I completely understand how you feel. It’s the biggest problem I have with the simulator right now, and it’s a shame to see this issue is so underrepresented (although probably not as bad as our friend, the mountain seams). I didn’t think that, 9 months later, we’d be in the stage where the developers have still not properly acknowledged the issue, and yet here we are.
I wouldn’t bother checking after every update if I were you. Even though the Feedback Snapshot says this will be fixed in 2021, it’s obviously very outdated with some inaccurate information. If it were being actively investigated, I think they’d at least stop it from becoming worse over time.
I think it’s a combination of all the above. Microsoft probably rushed the Xbox launch, and Asobo had no other choice but to release Sim Update 5 the same day as well. If they did not, the PC community would be outraged with the Xbox getting the new features first. Having participated in the beta, I can tell you that Asobo are working really, really hard, but there’s just so much to do.
About the fact that they claimed there would be no visual degradation, I think they either underestimated the community’s tolerance towards these artifacts, or there is genuinely an unintended side effect (the frame drops and stutters while panning are definitely intended though). We do not know yet, but hopefully we will soon.
Sadly the panning redraw and stutters do seem to be worse for TrackIR and VR users. The glowing clouds look like that because they increased the overall exposure of the title to optimise it for HDR displays, but sadly it causes the SDR rendition to look somewhat washed-out and blown-out. They might offer a slider to tweak the exposure in the future.
Although dumbing down the visuals for the Xbox seems like the obvious explanation, personally I think they went a little too far in trying to break away from the tradition of flight simulators being CPU-bound. Still, this was a great change for users who were performance-conscious and many are delighted with this update, but coming with some noticeable side effects I really think they should have made the culling optional or adjustable. You might be interested in this Wishlist request by the way.
That’s all for now. It will be a while until the next Q&A session takes place and August’s patch will be a World Update, so we cannot expect any changes to the morphing or the culling any time soon. I would suggest checking back again in late September, else you’re in for disappointment. If we come across a positive development in the meantime though, I’ll make sure to page you!