Downloading 1.8.3.0

[Tom Clayton]

Damn, reading all of this, I'm hoping I can fly it without updating.

It comes up as mandatory. No way around it.

[Bomber_12th]

Weird, other than not being able to set the sensitivity curves for the control axes for now, I've been having a good experience with this update (already spent two hours making 4 flights tonight). It's probably just my imagination, but it seems to look even better than it was before (scenery/lighting), though all of the my flights were around late evening/dusk. Happy to see a control tower now at KSTP.

[Tom Clayton]

Looking into Packages\Official\OneStore, it looks like just about everything got updated in one way or another according to the last update timestamp on the folders.

[gman5250]

Looks like the update went smoothly for me. I need a drink.
I always go deer in the headlights uploading/updating anything from MS.
PTSD

For reference: I'm running most of the settings in the high end range, ultra for pretty much everything.

Loaded an IFR in the Citation...flying that now. I got a faster boot for sure. System performance is in the green, no obvious negative impacts anywhere that I can find. Seems like the color has improved...less watercolor looking through real weather atmosphere. Color is richer for sure. Less screen tearing in the VC. Overall the whole thing was pretty painless, other than the fact that it took all day and we have quarter mile visibility under this smoke blanket, so I couldn't really go out and walk in the bush while the download ran.

Hope everything goes well for others. It's a new sim...gonna be buggy, so I guess we signed up for a little bit of pain along the way. That said...it feels good to have the new MS sim and Prepar3Dv5 running WFO with no real issues. Gotta say, since Mr. Venema released the ORBX TrueEarth product line Prepar3Dv5 can still hold its head high next to the MS sim visually.

IMO, as a sim enthusiast and developer I feel very privileged to have both of these stunning platforms at my fingertips. We've come a long way.

[BananaBob]

CTD constantly now, don't know what went wrong.

[FlyingsCool]

As an anecdotal point, I just applied the update and flew out of KASH for 47 minutes. The only issues I came across were:

1. I couldn't see my liveries until I exited the software after the update and restarted it
2. It appears the lights on the radios are now tied to the Taxi Light switch and the Dome light does not turn on (maybe they're simulating a burnt out bulb?) on the C-152. This could, however, be related to the fact that I am using the C-152X addon. I'll have to remove it and see if that fixes things.

Also, why is the landing light so dim on the C-152?... I might switch to using the Taxi light when doing night landings, which is MUCH brighter, which weren't exactly super easy to do without any lighting in the cockpit... Had to set the plane up by feel.

[Tom Clayton]

I know I'm REALLY loving these fluid frame rates!



For the record, I have Clouds and Ambient Occlusion set to Ultra, and the rest are in the medium/low settings. Someone either here or the MS forum posted a link to a rather long video that compared every level of just about every setting option. I wish I could find it now. There are so many items on the list that have very little real difference between low and high settings, but clouds set to low look like someone took a bag of cotton balls and launched them from a potato gun.

[Bomber_12th]

When I installed the update yesterday, which went very smoothly, I first made sure that there were no addons in the Community folder (I put them in a different folder temporarily). I also made sure that there weren't any modifications to the official files (I only had one - the reduced tree file - which I replaced with the original file prior to the update).

One of the recommendations, if you have repaints, is to make sure that the Aircraft.cfg files are up-to-date. I have looked through most of the Aircraft.cfg files in the Official files folder and none of them appear to have changed, so I think all of the repaints are fine with their current Aircraft.cfg files. Not sure about the major mod packs for some (like the A320 and C152), as I've stayed away from those.

[FlyingsCool]

When I installed the update yesterday, which went very smoothly, I first made sure that there were no addons in the Community folder (I put them in a different folder temporarily). I also made sure that there weren't any modifications to the official files (I only had one - the reduced tree file - which I replaced with the original file prior to the update).

One of the recommendations, if you have repaints, is to make sure that the Aircraft.cfg files are up-to-date. I have looked through most of the Aircraft.cfg files in the Official files folder and none of them appear to have changed, so I think all of the repaints are fine with their current Aircraft.cfg files. Not sure about the major mod packs for some (like the A320 and C152), as I've stayed away from those.

I gotta say, it does seem silly to me that you need the whole aircraft.cfg file just to add some [FLTSIM.x] sections, especially since it precludes them updating the aircraft.cfg sections just so we can have repaints.

Of course that doesn't preclude us wanting to actually change the aircraft.cfg data, as, for instance, C-152X does. I just don't see why they are in the same file.

Seems like there should be a Repaint.cfg file... which, I imagine, could very easily be implemented by us by adding to the .json file the requisite file? I wonder if the software is looking for an "aircraft.cfg" file to find the contents of the file, or is it just looking for the data structures contained in the aircraft.cfg file, which could in fact be in any file, which is what I would do....

[DaveWG]

You can. You can add variations without a full aircraft.cfg
https://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/th...r-msfs.448795/

[Ganter]

CAUTION LADS.

The Patch is broken in what seems like many ways.

One thing is clear - Empty your Community Folder (just shoot the contents over to another New Folder) before accepting the Download.

Information further coming but for us at the SOH - it totally breaks FSX Airframes - maybe deliberately, maybe by accident - who cares.

APPROACH WITH ABSOLUTE CAUTION - PATCH 1.8.3.0

If your MSFS is running to your satisfaction - then don't let it in.

My prediction being that ASOBO will Patch the PATCH within a fortnight.

[Ganter]

It comes up as mandatory. No way around it.

