Microsoft Flight Sim 2020

[AndyJWest]

Yet more Javan volcanoes.

 

I climb steeply from Abdulrachman Saleh airport as Semeru, Java's highest mountain, is less than 20 nm away.

 

Like many volcanoes, Semeru is an abode of the gods. For the Indonesian Hindu minority, no less a deity than Shiva himself, the great Destroyer, Benefactor, and Supreme Lord of Time.

As is fitting for the abode of a Destroyer and Benefactor, Semeru is, needless to say, an active volcano:

Quote

...the eruption at Semeru continued during 9-15 December [2020]. Incandescent material was ejected 50-100 m above the summit on 9 December and rock avalanches descended the Kobokan drainage 500 m on the SE flank. Explosions were recorded by the seismic network during 10-12 December but they could not be visually confirmed due to weather conditions. On 13 December a pyroclastic flow originating from the end of a lava flow traveled 1.5 km down the Kembar drainage (S flank), reaching a maximum distance of 3.5 km from the crater. The next day a pyroclastic flow traveled 3.5 km down the Kobokan drainage. Rock avalanches from the end of a lava flow traveled 300-1,500 m down both drainages during 14-15 December. The Alert Level remained at 2 (on a scale of 1-4), with a general exclusion zone of 1 km and extensions to 4 km in the SSE sector.

https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=263300

 

 

Leaving Semeru behind, I drop down to a more sensible 11,000 ft (Semeru is at 12,060 ft according to Wikipedia, though the height of an active volcano isn't really something you can remain certain of for long). Some time later, as I approach the eastern end of Java, and Bali becomes visible, Raung looms ahead, and I realise that I'll have to get higher again to see it properly.

 

Yup, too low to see inside. I circle round, climbing.

 

That's what a volcano should look like. Raung is relatively quiet at the moment, but back in 2015 was putting on quite a show, with red-hot lava filling the crater floor, ejected incandescent cinders lighting up the summit, and an ash plume extending for many miles. 

 

I cross the narrow strait to Bali, and drop down to Ngurah Rai International airport. Not a lot of room here, so they've extended it over the bay. 

 

Edited December 24, 2020 by AndyJWest

[dburne]

Oh my goodness this is taking a while. Took a break for a bit and come back to only around half of the install done so far.

[dburne]

Ok it is finally done installing.

But what the heck, looking in the directory where I installed the game, it is only showing a size of 1.4 GB?

Based on what I observed whilst it was installing it should be around 160 GB.

[ZachariasX]

3 minutes ago, dburne said:

Ok it is finally done installing.

But what the heck, looking in the directory where I installed the game, it is only showing a size of 1.4 GB?

Based on what I observed whilst it was installing it should be around 160 GB.

You have a folder where "Apps" go. You set the partition where they go in the windows system settings. Default is C:\ What that means, is that you have a (hidden and protected) C:\WindowsApps folder, and there is where the CRM garbage goes. You can set the default storage locations for that crap (things MS thinks you should be able to mess with on your rig) as well as default location for photos, music etc in the System settings under "Storage" IIRC. If you select D:\ for "Apps", it will create a D:\WindowsApps\ folder and the CRM BS goes there, however not the game itself.

 

If you want to relocate the CRM BS of an "App" you get from the store, you can do so that way as this folder is above your paygrade.

 

Now, where is FS20? When you installed the game, say from the store, then a first round of install goes in the location mentioned above. THEN it will ask you where it stores "files it would download". Even if it might mean that it asks for a temp directory to download and install from, it is actually where the real game goes to, along with all 130 GB of files! If you did not change the suggested folder, then you installed the sim in your default profile folder. Bummer.

[dburne]

3 minutes ago, ZachariasX said:

You have a folder where "Apps" go. You set the partition where they go in the windows system settings. Default is C:\ What that means, is that you have a (hidden and protected) C:\WindowsApps folder, and there is where the CRM garbage goes. You can set the default storage locations for that crap (things MS thinks you should be able to mess with on your rig) as well as default location for photos, music etc in the System settings under "Storage" IIRC. If you select D:\ for "Apps", it will create a D:\WindowsApps\ folder and the CRM BS goes there, however not the game itself.

 

If you want to relocate the CRM BS of an "App" you get from the store, you can do so that way as this folder is above your paygrade.

