**** Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Thread ****

Associate
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London Town
Am embarrassed to admit that on Tuesday I'd turned off live traffic, not AI traffic. Sorted that last night and flew for three hours with no stability issues at all.

It's still MS and Asobo's fault though. The time it took to download meant I'd had a couple of beers and half a bottle of wine before getting started with SU5.
 
Soldato
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Yancashire
Only just got around to trying update 5 as I had to completely uninstall and reinstall the game (my game will no longer update anymore, see my earlier post)

I'm only really interested in VR for this game now, and I'm running a pretty top end rig - 11700, 3090, 32GB fast DDR4, game on an NVME drive, Reverb G2 headset.

My initial findings for sim update 5 and VR SPECIFICALLY

Absolutely no difference at all, and potentially worse. What the actual ****?!

I'm flying the test route I always do from my local airfield, exact same VR settings as before which is 100% render scale in OpenXR, 70% render scale in game, then a mix of high and medium settings, draw distance and objects at 100.

With motion re-projection on
(NOTE: I use the "display frame timing overlay" option in open XR to display frame rate and what reprojection ratio is being used - eg 2/4, 3/4 etc

- Still bounces around between 22.5fps and 30fps with reprojection ratio of 2/4 or 3/4. As such it's a horrible experience, very warpy, and has judder as it moves between 22.5 and 30fps. I was really really hoping the optimisations of update 5 would allow for a constant 30fps with motion repro on. With my PC specs I'm amazed it still bounces around between 22.5fps and 30fps.

With motion re-projection off
(NOTE: I run with a 30fps lock on in Afterburner when using motion repro off, and set Virtual reality render ahead frames to 4 in the Nvidia control panel. Extensive testing I did before showed this was optimal for smoothness)

- With the same settings in game as above and OpenXR render scale etc. I still get a nice locked 30fps at all times. Half of the time it's nice and smooth with no stutter or judder, however it will randomly then start to judder for a while, then go back to being smooth in exactly the same way as it did before sim update 5.


Basically I'm seeing no improvement in VR, at all, with this update, and if anything it's actually worse with motion repro on than it was before.

(2D was and still is fine, but I'm not really interested in that when I've got a Reverb G2)

Not impressed at all. And it locks up/crashes which it never did before.
 
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Soldato
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15,763
Have to say my initial tests in VR weren't very different either, but I didn't mess around with settings much as it was too warm to be sitting with a headset on :p

2D performance though, huge difference.
 
Soldato
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For me VR was a substantial improvement in smoothness - only had one hitch so far where previously I'd get major prolonged hitches that fully freeze the sim every maybe 10-15 minutes or so on average... frame timing seems much more consistent and I'm getting less blur looking out the side of the aircraft at low level or close to objects, even at the same locked fps. I need more time to play with it to see if I can raise some settings and stay at 30 or lower others and shoot for the next goalpost of 45fps. but so far before I can objectively comment but I've been happy with the changes.

I have only personally seen the "culling pop in" issue if I move my head very rapidly - If I move my head at a normal pace it doesn't seem at all apparent. I wonder if the aggressive culling may be setting groundwork for direct storage later. No need to keep the items in memory then perhaps. I also haven't had a single CTD yet for what it's worth.

EDIT - if you are crashing lots perhaps try this I found in the main forums:

Under
“General Options”
“Traffic”

“Aviation Traffic”
Turn Off “Aircraft Traffic Type”
Turn Off “Show Traffic Nameplates”

“AI and Multiplayer Traffic Detail”
Turn Off “Use GenericPlanes Models(AI Traffic)”
Turn Off “Use Generic Plane models(Multipalayer)”

Had been shutting down after 6 to 8 minutes of starting a flight for 2 days.

Has been running for 40 minutes without CDT so far. 1 1/2 hrs now out and around EGLC maxed out Utra 4K 2D 45 to 50FPS, beautiful detail.

3+ Hours now around London and NYC. Consistent FPS 45 to 50 at 1,000ft in MSFS 172 from JFK to Newark and down Central Park. I say this was MY fix. Now to try my G2.

Others may or may not experience a similar result.
 
