Mac6737

This beautifully-made video illustrates well what has become, for me, the worst defect of FS2020 -- the unrealistic color palette. Especially the distant shots, which show a bleak, white-hot vista not at all like the real Grand Canyon. I can't believe the geniuses at MS can't easily tune this down about 2 f/stops of exposure.

I have managed to install FS2020, plus the first update patch and am running it. That said, I have some sympathy with both factions represented here, but more sympathy for the complainers. To say, “It’s working fine for me; therefore, you must be the problem” is not helpful, and discounts the screaming frustration that comes with laying out a C-note, and then having a glitch with nowhere to turn for help. Take my case: I received a gift card for FS2020 for my birthday, 08/22. (Against my wishes, BTW; I would have preferred to wait a while.) That card was bought in the preceding week. First attempt: “Gift card expired.” Sought tech support from FS site: “Problems at our end; can’t connect.” Opted for callback. Received prompt callback, but not from MS -- from Xbox! “Frank” said he couldn’t help me; transferred to MS. Looooong wait time. MS operator said he couldn’t help me; told me to contact my gift-giver, who would have to go to “point of purchase.” Cooled off; walked dog. Tried again to redeem gift card: this time, I got a different screen! Error message: “Gift card already redeemed.” $%&)**%$!!! Back to tech support, got prompt callback, again from Xbox. Explained situation, again. This time, “David” (bless his soul) spent 40 minutes on phone with me; verified gift code, walked me through extended process to DL. This entire saga would have been completely unnecessary, with competent programming, and/or adequate instruction of call center personnel. Next up: Days later, booted up sim: NOPE! “Mandatory update: click here.” Shunted to MS store; only screen shown encouraged me to purchase FS2020! #^(&%&@%#!!! Only because I am persistent, started afresh, went to MS Store. Asked to sign in: “Password invalid.” (Oh, baloney! It’s written down right here on a card at my desk and has always worked in the past.) Got email with code to reset password; did so. Back to MS Store. Had to search for “Flight Simulator,” got to purchase screen; clicked on “Purchase MSFS2020,” just to see what would happen. New screen tells me I already own the sim. (Well, at least they got that one right.) But it also lists the first update as available, with no further comment or instruction. Mystifying. Then, finally, I notice a tiny little icon in the upper right of the screen with the number 1 encircled. Pulled it down: EUREKA! Click for free DL of update. Install same. I’m spending the time to recount this in hopes someone on this forum, or at MS, or at Xbox will take some time to try to make these complex DLs go more smoothly. Also, to state my conviction that, in the main, the problems do not originate with the customers.

Thanks Kapitan, but there is no color tab under "GENERAL." At least not in my version of the sim. Can you tell me which of the sub-menus under General you mean. I think I've tried them all. Mac6737

I'm a bit disappointed at the color saturation in MSFS2020. It seems it was a lot better in P3D and FSX. Can it be adjusted? Here's a pic approaching Palermo. Those hills should be a much brighter green! Mac6737

Nope! (Hence my question.)

Can you display some basic flight parameters (heading, KIA, ALT) at the top the screen when in External View? Like you could in FSX, P3D, etc.? Mac6737

Yes, simpler. But (1) it darkens the screen a couple f-stops, and (2) it displays the term "FPS," but without a NUMBER! (I haven't tried developer mode -- above my pay grade.) Mac6737

Many bridges in MSFS2020 don't seem to display properly: from a distance they are solid black bars across rivers, sometimes with the towers sticking up. Is this a function of computer/video card power, or is there box somewhere that needs to be unticked? Mac6737

OMG! I am 80 effing years old. But I shall persist.