 

Now, where is FS20? When you installed the game, say from the store, then a first round of install goes in the location mentioned above. THEN it will ask you where it stores "files it would download". Even if it might mean that it asks for a temp directory to download and install from, it is actually where the real game goes to, along with all 130 GB of files! If you did not change the suggested folder, then you installed the sim in your default profile folder. Bummer.

 

 

Ah ok thanks, apparently that is what I did. I really wanted it on my E drive and thought that was what I had selected.

I will let it set there for a bit and decide if I want to uninstall and reinstall.

Edited December 24, 2020 by dburne

[Hoots]

3 hours ago, DD_Arthur said:

 

Do you get this in VR Luse?

 

I found the easiest way to get rid of it is to switch to the Oculus Open beta on the Oculus home page and let it update to V.24. Then restart everything and the frame is gone and performance is slightly better anyway.  In my opinion Steam VR really does take a big, very noticeable chunk of performance away from the whole experience compared to Open Composite.

However, I use this game for the eye candy opportunities and yes, VR does take all that away.  Fast and low-level in the MB339 I'm really struck by how similar the experience is to DCS in VR.  It kinda shows how well VR is implemented in IL2 in many ways but this is early days for Microsoft's VR.  The basic perfrmance is pretty solid and I'm sure they'll iron out lots of the lumops and bumps in following updates.

 

 

I found this as a way to disable it too..

 

1. Go to the Oculus Debug tool (Default folder should be C:\Program Files\Oculus\Support\oculus-diagnostics)
2. Open the Oculus Debug Tool
3. Turn the option “Use FOV Stencil” to Off

[ZachariasX]

26 minutes ago, dburne said:

I will let it set there for a bit and decide if I want to uninstall and reinstall.

The "community folder" will be there as well... We all know the size of addons. This makes the choice obvious.

 

Also you should check in the options menu of the simulator the "DATA" tab and set a location for the rolling cache and the manual cache. They can be set in any location of your liking and they simply create a pagefile of the size you specify as respective cache. A slight warning here, when doing any adjustments with that, it will write the whole d*mn file again, meaning if you select 100 GByte to cover basically the whole area you routinely fly over that can take a while. But it is just a one time pain. It took about 15 min to write that file set to 300 GByte on my striped SSD's.

 

Tha manual cache is an even worse disaster. If you enter that menu and you want to edit that file, you wait equally long. Selecting and downloading regions also lead to such wait times everytime you make updates there. Be wary of large manual cache files. Besides, you will only download there altitude data and photocenery details, the candy on top of what is always streamed. It helps if you have a slow or high latency connection. Else, there is relatively little benefit of that cache, considering the pain it can give you.

 

But bettter do it day after tomorrow, now it's Christmas eve (at least in these parts) and it's probably not the tome fighting an installer.

 

Merry Xmas to all of you!

[dburne]

Thanks for the info, Merry Christmas!!

[CanadaOne]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

Thanks for the info, Merry Christmas!!

 

Enjoy Christmas!

[dburne]

Well I guess since it is all installed as it is, and I am not hurting on drive space on any of my three 1TB drives, I will just leave the install as is rather than go through that whole process again. Thanks again for the tips.

Just a shame as I really wanted the whole thing on my E: drive. I swear I do not recall after I chose the initial drive from Steam it giving me an opportunity to choose any more drives. I would probably go through that whole process again and end up with the same result LOL.

Edited December 24, 2020 by dburne

[Lusekofte]

It let me choose, but due to intel security soft ware. I only got the standard install. I reinstalled it where it wanted to go in hope it would work. 

Just yesterday I managed to find it

[Trooper117]

23 minutes ago, dburne said:

Just a shame as I really wanted the whole thing on my E: drive. I swear I do not recall after I chose the initial drive from Steam it giving me an opportunity to choose any more drives.

 

Same thing happened to me mate... it didn't give me a choice. However, I reinstalled and put it on the drive of my choice... but what a pain in the backside.

[dburne]

37 minutes ago, Trooper117 said:

 

Same thing happened to me mate... it didn't give me a choice. However, I reinstalled and put it on the drive of my choice... but what a pain in the backside.

 

Yeah hmmm tempting. Have not gone in and started setting anything up yet, so I may go back and do this.

So at some point when it takes over the install from Steam it does prompt you where to put it?

[Trooper117]

The second time I went to install it let me choose what drive To put it in, for some reason it didn't give me an option the first time.

[dburne]

1 hour ago, Trooper117 said:

The second time I went to install it let me choose what drive To put it in, for some reason it didn't give me an option the first time.

