MSFS 2024 Xbox Sim Users

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I would like to take a step back. Rather than delve into all the various issues (aircraft, scenery airports, etc) I would like to have a conversation with other MSFS-2024 users of the Xbox platform. Period.

Too often issues that we raise get diverted into discussions that involve areas that are not pertinent to us such as add-ons. third-party products, and mods. The focus shifts to the PC community as many of the respondents to our posts are from PC users, not Xbox users. I appreciate that this is the larger market for the vendors of systems, peripherals, and add-ons. However, It would help if we could have discussions related to the Xbox platform which we have all literally bought into.

I feel that, regardless of the fact that Xbox is a Microsoft platform, most of the official comment by Microsoft and Asobo is focused on the PC community.

While Microsoft and Asosbo may take comfort from the incredible reviews and profiles being posted by the PC user community, the reality (from this Xbox users perspective) is that the Xbox experience in not what we expect from Microsoft. It is unreliable and not worth the cost of a Game Pass let alone one of the MSFS 2024 packages.

I just watched a series of YouTube reviews of aircraft and systems that are incredibly realistic. However each and every one of them was PC based. I then set up a short flight to see if the latest changes by Microsoft and Asobo had made any improvement, and my experience was dismal. The graphics were 1990’s low res and the flight ended in a sim crash and reboot.

I feel Xbox users are being punted to the curb.

So, if you are an Xbox user “flying” with just the as provided controller how has your experience been lately? Or, are you feeling played as I do?

If you are an Xbox user having a great experience please share your settings so that the rest of us can get to your level.

If you are a PC user with thoughts you would like to share, please resist the urge to post them.

If you are an Xbox user who feels that what you are experiencing is less that what you were promised by Microsoft and Asosbe can we work together and start developing a Xbox user focused list of issues we feel needed to be addressed.

And, if you are a moderator, the fact that I have to post this should indicate that the present system is not working for the Xbox user community.

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You are not the first nor will you be the last to create a topic here on the Forum reminding Microsoft of the problems they are fully aware of, which are the inherent limitations of the console. I have friends on both the Series S and the X. On the Series S, 2024 is terrible. Between staying in 2024 and 2020, it’s better to stay in 2020 where the ground quality is not good but not as horrible as it is in 2024. It seems to me that the Series X is more tolerable, although 2020 seems to me to be a simulator that runs perfectly on the Series X in many cases.

Regarding the Series S specifically, I see it as a lost cause. Microsoft, for obvious reasons, will not tell the truth that this is an extremely limited console and will say that they are finding a solution or optimizing the game to the maximum (actually squeezing the simulator on the console until the last drop of water comes out like a wet cloth, trying to make the Sim run anyway) along with the new one that will be brought with new GDK features. Well, the community has been waiting for this since the last SU of 2020.

My friends who treated 2024 as the miracle simulator that would be revolutionary on the console and would bypass all the problems that 2020 has hit a wall. If I had made a bet, I would already have money in my pocket, not to mention the other problems.

Anyway, sorry, it’s interesting to create a topic and such, and comment on this neglect with the Xbox community, but in reality, they know this, surely the simulator developers are fully aware of how limited the console is and can do nothing about it.

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I’m an Xbox Series X user, and while I have the same frustrations as everyone else with the bugs and confounding UI, once I’m in the air I have to say 2024 looks better than 2020 in nearly every way. The improvement in the lighting is especially noticeable. I’ve flown the exact same route in the same aircraft in both sims back to back and taken screenshots along the way. At no point was 2020 superior, and 2024 was smoother when panning the view around too.

I have experimented with various sizes of rolling cache, and seem to have seen the biggest improvement with an increase from the default of 16 GB to 32 GB. I’ve since purchased a 2 TB expansion card and increased it to 500 GB but can’t honestly tell whether that’s made any difference or not.

To date I have limited my flying to smaller GA aircraft, mainly the 172 classic. I have also flown the M20R Ovation, the Piper 250 Commanche and the Vision Jet and they all performed as expected, with only an occasional autopilot glitch.

