FSW First Impressions

[BradB]

I am curious if anybody has tried the early release of Dovetail's FSW yet ?. I found the loading times a bit on the long side .

 

Cheers

 

John

[kaboki]

Yeah, not too excited:(. What dissapoints me most is the blurries/slow texture loading, even old FSX wasnt as bad as this. I do like the rain effects, though they need to let the rain fade away when the airplane goes beyound 100knots or something. Antialising looks better than before, getting average 25 FPS around seattle in the cherokee, with high settings, feels smooth even with low frames(havent tried ultra yet). Also seing the same old lighting as before was a dissapointment.

 

 All in all, it has potential, but a long long looooooooooooooooooooong way to go.

 

 

[anfield ace]

Installed, had a quick look, my old rig can't handle this i'm afraid, too slow, just un-installed, and happy to stick with FSX!

[TigerTigerM]

It's getting hammered on the Steam forum, apparently.

TTM

[Benny]

22 minutes ago, TigerTigerM said:

It's getting hammered on the Steam forum, apparently.

TTM

 

Yea, badly... and sadly

Ben

[Mark Abdey]

The good, bad and ugly as it comes to mind....  Poor LOD that needs a cfg tweak to 6.5 to make the terrain look decent.... Lighting a very mixed bag, but, mostly washed-out, or too dark and smudgy, depending on the time of day (AO is quite nice)...  FTX Global, so that is a big plus... Some very nice default AC's as long as you like GA... Major Autogen pop-up... Nice clouds, but often poorly lit... Great cockpit shadows... No autogen or other environment shadowing as yet... Wonderful VC rain effect.... Claustrophobic, closed environment feels like it lacks possibilities and personalisation... An improvement over Flight School... Just another version of ESP/FSX/P3D.

 

To Add: Performance ok, but still suffers stutters and blurries if you slew (or could use fast aircraft)  Without rain effects I can get 50 - 60fps (Ultra @ 1080p) or 30 - 40 with them.

 

Based of what I've seen so far I would not trade this for what I have already, but for someone just starting out in flight simming it might just be a great way in to the hobby.

 

 

 

 

[TigerTigerM]

10 minutes ago, Mark Abdey said:

The good, bad and ugly as it comes to mind....  Poor LOD that needs a cfg tweak to 6.5 to make the terrain look decent.... 

 

10 minutes ago, Mark Abdey said:

Mark

 

Where did you find FSW.cfg?

Took  a mission, landing into LAX. Had a very irate English female ATC grumbling at me when I was well off course trying to tweak settings & views on the fly.

So 1st flight was not auspices & currently scenery is terrible.  Around LAX - flat washed out beige with matchbox featureless houses.

I need to find some way to tweak settings, or my set up is not up to snuff.

I couldn't save a screen shot with V key, anyone know how it is done in FSW??

TTM

 

 

 

[Mark Abdey]

1 minute ago, TigerTigerM said:

 

Where did you find FSW.cfg?

 

Your Name > App Data > Roaming > Dovetail FSW... pretty much the same as FSX/P3D. I'm not at the desktop, but that is more or less it.

 

V Key works for screen shots as per normal, with caps saved in 'Pictures' in the FSW folder.

[TigerTigerM]

19 minutes ago, Mark Abdey said:

 

Your Name > App Data > Roaming > Dovetail FSW... pretty much the same as FSX/P3D. I'm not at the desktop, but that is more or less it.

 

V Key works for screen shots as per normal, with caps saved in 'Pictures' in the FSW folder.

Thank you

TTM

 

Here is what I have with LOD_Radius = 2.5

Have changed to 6.5 & will see if that makes a difference.

Someone else is fiddling around with Nvidia settings.

 

 

[TigerTigerM]

Changed LOD_Radius to = 6.5 & flew out of Phoenix.

No discernible improvement.

Using a 6Gb GTX 1060 video card.

I think I will put it aside & monitor the tweaks &  wait for the lynch mob to quieten down, & see if I can get it looking better.

 

TTM

[kaboki]

Anyone noticed the lack of vsync(screen tearing is annoying...), did I miss something in the options? I also see there is no way too lock the frames??

[Kilstorm]

This certainly is a preview version. As far as the gameplay and my computer specs, I am happy with what I see there. It defaulted to Ultra on everything and Im in the 40s with the Seneca and thunderstorm weather at KACK my home airport. For positive comments thats really all I got. There seems to be some nice ground work in the UI to build out on.  Most everything else I will just consider in development and not look to hard at what it is. I've had no desire to switch from P3D as a platform so I'm not going to judge or compare either.

A great system seems to yield good frames with high settings is my big take away.

[sightseer]

I like it.

 

I just had a very enjoyable first flight.  It runs well.  Blurries were not any sort of major problem.  The overall graphics were great.  The lighting is much better than FSX.

 

Its a great start. 

[pracines]

Tried it - currently don't like it. As expected it needs a lot of work and of course 3pp support. If it comes around fast enough it may be a player, but we'll see.

 

After seeing some of the negative reviews, one can better understand the logic and wisdom in going with a closed beta with standard NDA's.

 

[TigerTigerM]

Had another look at it & found I had the  FSW Graphics settings all on Low.

Moved to Ultra & got this better result - inland Washington State.

TTM

 

[billoute]

i'v bought it and spent almost 4 hours on it, trying everything i can.

 

At first, i hated it : It's FSX at it's core but the FSX we all discovered in 2006 when no computers were capable of running it correctly, and without any addons to give him some eye candy.