In an earlier thread, I asked if my specs "could run this puppy" (received as a birthday present contrary to my preferences!). Two grizzled veterans said I could, and so I DLed and installed it. I must say, the graphics are astonishing. OTOH, there is indeed a steep learning curve, made steeper (unnecessarily, IMO) by the fact that most of the key strokes I've been using in FSX and P3D for at least the past 25 years are inoperative. (Why, oh why, can "P" not PAUSE the damn thing?) The pdf "manual" touted elsewhere on this forum I find close to useless -- lots of pretty pictures, lots of needless info for new users (e.g., a history of MS flight simulation). Far more useful are some of the YouTube submissions, like this series: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=flight+simulator+2020+manual But after 2 days (and even a few successful landings), I have these preliminary Qs: 1. There seems to be no way to display your FPS on the screen, and the YouTube guy says you should DL "MSI Afterburner." (I have done so, but have NO idea how or where to install it.) Is there really no way to display FPS in the program? 2. How, if at all, can I program the POV hat on the joystick to look around? (I have found out how to use right-click mouse for this, but who wants to do that all the time?) 3. The YouTube guy says you PAUSE with the "Pause/Break key." Yep, it's there, alright, next to "Scroll Lock." But it doesn't work, at least not for me. Any ideas on simply freezing my screen, short of ESC and exiting the scenario? And yes, I've tried to map the P key. That didn't work either. (Unlike the joystick controls, there seems to be no "Validate" button for the keyboard assignments.) That's all for now. I suspect I and others will be back here a lot. But the graphics may make it all worthwhile. Thanks all, Mac6737

Not to belabor the point, loki, but I don't see how texture res can have "no relationship" to screen res. Both affect the sharpness of the image seen on the screen, right? I know that higher texture res may impact performance, but you yourself warn that your "smooth a silk" MSFS2020 is realized at only 1080p screen res. I took that to mean that higher screen res may also affect performance, right? In another forum (Orbx), I've complained about poor performance in certain high res sceneries (TrueEarth), and was advised to try lowering my texture res to 1024 ("medium") from 4096 ("ultra"). That helped a lot. And I also tried running P3D in 1080p. Terrible! Blurry and at least as much stutter and low FPS as in 1440. In any event, as I said, someone gave me a MSFS2020 download for my birthday last week. So I'll try it, first at full strength, and I'll go to 1080 if necessary. (Assuming I can get through the install, that is.) Mac6737

O I C. We use the smaller number as shorthand. I now run P3D in what I guess we call "1440." I'll impose by asking a follow-up Q: The Graphics menu in P3D (and I believe FSX) gives you a choice of "Texture Resolutions," expressed as squares: 4096 x 4096 ("Ultra"), 2048 x 2048 ("High"), 1024 x 1024 ("Medium"), etc. So what is the relationship of "screen resolution" to "texture resolution"? Thanks for your help, loki. Mac6737

I am delighted with P3Dv.4.5 and much add-on Orbx scenery, and had not wanted to mess around with MFS2020 just yet, thinking there would be bugs, fixes, etc., for a good year or so. Then someone gave me a link to the DL for my birthday! So, I have 2 questions: 1. Can I run it with reasonable performance? -- Core i7-8700K, 3.7 GHz GeForce GTX 1070 Ti AORUS Z370 5LGA motherboard 16 GB 2 X 8GB DDR4-2400 MSI 27" LED gaming monitor 2. Can I put the DL onto an external hard drive, and run it off that? Thanks all, Mac6737

All of a sudden, my sound is cutting out in P3D, unpredictably. This sometimes happens when I change the view or pause the flight and resume. After a while (up to 5 minutes) it will come back on. Reload the scenario, and it comes back on. As I say, it is unpredictable. Also relevant: This has never happened before, and I have had this rig and software installed for over a year. This is new and sudden onset! Something is causing it, right? But what? Thanks all, Mac6737

Maybe isolation and social distancing have made me generous, but I want to publicly praise this remarkable piece of freeware for FSX and P3Dv.4. It's mammoth, I guess, at 4.16 gigs, but you get three different versions of the 787 with a total of 56 liveries. And you don't have to install them all in your sim -- just the ones you like, and keep the others in a hangar somewhere on your hard drive. I said "freeware." Well, yeah, but it helps to have the monthly subscription in effect (about $5 US, as I recall), because otherwise it takes forever to DL anything from the site. Even with the subscription, it took close to an hour. Still well worth it, plus you then have rapid access to all the other stuff on the site. A lot of freeware is kind of primitive -- especially the VC, IMO -- but you generally get what you pay for. This one has several VC views, and they look fine. (You can't look over your shoulder, though). Mac6737 PS -- My screenshots are too big for this forum.

