I flew from Vegas to Sedona last night with west Grand canyon in between with a Kodiak almost wincing as I got close waiting for blackout, but was aces, not even a fps drop(other than normal scenery drop-in chugs) and vnav worked fine. Two weeks ago guaranteed black screens.
Other staple 3rd party add ons have caused problems, but I have methodically uninstalled reinstalled them when I catch an issue. Only a couple I had to shelve for now. My Washington DC and KDCA have not been playing nice, as that includes 5 or so other airports in view at once and ads in a couple moving trains, all while KIAD is in view as well. I have to go back there with the SR22 or something else heavy in avionics and weed it out.
It’s a lot to get right with MS moving the goalposts, so having to uninstall/reinstall a few add-ons if not lose a couple temporarily is not a crisis. Although if Asobo enhanced airports cause an issue that’s another story.
I can see some improvement. Just a little. Before, when the avionics blacked out, I can wait for a CTD to happen seconds or minutes later. Now, I only get the black screens. Haven’t encountered a CTD for quite some time.
It’s not how it supposed to be, obviously. And for me personally, it’s still not good enough. Those black screens are a gigantic immersion killer, every time you go through all the procedures before landing, setting all things right then bam black screens
I can tell you for sure if you see any chugging/FPS drops on the apron before you take off, you will black screen for sure. It does this occasionally on first load of avionics, even on the runway. If you let it load up the systems and then restart(the flight), it usually will be fine for the flight. Will save you a ton of time just to control-e and check for lag/stutters, then restart which takes 20 seconds and then set up your flight plan adjustments/cold starts. Some initialization issue somewhere. Didn’t do this in 13, started in the beta along the way.
Most other black screen issues are 3rd party load-in crashes, particularly outside view. Many are fixed with uninstall/reinstall of the 3rd party. Some areas I have multiple things running so it takes quite a bit of time and testing to see which is the actual one or combination that triggers it/needs a developer update. And testing problem areas isn’t my particular favorite way to use spare time.
Birds and global shipping did it for me(the areas/not the core models) and re-installations stopped it. I have a few other areas for sure but have not had time to load/test each to call them out. Some of the newer PG areas in Europe also seem particularly problematic, even if the PG is relatively basic and ugly(outside the metropolitan areas), even without 3rd party. Again, have to eliminate everything then load it all in until you find the crash, then try to single/combo it to figure out what it really is.
+1 here. CTDs only now seem to happen with genuinely poorly optimised scenery. If I do get black screens, they most often pop back either while taxiing or shortly after take-off.
Not good enough, I agree, but every step in the right direction should be lauded. The issue I have is that, whenever stability is improved, general performance (i.e. fps) seems to suffer. It appears that, currently, us Xbox users can only have one or the other.
I pin all my hopes on FS2024. I really can’t see a great deal changing till its release.
Like I said 20 times, if you start a flight and find frame degradation/stuttering RIGHT AWAY, then immediately restart the flight, it will most likely be perfectly smooth. Turn on the avionics and go to outside view and swoop around the aircraft and see if it’s got stutters. It’s some initialization issue with any ‘glass’ instrument, including the 530. Takes 20 seconds to restart it and get rid of it before you loose all your waypoints and flight plan.
I’ve had my series X for 3 weeks now and have not had one black screen or CTD. Both SU 13 and 14. I don’t use add-on scenery, only one 3rd party ac (PMDG 736) and marketplace liveries for the A320neo and only use real live traffic. Haven’t had one single problem. Runs smooth as butter. VRR on. Can I BE more happy?
I really do believe things are starting to look up for Xboxers. We have FS2024 around the corner, and many devs are beginning to take the time to properly optimise their products for console. Yes, the memory issue remains but I’ve seen ample proof lately that it can be mitigated using new, more efficient development techniques.
For anyone wanting to see how large and/or very highly detailed airports can run flawlessly on Xbox, check out FSimStudios’ CYWG, Ini’s EGHI, Flightbeam’s KMSP and MK’s brand new LEMG.
I know we’d said this before, but I think it’s definitely down to the optimisation/file sizes part now from third party add-ons.
The recent ones which work flawlessly all have a small file size on common. CYWG and KMSP sizes are tiny for the size of airports. This is what made me chance MK-Studio’s LEMG when it released yesterday. Less than 1GB on file and I think the download package was around 250MB. Really small compared to some older add-one which cause issues. I’ve spent a fair while since LEMG came out yesterday deliberately trying to get it to black screen or CTD, and it still hasn’t and peforms brilliantly.
You mentioned EGHI, I’ll add on Jetstream’s LFRS as another with a really small file size for what it is and peforms flawlessly.
I’m just hoping all newly developed sceneries for 2020/2024 follow this pattern - we might see every airport from there on in working without issue…
Had very good luck lately since my Series X got repaired in the PMDG 73 and the FSR500. The lite liveries in yesterday’s update for the FSR seem to be preforming well, had a 3 hour flight departing and arriving into 3rd party airports, live weather, and live traffic.
Can anyone recommend a decent/well modeled 3rd party helicopter that doesn’t CTD all the time or black screen?
There is a Gamepass that covers PC specifically and Gamepass Ultimate covers both platforms.
