SU5.1 Xbox Series X Performance

Sim Update 5.1 Beta | MSFS 2024 SU5.1 Beta Discussion
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Default Saab 340B

Impulse Simulations YPAD - default YCBP

Started with a flight I was unable to complete in SU5 due to constant black screens and ctds. In sessions without EFB/ATC use or crazy drone camera antics, the memory issues arise most commonly from lowering the view from the overhead panel or turning the plane during taxi, and that hasn’t changed in the new beta from what I can see. Heavy or badly optimized sceneries exacerbate the issue, forcing the memory management to dump all the textures in the lower parts of the cockpit when looking up, after which it stutters and disables the avionics while desperately trying to reload the textures as I look down again.

I did get black screens in a turn during taxi which wiped most of my setup, but after that it worked like a dream. Surprisingly no memory warning after landing even though the airport is handcrafted, not even after I inspected the entire scenery in walkaround mode. Clearly an improvement on this specific flight.

Will try bigger planes during the weekend, mainly focusing on possible graphical nerfs I’m really hoping not to find. I should have more time then to better explain why I prefer the sim in its current state.

Usual setup: No traffic, MP on, PG on, all quantities off (parked planes replaced by LVFR statics), effects low, no EFB/ATC, 500 internet and 128 cache.

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ini A350

iniBuilds FAOR - default FACT

1st attempt ctd before flight was done loading. 2nd try got black screens from the start, plane crashed through the ground twice in a row, then back-on-tracked to the gate where I was able to complete a full setup (I skipped the oil check because I was too scared to turn the view all the way to the FADEC switches) and taxi to the runway. Memory warning immediately after takeoff, plane reset and engines died—the end.

3rd time was the charm, as the flight was almost perfect aside from some slight stuttering (acceptable on console) at Johannesburg. The poor optimization of that iniBuilds FAOR hurt the surrounding terrain for a little while, but as soon as there was some distance to the airport, the scenery turned crisp again. The mountains were a real highlight—reminded me of flying over the Alps in msfs 2020 back in 2023. The ability to recover from those memory-draining scenarios is still one of the greatest improvements I’ve seen in SU4 and SU5.

The console didn’t seem to even struggle at FACT, although it’s admittedly one of the more basic default handcrafted sceneries. Being able to do a proper shutdown in the A350 is so rare on Xbox that I feel like some kind of celebration is in order (non-alcoholic, of course).

The amazing graphics make up for all the performance issues I faced, so the emphasis should be placed on that 3rd attempt when assessing my feedback.

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There are several discussion threads. Just in case it gets missed here a link to my latest testing. I ll put it here because it is xbox specific.

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Get the beers down yer :joy:

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Default A321 Salt Lake Simulations livery

iniBuilds KOKC - FlyTampa KLAS + Strip

Wanted to get the flight started quickly and avoid repeating the setup multiple times, so I chose a well-performing airport far away from the west coast before going for the ‘Ultimate Xbox Killer’ (FlyTampa KLAS and Latin VFR KLSV enabled right next to it). In Oklahoma and most of the way to Nevada it felt like playing on a souped-up PC rather than a console; graphics and performance were both above my expectations.

The problems started about the same distance from Las Vegas as before: Same rapidly fluctuating tiles and a very obvious loading circle around the aircraft. The terrain slightly further away was just a pool table with zero detail (I have more poetic descriptions of this in older posts so I’ll leave it here this time). Runway, taxiway, and apron textures didn’t load in even after waiting for ages in a parked plane.

I’m now using the 2024 upgraded KLAS and its behavior is similar to the upgraded Orbx ENGM which I’ve complained about before. You have to stand next to the buildings in walkaround mode for any detail to load in, while in the cockpit or drone cam they are just ugly boxes. Exponentially worse than the old 2020 versions, but at least the ENGM update was free.

