State of the Sim after 18 months?

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I packed it in on MSFS in early 2021. Back then there were a ton of issues that drove me to put my cockpit gear into storage and move on. Has any of this been addressed? Is it worth looking at again?

  • ATC giving random crazy altitude assignments
  • Entering an approach on arrival had the plane doing a U-turn to some waypoint (FBW A320 or G1000)
  • No RNAV support on the FBW A320
  • Poor modelling of Turboprops - no propeller feathering and no prop wind resistance
  • AI aircraft was so bad you had to turn it off
  • Live Weather - not reflecting reality
  • Pixelated clouds
  • LOD and tree draw distance was bad and getting worse with every release where you had to hack the config file and suffer with really bad performance to get decent LOD
  • Night lighting was blurry
  • 2nd Screens with touch input were not usable
  • Non World Updated areas suffered from very poor mountain textures
  • Popup windows in the SIM (like a panel displayed on a 2nd monitor) caused a massive FPS drop
  • Performance was marginal even on a top of line system with it mostly being single-thread CPU bound
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I’m a relative noob and only started with SU7.

The state of the Working Title NXi G1000 is very good and will be default in SU10.

Other than bullet points mentioning “AI” there have been some improvements. But these will probably still bother you. As for AI items, they are scheduled for a rewrite in the future.

Other items I’m not sure about.

I have a 5800X/3080ti system and find the performance good for VR.

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I stopped flying a while back ago. I have to pause my world tour. There simply were so many problems after updates (5600X/3080ti). So I will wait and see.

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4

I pre-ordered it, played around with it for a couple of months after the initial release, and then just like you, I packed it.

Recently, due to the release of PMDG 737NG months ago, and witnessing screenshots of AIG traffic plus the availability of 3 of Indonesia’s biggest airports available in decent quality, I got back into it. Updated the FBW A32NX to its latest version, and voila, besides the lack of high fidelity airliner add-on, the sim is worth my time at this state.

(6700K / RTX2080Super)

Regarding your complaints:

ATC giving random crazy altitude assignments

-You can assign your own cruising altitude at flight planning page. The ATC however is super rigid and sluggish at assigning transition altitude (7,000 - 16,000 - 26,000 - your final crz). Depending on your climb performance, they typically responded when you are about 200 feet to your assigned altitude. So good luck if you are climbing at more than 3,000 FPM. They will tell you to descend.

  • They will ignore SID/STAR altitude restrictions

Entering an approach on arrival had the plane doing a U-turn to some waypoint (FBW A320 or G1000)

  • Less of an issue now, the planes and avionics can calculate the trajectory quicker. Use SimBrief for better flightplan integration

AI aircraft was so bad you had to turn it off

  • Still bad, saw one landing like 1,000 feet before the runway, and had the ATC tell me to go around
  • They will race you to the same runway

No RNAV support on the FBW A320

  • Still limited support, like unable to automatically calculate ToD from the flightplan

Poor modelling of Turboprops - no propeller feathering and no prop wind resistance

  • Somewhat improved

Live Weather - not reflecting reality

  • Cannot be really 100% accurate, but when it rains outside, it should rain in the sim.

Pixelated clouds

  • Yes, noticed this ever since Xbox compatibility update. Even AI plane doing trailing motions inside the cloud like some ninja or kungfu stuff

LOD and tree draw distance was bad and getting worse with every release where you had to hack the config file and suffer with really bad performance to get decent LOD

  • Improved quite a lot since then, but at the cost of visual quality (trees fading into existence or completely fades away into nothingness)

Night lighting was blurry

  • Yes, still the same. Can’t get that early release effects quality anymore

2nd Screens with touch input were not usable

  • Not sure about this, never tried. But there is “home cockpit mode” now

Non World Updated areas suffered from very poor mountain textures

  • Yes, still the same, although pretty much improved. You can still see distorted tree textures being used to represent cliff, but in much less frequency than before

Popup windows in the SIM (like a panel displayed on a 2nd monitor) caused a massive FPS drop

  • Not anymore, but at the cost of the pop up windows being a bit slower to open

Performance was marginal even on a top of line system with it mostly being single-thread CPU bound

  • I don’t know about it being single-thread CPU utilisation, but mine works fine, full pre-pandemic AIG AI traffic in busy airports like Changi (WSSS) or Haneda (RJTT) with high quality payware scenery yields relatively better FPS than it was in FSX or P3D or even X-Plane 11 running on Vulkan. The sim manages the performance drop in order for you to still be able to do a decent controlable approach, instead of letting you stutter along with the FPS.

I have been returning back to MSFS2020 since early this month, doing my flights around the very decent FBW A32NX at its current development version. They now have separated tiller function, which works very well.

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5

Thanks for your detailed post. I think if the FBW A320 is working well now and not doing strange things on approach, I could live with it.