Performance were execrable, until i crashed and switched to windowed mode...and voila all my fps got back again. so already a first fatal performance flaw that will with any doubt make most ppl run away from the game.

 

Then, i started to like it...no, it's not as pretty as my FSX pimped with Orbx, A2A and ASN, but it show promise, obviously there's a lot of work to do : missing functionnality, better control of the game options, bugs everywhere and probably the feeling that we'r playing something new, work in progress. And you know what ? it's exactly what EA means.

 

So basically what we have here is a revamped FSX core, with some little nice graphical touches but a lot of work to be done inside it....i feel it could become another step in the FS family, but a step who can show a lot of promise if DTG do his job seriously and with the help of 3rd parties.

 

I'll play it, report bugs, ask for added functionalities as much as i can...i'm really decided to give it his chance.

 

And now, i'll open the fsw.cfg and start tweaking it...hoping it won't never be necessary with the final product.

[Ken Hall]

1 hour ago, billoute said:

Then, i started to like it...no, it's not as pretty as my FSX pimped with Orbx, A2A and ASN, but it show promise, obviously there's a lot of work to do : missing functionnality, better control of the game options, bugs everywhere and probably the feeling that we'r playing something new, work in progress. And you know what ? it's exactly what EA means

spot on

It is early access, i;m running it on very high end machine with all sliders maxed on a 34nch widescreen at 3440x1400 and get 45fps down to 25fps in big cities, the weather engine is very promising once Hi Fi get a hold of it and we get some real world weather, theres lots to improve on, just as P3D V1 needed work.

The key is good feedback to dovetail, and that includes letting them know how important 3rd party add ons are, dont cripple them with excessive commissions, be prepared to ask for a modest commission.

[Jon Clarke]

Not thrilled but certainly realise it is early access and we are supposed to help in the development. My only criticism is the lack of access to things like Settings for light. I find daytime very washed out and can find no way to adjust the usual brightness, saturation etc.

Performance is reasonable, but visually in it's current format no Wow factor. Not that I was expecting a Wow factor.

 

Must admit I am only trying it because like others, I have free access. Never intend for it to be my go to sim. That will always be v4 P3D due to my expectation that it will perform similarly to the existing version or better, and that I can add all my FTX sceneries to it straight away.

Not knocking FSW, just saying it was never going to be my sim of choice. Same as AF2 is not going to be my sim of choice, but I enjoy it for what it does.

[Dreamsofwings1]

I've not tried it, but from what I have seen I think I am happy to stick with FSX and the small fortune I have invested in addons to make it a different sim to out of the box. Maybe in time FSW will be spot on, and I might start building up my addon library for that, but in the meantime it just doesn't look like the whole new sim I was probably foolishly waiting for.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Kilstorm]

I tried it and determined that it was not ready for me for one reason, VR. My whole sim is set up for VR and seeing that FlyInside is not exactly supportive of the whole 3rd party Steam/DTG skimming aspect (understandably), will not be making any version for it in the foreseeable future. Add that FSW does not have its own VR option (understandably) that left me with no option. So while I was still inside the window to get a refund, I did.

That said, I remember doing the free trial P3Dv1 offered upon release but went back to FSXDX10 and it wasnt until v2 that I brought it. By version 3 I was a dedicated user and of all the versions of XPlane, it was XP11 that sold me. So it goes without saying, if the sim works for me, I will support it but without having the ability to fly VR, I can not fly it due to my monitor/simpit setup.

[olderndirt]

Devil's advocate - I just bought Aerofly FS2.  After an agonizingly slow download from 'Steam' then a standoff with 'Panda virus', the game itself loaded rapidly.  Like FSW, it's early access, has a development agreement with Orbx and has overbright scenery.  Flown it once and the menu is fairly sparse but I think this outfit is 'getting its ducks in a row'  We'll see how the penny drops.

[ViperDriver]

FSW still is new and it's a LONG WAY from being what the community wants. Given time this sim has potential, it really needs an Open_LC added. Tucson, AZ seems to end at the city line and Marana is again all desert and No scenery as you fly NW from TUS. Plus took a quick flight to NYC and there was no freedom tower, minor things too be sure as this sim is still in the infant stages. I do like what it is, but like the rest of the Flight Sim community hope that FSW gets better with time. 

[JimmiG]

I got it for free since I previously bought Flight School. I appreciate the gesture, and I tried to keep an open mind. However FSW sadly failed to impress me in any way.

 

It's just too similar to FSX for me. The user interface is new and shiny (and very nice!), but once you start a flight, the illusion shatters. It feels like stepping 8 years back in time. The graphics simply feel outdated and flat. There's no volumetric haze and no cloud shadows. Not even buildings or trees cast real-time 3D shadows, which makes the whole scene look artificial and flat. There's only this annoying "HDR" filter that makes everything look over exposed and too bright. While it uses Global textures, the landclass and vector data seems to be lifted straight from FSX and is very crude indeed (to be fair, Prepar3D has the same problem and needs add-on vector and landclass data to be usable).

 

If you're coming from FSX, then it might be an improvement. For those who have experienced Prepar3D v3, XP11 and/or AFS2, not to mention other modern games and simulators, the visual downgrade is too obvious. It's possible they have some significant upgrades planned, but games rarely go through such dramatic changes during Early Access. I'll keep an eye on the development for sure, but they'll have to do better than FSX with a new launcher and flight planner.