Microsoft Flight Sim 2020

[dbzero]

8 minutes ago, CanadaOne said:

 

The "make an account and sign in every time you use it" is a huge deal breaker for me. I wouldn't pay $10 for it under those conditions.

 

And I understand that Steam take a cut, but because of Steam, and only because of Steam, have I bought games like Universe Sandbox. For certain products the exposure is well worth the cut. I'd say for 99% of the stuff I might buy for FS20 - if it's not on Steam, I'm not buying it. I'm not doing any more accounts and email verification and credit card info with any more companies. Sell it to me through Steam, or sell it to me without having to make an account of any kind, or no money for you.

 

Pardon my venting. 

To be fair the registration every time you start REX may be a problem on my end. I’ll see what my support ticket brings about.

[ZachariasX]

4 hours ago, dbzero said:

To be fair the registration every time you start REX may be a problem on my end. I’ll see what my support ticket brings about.

Yes, it likely is. In my case, I only had to enter it once. Still I also think that entering these details again like that is a no-go. Especially since they should even have that info when buying from them in the store.

 

5 hours ago, CanadaOne said:

But with the style of flying I do I find the weather as it is to be pretty good.

The difference is rather big. Especially when you see weather change while flying. It adds an important new dimension to your flight.

 

 

7 hours ago, dbzero said:

I didn't notice a big slowdown, but I was flying in pretty clear skies.

I had rather cloudy, yesterdays weather changed quickly from fair to rainy overcast and windy. At some point the plugin hammered my GPU to 10 FPS while the CPU started to idle, as it had little to do but waiting for the GPU. Just stoping and restarting the weather injection set things normal again. Bugs, bugs, bugs...

 

But as a whole it is a marked improvement. When you see weather changing like that, static weather gets really boring.

 

But in its current state, I can‘t recommend it unless you don‘t care for spending $21. It is clearly a beta product.

[SAS_Storebror]

11 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

The intel ME is hardware. It tells your chipset what is can do and it initializes your CPU. It is a microcontroller, an embedded CPU with it's own OS. It runs indepenedtly of your system and has full access on all your devices.

 

What you do, it you remove the program layer that can read the management engine that runs either way and find out if "something happened". It is indeed not required and you can do without knowing the status of your ME. If that is required to make a certain program run, then it is nothing short of technological bankruptcy of all parties involved. (Well, we never wanted the Intel ME anyway, as it is a great vetor to get a hold of your system in a way that you cannot prevent.)

 

I know what Intel ME is and I know what removing the software part of it means.

We can talk about this at a glass of beer of you like, but it's not the key point of the underlying issue here.

 

I've just tried to be helpful to others.

Intel ME is tagged as one key issue for XBox Networking connectivity issues.

If "Server Connectivity" says "Blocked" in XBox Networking, there's a very good chance that this is caused by the Intel Management Engine drivers.

Uninstalling them solved the issue for hundreds, if not thousands of users.

That's all.

It's possible, it's feasible, and 99.999% of affected users will not miss any bit of the Intel ME crap.

 

Mike

[ZachariasX]

1 hour ago, SAS_Storebror said:

Intel ME is tagged as one key issue for XBox Networking connectivity issues.

Actually, what got me responing to you is that I took is as plausible what you said. I just wanted to be clear to be on the same page and you just confirmed my fears. If this service is indeed flagged as problematic, then... Oh well.

[SAS_Storebror]

Oh yes we are on the same page, absolutely 

 

13 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

we never wanted the Intel ME anyway, as it is a great vetor to get a hold of your system in a way that you cannot prevent

 

53 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

If this service is indeed flagged as problematic, then... Oh well.

 

Essentially "if" returned "true" already.

Intel ME is one big PITA.

 

Mike

Edited September 28, 2020 by SAS_Storebror

[FlyingNutcase]

18 hours ago, Monostripezebra said:

Just a little fun exploring the world.. the Cub is just so basic simple fun to take everywhere.

 

 

 

Ha, pretty much my only ride. Your landing is like one I did by a farmhouse in the Italian Alps the other day. Loving the Cub. 

 

BTW your graphics seem pretty low but you have Traffic on. Is that by design? I've got a crappy system (i7 A90, GTX1060, 16GB slow RAM, old board) but am getting better graphics and made the decision to sacrifice all Traffic in favour of graphics/FPS. The satellite imagery will likely be a factor for that area though. Anyway, curious.

