I haven’t tried it on the S yet but will, hopefully later today, and report back. My X is participating in SU9 beta and the S is standard SU8.
I do have a question. One of the airports, I think TIST or something like that, I have as a third party addon already. If I purchase this product, does your TIST only add the seaplane extension, or does it also have the airport which will conflict with my airport?
Thanks, this is why I never hesitate to buy from SeafrontSims because you’re active on the forums and address issues. I’m on xbox x and the stutters get worse in the Virgin Islands the more I fly around (I was just testing in a C152 to keep it simple); however, I tried adjusting the water traffic settings to 0 and even after restarting the flight it didn’t seem to have any affect (just as many boats in water and same stutters). Which traffic setting should affect the boats in your addon? Just to re-iterate, I’ve had the Anguilla and UK pack for a while and never experienced similar issues so something is different in Virgin Islands affecting xbox x.
I have this same question too. Does the Seafront Virgin Islands come with the airports listed as improved/redone? And if so, how to we manage those airports if we have other third party airports installed for this area?
PS - Love the Seafront products. I don’t fly without it!
I did more testing today on both the Series S (SU8) and Series X (SU9). It’s proving both interesting and frustrating given the X is the higher spec console.
I used the stock Beechcraft Baron 58 for consistency and I primarily flew east from TIST but also did a number of flights west from TUPJ.
On the Series S I did not encounter any increased stutters or scenery loading issues with the traffic at 100%. Subjectively I felt like the S loaded less watercraft traffic at 100% then the X did at 100%.
On the X as previously reported when both the “Leisure Boats” slider and the “Ships and Ferries” silder at 100% there is noticeable stutter ~ at first it’s micro stutters but I also noticed it got worse over time resulting in larger pauses.
Turning both sliders to 0% allowed me to check static loading vs traffic. There were no stutters but there is a texture loading issue for the terrain in the distance. Some terrain textures were just loading as a white surface in the distance and only rendering with coloured ground textures once close. This does not happen with the package removed on the X and does not happen at all on the S. I also get the “popping” in of the static ships like others have reported but this strikes me as being the same as the way building pop in at the last minutes in the cities.
I then experimented with the two sliders separately and discovered with Ships and Ferries at 0% and Leisure Boats at 100% there was no traffic. Where as with the opposite settings there was traffic. So, the setting of the “Leisure Boats” slider seems to have no effect as far as decreasing stutters goes. Only the “Ships and Ferries” slider makes a difference.
As noted above the longer the flight the worse the stutters get until you reduce the Ships and Ferries slider to about 25%. Then stutters seem to mostly eliminated and you still see some moving watercraft. However, as also noted earlier you still see the issue with the terrain textures not loading properly (even with the traffic sliders at 0%).
So I believe the higher LOD of the static objects, and perhaps there is a higher density of them too, is having a higher impact on the X. For the traffic I suspect it’s that it’s calculated out to further distances and perhaps, as subjectively noted, at a higher density at closer distances too.
Here’s a screenshot of the white terrain textures in the distance:
I have some video too that I’ll see if I can make small enough to upload.
I fly coastal areas a lot and really enjoy how the Seafront Simulations bring it alive. I hope this additional information helps.
Small resolution size but it demonstrates the above.
Thanks for the comprehensive reporting @FieldGunner. This video is useful - I think have a fix for the white terrain. It could by itself be what is behind the stutters you’re experiencing.
The ship traffic shouldn’t affect this, so it might be a separate issue. This is especially true if you are able to go to busy areas like the Global Shipping’s English Channel or use our UK South East pack without any stuttering. It could also be a symptom of the aerial masking - we will investigate.
The Leisure Boat slider doesn’t currently do anything on Xbox - It is a bug with the ‘wanderboat’ technology within the sim engine itself. Asobo have it on their list, albeit at a low priority. This is the reason we can’t make Enhanced AI available to Xbox.
Yesterday I added many more boats around the islands so will be sourcing and testing on an Xbox X here before we roll out an update.
We are also working on further optimisations of the Vessels Core Library which will help too.