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Associate
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27 Jan 2007
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Location
London Town
Also really happy with it in VR now. Haven't checked any numbers but framerate (or smoothness at least) is substantially improved. Increased the render scaling from 80 to 100 in the graphics options (still at 70% in OXR) so have a decent bump in IQ as well.

Haven't noticed any pop-in when moving my head. Only thing like that I've seen is the absurdly near draw-distance for runway markers and stuff when taxiing.

I need to check out the view from airliner cruise altitude where people are complaining the ground looks rubbish. No issues from 10,000' over Yorkshire last night though.
 
Associate
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5 Mar 2009
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300
Sorry to sound so negative but this update has been an utter shambles. The sim is almost a year old and people have paid good money (way more than usual MSRP) for something that basically doesn’t have the functionality as advertised. It’s unacceptable to make these updates mandatory with CTDs. At least give the paying consumer the chance to rollback to the previous version.

I understand a hotfix is incoming and I sincerely hope this addresses a lot of the issues people are having.
 
Soldato
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I did a clean install after the May update, problem is though they take so incredibly long and it’s literally a 3 monthly thing!!
 
Soldato
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Hot fix 30th July 1500 UTC (followed by 5hrs to download 20mb no doubt lol)

Our team has been collecting your feedback, first impressions, and more and we would like to share that a hotfix will be live tomorrow, July 30th, at 8 am PT (1500 UTC) to download on both PC and Xbox Series X|S consoles. Here are the release notes:

Stability/performance
  • Fixed various crashes in game and on the world map
  • Fixed crashes related to the offline AI traffic
  • Fixed minor memory leaks
Input
  • The title should no longer freeze for a very long time when connecting / disconnecting peripherals
Navigation
  • Fixed broken flight plan for Garmin devices when adding an enroute waypoint that was inserted as a destination
  • Fixed flightplanner not resetting when going from one activity to another
  • Fixed flightplan from flight assistant not displaying on certain planes when VFR map is open after the destination is set
  • Fixed freezes happening when using the flight assistant when setting a new destination
UI
  • VR options should no longer be duplicated in the Option menu
  • Marketplace “Get and download” and “Download” buttons will now function as expected on the Content Page
  • User unable to interact with UI elements with the in game cursor for free flight in some cases
Planes
  • Improvements of pitot static system to fix altimeter bugs, improve accuracy and correctly simulate temperature impact
  • Fixed AutoBrakes Button Behavior on the Airbus A320Neo
Activity / Gameplay
  • The correct runway is now taken into account for the Landing challenge at Nice
  • Pilots are now displayed in external view at the Isafjordur Landing challenge
  • Title will no longer become unresponsive after using Fuel Supply and using a fuel or payload as a numerical value via ATC Ground Services
  • Some achievements will no longer be awarded in error for certain landing scenarios
Weather
  • Fixed big temperature spikes at high altitudes
SDK
  • Added new airspace to nearest facility JS API
  • Fixed crashes on WASM modules for older CPUs
We are actively working on making this sim the best experience possible, and look forward to seeing videos, comments, and more from you about this release.


Quite a long list of fixes… one assumes they can’t realistically have done this in the couple of days since the sim launched. Begs the question why they launched with it broken if so.
 
Caporegime
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You’re right. I’ll retract the ‘utter’ and just call it a shambles then.
If a shambles of an update to you is something that delivers a (universally accepted to be) significant performance improvement, then you must be a hard man to please.

I'd add that I've had no crashes or installation issues and it downloaded quite quickly.

Perhaps I was lucky.
 
Associate
Joined
5 Mar 2009
Posts
300
If a shambles of an update to you is something that delivers a (universally accepted to be) significant performance improvement, then you must be a hard man to please.

I'd add that I've had no crashes or installation issues and it downloaded quite quickly.

Perhaps I was lucky.

Perhaps you have been. It’s certainly not universally accepted as you put it. So much so there is now a hotfix coming. Remember better performance is no just about better FPS it’s the bigger picture. I admire Asobo for releasing the hotfix as quickly as they are though. They’ve clearly been working hard behind the scenes to fix some of the issues ASAP.
 