My one foray into airliners was with the 737 Max but I found it quite buggy and unsatisfying compared to the PMDG 737, which is my usual go to plane. I’ll wait for that to become available before I try again. Granted, this was in the first couple of days after launch and it may have improved since then, but the plane is still quite primitive compared to the PMDG.

I do not use an Xbox controller. I have a VelocityOne yoke and pedals, along with a keyboard, trackball, 9-key pad and an Axair MIAP. Out of curiosity I have tried flying with a controller, but it’s too cumbersome switching back and forth between modes. I can see where a controller with a keyboard and mouse might be acceptable, if for no other reason than it appears there are menu items in the UI that simply cannot be accessed with a controller alone, since there doesn’t appear to be a free moving cursor mode as there was in 2020. Perhaps I just haven’t found it?

Here’s my rig:

IMG_20240122_141050359_HDR~2
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Here’s a video that I took this morning after 1.2.8.0 came out. Downloading this and converting from 4K to 1080p causes quite a bit of loss of detail and some jerkiness that wasn’t present in the sim. It was actually a bit smoother than this, but this is a fair representation of how it’s running for me. How does this compare to your experience?

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I have left the Xbox platform, but will share my experiences on Xbox. I think it is a great sim if someones just wanna fly GA aircraft in non metropolitan areas. That works just great. My experience has been that flying bigger aircraft in dense scenery locations, quality of the sim drops dramatically and kills immersion: no to little scenery, hugely limited draw distance, limited and low quality scenery in favour of maintaining FPS. I do not know whether they can solve these issues. For me it is however very clear that Microsoft/Asobo delivered a product that does not meet expectations of the community (expectations based on the marketing campaign) and the product is missing an acceptable level of quality with regard to fundamentals of a satisfying simulation experience. But as said: if you only do GA and do just a certain type of flights, Xbox could be good enough. But answering to the question in the main topic comment: I felt played, enormously, and I felt there was a total neglect of the community (by not making any statements and just behaving like the sim works great and is improving anyway)…

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Thank you very much for the picture of your rig, and especially, the video.

My experience is not as good as yours. Given that we have the same basic platform it is likely due to your choice of aircraft, flight location, and your geographic location.

I typically am flying an airliner. The A320 Neo V2, the A321, or the 737 Max BBJ. Perhaps having to render all of those complex airframes requires more resources than the Cessna you chose.

I am also flying out of CYYZ to other locations in Southern Ontario, Quebec, or New York State. I do not think the imaging there is as complete as other locations such as the UK London area, or the New York City Area. The rendering of Pearson International is brutal. And the AI aircraft pop up at the last minute in very low resolution. The Toronto city centre and suburban areas are very blocky. In many cases overpasses and bridges are not elevated by rather lie across the road below. When they are elevated the area under them is a solid black area. The cars are fewer than in you view and so not move smoothly. In other works, the base imagery may be of lower quality to begin with than where you were flying..

When I fly into more well executed cities, such as the New York City area, the system almost comes to a complete stop as it tries to process all the scenery detail and the airliners details. You can watch as the image builds, layer by layer, area by area.

I am located just east of Toronto. While my local connection to the internet is the best available (fibre to the router from the central office), the overall Canadian internet tends to have latency issues. So, while I have a100 Mbpsconnection, and my router indicates latency less than 10, I suspect that farther up the pipe to the MSFS 2024 server delays are being introduced.

I guess I should factor in an investment in control systems other than the base controller as you and other respondents have. That is rather hard for me to justify … spending more on kit to fly such a poorly executed MSFS 2024 Xbox Game Pass edition.

Thanks again for your reply.

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Thanks for your reply. Your experience with flying bigger aircraft in dense scenery locations is the same as mine.

Begs the question: what was Adobe’s Xbox MSFS 2024 testing approach and set-up? Did they utilize a network configuration similar to what a user at home would have? Or, did they connect through their developer’s access into the servers directly?

Thanks again for your reply.

