Missing water masks after WU16

[reverentan]

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No

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Yes

Brief description of the issue:

I’m seeing a massive regression with the water masking after WU16. Several areas which previously had very nice water masks are now missing them completely.

Provide Screenshot(s)/video(s) of the issue encountered:

ICAO or coordinates (DevMode > Debug > Display position)

MUCL and MBPV (these are just two examples more areas are affected, pretty much all over the Caribbean)

Detailed steps to reproduce the issue encountered:

PC specs and/or peripheral set up if relevant:

Build Version # when you first started experiencing this issue:

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Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

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[ryanbatc]

They’re all gone. I slewed all over the northern Carribean.

Also at Nassau my water looks nothing like the trailer.

[DementedCorn327]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

same issue at Nassau as reported by ryanbatc in above screenshots

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[ElasticSack182]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes, after downloading WU Caribbean water masks are gone.

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Especially notable around Nassau / North Eleuthera, the bay in Charlotte Amalie/Red Hook, sandbars and beaches are completely covered in teal water now.

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This is how Chub Cay, Big Whale Cay, Little Whale Cay used to look. Now it is a blanket of teal water.

[CasualClick]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes

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I also tried to simulate the view from the Atlantis Resort on Nassau - the watermasks are definitely missing

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[FlyngWithJay]

+1 for me too. All water masks are gone. I was really looking forward to this update…

[Trex2269152]

Same here, have gone around to some trailer locations, and have gone to half a dozen places where I took screenshots as recently as last week with good water masking, all missing now. It seems to have affected other areas in the world too, seeing some missing masks around Australia and some of the Japanese Islands. Hopefully this gets addressed soon as water masks are pretty much the main attraction of the Caribbean.

[moxiejeff]

It’s sad to hear this and I too can say no watermasks… man Asobo, I was really hoping this was a good one.

Just turquoise water over the bahamas now.

Into Nassau, literally no water masks at all:

[geloxo]

Well, indeed the water masks are gone worldwide, not only at the Caribbean area. This is Reefworld (next to Hamilton, north east of Australia), showing a perfectly pixelated and low resolution set that looks like the offline textures set to me instead of the expected online Bing textures set. However inland terrain elsewhere is displaying online Bing textures correctly, so this does not appear to be an overall server error but just Bing textures being missing in the ocean areas. Maybe someone just missed to double check what was uploaded to servers before launching the WU16

You can see that the ocean layer is also missing at world map, while inland terrain layer still exists.

By the way, this is the explanation of the experiment they had in mind:

November 2023 Developer Live Stream

The experiment should only affect the neighbouring areas at islands coast, not the whole ocean textures set.

Cheers

[odourboy]

This is so disappointing. I think the Product Manager owes the community an explanation of the rationale for the decision to trash the water masks.

[moxiejeff]

In all fairness (yes, it’s frustrating - this happens ALL the time), but I do think it’s a bug. I don’t think it’s intentional.

[geloxo]

I also think it´s a mistake, not intentional. I added another pic to my previous post where you can see the problem clearly at world map: water areas layers are missing, while inland terrain areas layers still exist on the online Bing data provided by server. So watermasks don´t seem to be downgraded and instead of that ocean water textures are simply currently not available at the server for whatever reason.

Even if this is a temporal error I agree this type of things shouldn´t happen after 3 years. Online data, whatever its nature, is one of the main pillars of this game but it always turns to be the weakest portion of it.

Cheers

[BigCow74]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

Yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

Flying around St. Barts, I assume the missing water masks are causing satellite imagery of flat ghost ships to appear near the shore.

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[Vincent1064]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

YES

[BragRaindrop933]

Small example (tiny island) of what I saw going on. It looks like a small radius applied islands with sea detail followed by what looks like an overly aggressive gaussian blur (washed out look) of the detail beyond.

[AnkH828072]

Totally agree that this must be a bug, but as it happens for the at least second time that they show stuff in the trailer not being like this in the final product, I seriously wonder (not for the first time) how their QA works prior release of such an update. Personally, I would think that you have at least one rig running the RC of the sim like all customers do and before you give the final OK for release of the update, install it and check the POIs shown in the trailer (at least). So many things could have been instantly realized doing such a basic and simple Q approach. Really, really do not understand why Asobo does not get this QA stuff sorted after 16 world updates and almost as much sim updates. Disappointing.

[BragRaindrop933]

Around Kitts & Nevis. You can see the extra radius around land applied to reveal coastal details, but the contrast with the opaque / gaussian blurred area is pronounced and very noticeable depending on where you are located.
Same location, different viewpoint. (Just out of Bradshaw International TKPK)

[Captaindoogz907]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

missing water maks same as OP

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[ToriDadriel]

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?

yes

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:

Water masking around Eleuthea completely destroyed the existing look of the shallow areas, see the before and after below:

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:

The issue is not present everywhere for me. For example the area at the north shore of Guadaloupe looks fine to me, just like in the trailer:

[QuotedWings7052]

In all honesty, I think they’re probably also devoting a lot of time to MSFS 2024, and that one will have all of these things fixed. It’s very unfortunate that these World Updates are ruining things in the sim we have now, but hopefully MSFS 2024 is leaps and bounds above what we’re getting now. The Caribbean looks like such a mess and a lot of it doesn’t resemble anything from the trailer. Idk how they could release it in the state it’s in, but maybe it was rushed out.