Default A320 Bravoairspace livery

MK Studios EDDL - 29Palms LGMK

1st try ctd, then on the 2nd one everything was perfect except it stuttered much more than before when loading the Düsseldorf PG around 10000 feet. I suspect the reason was the combination of heavy weather and crazy MP traffic (surprising in a beta). Terrain quality remained solid which is more important to me.

Black screens just at the end of taxi—had to use the parking brake because no other controls worked. Screens and controls came back which allowed me to park the plane, then lost the avionics one more time before completing the shutdown. My favorite part was that the mountain in the distance was fully textured; in the past it was blurry and a massive eyesore, though this was fixed already in SU4 or early SU5 betas, don’t know for sure. Awesome island vibes got me motivated to continue testing.

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Question: for A320Nv2 players (xbox)

When loading free flight, what sequence do you follow for loading flight plan.

This is what I do:

Select free flight, pick aircraft, change rego, ensure live weather, load flight, power up electrics, IRS, start APU, Connect bridge, catering, luggage, load Flight plan from simbrief to FMS, load plane weight, fuel in a320EFB, open FsimEFB, import FP from avionics, check integrity, send to ATC. it is at this point that on 30% my airports low memory comes up.

However, I tried different sequence

Select free flight, pick aircraft, change rego, ensure live weather… now instead of loading flight, while in the free flight screen, open EFB, manually load FP, sent to ATC and Avionics, then load flight, power up etc.

If following this sequence I am not getting any memory issues. Tried 3 airports where I experienced the issues if following first sequence example.

BTW graphics cranked up, all 3rd party airports, even real traffic ATG airline ON.

Interested to hear:

  • what sequence do you follow when loading flight and flight plan (IFR ATC)
  • if perhaps some of you could try a couple of the airports that normally give low memory and whether change of sequence does anything different
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At the moment I’m not sending anything from sim efb to either avionics or Atc. I plan a flight with the online flight planner then load it up on the sim efb and manually input into the planes fmc. Then load in fuel, payload etc. For the past few short hauls in the a340everything has ran pretty smooth, even now after adding back in addons. I Have a pleasure flight planned in the corvalis around France tommorow so will probably use Atc and efb to send to avionics as its only GA.

Xbox series x

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I used to create the plan on SimBrief, copy/paste the route to the online planner, and then load it into the EFB as soon as I got inside the cockpit. I would only send it to ATC just so they know what I’m doing, as I prefer to punch in all the stuff manually from the SimBrief OFP. I experimented with loading the plan on the map screen a few times when performance became an issue, but eventually had to give up on ATC/EFB use altogether.

Now I only use SimBrief for airliners, and also utilize the SimBrief performance calculator for planes which only have the universal EFB, such as the default 737. It’s also great for the default iniBuilds planes, since they don’t have a page for landing performance in their EFBs. My charts are mostly from the online planner, but sometimes also a little phone app called AirMate and occasionally Skyvector for the ‘Murican stuff. Anything to avoid using the in-game EFB (sometimes I open charts in 3rd party planes’ EFBs if the sceneries are light).

The first time I flew without ATC/EFB was a shock: The terrain wasn’t blurry and even the photogrammetry loaded to a decent distance, even around 3rd party airports. Suddenly the game was recognizable as the same sim the guys on PC are playing, just like it was for the first two years in msfs 2020. Large 3rd party airports also became usable.

In smaller planes I can get away with brutal EFB use involving flight planning, charts, and sometimes even ATC. I enjoy using it for flights in which I want to be able to quickly change things, find navaids and just goof around. I don’t miss those things too much when doing my usual airliner stuff. I’m actually quite happy with the sim at the moment.

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Default 737 Bravoairspace livery

Seafront Simulations Vessels: The Hawaiian Islands

Northern Sky Studio PHOG - Northern Sky Studio PHLI

The Seafront Simulations add-on filled the waters with highly detailed boats, noticeably affecting frame rate at lower altitudes. The world felt so alive that it’s really a shame it’s still impossible to have live sea traffic on without also turning on air traffic which kills performance on Xbox. That choppier frame rate was still ok on console so clearly the boats could be doable, especially since they can’t enter large 3rd party airport sceneries. Memory wasn’t an issue either as the islands remained sharply textured; only during shutdown I got the usual black screens when looking up and down in the cockpit. Please make it possible to have marine traffic on Xbox while air traffic is off.