 

Ok thanks, I may give that a try and see if it will let me put it all on my E: drive.

[Jade_Monkey]

Sorry if it was posted before in the thread, i haven't gone through all of it.

 

I just saw this video with the Spitfire IX in beta, definitely something to check out once it's out:

 

 

[dburne]

4 hours ago, Trooper117 said:

The second time I went to install it let me choose what drive To put it in, for some reason it didn't give me an option the first time.

 

 

Ok I uninstalled and am now doing a new download/install and I think it appears I now have it going where I want it.

Thanks again.

[Hoots]

Before I google that for me has anyone moved drive without uninstalling and reinstalling?

[coconut]

What you might be able to do is locate the packages (community and official), make a back up, uninstall, reinstall, pause/cancel the download that happens within the first run of the newly installed game, copy the backed up packages, and restart/resume the game.

 

For me, the packages are in C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_<some weird letter sequence>\LocalCache\Packages

 

No guarantees though, so don't blame me if something breaks. But I've fiddled with the packages while trying to run an update because it failed to download some large file repeatedly, and it worked.

[Hoots]

5 minutes ago, coconut said:

What you might be able to do is locate the packages (community and official), make a back up, uninstall, reinstall, pause/cancel the download that happens within the first run of the newly installed game, copy the backed up packages, and restart/resume the game.

 

For me, the packages are in C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_<some weird letter sequence>\LocalCache\Packages

 

No guarantees though, so don't blame me if something breaks. But I've fiddled with the packages while trying to run an update because it failed to download some large file repeatedly, and it worked.

Hmmmm... think I may just go for the complete uninstall and redo... thanks though! 

[dburne]

Well I got it all installed last night, now to get my controllers set up and check this thing out in VR.

It put me at Ultra settings and I am betting for VR I am going to need to lower those some.

 

[Hoots]

Having played around a bit in VR it is very well done but I lose so much of the detail that it somehow isn't as immersive as other titles in VR. It's early days so I'm sure it'll get better but for me it's not quite there and I think I'll stick with Track IR for FS2020 and dip in and out for a quick circuit in VR. Luckily it's so easy to switch between the two that this isn't a problem at all

[Lusekofte]

41 minutes ago, Hoots said:

Having played around a bit in VR it is very well done but I lose so much of the detail that it somehow isn't as immersive as other titles in VR. It's early days so I'm sure it'll get better but for me it's not quite there and I think I'll stick with Track IR for FS2020 and dip in and out for a quick circuit in VR. Luckily it's so easy to switch between the two that this isn't a problem at all

Yeah I figured the same. I haven't tweaked VR yet but guess I will do some micro / cub flights now and then in VR. 

It is not the same as DCS. I like to sit inside a vintage airplane. Aim and such, but in FS I simply do not feel the same need for VR

[Blooddawn1942]

I had to play around with the settings a lot, before I was satisfied with the outcome. At first I thought I wouldn't enjoy this title in VR much because it looses some of the visual qualities. Maybe my brain fills the gaps now or something like that, but now I enjoy it in VR big time!!! 

[dburne]

Just tried a quick flight in the training for the 152. This thing is really nice in VR for sure. Could not tell what my fps were, I had enabled in Developer Mode however it displays on the far right of my headset - I am blind on that the right side  of my sight so I can not tell what it was doing. Not sure if there is a way to change the positioning of that display.

I had changed my settings to High from Ultra and it seemed pretty smooth though  for the time I was flying.

I landed on a road, and whilst my instructor chastised me she did say it was a smooth landing lol.

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by dburne

[dburne]

Ugh starting to have a lot of problems with the game crashing on me switching to VR Mode.

Am I correct in saying there is not a way to actually launch the game into VR mode?

[coconut]

3 hours ago, dburne said:

Well I got it all installed last night, now to get my controllers set up and check this thing out in VR.

It put me at Ultra settings and I am betting for VR I am going to need to lower those some.

 

Note there are different settings for 2D and VR. The graphics and traffic have a first entry in their respective page which indicates if you are looking at 2D or VR settings. 

[ZachariasX]

It's funny, since the last VR update, I get like 3% GPU load on the task manager when running the sim. But it works reliable again, the only one crashing is me.

 

Speaking of, I did some more flying, from Guatemala City to Aeropuerto Internacional De Torreón Francisco Sarabia in northern Mexico, out there in the desert mountain ranges.

Spoiler

 

Weather was good along the  way, shoul make for some good screenies.

