Have you seen what happens to people who don’t have a lot of graphics memory just trying to fly planes with glass panels and moving map?
There’s a whole lot more going on in Asobo’s graphics engine than there used to be in FS, it and a ton of other stuff just gobbles up memory. People are going to demand all monitors have the same level of detail.
There’s just not enough computing power or graphics memory space in computers these days to power multiple monitors like FSX used to be able to do.
It’s also why they don’t have the ability to do multiple cameras.
Remember that a huge part of their boosting performance was adding the ability to turn off what’s behind us. Now they’re going to have to track everything everywhere all the time with multiple monitors.
I have no idea if they’ve improved how they store and display graphics for 2024, but, most likely not to the level required.
You make good points, but for multiple outside views a lot of the textures etc are shared so it’s not like each view takes up as much VRAM or RAM as the main view. Equally, multiple cameras onto the same scene can share much of the data of the scene. If you had cameras covering much more of the scene, so that stuff that would be discarded has to be retained, that will affect VRAM, sure, and to some extent performance as well since there’s more to be calculated, but again I don’t think it’s along the lines of +1 view = double the resources needed.
What seems to bring the sim to its knees is the depiction of many fully-detailed aircraft, ie multiplayer with a lot of other players, but that’s as much the case for one screen as it would be for many.
Proper multi-view support would probably require GPUs with maximum VRAM (24GB as of right now) and the fastest-performing CPUs to overcome some of those issues, but for those already spending $$$$ on home cockpit setups that’s unlikely to be a major barrier.
Right now the multi-monitor support is multiple viewports of the same camera onto the same scene, which I guess was the easiest thing to add into the rendering pipeline. Getting towards what some of us want and are asking for would be a big job and I doubt very much that any significant work has been done on that in 2024.
I think you missed the point that in today’s camera, they dump everything that’s behind/not in the current view, and reload it when you turn around. So, other views will add more VRAM to what’s required. In other words, they will lose the performance gain they got with I think SU5 when they implemented the “dump what’s behind” method. With what you want, they’re going to have to load everything into VRAM all the time, nearly 360 degrees. IOW, nothing’s free.
If you think there’s issues people have now with “black screens”, this will kill it.
I’m pretty sure you need those GPS screens, too, you’re just moving them off to other screens?
Who knows, maybe with 2024 they’re changing the format, compressing it, reducing it, whatever, but, in 2020, if they could have done it, they would have done it. They went for full detail in what one screen can see, rather than reducing the amount of detail so they could store it all.
No, I got that. But if you have the VRAM to cope with it, you should be able to choose to do so. The necessity to reload textures that have only recently been displayed is one of the causes of stutters and if you have the hardware necessary to avoid that then you should be able to take advantage of it. Terrain pre-caching as currently implemented doesn’t do the trick.
The sim needs to be able to run on the minimum required spec, and it needs to be able to run on Xbox Series X and S, and the black screen problem certainly needs to be solved in order to do that properly, but I’d like Asobo to not limit the ability to fully take advantage of high-spec PCs for those that have them, and I’d like them to provide further options - including multiple views with independent view frustums and multiple cameras - that those who have the capability can use.
If everything is optional, users can choose the options that work with the hardware they have. Xbox users are always going to have constrained options that are limited to fit that platform. PC users can go further if they have the hardware to do so.
Yes. I’m popping out the avionics of all the aircraft I fly. I’ve never had any issues with that after SU9 and DX12. Others still have problems with performance doing this.
I think you’re making some assumptions about how much VRAM, and other RAM/Page space, will be required to do what you want that may not be valid.
In any event, my original answer was regarding the comment about the support for it being “so basic”.
Asobo made the decision early on that they felt the cost of multiple cameras viewing the same space was not worth the performance cost or the cost it would take from putting the required development resources on other needs.
This is it. They know the users who needed more than what’s already implemented is minimal. So they decided to focus on other areas. It doesn’t mean they will never improve on that area, but it’s not a priority either.
If it’s just not important to them then every current and future cockpit builder / user is just plain out of luck? Yikes. A Flight Simulator cockpit with only a forward facing view, how nice.
Well, cockpit builders generally are a minority of users, and those who want to go further and have complex display systems with multiple TVs or projectors are a minority of those users. I can see how we don’t get to the top of the list very often.