 

[CanadaOne]

5 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

The difference is rather big. Especially when you see weather change while flying. It adds an important new dimension to your flight.

 

 

I'll watch some more videos, but I'll probably stick with what is available through the in-game marketplace.

[dbzero]

10 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

Yes, it likely is. In my case, I only had to enter it once. Still I also think that entering these details again like that is a no-go. Especially since they should even have that info when buying from them in the store.

 

The difference is rather big. Especially when you see weather change while flying. It adds an important new dimension to your flight.

 

 

I had rather cloudy, yesterdays weather changed quickly from fair to rainy overcast and windy. At some point the plugin hammered my GPU to 10 FPS while the CPU started to idle, as it had little to do but waiting for the GPU. Just stoping and restarting the weather injection set things normal again. Bugs, bugs, bugs...

 

But as a whole it is a marked improvement. When you see weather changing like that, static weather gets really boring.

 

But in its current state, I can‘t recommend it unless you don‘t care for spending $21. It is clearly a beta product.

When REX works the difference is indeed huge. Setup a flight in Alaska yesterday. MS2020 setup was clear skies. REX pulled weather data and setup for rainy skies. The transition from the overcast rainy skies into a clear sunny sky once you got out of the rain clouds was breathtaking...

 

Unfortunately the bugs and getting REX to function makes for a hugely frustrating experience.

 

Going to take a few updates to get REX past the beta state.

[AndyJWest]

I've been reading some very mixed reviews of REX over at the MSFS forum. From what I've read, it uses METARs (where available) around airports, and then transitions back to stock MSFS 'live' weather abruptly as it leaves the area the METAR covers. Meaning that you can't see the change from stock to METAR until you get to it. And when the change comes, it changes to local METAR over your entire field of view.

 

Personally, I'd rather fly in weather I can see and avoid, than worry about matching real-world METAR reports. For route-planning over any significant distance, if the weather isn't changing rapidly, MSFS 'live' weather is usually fairly close, and if it is changing rapidly, METARs are going to be out of date by the time you get there anyway. 

 

And from what I've read about how REX works, it is liable to break with every MSFS patch, since it is injecting data directly, rather than through the API. 

 

Going to give this one a miss.

[ZachariasX]

34 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Meaning that you can't see the change from stock to METAR until you get to it.

Even similar METAR data does not look the same, in game vs. REX.

 

36 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Personally, I'd rather fly in weather I can see and avoid,

With REX, you can take your chances... see if you make it in time.

[AndyJWest]

There isn't any in-game METAR, as far as I'm aware. You can get ATIS from some airports, but it doesn't seem to be reliable.

[ZachariasX]

True, it uses a different, much lower resolution data set, supposedly by the company Metoblue. I thought they woudl use METAR, but I seem to be mistaken. I haven't flown much outside regions with good METAR coverage, so I can't really tell if REX' system is better then the default weather prediction system when it can't rely on lots of data.

[AndyJWest]

You cannot build a global three-dimensional weather model with METAR. Meteoblue may very well use METAR data as one as its inputs (I'd be surprised if it didn't), but it needs a whole lot of other data too.

 

And no, when I refer to METAR, I'm not discussing how MSFS, or REX, or any other bit of software models weather. I'm discussing real-world weather records, from actual airports. Reports that don't have a 'resolution'. Discussions about what sims do regarding weather would be a darned sight less confusing if people didn't misuse one term to mean something else entirely. 

[ZachariasX]

All I can say that the game with or without REX occasionally produces very different results. Anyone had a look out the window in the bay area?

 

REX:

 

"live"

 

"clear"

Spoiler

It differs from clear only in the shade of the sea.

 

But by looking at local webcams, the MS version seems more plausible, although it lacks the smoke haze.

 

There's still lots of playroom to make things really right.

[AndyJWest]

If it didn't produce different results, there wouldn't be much point in having it.

 

As for matching the real world, I live about 8 miles from Heathrow airport. The METARs there frequently say 'no cloud' when I can look out the window to see what looks like 75% cloud cover. Sure, this is England, and the weather lives up to its reputation for variability, but kept seeing the same pattern. Until I looked into it. Apparently 'NCL' in raw METAR data doesn't necessarily mean 'no cloud at all'. What it seems to mean is 'no cloud which will affect VFR flying in the permitted airspace' or something like that. If REX doesn't understand the distinction, it is liable to get things wrong.

