The Sim on Xbox is (not?) Sublime Right Now

Discussion Hub General Discussion
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On April 6th, as soon as they hit the vendors, I bought an AMD 7800X3D. My thinking was leaning towards building a PC and I wanted to get my hands on one of these CPUs before the scalpers and lack of stock drove up prices.

Anyhow, April 6th is also the day when the DC-6 re-released for Xbox. Of course, I immediately downloaded it from my Content Manager, because it’s all I’ve wanted to fly on Xbox for a year and half.

Where I’m going with all this preamble is I am so blown away by the performance of the DC-6 and MSFS 2020 on my Xbox right now that I feel like I have no need to build a PC.

The team, Jörg, everyone at Asobo, WT, PMDG and anyone else who’s been involved in bringing the solution to the WASM issue, improving the avionics, getting the sim to run this well on a Series X with 3rd party airports & scenery and for providing an absolutely amazing sim experience within the limitations of the “walled garden” environment that is the Xbox. This is, truly, an incredible feat — one that has never been done before in the history of console gaming (and I’ve been here since the beginning and developed console games as a producer). You all should be very proud of this accomplishment!

I keep staring over at that, still wrapped in cellophane, AMD box and wonder if it will ever be utilized by me.

Thank you, to you all. I’ve put more hours into flying since Thursday afternoon than I have in a long time and I simply cannot stop smiling.

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i confirm , did a LFLL to LEIB , departure a little time before sunset with LVFR a320 CEO , textures and sky were stunning !!!

arrival at LEIB with night enhanced scenery. was really great.

get massive entertainement with flight sumulator . all my flights are with third party addons airports, won’t be able to come back to default scenery…

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Yup, loving it. Only had a single CTD in the past two months, and the sim looks and flies great. AAU1 was a major turning point, and SU12 kept the momentum going. Can’t wait for the World Hub contributions to make the generic airports in my area more true-to-life, or Orbx to port over additional PNW scenery cough Darrington cough.

Really appreciate the MS/Asobo/Working Title teams’ efforts to continually improve the experience. I’m confident ATC, ground handling, seasons, etc., will all get the TLC they deserve just as clouds, weather, and avionics have.

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I’d show you my DC6 over 10m DEM Austrian Alps with a huge freeware pack of sights etc, running REX Accuseason, FSLTL… Just to annoy you :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley: (sry I just had to :D)

Build that PC and keep the XBox for the sunday afternoon on the couch :smiley:

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Haha! Yeah, that was why I included this statement:

It is really quite something even with its limits.

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Agreed 100%. Stability and performance is absolutely great for 95% of the time, the odd black screens issue is still a thing sometimes… Man, did Xbox came from far. Remember the time when if you just move around in the cockpit of the 787 you get sick from the stutters and lag. And don’t even think of trying to use your 3rd party content, guaranteed headaches! That’s all gone now, I love this Simulator. Spending too much on it too, but oh well who gives a…

But, there’s still a lot too wish for. Fix and improve the ATC, and please can we get some descent AI traffic for our beloved Xbox, PLEASE. Those genaric planes with their ugly liveries are killing me. Thank you.

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WOW, makes everyone happy that you are so satisfied with the Xbox performance. Great, happy to hear that.
I am having the exact same experience on my AMD Upgradable PC. Looks like we are all super happy with our hardware and MSFS. Great !

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Another (more than) satisfied Xbox (Series X) user here. Interestingly, before I go further, do we have any users running it on Series S? Reason I ask is that, around a month ago — when a YouTube video of the MSFS Xbox release convinced me to buy — I wondered whether I could get away with spending less for essentially the same sim. The differences seemed pretty minimal, with the Series S actually running more smoothly at times due to less complexity to handle. However in the end the extra power of the X drew me in, as the reduced draw distance on the S I felt would detract from the overall experience.

I watched many side-by-side comparisons with the (high-end) PC and there seems to be very little in it, save for a few slightly better textures (particularly when viewed from distance). Sure, the PC version has all the bells and whistles due to not being a ‘closed wall’ platform but I think the Xbox version holds its own — perhaps much to the chagrin of the PC fanboys. We don’t have to spend thousands, and we don’t have to worry about whether or not the latest sceneries will run like a two-legged horse at Royal Ascot! One that’s getting a lot of grief at the moment is NZA’s CHC, which, save for the odd CTD and slow-to-load textures, runs like butter on my system! In communication with NZA they were on about further optimising (i.e. disabling) the Xbox version but most of the complaints now are from PC users!

I’m not trying to claim that the Xbox version is better or even equal — but all constraints considered, I think it actually outdoes the PC version in many ways (rather than in a single, overall way). The Xbox version does appear to be viewed with contempt by some PC users here, however us users certainly aren’t ‘lesser simmers’ for choosing the more hassle-free platform.