Here’s the real problem for that specific community: MSFS has taken over the hobby sim market to such an extent that there are no new or updated products for P3D (which continues to be developed, but with old products gradually becoming incompatible), and while X-Plane has a thriving freeware community, it’s also suffered from a lack of 3rd party commercial products since MSFS arrived. As a cockpit builder your choices are to use P3D / X-Plane and stay multiple versions behind so you still have compatible products, but you’ll never get any improvement over what you have now; or find creative ways to use MSFS, and complain about the limitations in the hope that eventually something might be done about them. Most of us have chosen the latter
It is pretty upsetting that we are being squeezed out of the market and either having to settle for less (to get more in terms of scenery, weather etc) with MSFS, or end up running old software forever. I had a fully-functioning sim with a 180 degree curved projector display and full integration of hardware and viable touch control of every aircraft I owned in P3D, but once you go MSFS, you can’t go back. I wanted (and expected) to be able to do this in MSFS, because I assumed that the functionality that was in FSX would be preserved into MSFS. That’s the single biggest disappointment I ever had with this sim.
So I know that the triple monitor / extra hardware folks are a minority. I have the luxury of all of the kids moved out, I can afford a bit of hardware (not the $20K cockpit full builds but dang those are sweet). But I’ll say that even to the extent I’ve got 3 TVs, flight controls, a touch screen and knobster to TOUCH and physically set controls it’s just an amazing experience. I had to go back to 1 TV for a bit just to test something with some game crashes, and it felt like being in a tunnel. So I’m going to keep pushing the devs to improve multimonitor as much as possible, improve game engine performance, anything that helps make this enjoyable.
You should do that. I have no intention to discourage anyone to report the issues. But everything I said above is to point out the reasoning behind their decisions. They will focus their efforts on issues that affect more people.I hope they improve things for the homecockpit owners, but it’s not reallistic to expect them to prioritize things like Multimonitor, Ultra Wide resolutions, VR or homecockpit hardware support.
Personally, I would like to see them put some good effort into the VR experience, along with Microsoft / Windows as a whole (working on it, too). It’s just so awesome.
Of course, my biggest issue with VR is cockpit interaction, since I can’t take my glasses off. But I get by…
I also think VR is awesome, don’t get me wrong, I would love to see a flawless implementation of it. That said, I think it’s not plausible to think they will prioritize this because it’s a niche within a niche.
The improvements will be more organic and less disruptive. Everytime the team finds something to be implemented, that doesn’t demand a lot of effort, they probably will.
While, from a business standpoint, I can understand a decision not to invest resources in something that is used by a small percentage of users, from an industry-wide perspective it could make a lot of sense TO invest. Flight Simulator has always been a somewhat “cutting edge” software. It has been a leader in technology, pushing the limits of hardware and software. From this standpoint, it could be that it would make a lot of sense to invest in VR.
I have never had the opportunity to experience VR MSFS, but I sure would like to! It seems to be the future of flight simulation and will most likely only get better, attracting more and more people to it. If the price of VR headsets drops some, it will attract even more. So, while a lot of us are not there yet, we wait in the wings for the opportunity to try VR MSFS and software like MSFS can push us to try VR. MSFS VR can be a driver to get VR into the hands of many more!
I have an inexpensive three-monitor setup and like it very much! It’s set up as the more typical (perhaps) front and sides cockpit view, but I sympathize with cockpit builders who would like more multi-view capability. I hope there will be a few things done for those people.
I’ve been away for a while, and getting caught up on the status of MM support in the new simulator… strongly agree that we need to try to amplify our voices on this topic to try to get MS and Asobo to put some priority on this. This has been my biggest issue since about 2021, when MS would ‘promise’ but took forever to provide a ‘minimal’ solution. I suggest that we don’t create multiple threads on this topic in order to keep the volume up on this topic. The current FS2020 implementation satisfied me through 2023 but I expect more from MS/Asobo. I was at FlightSimExpo in Houston in 2023, and talked face-to-face with Jorg N about my strong need for a better solution, and he assured me that it was coming with the 2024 edition. I noted that a lot of people here (looking around FlightSimExpo) really need this, and that it was my personal number 1 improvement need. I feel the need to hold him to that promise