Whether or not you suffer issues on Xbox is largely down to what scenery products you buy (more so in my experience than the aircraft types you acquire). I’m very selective but if I do come across a poorly optimised airport I ensure I remain in cockpit view for the duration of my stay on the deck (and in the immediate aerial vicinity). That said, I tend to avoid poorly optimised scenery, unless it’s an airport I really want.
It’s not an ideal situation but the Xbox experience is not only manageable, but fun too. Ruining your own experience because of what is actually some form of entitlement (albeit entirely justified entitlement) is pointless when one can demonstrably enjoy hassle-free simming if one really wants to.
My point is, the sim is what it is, and it won’t change (at least not till FS2024 next year). We can all walk away at any point if we feel sufficiently dissatisfied. For me, a PC is too complex a machine for my liking, and I currently enjoy the sim and its simplicity on console enormously. Perhaps I shall reconsider if FS2024 doesn’t deliver as promised but, for now, I shan’t be making the switch. If I spend 6x as much on a top PC, I expect at least 4x the experience. That’s just not feasible and so I’ve no way of justifying the outlay.
Mine’s up to about 315GB if that’s any indication of the add-ons. I’ve found all of my problems are either from some scenery that hasn’t played well with update(yet), but it’s been only a handful of airports/updates that have had to be disabled for now. More than a few were fixed with an uninstall/reinstall of the add-on. I also have concentrated areas where I fly, where I have tons of scenery updates and in other places none, so I can check some areas I never fly in to see if it’s me or the scenery.
**The main one remains the initialization bug, where I now start every first flight the same. Load on the apron, hit control-e, once everything is booted up(same for a runway start), RESTART the flight and THEN start the procedures. I wonder if PC is doing this too.
I won’t dare load a flight plan and go through a cold start without doing that now, waste 20 minutes and then it chugs away on the taxiway-that flight is now a time bomb for CTD/black screen no matter what scenery you have(or not). You see it hang/chug/slow pan before you take off, that flight is going to suck.
Something is wrong there initializing the first flight. After that, usually it’s fine for multiple aircraft/flights in the session(unless you hit bad scenery).
Part of the problem I think has been Asobo buck-passing. Acceptable, given the complexity and ambiguity of the issues, however I feel they should be giving us a little more info — unless of course they don’t know themselves (which I’m beginning to suspect). Seems to me that Asobo weren’t really aware of how popular and ‘pimped’ their product would ultimately become — again understandable since it’s their first go at MSFS. Hopefully lessons have been learned and while I don’t expect FS2024 to be bug-free, I do expect it to be better optimised for Xbox.
I have plenty of time on my hands and have therefore managed to test some of Asobo’s theories. In my experience, it doesn’t matter how many add-ons you have installed, unless of course there are several clogging up a very small area within the sim (e.g. London, NYC or Seattle). Airports that I consider poorly optimised don’t work well irrespective of how many World Updates and third-party add-ons I do or don’t have installed. Similarly, airports that function well do so under the same circumstances. I’m by no means a tech wizard but I do understand enough to know that the number of add-ons is of little consequence when your system isn’t rendering them all concurrently. Out of sight is out of mind, basically — stress can only be exerted upon your hardware when the sheer volume of what’s to be processed demands it.
This whole notion of having ‘too many add-ons’ is just a deflection tactic employed by Microsoft, however I do believe Asobo are genuinely looking into the Xbox black screen/CTD issues behind the scenes. I am normally pretty empathetic when it comes to Asobo as it can’t be easy having the coffers at Microsoft breathing down your neck.
In my non-expert opinion, I imagine that the sim has basically outgrown its current coding, the sole resolution being to build an entirely new product (but still using FS2020 as a basis).
By default the sim works pretty well I must admit. The problems given by the people here and community is definitely related to scenery addons. Some are too heavy. Uninstalling and reinstall those addons doesn’t change anything. For example the sceneries from NZA simulations will give you a 100% black screen (NZCH, NZWN for example). These are not wel optimised or just too heavy… EHAM from flytampa also does not work wel. Im still testing KLAX and EGLL from inibuilds and so far these are still good.
Solution is simple. Wait for 3rd party developer to optimise the scenery and in meantime don’t go near there (or uninstall add-on). Flying default never gives me a black screen or CTD.
Specs; Im on Xbox Series X. Fly without AI and ATC but with live weather. Most of the time I use the PDMG 737.
Maybe we should start a forum topic with a list of scenery that triggers the black screens ?
I created just such a topic some months ago, although admittedly it’s a lot of reading if you just want to know which airports are good and which aren’t. Perhaps I should do a ‘top ten’ or something? In fact, that’s a good idea…
Would be good to have a safe list for add-ons that we know work well.
I’ve had no issue with airplanes.
Only scenery
And airport’s.
And also some world updates cause an issue.
I think it’s about reaching an acceptable balance for the user and what combinations work for them.
I was hoping folks with issues would post here so we could help them. Seems the ones with biggest issues have gone over to PC. Maybe that was always their goal.
As others said that brings it’s own issues. It’s not all rainbows and butterflies over that side. And cost it at least x3, x4,.to x5 timea higher.