I really do hope the Asobo team and third-party partners continue to improve the Xbox experience — and for me, they can do that by making possible realistic AI traffic (as previously mentioned) and VDGS. More seasonal variation would be good too — something that’s noticeably lacking when I fly around Japan, the landscape of which is starkly different depending on time of year.

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I wish we could get someone who has a reliable experience, and someone who doesn’t, to meet up with hardware and try and find out what the difference is.

Am I happy with the sim on xbox? I’d give it a 6 out of 10. I mean, it’s absolutely amazing when it’s working as well as it can, stunning graphics, amazing live weather, incredible scenery, unbelievable scope for doing anything anywhere, literally a whole world of opportunity. If it worked as well as it could all of the time 10 out of 10 wouldn’t do it justice.

Heck, I’ve just managed a 10.5hr flight from Japan to Australia in an A310 simulating everything. To do this on xbox is an amazing feat. Sadly the problems I encountered on the way really highlight that there’s a lot to do to get that solid 10 out of 10.

I had to fly out of RJAA which is an autogen airport (fortunately not as ugly as some) because I know from trying multiple times that the Asobo RJTT will cause CTD even before I start to taxi. I had every kind of problem with ATC until it eventually broke completely. Blurred ground textures and melted photogrammetry at low altitude, coastlines popping in and out. Black screens during final. Luckily the inevitable CTD held off until after I’d powered down and switched to drone cam to enjoy the view.

The sim is more stable than it has been, but a long way from where it should be. I get CTD regularly at many 3rd party airports, and some Asobo modelled airport’s too.

Weather and clouds are fantastic, but the rest of the graphics are not as good as they have been. More blurry textures, the coast morphing didn’t used to happen, I think that mountain morphing always happened but seems worse in the last 6 months. Terrible LOD at 3rd party and Asobo modelled airport’s. Ground vehicles appear suddenly when you are already quite close, and still then are just blocks, these don’t get rendered until nearly on top of them - this certainly wasn’t the case a year ago.

Don’t get me wrong, I value reliability over graphics, but it seems to me that Asobo are struggling with balancing graphics over stability and as a result I’m not quite getting enough of either.

Furthermore I bought the AN225 and cannot use it because for many of us WASM is just broken on the xbox still. I’m not touching any more WASM add-ons until this is properly sorted, but at usual we have Asobo radio silence on this.

I’ve had the series X for almost 18 months, bought just to fly MSFS. If the cost of a good PC wasn’t so high I’d have already converted, I still think it’s very likely I’ll switch to PC when I can afford it, because I’m not sure how many more years I want to wait for.

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I must say, I completely agree. I am currently playing on a Series X, but I have also put in significant time on the Series S as well. Lately it has been the best gaming experience I’ve ever had. I’m using the Thrustmaster HOTAS and rudder pedals and just today I received the Turtle Beach flight stick and they are both fantastic. The PC crowd generally likes to look down their noses at the XBox version, but I feel like I am really not missing anything I’d care about. I’m not a VATSIM kind of guy, I don’t think. The game is absolutely fantastic and runs great.

I am running all of the world updates, iniBuilds KDTW airport (which is astonishingly good), and a few liveries for stock planes. I am not experiencing any of the problems that @RagingWombat839 is experiencing as far as CTDs. When I install the horrible KDET by MSFScenerybuilders, the game becomes incredibly unstable and crashes. Fortunately for me, the airport is a hunk of garbage so I don’t mind not having it installed. This may be an uninformed way of thinking, but I blame the instability of the game on the poor 3rd party developers rather than MS/Asobo.

Thanks for an awesome sim experience!

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Stability and performances improved a lot in the past few months, and I’m very happy about that. Anyway, I can’t ignore some gamebreaking issue still around. The worst, in my opinion, is this horrendous ground textures changing and poppin in. It affected just a few places until SU12, but since then it’s spreading worldwide. I know, not an Xbox “exclusive”, but without this issue I would be a 100%, well, 90% happy customer.

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I was really blown away when I first started MSFS on Xbox about a year and a half ago.

Now I’m wanting to immerse myself more into the game but the limits of the Xbox version some severe bugs really kill the immersion to the point where I almost have no fun anymore digging more into it.

Like the level of detail is degraded so much I sometimes have issues enjoying the scenery.

When I want to get more into IFR and ATC, the ATC voices suddenly stop. There is Vatsim and all that stuff, ah no, not for Xbox.

