MSFS Formation Jitter

[AviatorLogic]

Hi Peter,

Is there anything that can be done to improve smoothness for recordings in Microsoft Flight Simulator? It is not feasible to fly formation in MSFS at the level I do. There is quite a bit of aircraft jittering (in all directions) that makes it really hard to get close, especially at higher speeds. I like to create videos of this type of flying and currently have to use a series of workarounds in other simulators and other recording platforms. I'd really like to natively use JoinFS in MSFS if I can. Thanks for any insight!

[Peter]

Hi. I'm still using a very old SimConnect interface with FS2020, so I will look at changing this to use the latest to see if that improves the performance.

Peter

[Peter]

Just an update. With the latest version 3.1.7 I have started using the latest SimConnect that comes with FS2020. Although this does not seem to have fixed any of the position issues, I have however found a better solution for the orientation updates which are a lot smoother now. There is also another position problem that I am looking at, but I expect v3.1.8 should be better.

Peter

[Peter]

I think I have managed to fix the recent FS2020 position issues. There is an early access v3.2.0 here, https://joinfs.net/development.html. Let me know how you get on.

Peter

[AviatorLogic]

Hey Peter, thanks for continuing to post updates about this. I will give it a go! Again, thank you.

[AviatorLogic]

Thanks for your work on this. This is a massive improvement for sure. A small amount of jittery movement continues to linger as demonstrated in this video: https://youtu.be/fR05LqA9WVM But this is a huge improvement! Thanks.

[Peter]

Thanks for your work on this. This is a massive improvement for sure. A small amount of jittery movement continues to linger as demonstrated in this video: https://youtu.be/fR05LqA9WVM But this is a huge improvement! Thanks.

Top video! Thanks for posting it. It's good to get some user feedback. I'm going to look into some ways of removing both the positional jitter (affects all platforms), as well as the orientation jitter (FS2020 only). But at least FS2020 is back to being usable now.

Peter

[AviatorLogic]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your last message. I wanted to highlight a little bit more of what I am experiencing. Please see this video for what I am describing: https://youtu.be/YbS2ddAB3YA.
There is significant positional jitter (especially fore/aft). The first clip shows how this appears on the side of an aircraft. The second clip compares this to native multiplayer, where it's not an issue. The third clip is from the same sequence, but from a trailing position to highlight the general jitter of the aircraft. I know you aware of this issue but I wanted to provide some more footage to show how it appears. Finally, a new issue I ran into was in looping maneuvers. Once the aircraft pitch is beyond 90 degrees up (aircraft becomes inverted at top of loop), the pitch of the aircraft becomes significantly more jittery than when nosing up while not inverted. If there's anything else you'd like to see, let me know. Thanks!

[Peter]

Great news! I think I found the problem. On the off chance I decided to search for similar FS2020 reports and discovered that someone had a very similar issue. It turns out that this isn't actually a bug as such, but most importantly it only affects the aircraft while it is on the ground. I always assumed that it simply stopped working completely.

The upshot is that the workaround fix is only needed while the aircraft is on the ground, no issues there. But when the aircraft is in the air the original method still works fine.

I will get a fix in ASAP. If you could try the same test again with the next version then we can see if the positioning needs further improvement at that point.

Thanks for being persistent. I may not have found this otherwise.

Peter

[AviatorLogic]

That is awesome! I would be happy to test again in the next version. Thanks for your commitment to this Peter.

[Peter]

Sorry to get your hopes up, but I have done some further testing and it seems the problem is still there, even when the aircraft is in the air. The initial testing was not doing what I thought it was.

Back to the drawing board...

Peter

[Peter]

I have made an adjustment to the smoothing factor in v3.2.4, out soon. I realized that with the recent changes it was too aggressive, so I have corrected it. Should make a bit of a difference.

Peter

[AviatorLogic]

I'll give it a try. Thanks.