Right? You’d think that a marketplace with a big section for featured content, would actually place something like a brand new city update on it.
4 Likes
I appreciate what is new and what is better… BUT… it seems to me we already had a lot of these areas in PG and I’m not sure that what was there wasn’t actually better in some cases.
I don’t know if this is ‘the latest tech’ – I sure hope not because it doesn’t do nearly as good as previous tech. Heres a few comparisons - first a pic from the new CU11 in New Jersey:
and heres two examples from MSFS2020 (Allentown and Dublin I think):
Whatever is going on with the ‘new tech’ and the ‘new sim’, it needs to be fixed. Today I had to quit flying because it was just too ugly to look at and the PG could easily have been BAD autogen - I don’t think there would have been a difference… but maybe thats the goal.
seriously: PG or Autogen?:
A post was merged into an existing topic: [Polls] Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 Marketplace Feedback
Today I did a comparison test between CU11 (New Jersey) and the LA area around KAJO - KRIR. I flew the same C152 Ive been flying. To my knowledge the KAJO area is new to this cache but Ive been flying over New Jersey since the CU11 update came out so it should defintely be in the rolling cache.
first heres some CU11 New Jersey:
note the simplistic shapes, triangular sharp edged appearance, and lack of detail on larger buildings (sides and roofs)
I then shut down the sim and restarted and then flew from KAJO. Note more details everywhere (and almost NO triangles - just rectangular buildings)
Same day, same plane, same XBox on same connection within the same hour of the day. The differences are location (both PG and presumable same quality but the CU11 update reminds me of the D.C. region (and others) in its appearance), and also the trees. i don’t see any of those tall conifers in the KAJO area. There are tall conifers in D.C. (by mistake) and also Seattle and Olympia – all of which are areas where the PG performance suffers on my machine.
Could the tall conifers be causing an extra performance hit that degrades PG/TIN? I don’t know of course but Im beginning to think so.
Note: this comparison and my previous post were both under SU3 beta v1.5.10.0
It’s been awhile since I’ve checked these forums and flew in MSFS 2020 and wow have things changed. I logged in today and noticed the new City 10 and City 11 updates were available for free in the Marketplace and figured while I mow the lawn I’ll download these new cities as they must take up at least 5GB each so with my connection would take around 30 mins. I click to own both new City updates and it tells me they are both available now to play immediately which I thought was odd and maybe an earlier update included the cities and I did not notice it.
So I flew and checked out most of the new cities like Boston, Honolulu , Dallas etc and saw they had the Photometric Buildings but I noticed my bandwidth was almost double what it was when I played months ago so I decided to check this board for answers.
I now see that new world/city updates will be just streamable like MSFS 2024 does and not downloadable like the previous MSFS2020 updates were. I also see people are trying to have MSFS give people the option to either download the city/world updates or keep streaming. What city/world update for MSFS2020 did they change to streaming and what are the odds they give us the option for downloading them for people like me with low bandwidth?
thanks for reading and if I have anything wrong let me know, glad to be back.
Rick
The new PG areas are tinted very green in low sun light levels like during sunset at Honolulu, New york etc.
Try Bijan add-on.
City updates are very small in size compared to WU or SU, because they are mainly and have always been, streamable PG cities, even on 2020.
-eelis-
I had not realized that the City Updates have all been small since they are all streamable. That brings up one more question, what is NOT streamable for the World Updates to make them 5GB+ downloads?
Everything is downloadable in the SU 3 beta. It’s supposed to be out this month.
Have you planned to visit South America ? (For example, Peru!)
In a case of 2020 they are mostly POIs and possible hand made airports.
-eelis-
Good to hear and look forward to trying it out later this month.
I finally did some comparison flights around NYC. Compared to stock, the NY area looks substantially better with some potentially strong caveats. First the good. Most of the bridges around the area are improved, sometimes substantially so - they are actually modeled with reasonable detail and you can presumably fly under most of them. From a distance or above a few thousand feet AGL, the cityscape looks pretty good in daylight.
Now the caveats: despite being reasonably well-modeled, the bridges typically all suffer from overly-aggressive LODs. Often you can only see the support towers of suspension bridges like the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and the Whitestone Bridge until you are up close to them. Same with the Brooklyn Bridge and even the GWB. Second, night lighting around the city is still in a word, terrible. Generic perfectly-spaced overly-yellow and blue-toned rectangle emissive textures pasted over the outsides of buildings without any kind of regard to the building itself - I saw lights all the way up the Empire State Building including over the art deco metal cladding around the peak, and lights auto-pasted up the north (Manhattan-side) tower of the GWB. Again, from a distance it’s okay-ish but if you’re taking advantage of what a visual flight sim has to offer and actually sight-seeing at moderate altitude along the rivers at night or dusk/dawn, the building lights are a major turnoff.
I have not checked the other areas, but as I already own SamScene3D New York City Times and several of their U.S. Cities packs including Boston, I have disabled this City Update for now.
As it stands, for anyone who wants the best visuals in the area, the combination of SamScene 3D’s New York City Times, RK Bridger NYC Bridges and MK Studios KLGA gives the best experience. Several dozen much better individually customized and textured buildings around the city including animated billboards and displays around street level, better lighted signage for major Manhattan landmark buildings, and RK Bridger’s bridges are, in a word, gorgeous. Way better than stock and easily better than those included in CU 11’s NY scenery, not the least of which is because they aren’t so heavily LOD’d that they disappear when you’re a mile or two away.
7 Likes
I’ve increased my vote because I have discovered that there are some really good looking areas in this update. It does cover some previous ground but it expands quite a bit and fixes/changes some of the issues Ive had. And I found horses for the first time. They were nice to see.
Anyway - thanks Asobo/MS for the additional nature TIN. The expansion on Long Island and Rhode Island look good and are appreciated.
I still don’t understand why some areas look bad though. If the sim can be so good in some areas like Denver or parts of the CU11:
then why can’t it even make three round water tanks between KORH and Boston:
Edited:
Wrong place. Sorry
Can anyone confirm if this City Update is compatible with Samscene 3D New York City Times? I have the NYC addon and really like what it does. CU 11 covers far more area.
Can anyone confirm if this City Update is compatible with the FLYTAMPA KBOS Boston Airport? Thanks.
I like CU11 with NYC Times and Boston. I have The Fly Tampa KBOS and IMO Boston is much better. No effect on the airport and in fact that’s one of my favorite payware airports.
Why don’t you try CU11? You can easily deactivate it but I think you will like it 
2 Likes
They made some nice adjustments to the south shore coastline on Long Island as well… beaches and the inlets are pretty accurate. and the east end of LI is really nice. I’m biased. I live in Nassau County.
3 Likes