My main issue with ATC was that on decent they might call for you to decend to 3000 but there was a 5000’ peak between you and the airport… or you would be at 5000 heading for 3000 to line up for final and they would tell you to go to 7500. You really just had to ignore them which was so immersion breaking.

So do you think strides have been made on performance? Is 4K 60FPS on ultra settings possible with a high end system 5800/3090?

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It’s like a new sim compared to the early days and the 3rd party support is finally exciting.

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How is it a new sim? I mean a lot of what I’m hearing is that many of the old issues remain. What has improved substantially?

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The sim is FENIXLICIOUS!

But there is one flaw, whenever I switch on the weather radar, nothing happens since 2020… :wink:
(Not sure because in my age one tends to forget things, but I think I have already mentioned this problem before. Probably every six hours since 2021 *ggg)

Yes I agree on that, lighting quality, clouds and draw distance must not be reduced on the PC version :wink: because on PC users adjust their own private graphics quality settings fitting their likings and based on the power of the hardware.

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This is still pretty much a problem. I have edited my flightplan, which can include detailed approach STAR. The problem is ATC will always assume you to include transitional waypoint. That’s why they set you at 4,500 feet instead of 2,000 feet on final, since that transition waypoint is like 12 miles away.

If you descend, they’ll tell you to climb and maintain the assigned altitude. Sometimes during the approach you can liberally descend on your own before they tell you to contact the Tower.

The good thing is, unlike previous MSFS (FSX and FS9), they are pretty adaptive and won’t cancel IFR right away. And then I have to give Asobo the credit that despite the inexistence of ToD calculation in FBW A32NX, the ATC is pretty spot on telling you when to descend. No need to open that speedbrakes at all.

ATC AI is always problematical, even the payware ones, which is why a lot of people chose to fly online with IVAO/VATSIM.

I think this is a real possibility, because despite some choppy performance, the plane is still perfectly controllable, allowing you to reasonably butter any landing despite FPS reduction. The sim also loads faster now, and then load the rest of the objects and sceneries separately when you are on plane.

In my experience, this is pretty much unlike in X-Plane or previous FSX/P3D, where when it lags, everything incuding the control simply lags.

How is it a new sim? I mean a lot of what I’m hearing is that many of the old issues remain. What has improved substantially?

I think you really have to experience it. I also binned MSFS2020 since like November 2020 (the system recorded when I last opened the program), and then on May 2022 I downloaded hefty amount of updates.

I updated everything, from FBW A32NX, deleting my previous add-ons that is no longer compatible with SU9. IMO what makes it far more usable and easy to migrate:

  • 3rd Party pushback tool (although not as smooth as “Better Pushback” on XP11) that makes it more realistic
  • AIG AI Traffic, which IMO the best model accuracy ever, no payware sets and its hassle-free installation can ever top the quality and detailed variety. Their AI Manager app makes everything much simpler, no longer you have to install liveries one by one and compile AI flightplans individually. If you are that obsessive with plane spotting, it can also be integrated into RealTraffic - so far, this is my biggest draw to migrate back into MSFS
  • Graphics visual quality, although noticably reduced from its first release back in Q3 2020, MSFS is still superior to other titles, you are no longer flying on a treadmill of generic earth texture
  • Addition to many controllable functions (e.g., separation between rudder & nosewheel tiller), plus so many other integration like Airbus starter switch modes mapping. It is amazing to see how expanded it currently is, I don’t know if those casual gaming media that lauded MSFS release way back in 2020 can take a re-look at it today, then re-evaluate their proper definition of “complex” and “detailed”
  • Navigation updates - at least flightplans generated using the latest AIRAC and all the latest waypoints can be easily found in the world map flight planner.

As airliner enthusiast, the current biggest drawback besides weird AI behaviour and some ATC issues is simply the night lighting in a lot of the major airports not touched by add-ons / custom contents. For example, the default Kansai Intl Airport (RJBB / KIX), is pretty dark without any apron lightings. It is weird to see how the aerobridge & cargo truck can find you under complete darkness, guided only by the cockpit dome light and position & logo lights.

Besides that, I have all those typical PC elitist rant: MSFS has much reduced mouse control functionalities now. You can’t spin the world map globe using mouse any longer, need to press the directional key in the Numpad. Your previous map filter / settings are reset (they will always hide the navaids / waypoints, you need to re-enable it everytime). Some options are also not as interactive or clickable, requiring you to press buttons / keys, which is an obvious adaptation patch to console interface.

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Thanks again for your detailed reply. I’m so torn. Progress has clearly been made, but it’s astounding how slow it has been.

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That entirely depends on where you are, and what aircraft you are flying. At 10,000ft its easy. On the ground at a busy airport, not so much, but may still be possible with DX12/DLSS depending on the bottlenecks with your system. Even then 4K@60 may be a big ask without making some compromises.