Thanks, guys. Turns out I had installed the Wash demo in both sims, but had forgotten about FSX. It's in "Add-on Scenery" in both sims. What threw me off was that the install into P3D creates a folder in User\Docs\P3D Add-ons that contains no actual scenery files! Mac6737

My FSX Scenery Library shows a "Washington X Demo." Where is it on my hard drive? It does not appear in FSX/Scenery. At this time, I have both FSX and P3D v. 4.5 on my PC. I have installed the Drzewiecki Design Washington Demo in P3D, and wanted to compare it with the default in FSX. Well, that won't work, because I must have replaced the default with "Washington X Demo," whatever that is. I don't believe it is the Drzewiecki product because it looks different -- and better, IMO. Mac6737

That seemed to work. Thanks, Mac6737

Vic, I don't think so. That folder contains scenarios (and vastly more of them than appear in my "Load" menu when P3D is actually running). It does not seem to include the "Flight Plans" you can save under the "Flight Plan" tab. Mac6737

I recently used the Flight Planner function for the first time, and saved the plan. I did not see anything amiss. Next time, I tried to save a different plan with a different name (of course), but it would not let me. Paid no attention. Now, whenever I boot up P3D v. 4.5, I get this message: "Error loading GPS engine. The flight plan will not be used." Click OK, and the sim proceeds to load as usual. Trouble is, the error message halts the boot-up until you click OK. Annoying. What is this message, and how can I get rid of it? Is there a corrupted flight plan? If so, where in the P3d Folder are the flight plans saved? Thanks for your thoughts, Mac6737

It's v 4.5. Since posting this, I tried disabling crash protection, and that seemed to solve the problem -- even though these reboots never caused the "Crash!" notice to appear.

It's always something. I recently installed Orbx Land Class Africa, and spent a week or so flying around, mostly to places I've been IRL. Perfect! But then I flew north from Cairo and up the Suez Canal. On approaching, or soon after leaving, Kibrit (HE34), the scenario stopped and restarted. These were not CTDs, nor did the "Crash!" indication come in. I tried it about 8 times, and was never able to make it past a couple minutes of flight. I have never seen this before, in either P3D or FSX. (I have experienced "Crash!" and automatic recycling of the scenario when encountering "invisible" objects, in mid-air or on the ground, but only 2 or 3 times, not enough to be a problem.) Thinking it might be a scenery problem, I then installed AfricaLC in FSX. There, everything was smooth as silk around Kibrit, as elsewhere. Tentative conclusions: Not an Orbx scenery problem, not found anyplace else in the P3d world, unrelated to the aircraft used. Any ideas? If not, I guess the best thing is to avoid the Suez Canal in P3D. Mac6737

Thank you, Zip. That's what I thought. So I uninstalled the Orbx AUNZ AI Traffic (again!) and this time checked trafficAircraft.bgl. It was no longer disabled! And the json file that had contained the instruction to disable it was completely rewritten! Opened up P3D, and I had AI traffic at the gates and in the air. Oh joy! OK, so why didn't this work the last time I tried it? Oh, never mind. Mac6737

I think you're on to something. In that folder there's a file styled "trafficAircraft.bgl.disabled-by-aitraffic-aunz-p3d4" (Did I mention I'm running P3D? There's very little action in that forum and the architecture is the same.) As I say, I do have AI traffic in AU and NZ, but nowhere else. But when I uninstalled the Orbx AUNZ traffic, I STILL didn't have AI traffic in the rest of the world. So I reinstalled it; at least I can go to Brisbane for AI traffic. To be clear: Is "trafficAircraft.bgl" the basic AI file in these programs? Thanks for your help. Mac6737