Man of Honour
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Edinburgh
I have to admit aside from a couple of crashes as I was using an old version of the A32X mod the new update has been pretty stable for me, it was horrendous the first day, seemed any flight near London was just a no-go although that could have had something to do with the sheer volume of people flying around there.
 
Soldato
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Did some more flying last night, definite performance improvement in VR. Outside of built up areas the CPU frametime is below 10ms which I've never seen before in MSFS.

Dropping my render resolution on the G2 down to 75% resulted in 48-50fps for the most part, making it possible to largely lock to 45fps rather than 30fps... even in the TBM with the glass displays (with refresh set to high) it was maintaining over 45fps. Before when I tried to hit 45 I had to come significantly lower (I believe around 50-60%) and still couldn't do it as the CPU would get in the way of maintaining the 45fps minimum.

So I now have the option of VR at 30fps at 100% with a little headroom (maintains around 35fps typically with my settings), or 45fps at 75%. I got none of the sim pausing hitches and frametime spikes that plagued me on earlier versions and much better smoothness even at 30fps with significantly less stuttering and blurring on close by objects when looking out the side.

Worth mentioning this is using the Steam OXR runtime which traditionally performs worse onthe G2 than the windows one, so potentially there's even more room there if using the native runtime. Alas I can't apply motion compensation without using steam's version so not an option for me.

Fingers crossed the hotfix sorts out most of the issues others are having.
 
Soldato
Joined
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15,763
Have to say my initial tests in VR weren't very different either, but I didn't mess around with settings much as it was too warm to be sitting with a headset on :p

2D performance though, huge difference.

I take this back, I spent a little time tinkering yesterday and did a short flight in a Citation in the Rift S and got it running very nice....for my ageing 5820k and 2070. No reprojection artifacts, smooth panning.

Lots of general bugs though. Throttles in the citation weren't moving visually, abs whenever I exited the options screen throttle dropped to zero, had to nudge the throttle to get it back to previous setting.
 
Soldato
Joined
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Posts
3,518
Location
Yancashire
Did some more flying last night, definite performance improvement in VR. Outside of built up areas the CPU frametime is below 10ms which I've never seen before in MSFS.

Dropping my render resolution on the G2 down to 75% resulted in 48-50fps for the most part, making it possible to largely lock to 45fps rather than 30fps... even in the TBM with the glass displays (with refresh set to high) it was maintaining over 45fps. Before when I tried to hit 45 I had to come significantly lower (I believe around 50-60%) and still couldn't do it as the CPU would get in the way of maintaining the 45fps minimum.

So I now have the option of VR at 30fps at 100% with a little headroom (maintains around 35fps typically with my settings), or 45fps at 75%. I got none of the sim pausing hitches and frametime spikes that plagued me on earlier versions and much better smoothness even at 30fps with significantly less stuttering and blurring on close by objects when looking out the side.

Worth mentioning this is using the Steam OXR runtime which traditionally performs worse onthe G2 than the windows one, so potentially there's even more room there if using the native runtime. Alas I can't apply motion compensation without using steam's version so not an option for me.

Fingers crossed the hotfix sorts out most of the issues others are having.

Wondering why you say you can't use motion compensation/ reprojection without using Steam's version? I thought you had the Gamepass/ Windows version, Guess simple answer is you only have the Steam version of the game now.

Also, when you run without any motion compensation, do you use a 30fps/ 45fps lock cap (like Rivatuner or similar?)

I'm really disappointed this sim update 5 has done bugger all for my VR performance. Why can my system, an 11700, 3090, 32GB fast RAM, NVME, Reverb G2 not maintain 30fps with motion reprojection on in VR? This is with OpenXR render scale at 100%, in game render at 70%, high and medium settings.

It's no different to when I had my 5930k x99 system paired with my 3090. I thought a new gen intel CPU, RAM and motherboard would really help Flight Sim 2020 but it made no real difference, and now this fabled update 5 has made zero difference either for VR.

If I run with motion repro off, I can maintain 30fps locked (via Rivatuner) in VR easy with the above settings, but there is still random horrible judder just like before so it gets annoying.
 
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