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Afraid not, I have a 3090ti and a 12900K running on a 4k 120hz panel with mixture of medium, high and ultra, I average around 80 in the air (in a Spitfire) and around 55 on the ground, it’s always CPU bound.

Performance is hugely impacted by what aircraft you are using too.

Ultra is not that exciting — just more taxing for little to no actual visual improvement.

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Maturity, and 3rd party support.

I think at this point, if MSFS is not for you, seek a different sim that fits the bill.

If you don’t see and feel immediate differences between the sim these days (especially with the SU10 beta) and the launch version, you need something other than Asobo’s sim to meet your needs.

Take a look at this forum from around launch time and look at the issues folks were having then. Compare them to the issues folks are having now. The really big problems have been fixed, patched, or made irrelevant by 3rd party add ons. The issues that remain seem trite in comparison.

If you want perfection, this isn’t it. But what sim is? Let me know when you find a perfect commercial sim. We would ALL love to fly it.

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I slightly disagree.
For me VFR is top priority.

But I must agree with you in regards of the “quality” of ATC.
This could be much better.

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You didn’t ask us to confirm your opinions, you asked for our opinions. I didn’t share mine to argue, I assure you.

We all get bothered by different things.

ATC is absolutely overdue for an overhaul. But there are 3rd party options now that weren’t available upon release, and the vanilla ATC, while still glaringly flawed, has seen a number of improvements and enhancements since release. Perhaps not the ones you are looking for, but oof, how quickly we forget how truly rough it was upon release.

IFR would greatly benefit from an ATC overhaul. Flying by instrument is there. Planning your flight is there. Programming your in flight computer is there. But it can depend on what planes you fly, and if you have some decent addons.

But your initial post wasn’t about the state of the ATC, it was about the state of the sim. And it is undeniably better and much more feature rich, even in vanilla state than it was upon release. And the third party support is finally up to speed and fleshing out the sim well beyond the scope of the vanilla.

If we want perfection, we kinda need to fly at least two sims, because then the bugs and issues don’t carry over. Each sim has its own unique bugs and issues! :joy:

And we all have our own needs, hardware, and ways of flying. Another sim might be a better fit for different folks.

Is MSFS perfect at this point? Undeniably no.

Has it improved in 18 months? A resounding yes.

It really isn’t worth debating further.

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No. It is nonconstructive criticism to say the least.

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I think it’s worth discussing further but can understand if some don’t want to.

Given the state of the ATC, what is one of the better alternatives? I previously looked at Pilot2ATC back in the day and my understanding then was that it could not assign an approach on arrival making it unsuitable for simulating a commercial IFR flight. Even the default ATC can assign an approach. Maybe that’s been addressed? Or there are other alternatives now? Do any of them work with the built in flight planner?

My biggest beef with the default ATC is that they are calling for me to descend and maintain 3000’ while I’m coming in over 7000’ peaks to Vancouver or similar. :frowning:

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That’s maddening. I just follow my route now when it gets to be time to descend.

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ATC will honestly never be perfect in any simulator to be fair neither does any have a what you call “decent” system. There is not a single sim out there that does this well, let it be MSFS, X-Plane, DCS, or even the early FSX and P3D days. Yes they can continuously improve on it but just because it is lacking a good AI ATC does not mean it is not a flight simulator. That is why VATSIM was created to fill in that gap. Most real world pilots use VATSIM if they want to practice actual communication for VFR or IFR. Heck even when training pilots on Level D simulators, they don’t have a AI ATC system on there, the examiner role plays the ATC role much like what VATSIM does for pilots.

The other issue is, you say that the turboprop flight model is very poor, my question is which turboprops do you use? The Asobo or 3rd party add ons. It is always know that the devs for simulators are not going to spend 100% of their time fine tuning every single little detail in the propeller and flight model logic. Their goal is to not create study level aircraft themselves. That is why there is 3rd party add ons for that area, and frankly that is what most sims developers depend on, for someone else to create and put out third party high fidelity add ons. Most developers have the tools already in hand to create great aircraft and fine tune their products to utilize the most they can get out of the sim and so far PMDG and Fenix have done a great job so far with many improvements coming and more tools for these devs to use with the new SU10 coming out.

I am sure eventually ATC will get another overhaul, but right now their priority is fixing most of the bugs and memory leaks in the sim and get performance going really well while continuously improving the tools for the flight models and weather for devs to use. After all, in the real world, weather and handling is what affects a aircraft most rather than ATC.

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ATC is not “fixed” after 18 months. That much has been established. It is madding to get bad instructions. I use it for background ambience. But my expectation was really low, so I am ok with it. The workaround is Vatsim.

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