Thanks again,
SeafrontSims
Hi @tgbushman @sttovo - Our sceneries are purely focused on the nautical side of the simulator so we don’t provide updated airports. The airports are listed because customers have previously asked for ideal starting points to check out the scenery. We have updated the post to make this clearer.
Thanks so much for looking into this.
I have the Global Shipping package so did some test flying at spots along the English Channel as well as Gibraltar. The Channel is wide enough that it’s harder to appreciate the moving traffic density. However, there was a fair amount moving ship density in the Gibraltar area and it also has the more rugged terrain in a way like the Virgin Islands. I had no issues in either location.
Hello,
Just bought this pack and the Anguilla pack today and the Anguilla pack works flawlessly but I had to uninstall the Virgin Islands pack as I was getting stutters leading to CTDs every time. I uninstalled and rebooted the game with the same flight path and my frame rate is back to normal and I am able to complete a flight. Love your work but there is an issue going on, I’m on Xbox series X.
Hi @Novascotia64 - We’ve been working with MS/Asobo on diagnosing this since SU9 (including the patch). Oddly their own Xbox testing hasn’t thrown up any issues although ours is showing an impact on frames. We are working on an update at the moment for both watermasks the boat traffic.
Thank you for your response, I am a big fan of what you do for the sim.
Thankyou @Novascotia64 - The feedback helps us to keep improving
This is evidence that many of us have suspected for months now that their emulations are different to our Xboxes. They do not act, react and perhaps even perform the same. I do believe everything they test works amazing and reliably for them and them only. It’s a different story for us and you as well (among other devs), just as you’re finding out. Things are fundamentally wrong here. They need to go home with a new off the shelf console and see for themselves. Go undercover as a new simmer and go through what we go through and then they’ll truly know what they’re up against.
Any chance for a Long Island, NY DLC?
Rich maritime history especially on the east end all the way to block island, cargo and LNG ships in the sound, ferries, as well as tons of boats in peconic bay. Cheers
Also, in case you weren’t aware of it, the Virgin Islands package has some scenery issues (and slight stutter) on a PC too. I just switched to PC (Win11, i7-12700K, RTX 3070 Ti, 16GB of DDR5) and see the white islands until very close as reported earlier on the Series X. Increased stuttering isn’t as pronounced on the PC but it’s still there as well.
Here’s the white islands with the package installed:
And here they are with the package removed (I’m closer in this screen shot to the previous one but you still see white areas when this close with the package installed too):
Thanks @FieldGunner - We have also replicated this on PC and are seeking advice from Asobo. The issue only seems to affect the Virgin Islands and only after SU9. The white areas are not actually areas that we have edited (as we have only changed the water). It may be the result of a collision between our imagery and some overlays that MS/Asobo has prepared for the area but we are investigating. The ongoing issues with SU9 are making diagnosis a challenge. Disabling and re-enabling Bing Map Data did seem to resolve the white terrain issue for us albeit temporarily. It also only happens at one level of detail (12). We will update when we know more. In the meantime we have also added more traffic but are holding off on publishing this until we get more stability/predictability in the core sim.
The performance issue affecting our scenery post SU9 (but more noticeably Vessels: The Virgin Islands) has been diagnosed by Asobo and is related to a FX bug introduced with SU9. We have been told by Asobo that they are looking into optimizing this for SU10.
In the meantime thank you for your patience.
We have released v1.8.0 of the Vessels Core Library. This is available via Orbx Central and is in the queue for the MSFS Marketplace.
Hi All - For those wanting more detail on the performance impact from SU9 and upcoming changes in SU10 we have been told the following by Asobo:
SU8: effect were not spawned and updated when SimObject was not rendered (too far, cockpit view vs external view, etc…)
SU9: effect are spawned and updated at all time.
SU10: effect will spawn and be updated only if current distance < MaxDistance
Essentially with SU9 the sim is trying to update (the position, scale, fade etc) ALL of the wakes in the scenery at once, even if they are well beyond sight. Several hundred leisure boats are on the move in the Virgin Islands scenery, hence the larger impact.