 

 

After taking off, the course is NW...

 

 

Through the land of impressive elevation data messups.

 

 

Mexico... The Angostura Dam on Grijalva River created a huge lake. Power for Chiapas.

 

 

Futher NW past the lake, I arrice at the catpital of Mexicos southermost state, Tuxtla Gutiérrez  alog with its airport. 

 

 

For the ones who share some affection for airports situated on cliffs, Aeropuerto Llano San Juan deserves a closer look. It sits just above the city of Ocozocoautla de Espinosa.

 

 

Once I manage to pronounce Oco-zo-co-au-tla, I arrive over the junge area of Veracruz. Nothing to see and I certainly cannot underfly those clouds. Just as a warning, some RTI cost me two frags when keeping the plane on autopilot at 7'500 ft. Stepping back into the cockpit made me stare at the black screen. I tried again, same happened while I left it at 8'500 ft. At 12'000 ft, I managed to leave the state of Veracruz with body and soul combined.

 

 

Climing to 12'000 ft over Lake Miguel Alemán. The higest peak of the moutain range ahead is the Pico de Orizaba (18'490 ft.), the highest mountain in Mexico and third highest in North America. You better have some altitude here.

 

The Pico de Orizaba, also known as "Citlaltépetl". From here on, it is largely high desert until I arrive at my second last waypoint, the Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla Guadalajara International Airport.

 

 

Guadalajara, a huge featureless city. At least as seen from above. I keep flying at 12'000 ft even though the Baron prefers flying low. But everything here seems to be above 5'000 ft. Originally, the name comes from arabic and supposedly means "Valley of Stones". That might apply for the original Spanish city, but not much of valley here.

 

 

I turn North and find myself above some highlands that I'd almost could mistake for the Grand Canyon, but Garmin tells me otherwise. I'm still up at 12'000 but ground level is up at almost 6'000 ft. rom there, it goes down in those canyons. Most impressive.

 

 

Further North I find myself on Mars. Appraching Calera, one of the 58 municipalities in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

 

 

Decending towards my last waypoint, Torreón International Airport. It's gotta be somewhere behind one of these ridges... They are bloody high.

 

 

Found it.

 

 

Also one of the more nicely implemented airports.

 

[dburne]

46 minutes ago, coconut said:

Note there are different settings for 2D and VR. The graphics and traffic have a first entry in their respective page which indicates if you are looking at 2D or VR settings. 

 

Yeah I finally discovered that thanks.

Right now having trouble getting it to not crash when switching from 2d mode to VR.

 

Not sure why but it worked fine for the first three training experiences, now every time I launch the game and select VR mode it just crashes to desktop.

Crazy.

 

Edit: I give up , so dang frustrated. Every time I switch to VR, boom to desktop. I sure hope I have not just wasted 119 bucks.

 

 

Edited December 26, 2020 by dburne

[dburne]

I don't know how but I managed to get a successful training flight in. I think I did not start Steam VR till after the game was running in 2d mode on my monitor.

But who knows may have been the way my legs were crossed this time lol.

 

Ironically when I launched the game  I got a warning message that MSFS did not support VR. I was like yeah not very good anyways.

[Hoots]

2 hours ago, dburne said:

Ugh starting to have a lot of problems with the game crashing on me switching to VR Mode.

Am I correct in saying there is not a way to actually launch the game into VR mode?

You’re right, there isn’t. I didn’t have any stability issues though. 

[kestrel79]

I need some help calibrating my CH Throttle Quad. The 6 axis on this thing have never been perfect for me, but usually I can dial that out in other games by calibrating a new min and max for each axis. I can’t figure out how to do that in MSFS2020 yet can anyone help? My mixture is at about 6%-94% right now and needs to be 0-100%. 

[dburne]

3 hours ago, Hoots said:

You’re right, there isn’t. I didn’t have any stability issues though. 

 

Well mine is crashing again.

Got one short training flight in then on the second blammo.

Very frustrating.  I may well have just wasted 120 bucks augh.

What happens is the image totally freezes up in the headset, then shortly after the game crashes to desktop.

I even enrolled in the Steam Beta to see if that might help but apparently it did not either.

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by dburne

[ZachariasX]

11 hours ago, dburne said:

Well mine is crashing again.

Have you tried to ease the OC a bit? FS20 makes use on all cores and maybe creates a higher system load than other games.

