Yep, since the XBOX version of the sim released about a year ago the sequence has been: Perfectly smooth and awesome, to a little glitchy after updates but fixable, to Sim Updates 8 and/or 9 completely trashed the sim, to a “hotfix” that didn’t fix anything, to World Update 9 put the final nail in the coffin by making it impossible to even start the sim.
But don’t look back Microsoft/Asobo, just keep driving full speed toward that cliff to keep the marketing department happy.
Well, the cat is dead. 
I purchased a MSI Aegis RS gaming PC with an i7-12700K and RTX 3070 Ti and 16GB of DDR5. It runs MSFS very well indeed at my monitor’s native 1440p resolution, 100% scaling, global setting of “Ultra” and no additional adjustments, safe BIOS settings (no overclocking needed or registry hacks which were goals).
Among other things, my justification for going back to a PC included being able to have access to the planes (payware as well as freeware), repaints and other community offerings, being able to have “guns” visible on the historic aircraft that had them (dumb Marketplace policy) and being able to load FSX again for planes that haven’t made it to MSFS like the A2A offerings which are still pretty great.
For comparison to the Series X, it does look a little nicer on the PC with Ultra. I think the reasons include native scale rendering, further draw distances and a bit better anti-aliasing. Even the Series S looks great and the Series X has the further draw distances and details so that alone doesn’t justify what worked out to be a 4 fold cost (on sale even) over the Series X.
It runs smoother with this PC (which I’m also pushing harder than the Series X) including around airports but it DOES have the occasional brief stutter. I’m convinced these are due to either a large number of simultaneous AI spawns or delays in fetching data from the servers. So, another goal was to feel like I got an upgrade in terms of visual quality and performance and I believe I’ve succeeded.
In terms of the original subject line… the Series X absolutely can run MSFS well but it would do that much better if MS/Asobo added the ability to run at native 1440p and offer a few choices regarding OLOD and TLOD to dial in that perfect experience. The Series X is not capable of the default PC “Ultra” settings but it’s darn close. Now that I’ve seen both I see how people say the X sits between the PC “High” and “Ultra” settings. On the PC, “High” looks pretty darn good too and would be probably perfect for a number of less expensive PC options out there. If the Series X dialed the settings back to just “High” (or gave the end user the option) and allowed the choice of native 1080p and 1440p then I suspect it would meet most people’s needs.
If you have a Series X and are wondering about switching to a PC, I’d say proceed with caution. If your only reason is because of a little more stutters over the Series S then I’d say just wait for MS to continue to optimize it further. The expense to get to the level that will exceed the Series X on a PC hardware is huge. If you have other games or other flight simming reasons then the switch might be justifiable.
If you’re just getting into MSFS and don’t have a console yet then I’d say buy a Series S for now. It DOES run the sim more smoothly but at the expense of smaller drawing distance and slightly lower resolution ~ but don’t let that deter you because it does look great, will run all of the aircraft and scenery available through the Marketplace and the entry price can’t be beat.
One other surprise, and tip for Xbox users, is even on “Ultra” the default setting for AI traffic (all types except Fauna) is 50%! The Xbox defaults to 100% for those if I remember correctly. AI traffic can cause stutters so dial your settings back to 50% and it should help a little. It’s one of the few things we CAN tune on the Xbox.
I’m not a betting man typically, but I’ll bet Top Gun DLC rolls out before anything is properly patched
Oh, I’d put a big bet on that one in a heartbeat.
Complete waste of time IMO, just like the Reno DLC.
Yep, it’s only being produced for the marketing “synergy” with the film. What sense does it make to produce air combat-based DLC for a simulator that doesn’t simulate weapons of any kind?
I’ve been to the Reno air races, and they’re absolutely awesome in real life. But as a video game they’re as boring as can be, and I knew they probably would be before the Reno DLC was released. It just doesn’t translate well. As a spectator, the thrill is in watching the speed and hearing those engines (especially the Merlins of the P-51s, and Rare Bear’s awesome radial engine and huge prop that create a deep note that you feel more than hear). And the thrill of being in the cockpit is a combination of the risk and the sensations of making tight turns at high Gs at low level, and then trying to race your competition on top of all that.
