure that hardware is the issue.
Can more players chime in on this? In particular I’d like to hear from other Xbox players - or from the horse’s mouth. But all input is welcome… I want to see marine traffic, or at least try to understand why I can’t.
It doesn’t seem to be in the Asobo list of issues - that I could see.
Asobo did some weird things with inland waterways and lakes. They aren’t at sea level. So, if a ship sails in the Great Lakes it will be fine. BUT, if it sails out of the lakes and into rivers, it will slowly begin to sink into the water as it travels along. More accurately, the water will be rising and the vessels don’t.
Henrik stated that a Great Lakes pack is imminent, and I do believe I read that he figured out how to work around the river’s issue. I think I read that he already managed to successfully do something in a canal.