PMDG 777-300ER

South Oak Co HAAB - inibuilds HKJK

The runway and taxiway textures in Nairobi didn’t load until I vacated the runway. During taxi, the ground went blurry a few times, though it always recovered quickly. The terminal had a very basic LOD model longer than I would have wanted, but this could be just iniBuilds being overly cautious, or perhaps the multiplayer traffic caused memory issues. When it switched to the detailed model, performance wasn’t affected and the fluctuating taxiway didn’t improve or get worse. Otherwise flawless flight.

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I can’t 100% confirm this is the issue, but I get much better performance on every aircraft when I don’t send the fp to atc. I have always suspected that was the issue but I have never seen it mentioned on the forums before.

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Throughout many betas, while experimenting, some people settled to flying without options such as ATC, photogrammetry, reduced graphics options, etc. That’s ok from a single user perspective, however these options exist and should be working and usable. In other words there should be no trade off especially on console because the hardware is consistent.

while trying few different things since su5.1 beta, I noticed that if using sim brief import and sending plan to ATC, if at that point the sim doesn’t bomb out (low memory issue) it is always great smooth performance. But if I don’t use sim brief and instead manually create flight plan during free flight screen (before starting free flight) then I don’t get memory issue (stability is good) but all my flights are stuttery (performance impact). Not major but noticeable especially if moving camera around cockpit.

Anyway, in my case there is definitely the difference in how sim performs depending on how the free flight is started in respect to flight plan submission sequence

Keep playing and testing I guess.

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While I 100% agree that filing a flight plan shouldn’t have such a massive performance impact, having no trade-offs at all would make the graphics options completely pointless. Our boxes are identical, but the aircraft we use, 3rd party sceneries, and just the general demands of the type of flying we prefer vary widely. Even if they can optimize more for a specific spec, the repercussions of adding more load won’t magically go away just because someone on the other side of the world owns the same console. For that reason, the “no trade-offs” policy you are proposing is somewhat unrealistic in my opinion.

I haven’t done enough testing to properly comment on the rest of it. All I can say is that the memory problems usually begin after sending the flight plan to ATC, and then get worse as I start opening the charts on the EFB. Would be very interesting if you can figure out an order of doing the setup that makes ATC/EFB flights from the more problematic airports possible.

I saw someone bring up the ATC keyboard shortcuts in another thread and that might be worth mentioning here. By memorization and using the number keys it’s possible to avoid opening the ATC window completely—it works well in IFR because the options are in the same order most of the time. I’ve been doing this for a long time as it helps with performance at least a little bit and removes the stutter from opening the window.

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iniBuilds A300 passenger

MSK Productions OPKC - default OMDB

WASM crash on first attempt, restart, load back in and everything was ok. Even the disastrous A300 is usable if you are willing to sacrifice some of the sim’s features. I’ve always loved taking off in the thick haze here, and now when the city on the coast comes into view in greater detail than before, I would even go as far as calling it a spectacle.

The terrain problems I’ve had in Dubai were gone; I don’t think it looked any better than this even in the best days of msfs 2020 (perhaps the city had a slightly better draw distance). Black screens when turning to the gate reset the plane and I had to restart one engine to finish parking. Although I did get repeated disabled avionics during shutdown, I still consider this a major success as I’ve never been able to secure any airliner in Dubai before. No ctd despite very lively multiplayer traffic.

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Cockspur Phenom 100

iniBuilds KPSP - UK2000 KFLG

Taking a break from the airliners to fly some lighter aircraft is a bittersweet affair on Xbox. On one hand, there definitely is such a thing as too much Netflix; on another, it’s always so disappointing to see how big the graphics and performance gap still is after all the updates. The mountains surrounding Palm Springs added so much to the atmosphere when they were properly textured and didn’t constantly morph under the heavy memory load of iniBuilds airliners.