 

MSFS weather has issues (beyond the not-working-at-all one which I've thankfully not had), and clearly needs further work. I don't however believe that third-party hack-jobs are a long-term fix. I've been investigating one particular example of weather weirdness myself, and depending on whether it gets fixed in the next patch (or via a server-side fix, which is probably more likely) may submit a proper bug report. With proper systematic data. Something that might get that specific issue dealt with. Issues aren't going to be dealt with via hack-jobs, or with the sort of random and thoroughly misleading 'its all broken for everyone' whining on the MSFS forum. I doubt the developers read much of that. In fact, I hope they don't...

[Enceladus828]

AndyJWest, I don't think you know what a METAR is, nor how it's decoded.

[Bremspropeller]

2 hours ago, ZachariasX said:

It differs from clear only in the shade of the sea.

 

50 shades of sea.

[Lusekofte]

On 9/27/2020 at 7:46 PM, SAS_Storebror said:

Open Windows Settings > Apps and then click on Apps & Futures. Look on R.H. Panel for Intel Management Engine Components and click on it. Now click on Uninstall.

This did the trick. 
Mike you are my angel, if you had been a little bit prettier I married you. 

I took a brake for a day and read this just now. 
now I got 31 planes
 

[messsucher]

4 minutes ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

This did the trick. 
Mike you are my angel, if you had been a little bit prettier I married you. 

I took a brake for a day and read this just now. 
now I got 31 planes
 

 

Oh..and I was so waiting when I can ask you do you want to sell your VR stuff for me ?

[Lusekofte]

10 minutes ago, messsucher said:

 

Oh..and I was so waiting when I can ask you do you want to sell your VR stuff for me ?

Well if my son does not use it you might get a cheap Rift S

[AndyJWest]

43 minutes ago, Enceladus said:

AndyJWest, I don't think you know what a METAR is, nor how it's decoded.

 

I know what mental illness is, and how to recognise it.

 

Get help. Or find some other victim for your obsessive-compulsive stalking behaviour.  I have been ignoring your relentless tagging of my month or years old comments (including marking post made long before you joined the forum) with 'confused' tags. I have ignored the fact that you check on my posts every day. I had to resort to blocking you from sending insulting PMs to me entirely, after I told you that I wasn't interested in reading thousand-word rants about your personal life. If you can't get the message privately, and instead insist in making facile and obnoxious comments about me in threads you are playing no part in, I see no reason why I shouldn't respond in public. I have no duty of care over random mentally-ill adults. You are clearly suffering from OCD at minimum and in my opinion, quite possibly more.

 

Get help.

[Lusekofte]

At last my old 172

[AndyJWest]

It's getting a bit blowy up here...

 

True airspeed 305 kt. Headwind 94 kt. Groundspeed 212 kt. I'm over central North Dakota, moseying around in the jetstream. From what I can find out via windy.com it ought to be windier still - 106 to 116 kt, depending on which weather model you look at. Since I took the screenshot, the wind has gone up to 99 kt. When it reaches 100 kt, I'm coming back down (probably in Nebraska, given the potential tailwind ?) and will try south of the Aleutians later, where the stream is supposed to be blowing up to 170 kt at 30,000 ft.

 

And bingo! Just hit 100 kt headwind. By my calculations, if I turn south, with a tailwind I'd be doing Mach 0.69. In a TBM. Except that it doesn't work like that, for obvious reasons...

 

102 kt, still rising. I wonder how slow I could get this thing to fly. Going backwards at 30,000 ft would be fun. ?

 

Edit: Yikes! Since it reached midnight here (i.e. 23:00 Zulu) the TBM has been  lurching around violently, with the wind going from about 250 degrees to 6, and then back again. I think the server may be getting confused about the time, or something. Seems to have settled now, so I'm going to take this thing up a couple more thousand feet and see if its any windier. The TBM is rated to 31,000 ft, and will go to about 34,000 before it starts griping about oxygen masks.

 

Edit 2: Despite my best efforts (or rather, those of the autopilot, which I'm sure isn't supposed to be used that way ?) Throttling back until the plane stopped telling me to lower the landing gear - I had full flaps down - and started to give stall warnings, I didn't quite succeed in flying backwards out of Saskatchewan. Groundspeed 4 kts. Though thinking about it, I don't know if the Garmin knows about negative groundspeeds. I'll have to find out over the Pacific.

Edited September 28, 2020 by AndyJWest

[messsucher]

1 hour ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

At last my old 172

 

Looks a bit dead instrument panel, not much illumination.