Your Avatar - with the scary mask - really frightens. It's not funny, entertaining or anything - especially with your screwed up facial features - it's just horrible.

In these times that we live in - perhaps you could think of something a little less scary and demonic and a bit more friendly.
Honestly, every time I see your avatar it sends me a little further away from this place. I love your posts and I love what you generally have to say but. . .

I'm not kidding - your avatar looks really horrible.

I'm asking.

x

[StormILM]

CAUTION LADS.

The Patch is broken in what seems like many ways.

One thing is clear - Empty your Community Folder (just shoot the contents over to another New Folder) before accepting the Download.

Information further coming but for us at the SOH - it totally breaks FSX Airframes - maybe deliberately, maybe by accident - who cares.

APPROACH WITH ABSOLUTE CAUTION - PATCH 1.8.3.0

If your MSFS is running to your satisfaction - then don't let it in.

My prediction being that ASOBO will Patch the PATCH within a fortnight.

I certainly hope they fix it. At present, I believe I will end up having to do a complete uninstall/reinstall when all is said and done.

BTW, does anyone know where the controller settings config is saved? I was hoping to save my settings and then move them over once all is sorted so I don't have to re-bind everything. I hate asking questions on their support forums as you get your head chewed off by some of the drive-by posters there.

[FlyingsCool]

CAUTION LADS.

The Patch is broken in what seems like many ways.

One thing is clear - Empty your Community Folder (just shoot the contents over to another New Folder) before accepting the Download.

Information further coming but for us at the SOH - it totally breaks FSX Airframes - maybe deliberately, maybe by accident - who cares.

APPROACH WITH ABSOLUTE CAUTION - PATCH 1.8.3.0

If your MSFS is running to your satisfaction - then don't let it in.

My prediction being that ASOBO will Patch the PATCH within a fortnight.

Again, anecdotally, I left everything in my Community folder and have not experienced any issues other than what I said previously. I wonder if it has something to do with the wide variety of ways people have installed the software. I'm on MSStore. I did have an issue after the FIRST update, where the area surrounding last airport I flew out of prior to the update was stripped bare of trees (not buildings). I had initially installed in the WpApps directory. The only fix that I could figure out was to uninstall and reinstall. This time, I installed to my own directory, and noticed none of the files are encrypted when you don't install in the WpApps directory. I wonder if this has something to do with my smoother update this time?

Is there any common theme for people who have had problems as to where it's installed and where they purchased (i.e. Steam, WpApps, etc.)? I wonder if encryption and file ownership issues, and files people may have edited in the official directory, are screwing up the reliability of the install. For instance, I wonder if some sort of file caching issue that wasn't cleaned up properly combined with encryption/file ownership issues screwed up my first update. And by my now owning all my files made my second update go better.

[Francois]

Did a few flights tonight with the patched sim, no problems except for not being able to calibrate the controls anymore. But then again, I fly in Alaska, with twins and not jets and have no mods whatsoever.
I thought I'd wait a good few months before starting to look at add-ons.....

[Tom Clayton]

The only mods I have now are a replacement set of strobes and nav lights, along with some scenery bits like Stonehenge. I removed all performance and instrument mods to avoid conflicts.

[BananaBob]

I uninstalled and reinstalled the sim, all seems to be working right so far.............

[Dangerous Beans]

the update went smoothly for me. I have the Windows Store version installed to a custom location and moved everything out of the Community folder before updating just in case.

It's a bit disappointing about the broken control calibration but I can always adjust it in the Saitek software for my X55 for now until they fix it.

[UnknownGuest12]

Installed 1.8.3.0, changed nothing evrything the same, no problems, lack calibration for my joystick, loading time quicker, made a few simple day flights on the Cessnas, no problems so far...

[BananaBob]

I'm happy with it right now. Flying at 1920x1080 all settings on Ultra with AI traffic at 50% and getting up to 45 fps now. My gpu is RTX 2070 Super. My CPU is the i5 9600k, thinking about getting the i9 cpu, does anyone that has that cpu think it will make a huge difference?

[Bomber_12th]

I've noticed two airports so-far that were missing control towers before, that now have control towers after the update (KSTP and KOSH).

[ak416]

I'm happy with it right now. Flying at 1920x1080 all settings on Ultra with AI traffic at 50% and getting up to 45 fps now. My gpu is RTX 2070 Super. My CPU is the i5 9600k, thinking about getting the i9 cpu, does anyone that has that cpu think it will make a huge difference?

I think some optimizing of your settings could help a great deal here. Some Ultra settings are very taxing but not very noticeable compared to their High setting. Even the new 3080 cards are not pulling 60fps @ 1080p on all Ultra settings.

I followed Digital Foundry's optimization guide and had good results. Basically, use the High preset, then change Anisotropic filtering to 16x, Texture Supersampling to 8x8 and Ultra texture synthesis and Ultra textures. You can see in your screenshot that your being limited by your GPU so turning things like clouds and trees etc to high should improve performance without sacrificing much visual fidelity.

[BananaBob]

Thanks a lot ak416! Will try those settings. 👍

[modelr]

I have the Windows Store Premium version, left everything in the folders. Update went smoothly. Except for no control calibration ability, everything seems o be working ok.

[Snaker]

This update allowed me to finally be able to use this sim on my low end i5 7300q, 8gb ram, and gtx1050 4gb. I am able to fly many areas on medium when before I could not even fly on low settings. I get much better frame rates and less stutters. For me this update was amazing!