The vast majority of my US flying has been in California and it’s also the state where I have the most dense concentration of 3rd party sceneries and photogrammetry. The cumulative effect of buying more content from the marketplace has caused the area to shift between a no-fly zone (especially in msfs 2020), Roblox world, and the current somewhat respectable level of detail which can look even quite beautiful in small planes and on rare occasions, even in airliners. Nonetheless, the disparity is very clear, and though I’ve spoken against the “no compromises” posts before, the automatic graphics quality change when you switch to an airliner is what hurts my enjoyment of the game the most. Perhaps it wouldn’t work for the larger console audience, but I would prefer to choose those adjustments and trade-offs myself.

2 quick additions not related to the beta: The Phenom 100 was largely unusable in msfs 2020 due to constant black avionics, whereas in 2024 the unverified version is one of the better-performing jets. Now that’s truly amazing.

Unfortunately the second thing is more negative. I’ve screenshotted Flagstaff extensively in the early days of msfs 2020 and a direct comparison makes the 2024 version seem pretty rough—the improved trees completely mess up the areas outside the central parts of the city. Furthermore, the mountain close to the airport had a far more realistic appearance in msfs 2020 when viewed from the same 3rd party airport. Thus far, that’s the only place I’ve scrutinized in this manner, so I won’t draw any conclusions about the rest of the world.

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Fully agree.
MSFS 2024 is much more complex than a normal PC/console game and has to be treated differently. Unless you have a NASA computer you will have to make trade offs all the time. Even there we have to make trade offs, a different one there as it’s cost vs power. For everyone else it’s smoothness vs graphics - and we have to realise that all those “bells and whistles”, the nice-to-haves, impact performance. With complex aircraft available on Xbox - they weren’t in the early days and lots said it would not be possible to bring them to Xbox - that trade off space has become more important. And SU5 betas started pushing the Series X to the edge of its capabilities.
So it’s about setting our own priorities in terms of aircraft we want to fly and then setting a personal balance between the essential components for those flights to be completed successfully and the nice-to-haves that add to the immersion. Everyone’s balance will be different, there is no right or wrong answer, but we cannot have it all in MSFS and we never have been able to have it all even when I was flying flight simulators on the Atari. Overall we’ve done very well on Xbox given the scale and complexity of the simulation - it gives a huge “bang for the buck”.
But we do need MS/Asobo to work harder at testing on Xbox - I know they don’t like me saying this but all the evidence of the past few months shows that Xbox testing has largely been an afterthought and that must change.

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Don’t understand how it’s so hard I just spawned first flight in 4 days and got the low memory avionics blackout warning. 1st time. 747

Devs just load up the 747 in career mode st any major airport, you will get the memory warning

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I suspect it’s those trade-offs that are making it hard. They could make it possible to fly the A350 from Heathrow, but then we’ll be playing with Amiga 500 vector graphics again. If I’m right, I personally don’t care about either London or those mid-tier iniBuilds airliners so much that I would wish for that outcome (despite spending over 100 euros on the A350 because of the livery scam). I’d rather buy my add-ons outside of Europe and North America and explore some less congested places to fly in, which is actually what I’ve already started doing whenever there’s a big sale on the marketplace. You can even have multiplayer on when there are no other players around.

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But it was very possible, and actually enjoyably good, to fly the A350 from Heathrow in SU4 so we know that it’s possible

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To my knowledge, they did add more stuff to the sim in SU5. It’s hard to make those comparisons when the game keeps evolving constantly.

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It was right from the first beta version of SU5 that I noticed problems when I couldn’t restart a flight without getting a low memory warning. Last time I’d had that problem was back in SU3 and we know that multithreading of aircraft systems was removed for SU4 and reintroduced for SU5. I can’t help but feel that there’s a link there