[Enceladus828]

2 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

I know what mental illness is, and how to recognize it.

You wanna know something?

In the past you have been such a bully to people: being mean, obtuse, overbearing, treating them like garbage, etc. And a considerable amount of these people are people that you've had very little, if any contact with, and all they've done is just post something, and at the most it isn't that antagonizing.

 

YOU are not a moderator. If it becomes a continual argument with someone, you should just move on, or let the moderators deal with it themselves or just Report it or PM a moderator.

 

You seem to have a mental illness too, that being anger issues and/or mental stress.

Maybe you shouldn't be coming to this forum after waking up from a bad night sleep, coming home from a long day at work, or immediately after the Pilot in your Pilot Career died and you were on Ironman mode.

 

Sorry.

 

There. I apologize.

Edited September 28, 2020 by Enceladus

[AndyJWest]

Jeez, some people have all the self-awareness of a dead haddock.

 

Get Help.

[ST_Catchov]

40 minutes ago, Enceladus said:

In the past you have been such a bully to people: being mean, obtuse, overbearing, treating them like garbage, etc. And a considerable amount of these people are people that you've had very little, if any contact with, and all they've done is just post something, and at the most it isn't that antagonizing.

 

This is true of a few people here. Thankfully not many.

 

When cornered they resort to insults. When asked for facts to back up their statements, they can't. When challenged, they fold. Or use deflection tactics or more personal insults. If all else fails, they resort to insults. Again. They never admit to being wrong, ever. Keyboard warrior syndrome. Is that a recognised mental illness? 

 

It is funny though. Grown men acting like that. Condescending. Some say just ignore them. But they should be brought to account sometimes. It gets them riled. 

 

It's a shame the moderators don't step in and stop people who "consistently post in an aggressive, provocative, or antagonistic manner." But they do have a tough job and they can't be everywhere and see everything. 

 

I expect to be roasted over these comments from some lol.   Insults, name-calling, hissy fits. Or maybe even the dreaded sad face. The works. Too bad. 

 

 

 

 

[messsucher]

4 minutes ago, ST_Catchov said:

 

This is true of a few people here. Thankfully not many.

 

When cornered they resort to insults. When asked for facts to back up their statements, they can't. When challenged, they fold. Or use deflection tactics or more personal insults. If all else fails, they resort to insults. Again. They never admit to being wrong, ever. Keyboard warrior syndrome. Is that a recognised mental illness? 

 

It is funny though. Grown men acting like that. Condescending. Some say just ignore them. But they should be brought to account sometimes. It gets them riled. 

 

It's a shame the moderators don't step in and stop people who "consistently post in an aggressive, provocative, or antagonistic manner." But they do have a tough job and they can't be everywhere and see everything. 

 

I expect to be roasted over these comments from some lol.   Insults, name-calling, hissy fits. Or maybe even the dreaded sad face. The works. Too bad. 

 

 

 

 

 

I agree on that they should get at times some serious shakedown ?

 

The sad face is one the best things actually. It exposes good those most hideous stalkers.

[ZachariasX]

10 hours ago, AndyJWest said:

Issues aren't going to be dealt with via hack-jobs, or with the sort of random and thoroughly misleading 'its all broken for everyone' whining on the MSFS forum. I doubt the developers read much of that. In fact, I hope they don't...

They say that? It is by far (and thousand times) better than anything we had in a game ever.

 

The only thing REX so far brings to the table is weather transitioning. The rest is optics.

 

The global weather simulation that FS2020 seems to draw its data from (anyone has some specific info on that?) has upsides and downsides. Upside is that in sparsely populated areas of the world (where only few weather stations are located) you get relatively good predictions, whereas in populated areas, the resolution is not very granular. In a complex topography, this produces systematically odd results. In such a way, Google weather is wrecking tourism in Glurns, as it resides in a compute bracket that depicts the weather of the other side of the mountains with lesser weather.

 

I‘m not a big fan of METAR as data for weather simulation not only due to the ambiguity you pointed out Andy, but due to it not being available in many places, there is another downside to it.

 

I don‘t really see REX as a „hack job“ (code quality is...) to fix something, but mainly a way to have an alternative where the global weather simulation is inaccurate and you can use what you deem best for your use case. In Switzerland, they could reduce grid size to 1.1 km for weather simulations, meaning that most valleys get their own prediction now. Climate barriers can be depicted like that. I don‘t think that such is the way to go for depicting the whole globe. But it would be nice can could draw from further, locally more accurate info and add that.

