MSFS 2024 -- my wish list for SU4:)

[toprob]

Ok, just a few observations about 2024 post-SU3, and even before.
I can remember when I built NZCH for P3D it was easy enough to get a reasonably accurate gate parking, with a couple of gates reserved for the real heavies, other jets lined up at appropriate gates, and the prop-liners down by the walk-in gates. With MSFS I can't figure out how to get things to park in the right place, the normal size and type of parking doesn't seem to restrict anything from parking anywhere, so the props are at jetways, and the jetliners are sometimes stuck at a ramp. In the SDK editor it isn't even possible to assign airlines to gates like in P3D, although I understand I can edit the XML by hand, I just haven't got around to trying that yet. The only thing I can think to try now is to renumber all the parking, to see if the sim sticks close to numerical order.

Here's the current mish-mash of gate assignments.



I'm already moaned about the crops within the airport...

One interesting thing I didn't know before, I've been trying to spend zero dollars in the Marketplace, exchanging Bing points for Xbox gift cards, and using these to buy addons now and then. I've managed a couple of airports and a few cheaper aircraft so far, but the issues is that for some reason these gift cards expire after a month, so If I don't spend 'em I lose them. I've got around this by using them to buy Simverse Coins. These, of course, is what we use to buy addons in the Marketplace, obviously designed to get around limitation of the Marketplace, but I can't make sense of it. I think it might be that if you want a refund, they don't give you your money back, they just refund Simverse Coins.

Last month I had almost enough to buy an NZA airport (maybe NZWF), but the only one updated for 2024 is Nelson, and I don't want that. So I thought I'd buy one in 2020, and when it is updated (I know they've been awaiting a few fixes in 2024, but I'm not sure if SU3 is enough progress) I'd use it in 2024. However turns out that 2020 isn't part of the Simverse, it still uses the old Flightsim Credits. Hey, I don't make up these names. So I can't spend my Coins yet, but at least I know they won't expire. At least not until they change the rules.

[toprob]

MSFS 2024 SU4 Beta appeared a while ago, and at the moment this is a good effort, although I'm aware that things can change over time, and any improvements can be back-tracked. But performance has improved, and the colour/tones are now back to how they should be. Even the night lighting has been improved.
I still haven't found a fix for the random gate parking, although I only today realised that I have GSX active, so I'll have to look at how that affects things. I thought I'd deactivated GSX a long time ago, until it was more fully 2024-compliant. Trying to edit the jetways just now caused GSX to crash, so I may be back to disabling it.
Someone on the MSFS forum gave a fix for the wheat fields that I had in the middle of NZCH, so they've gone. I know that this was holding up NZA's 2024 version of NZCH, but I don't know what else they may need to do to get it released. In the meantime, I am back to working on mine as a freeware alternative.
While typing this I was getting annoyed at the noise from my PC, and just realised that this was the GPU fans running because 2024 hadn't shut down properly. This has been a niggly issue for a while.
I'm back to feeling positive about 2024, but I'm still finding little issues. Maybe SU6 will be the break-through. In the meantime, I get solid enough performance to keep from throwing the PC out the window.
Speaking of the PC, I signed up for Windows 10 for another year, as I can't upgrade to Win 11. Since then, I've had some funny little issues, such as apps not working no matter what I do. I'm not the type to go straight to conspiracy theories, but I am amused by the co-incidence. Just in case my PC just stops working one day, I'll say goodbye now....

[Buzzard67]

Hey Robin, yes I've noticed we don't have those horrible greens anymore in NZ. All the colors have been tonned down. Just wondering, do you use photogrammetry? If so have you noticed better blending into default colour's? Up until now Ive left photogrammetry off because the difference in colour was like night and day. The sim looks so good at the moment just as it is, I don't want to ruin it lol

[toprob]

Just wondering, do you use photogrammetry? If so have you noticed better blending into default colour's?

I do use photogrammetry, but only because it looks ok from a certain height. The clash of photogrammetry and photo tiles is still an issue, that's for sure.

Today I tried the latest SU4 beta download, which is starting to look promising. I have decided that I have to stick with 1080p if I want reasonable performance at higher settings, a bit of a waste on my 4K monitor. But no crashes so far. I can even use the in-game development mode without bringing the sim to its knees.

Loading the sim still takes a while, but loading a flight is almost instant -- around 10 seconds to 'fly now'. Because developer mode works well now, I have spent today working on NZCH. My jetways now work (they stopped working in previous SU4 versions) but I have a weird problem with a couple of the jetways, which don't appear until I load the airport objects in developer mode. I thought it might have been a cache problem after the update, so deleted the cache, which made the jetways appear again, just that one time. I may have done something stupid, or it's a bug.

The GUI is responsive once more, although still ugly.

If we manage to get to the release of SU4 without any major breakages, this may be the one which brings 2024 almost to the completion state of 2020. I'm even daydreaming about upgrading my PC, although I could just buy a PlayStation....