What was mind blowing about this simulator was the water, I bought a product with realistic and beautiful water. Now it looks like nothing with awful, unrealistic water computerized with grid lines, shameful, I want my money back please. Guess this is a work in progress but I want an improved game not degraded
23 Likes
I donāt consider a refund for water but itās undoubted that water has become worse with each āupdateā.
17 Likes
I agree. The water looks like plasticine sht.
11 Likes
I noticed a huge water downgrade after patch 3. There was hope that they will fix it in the fourth update, but still not fixed.
11 Likes
We each need to raise our concerns with zendesk and also vote in the bugs & issues area.
The more users that raise the issue, the better the chance that it will be addressed with some level of emphasis.
IMHO, discussing it here does not always guarantee that specific concerns will be addressed.
If I may suggest, perhaps the title of this thread could be more descriptive as well, I know that the CEO browses these forums now and then.
6 Likes
Thatās exactly what I see, it has to be changed again. And the whole performance has gotten worse up to 10-15 FPs ā¦ What is going on ???
5 Likes
Iām not sure what youāre talking about, the water looks great to me. Change the ground wind level and see the effect, it looks pretty fantastic. Perhaps they have updated the effect of the wind ?
Do you have any screenshots ?
5 Likes
The game has been āoptimizedā for superior Xbox machine. 
7 Likes
thatās exactly where we are at. the water textures, effects, and reflections in clear sky conditions (wind less than 10knots) started to become increasingly worse since 1.8.3 and the loop seems to keep going with 1.9.5 now. With 1.7.12 and 1.7.14 we didnāt have those issue with water, it was so crispy, non gridded, and with perfect reflections both from sunlight and environment. Iāll share a screenshot shortly.
8 Likes
we guys should open a ticket at zendesk to get an absolute rollback for the downgraded water with each āupdateā.
3 Likes
I think it looks great too.
2 Likes
Oh well, zensedesk doesnāt matter. You will be hard pressed to reverse any downgrades. See : Ubisoft.
1 Like
The sight and appearance of the water deteriorated further. Very ugly. The simulator is worse with each update. In my opinion, the quality deterioration is intentional. I donāt have a chase mania ā¦ Whatever you can say, letās see for myself where the simulator has gone since its release ā¦
1 Like
Have to agree: the water looks a lot worse than in the initial release versionā¦ When I fly very low I can see those little waves and the light playing on the water but even at a few 1000 ft already the water becomes a blueish nothing with a vague, odd looking, repetitive basic wave effect that looks nothing like how it was. Totally spoils the fun of flying over water. Please gives us back the water as it was!!!
12 Likes
Here is your opportunity to vote on the subject of water image quality.
5 Likes
I actually thought there was a slight improvement in the last update, at least in the 6-10kt range - seemed to have a bit of texture to it.
1 Like
please dudes, who think water downgraded since patch 1.9.3 and continued with 1.9.5 vote here
So hereās a screenshot I have from right after launch (this was made on August 20th) - sorry for the clutter, this was real weather during one of the stormsā¦)
I recreated this as close as I could today with 1.9.5 ā¦ same weather conditions (as near as I could), same location, same time and date as the original (I also learned how to scale the interface 
) :
The main difference I see is that the waves have been scaled down; and this of course also affects the reflections. There do seem to have been some other changes too - the new image has more haziness and the islands are less distinct. Believe me, I played around with the cloud layers for a long time to get as close to the earlier image as I could.
In these conditions, I have to say I think the water effects have been improved since launch.
The problem in my opinion is how water surface texture is driven by wind. So I did some experimenting. Hereās the sea from 1000 ft altitude with 10kts wind:
Anything less than this and we start to see the water replaced by some odd dimply surface thingyā¦
Problem being that any large body of water is rarely this calm, even in dead calm conditions. Currents and tides keep any water in motion. For comparison, hereās a photo we took off the East UK coast. This was at 1500ft altitude with about 035 /10kt wind as far as I can remember and a pretty nice fair weather flying day, reasonably close to the conditions simulated above.
Pretty flat with just a hint of waves discernible - but no dimples. Generally, I think MSFS does a really good job of depicting the sea (at least) except where the conditions are very calm. Those huge ādimplesā that are supposed to simulate gentle sea swells I guess, just donāt look like anything real.
Go to the other extreme and you can still find some monstrous wavesā¦ out with a 152 in 150kt winds way low down to take a look. Actually ended up ditching at 100kts backwards!
I decided to take a look at the other extreme. hereās a modest size pond from about 1000agl - first actual photo and then the same location in MSFS. This was the same flight as the coastal shot earlier and again, I replicated the conditions as near as I could remember them:
With a slight wind, there are again ripples on the surface and therefore no discernible reflection. In real life, a small body of water like under these conditions appears glass-smooth and as can be seen, reflects the trees clearly. Again, small bodies of water look better with the scaled down waves ā¦ less like weāre flying over a 1/100scale model of the world.
Managing to accurately depict water surfaces on bodies of water from small ponds to the ocean under all kinds of weather is asking the impossible. Overall I think what we have in MSFS is astounding. The fact that I can actually go and find a pond in the sim that we photographed from a Piper Archer 20 years ago really tells you something. Iād like to see the calm weather ādimplesā changed, but otherwise I donāt think that the water effects are broadly worse than at release. I suspect itās just a case of balancing the scaling.
And an interesting irony ā¦ why was I flying around England taking pictures of ponds? Wasnāt the main reason for the flight, but I had asked my passenger to take some shots of ponds and rivers to post on a FS98 forum discussion about water color & texture ā¦ making the point that all water bodies are not just blue surfaces. How far weāve come.
27 Likes
Thanks for taking the time for the screenshots!
I know something about the Nvidia Wave system, I clearly see that the mesh resolution was scaled down. That might directly impact on how the texture is rendered. You can see the scaled down mesh of the wave in the cessna shot with that big wave behind. Look at the top right corner, you can see the straight lines of the mesh, low res, low poly (in terms of waves simulation of course). So yeah, even with smaller waves you can see how they flatten when they collide each other, that behavior with a higher res mesh wouldnāt happen or at least would be less noticeable.
3 Likes
If you have the time, you can download the Nvidia wave SDK and experiment with the waves. They included a project you can execute and experiment with all the different parameters. If I recall it correctly you need Visual Studio, you double click the .sln file and hit project/compile.
THen Execute the thing and the 3d renderer lets you play with the parameters.