I bought the honeycomb alpha and bravo for more immersion and I like it really much, but its lack of proper native support is bugging me so much. No lights on the bravo. Trim wheel action is horrendous since the 10 degree heading adjustment fix, no usable trim
contol possible due unless I want to rotate the wheel 50 times in slow motion.

Useful keybindings for avionics missing. Sure I can use a mouse on my Xbox to control these fiddely things. Ah wait, mouse is extremely sluggish on Xbox, quick and precise control impossible.

No VR on Xbox.

All the nice mods and services available on pc are much needed on the Xbox version. I just don’t have the time, money and space to spend thousands of dollars for a powerful pc to switch to the pc version.

Despite all these I still think that is absolutely incredible to have MSFS on an Xbox, it is a blast. But I feel I’m loosing interest as I feel limited in immersing myself more into the sim and start just doing dumb flights because I want to avoid the hassle of fiddling around with the mentioned things. I don’t enjoy it anymore so much as when I started playing it and thought there is no limit of digging deeper and deeper into it.

Anyway. Love the game, but not playing so much anymore as before.

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There certainly comes a point where if you want maximum functionality you’ll always need to be on PC. The xbox as a console has platform restrictions, and that’s fair enough. My concern is that the sim isn’t as good as it could be even within those limitations. The peaks are incredibly high but the average experience is too low.

Right now I’m flying a multi leg tour from top to bottom of NZ in the vision jet. It’s absolutely fantastic. No black screens, very little scenery pop issues, a little bit of blurred ground and photogrammetry is not bad too. NZ looks spectacular though, so the negatives are trivial, except for the ATC which has failed in multiple ways in just two legs.

9/10 for this experience, with 1 point docked for terrible ATC.

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Still can’t understand why people keep saying this. I really can’t, sorry.

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In my original post, I tried to avoid pointing out or focusing attention on the issues that exist in the sim for all of us — many of which exist on PC, as well.

I know there are improvements and bug fixes the sim needs and I’m sure the developers are aware of them too.

I wanted to focus my attention on the positives. This forum is filled with commentary on the negatives. I’m not trying to gloss over them, at all, but just really wanted to take a moment to look at what does work, what I am able to do here and how much joy all of that has brought to me.

From the perspective of one who has worked in the game’s industry, I really appreciate how much this sim is able to do on a console.

Sure, there are elements that need to be improved, but as I’ve been saying for quite awhile on this forum, “They will come. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

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If you seriously thought about building a sim PC, do keep it. You know you can do a lot more on PC. Free liveries and add-ons from flightsim.to alone will probably make it worth it. Plus not having to depend on marketplace all the time may be a plus, VATsim, external ATC apps, more customisability makes this even better. And some planes may never be available on xbox.

If all that doesn’t interest you, sure, stick to Xbox. There’s not much difference between PC and and Xbox when it comes to the vanila sim with the marketplace add-ons. The most glaring Xbox exclusive issue i can think of is the memory outage causing CTD or black avionics. But that may just be fixed if asobo implements a better quality scaling.

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I only tend to have CTDs when using the drone to zoom over abundant detail. Only literally had a couple of CTDs when in the cockpit or while using the external chase cam.

Let’s not forget that the sim isn’t 100% stable on PC — and the ambiguity of what hardware one requires to run it puts me right off the PC version. The performance/cost ratio on Xbox I’m sure is unrivalled; and there’s far less concern about getting your hardware exactly right.

All that said, the price we pay for the convenience is a lower priority than PC. I think it really is that simple, because I fail to believe that things such as advanced AI traffic, etc. simply aren’t possible due to technological constraints. If Microsoft/Asobo really wanted to integrate them into the Xbox sim, I’m certain they could… and I’m confident that they will as the platform grows.

As for the detail between the two, I’ve watched countless video reviews of DLC add-ons — mostly featured on high-end PCs — and even with the most complex of airports the Xbox version gives none of that detail up (with the exception of Drzewiecki’s EWR which, by his own admission, omitted a lot of the detail only to pre-empt any Xbox issues). I’d challenge anyone to notice the differences between, say, the two versions of NZA’s CHC.

What us Xbox users are missing is simply the expanded FS universe.

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How is that KDTW on Xbox, by the way? Does it have those animated de-icing pads? More to the point, are they usable or just for show?

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Agree 100% even though for me using mostly Macs, PC was never an option!
Stability at least on up to 2 hours flights is great for me even on XBOX X and at times you get breathtaking sceneries and weather and you wonder if this is really happening on a console…

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Absolutely agree. I’ve been away from the sim
for a while and have just completed my first short haul flight in a while on Series X. I daresay it was flawless. Sometimes I forget how mesmerising this sim can be and how lucky I feel to have it on a console- especially when it’s running as well as it is.

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