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You are welcome! The answers to your questions would be only a guess… I can not believe they did any reliable testing, because if yes: the product would not have been launched, or after launch they would have made statements about improvements to come. I do not know about which server config they would have been using. Anyway: my home config is a fiber internet connection with 150 mbps download. I do not want to involve PC’s into the discussion, however: I switched to PC, same internet connection, and the difference is huge…

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Yes, look at the PC, you have room to increase your RAM, on the Xbox we are talking about 8GB for the Series S and 10GB for the X. Putting a sim with all this complexity in so little memory without squeezing all the resources and telling us that it will run “well” is quite complicated. At some point the sandcastle will collapse and the Xbox community will make 2020 the default simulator for a good few years.

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I took a quick flight over CYYZ and downtown Toronto for you. Is this about what you’re seeing?

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I feel your pain, I was a Series X user and experienced all the issues you described. As mentioned setting the rolling cache higher definitely helped and I agree that 32GB seems to be a good size. I used a Honeycomb Alpha and Bravo which was great when the Xbox recognized them.

At the end of the day though it just became more clear this is software really meant for a PC so I made the switch. @RVictorPilot is pretty spot on. Playing on Xbox was just always a compromise and having to accept you can’t tune anything in the sim really to improve performance. Even the updates from MS and Asobo were a give and take. Certain things got better and others got worse.

They squeezed a lot out of the Series X. I just feel it’s reached a limit so it was either live with it or make the jump to PC. I hope it gets better for you.

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Not even close. Are you on an Xbox?

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Thanks.

In my case I wouldn’t invest in a PC platform just for MSFS.

My computer set up is all Apple. I stopped using PC’s and Windows decades ago.

I uninstalled MSFS 2020 to free up space so that I could set the rolling cache for MSFS 2024 to 200 gig. That didn’t really make any difference

This is becoming more of an exercise to see how the Microsoft Asobo team get themselves out of this. I’m no longer invested in MAFS 2024 they was I was at the launch.

That means however, that I will not buy the full MSFS 2024 package and the peripherals I had planned. My lost business isn’t going to register with them at all. However, if others take the same approach they may pay attention.

Thanks for your reply.

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Yes, Series X. Try increasing your rolling cache size to 64 GB or larger if you have the space.

Oops, sorry, just caught up to realize you’ve already done so. In that case, try deleting and reinstalling the sim. As long as you don’t delete your saved profile, you’ll still have your progress and saved controller profiles.

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Yes, I need up doing that last week. I wondered if removing and reinstalling MSFS 2024 would “clear” any issue impacting performance. I Wass able to increase my rolling cache to 75 GB.

Perhaps you have better network service where you are which helps achieve the results which you shared in your video.

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Maybe, but it’s nothing special. Just T-Mobile 5G cellular home internet.

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Also, what server are you connected to and what is the ping time?

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It’s not very smart to use Speedtest to analyze the quality of the network outside of your infrastructure. Often your provider hosts a server with Speedtest (including a speed booster to give you the impression that your internet is of excellent quality, it’s as if you were testing your own LAN network), which gives a false sense of a problem-free internet. In the case of MSFS, we’re talking about Azure servers. You can analyze your ping here: Azure Latency Test - Measure Latency to Azure Datacenters Worldwide

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I used the network tools in the Bell modem which my Xbox is wired into:

101.09 Mbps down
10.52 Mbps up
12 milliseconds latency.

The Azure says that the average for the Canada Central connection in Toronto (just west of me) is 13 ms … and that Canada East out of Quebec City is 7 ms!

However, when I measure from the Xbox using its Microsoft Edge browser the results are 41 ms Toronto, 53 ms Quebec City!

Whoa! It would be interesting to see what the MSFS 2024 is experiencing.

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Consider the data that Azure gave ignoring what was demonstrated on Xbox. Either way your connection is excellent based on Azure data.

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There’s a Server setting in the Online Settings page. See what you are set to. I assume we should choose auto and allow it to pick the optimal server.

To the side of the current server name, the ping time is displayed. What is yours?