A video game just can’t capture all of that.
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For me I wouldn’t say since release each update has gradually made things worse, I found the early SU updates not as great and for me SU7/8 were better. SU9 on the other hand!!
What I meant about the pre-SU 8 updates was just that after some of them I would experience stuttering and pretty bad pop-in, but simply deleting and rebuilding the rolling cache would fix it. For me and many others, though, we don’t even have access to the rolling cache settings any more since SU 8 (SU 9 for some others). So that fix is no longer available to us.
And of course the whole midnight buffet of new and horrendous performance and crashing problems that have been mentioned endlessly started for some, like me, with SU 8, and for others with SU 9. For me SU 9 just made the problems from SU 8 even worse, and added in new ones, like no antialiasing and the worst pop-in of trees and buildings that I’ve ever seen.
The last stable version that I’ve experienced was SU 7. The only true problem that I recall with the sim at the SU 7 stage of development was what everyone called “popcorn clouds” during clear weather. In hindsight, that was a ridiculously trivial problem compared to the disaster they have unleashed with the updates since then (and of course, the one and only thing they did fix with SU 8 was the popcorn clouds - man, I’d take those popcorn clouds back in a heartbeat in exchange for the carnage since).
My issue with SU7 was the “Next Pilot Position” freeze bug.
On day one of SU7’s release, I spent 7 hours trying to figure out why my sim kept crashing as I was taxiing. It was incredibly aggravating.
The default Xbox controller LB+D-pad Up was what I used to see up and over the dash for taxiing. When you’d use that default control setting it would crash the sim.
I was incensed that a crash bug was tied to a default key mapping for the Xbox. How that was allowed to get past testing just floored me. Worse, is when it was brought to the attention of MS/Asobo, it didn’t even get a mention in the Known Issues list.
This sort of nonsense just seems par for the course, now.
Sigh.
Their whole QA process needs a drastic, and immediate overhaul, for me. It’s biblically awful.
Will this ‘Optimization’ entail even more degradation of overall visual quality ?
Since the sim update is on it, I can no longer play FS2020 on Xbox Series X. From the beginning it starts to jerk and during the game it crashes and the game starts again. It’s just a shame that Microsoft and Asobo make every update even worse. I don’t feel like playing anymore. No matter what I set, the same thing always happens.
I must be lucky to a certain extent since i have very little to set (no addons, scenery etc) so the CTD are not my main issue, though what’s completely pervade the whole experience are stutters and freezes
I’m kinda looking forward to Aircraft carriers that function and move. It’s not for everyone but right up my alley.
Hey that’s fair enough, each to their own mate. I personally think they’d be better off dealing with the backlash from SU9.
I think this is a really sound, excellent assessment of the situation speaking as an ex PC user who moved to Xbox because the cost of a high end gaming PC is out of my reach. The Xbox performance exceeds my 4yr old PC by a surprising margin.
But we do need Asobo to up their testing regime for the Xbox platforms -it’s clearly not good enough as it stands.
On that we can all agree, I would accept it if they did postpone it but realistically doubtful.
I don’t think the DLC they offer is going to harm anything to the sim, so I’ll take it. And it had been finished long ago anyways (was suppose to release last year)so no extra time was spent on creating it.
Of course without a patch it’s all meaningless to me since I can’t get past the splash screen. So the whole Top Gun could be a mute point anyways
Wow thanks for doing that comparison. How would you say the “pop In” compares between XSX and PC? When at an airport, random pop-in can occur very close the the aircraft on XSX.
That’s weird, because I use that button combo all the time to change the view position and I never had any problem with it, during SU 7 or at any other time. I said weird, because I guess for the first time I’m on the other side of the “Mine works fine, don’t know what your problem is” fence.
The wide variation in experience on the XBOX is crazy, because there shouldn’t be any significant differences from one machine to the next.