 

******** bloody merge***********

 

That aside... Made another flight up North from Torreón International Airport, Mexico to Telluride Regional Airport, Co.

Spoiler

 

Unfortunately, I took off a bit late in the day, so from Navaho Bridge on, the night got dark and I didn't get to see much of Monument Valley. On the next flight maybe I might pass along there again.

 

Other than that, this flight showed me the difference between an American desert and a Mexican desert. Check that out, it's a systemic feature:

 

 

A Mexican desert.

 

 

An American desert.

 

Difference?

Spoiler

Golf courses

 

You cannot go anywhere in the states without that (with the exception of maybe Indian reservations). No wonder it is a specific feature in ORBX' sceneries that you can enhance by enabling the respective tick box.

 

Night approach to Telluride Regional Airport was rather impressive. Although vision was good, the darkness hid these mountain slopes, making what I thought "only 7 knots" crosswind something that required me suddeenly to use full power to maintain 100 knots during the approach. That is a special airport indeed. Sedona from Hell.

 

 

Runway and taxiways are rather steep. Interessting in the dark.

 

 

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by ZachariasX

[dburne]

That may be but I really don't think so. VR often crashes right after I just get into the menus. Also did complete play throughs of Half Life Alyx and Medal of Honor without any glitch.

I may give a few flights a try in just 2d Mode and see what it does.

 

Edit: I might also try it with my Rift S and see if I can narrow it down.

Edited December 27, 2020 by dburne

[Lusekofte]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

That may be but I really don't think so. VR often crashes right after I just get into the menus. Also did complete play throughs of Half Life Alyx and Medal of Honor without any glitch.

I may give a few flights a try in just 2d Mode and see what it does.

 

Edit: I might also try it with my Rift S and see if I can narrow it down.

It is very early days of VR, we had and still have oddities with the software, now they got a lot more reasons for patches

[dburne]

Now this is odd.

 

This dude at timemark 9:40 shows a display of the settings, and in his he shows a graphics tab and just below it a VR graphics tab.

My install does not show a VR Graphics tab at all.

 

Think I might better try a complete uninstall and re-install of this dang thing again, for a third time.

Do you VR guys have this VR graphics tab in the settings menu?

[Hoots]

13 minutes ago, dburne said:

Now this is odd.

 

This dude at timemark 9:40 shows a display of the settings, and in his he shows a graphics tab and just below it a VR graphics tab.

My install does not show a VR Graphics tab at all.

 

Think I might better try a complete uninstall and re-install of this dang thing again, for a third time.

Do you VR guys have this VR graphics tab in the settings menu?

 

Forgot to say, I'm on a rift S and have no issues. I think the graphics tab is a hangover from a pre release build. I have a "scroll bar" (for want of a better description) that moves left or right between PC and VR options.

Edit, this is in the graphics tab.

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Hoots

[dburne]

4 hours ago, Hoots said:

 

Forgot to say, I'm on a rift S and have no issues. I think the graphics tab is a hangover from a pre release build. I have a "scroll bar" (for want of a better description) that moves left or right between PC and VR options.

Edit, this is in the graphics tab.

 

 

Ok thanks.

I am having so much trouble think I will try one more uninstall and re-install just to be safe, before I get more of my controller assignments set up.

It seemed to run fine after the first install, then when I did the second to get more of the game on my E: Drive that is when things went south on me.

 

Last time the Steam download was on E and I installed the game on D, this time I am installing it all on E: will see how it does.

Probably all for naught but gotta try I reckon.

Edited December 27, 2020 by dburne

[ZachariasX]

Hope you get it sorted. I'm saving VR for my next rig. Maybe next summer, when parts become available in real quantities...

 

As for the sim, it is indeed impressive as far as stock scenery goes. With the latest scenery update, they polished a lot.

 

Made a flight from Telluride to Calgary via South Dakota.

 

 

Weather is getting iffy. The way the cloud AI is gradually texturing the scenery with snow depending on weather is truly amazing. Not just the usuall "all white" map just because it's winter.

 

 

At least there was good visibility at the Crazy Horse Memorial...

 

 

...as well as at Mount Rushmore. From there on it wa svery cloudy, Devils Tower wasn't visible unless I made it such. It is also very nicely rendered.

 

It will be difficult making it across the Bering Sea, the plane already froze up on the way to Canada. The recent updates make the whole body heater as well as the window heaters disengage after some time. If you don't pay attention (or stay AFK),  that will not end well.

 

 

A taste of the North, crossing into Canada.