 

9 hours ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

This did the trick. 
Mike you are my angel, if you had been a little bit prettier I married you. 

I took a brake for a day and read this just now. 
now I got 31 planes

Wow. I guess i own @SAS_Storebror a Maß myself... But sweet Jesus...

[Lusekofte]

7 hours ago, messsucher said:

 

Looks a bit dead instrument panel, not much illumination.

172 got light in the glareshield, just had not yet turned it on, It is a great aircraft to fly. 

1 hour ago, ZachariasX said:

They say that? It is by far (and thousand times) better than anything we had in a game ever.

 

The only thing REX so far brings to the table is weather transitioning. The rest is optics.

I was not able to find a solution in MSFS forums, not that they are not there. But it is a lot of very dramatic wording , mostly of the one engine on the Airbus and ILS flying.

Personally I have encountered some issues mentioned, but these do not bother me, they are to be expected. I believe many years with DCS have learned me that it will be fixes, and the fixes will fix something and ruin other things. We have to live with it. 

About REX , they say it bring nothing new on visual, and the things it does, the game itself will have in a short while. I do not know , but I wait out and see. 

The problem I had, is in my mind a total different matter. Having to go into Terredo support and do a lot of things. They are going to loose a lot of customers if many are having these issues, It was only luck making me go in here before I uninstalled the game and never looked back. 

Who could ever think of intel software is blocking a TLC . Standard work as normal, but anything else comming from markedplace do not

[Guest deleted@50488]

Well, to address Zacharias quest above, it's from Meteoblue that ASOBO fetches the GRIB data containing the forecast models provided by that company.

 

As I pointed out at another post, that's fine for medium / higher levels, and in some occasions even lower levels, but observation data ( METAR / SPECI ) or even PIREP / AIREP are important feeds as well.

 

The problem is blending aloft model data with METAR... This blending is the secret to "success", and the latest patch has walked towards a more acceptable result for their weather engine.

 

Missed, a LOT, is the chance to properly represent prevailing visibility as reported in a METAR inside of MFS - it's not working at all in most of the occasions, and it's a must have i one want's to use the sim for IMC / IFR training ...

 

There  is no way to define visibility in the manual weather interface, but also there's not much information on the new "aerosol density" variable.

 

Let's hope they bring VISIBILITY SETTINGS as per METAR in the near future ...

Edited September 29, 2020 by jcomm-in-il2

[Lusekofte]

REading in FB and forum for MSFS I still find more info here than there. 

Conclution on how REX work over there is basically as I understan laught at, but here I can see use of it. 

I am a bit confused by it all. I use Google map inplugs , Saitek FIP inplug already, and bringing a new external program to start is to me little problematic, but I really like the inputs and opinion on the matter. 

Funny to find a topic in a cfs forum more informative than forum meant for it

[DBFlyguy]

Has the Japan update gone active for anyone yet, wondering if it got pushed back ?

[AndyJWest]

Update is out.

 

Patch notes here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/world-update-i-japan-patch-version-1-9-3-is-now-available/287453

 

6 hours ago, 216th_LuseKofte said:

Funny to find a topic in a cfs forum more informative than forum meant for it

 

The biggest problem right now on the MSFS forum is the signal-to-noise ratio. Too many people writing and not reading. Too many people unable to distinguish between 'I have a problem' and 'everyone has a problem'. Too many trolls. I suspect it will get better as things settle down, but it is never going to be the haven of peace and light we have here. ?

Edited September 29, 2020 by AndyJWest

[Lusekofte]

11 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Too many trolls

 

11 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

peace and light we have here

I agree, was in for a quick flight and got right into the new patch

Tested out Tokio and got my first CTD after a overstress on my plane

 

[ZachariasX]

15 minutes ago, AndyJWest said:

Update is out.

8.79 GB...

[dbzero]

Downloaded and installed new update. You also get free stuff in marketplace you can download once you install new update.

 

on other boards some say performance has imposed. We shall see...

[ZachariasX]

Also check the content manager for updates.

[CanadaOne]

Took a quick flight over Tokyo - one CTD - and the scenery, night and day, was stunning. Good FPS, 30+ at 1080 and pretty high settings. Just fantastic eye candy. 

[Lusekofte]

Mee to night flying over tokyo with full moon was awesome