After terrible streaming scenery performance in MSFS2024 for the first leg, I was planning to continue in MSFS2020 but had to wait for an update to complete downloading, so continued the next couple of legs in FSX (yes, really). I discovered that Little Nav Map tracks your flights regardless of whether you’re running FSX (with the 32 bit app), or with 2020 or 2024, so despite starting out using a mix of all the above so far, I’m still able to track my progress in a single place:
Left Narsarsuaq (BGBW) in Greenland in snowy conditions in the CJ4 en route to Goose Bay:
Narsarsuaq in MSFS 2020
On approach to Goose Bay was treated so an awesome snowy sunset:
Goose Bay, MSFS 2020
After arriving in Canada I continued in MSFS2024 in the TBM 830 – at least this time the plane itself was streaming in complete and not missing any bodywork like before, but could not say the same for most airports when starting a leg on the runway – trees were rendering as Minecraft trees for some reason:
For the next couple of legs heading south I’ll be continuing in 2024 and the TBM as I head in to the US.
With the recent UK scenery updates (July 2024), other than the newly updated photogrammetry areas I was wondering if there had been any other updates that have been sneaked in and not mentioned in the release notes.
I took a number of screenshots of melty scenery back in 2020 shortly after the release that I was going to share but just remained in my screenshots folder. Let’s go back and see if there’s been any changes.
August 2020: Flying west near the mouth of the Thames estuary, there were some interesting water formations in the Thames:
August 2020: London before the recent updates, looking rather sparse:
… but after World Update XVII London is now looking incredible, and the water level glitches are fixed (actually I think they were fixed a while ago, not just in this most recent World Update):
September 2020: McLaren’s headquarters near Woking decided they needed to expand and build houses on their roof:
… looking good after recent updates:
August 2020: rather sparse looking Colchester Castle in Essex:
November 2021: Colchester Castle with some updates, but still being rendered as if it is an office building:
… September 2024: looks like the castle model has slightly more detail again, but still not great, it still is rendered with office building textures. This really deserves it’s own POI model:
October 2020: similarly even sparser Needles at the Isle of Wight:
May 2021: some of favorite melted scenery I’ve found so far in game is around Southampton docks, like these melted tractors and trucks:
and similar looking melted cars:
May 2021: Southampton docks melted ships:
… September 2024: I couldn’t find this same ship again, but this one in 2024 is even better:
May 2021: one of my favorites, a melted car park structure near Southampton docks:
and more melted farm equipment:
Parked cars draped over the side of a building:
… September 2024: still here, still melty:
May 2021: trees growing on cruise ships at Southampton docks:
… in Sept 2024, this same ship is oddly looking worse, like it’s taken on some water:
May 2021: Cardington Airfield hangers rendered as just large stock scenery buildings:
… updated recently in World Update XVII in July 2024:
I’ve been doing some sightseeing in Microsoft Flight Simulator, flying over some of the major atoll locations around the world, and other famous Pacific island locations (e.g. Wake Island, featured in many Battlefield and other games)
In less than 10 months the disk on my new custom PC I built specifically for play Microsoft Flight Simulator is already full:
I put a 500GB m.2 NVMe drive in this machine, so while 500GB is not massive, it’s surprising that the updates, patches and scenery cache so far has already filled the entire disk. This main NVMe was a Corsair Gen 4 m.2, so was slightly more pricey than alternatives but faster than the other Gen 3 m.2 sticks at the time. I have since added a second 1GB m.2 stick, a cheaper but not as fast Sabrent Rocket.
Rather than reinstalling MS Flight Sim from scratch (which would have required another multiday download from Steam), I moved the packages folder from C: to D: – steps to do this are described here.
In summary for Steam installs, edit the UserCFG.opt file in this location:
… to point to any new location. You can move the existing content of this folder to the new location, and when you restart, any new updates or add-ons will go to this new location.
