It seems Asobo are trying the get the right balance between looks and performance when it comes to draw distance of objects and high resolution ground textures. Currently the maximum LOD range is too small and doesn’t allow people with high end machines to really enjoy the sim at its maximum potential. People should be able to max out their LOD to the horizon and beyond!
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Configurable LOD radius, or at least some lower res distant ground rendering. Took off from o’hare the other day not knowing which side of Chicago it is on, flew up to 1000 feet assuming I’d be able to see where the city centre/skyscrapers are - but no :-(.
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I guess you’ll have to put this in another sub-forum, because I see no vote button.
Oops wrong thread, will correct!
I see my earlier comment struck up a movement. Vote yea.
So how do you add a vote function to a thread?
Great thanks!
I thought I read somewhere you can edit the slider bar more in one of the config files, can anybody shed some light on that?
Just looked through forum can’t find the post tho
LOD is too CPU dependant at this stage… especially terrain.
Bump. Asobo need to stop nerfing and instead provide flexibility for users to dial in the settings they want.
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My worry is they are trying to get consistent performance and visuals between the PC and Xbox versions. Introducing sliders to the PC version only would compromise this - I don’t think they would introduce these kind of sliders to Xbox version as it doesn’t have same cpu/GPU capability
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And why would they do this? To sell more Xbox’es and fewer Windows licenses?
Well there are more Xbox players than pc players. And not having these LOD sliders isn’t going to necessarily put PC owners off from purchasing the sim. It’s really a nice to have.
Nice idea as long as the ‘ultra’ setting increases LOD more than the maximum ‘200’ we have at the moment. We’re looking for a level of detail the beta testers have been describing in these forums. If you have the machine then you should be able to experience the sim at its absolute maximum
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Anyone interested in TOP scenery quality (what your GPU can do, irrespective of frame rate)
FOR NOW… check this out there’s a tweak for it thx @MrTonySM !
In the future… without cfg changes… the remainder of this topic
Suppose… someone produces game consoles… you’ll have a great version within a few years, with good graphics, and to get it rolling, you develop MSFS early for PC and let the community review it, test it, expand it with free scenery… good plan ! things will land on the Console, eventually… and on PC’s, it is a win-win ! a lot of people will buy it and have fun with it, love it, hate it… whatever ! It has got the eye balls when your new console comes out.
Issue is, things changed a little since 2018… in PC-land… you got for instance this RTX-3080 super board suddenly for 800 instead of 1500. Also RAM is no issue anymore, 32GB or 64GB is getting common for PC’s. It will cost some, but on Ultra it gives a lot of bang for the buck. So high end PC users and photographers use Ultra levels a lot. But LOD-200 is out… even LOD-100 is out… Settings got clipped, because the promise is 30Fps ?
This whole issue for PC users is not needed. MS/Asobo could make everybody happy again, with the following proposal… Easy way out.
Simply change the General Settings and Reserve Ultra level for PC’s ! Tune it separately !
Why ? Console and PC’s are seperate paths that will stay. In the coming years, XBox won’t get anywhere near new GPU’s coming out for the PC. So let’s have that supported ! Don’t tune everything down, just the low, medium and high levels. Leave the Ultra levels on the pre-Nordic settings. Or special settings, that are tuned for 35 FpS on… a 3080 + i7 + 32GB ? And let’s have an honest High end, if you want LOD-200 you get it, also on the Console… it will be unflyable… but what photographer needs FpS ? You want the best picture. you tune it up and down.
I run low end hardware, I’d gladly give my 7 “Nordic FpS gains” back to be able - again - to make landscape pictures…
Scale Low, Medium and High levels to the available hardware
This next wish/idea is actually supplementary to the above… that did not get much attention 
I’ll proceed here anyway, I think it’s a good plan.
Let’s work out the sub-Ultra levels now… these are supposed to be flyable, that is having an absolute minimal framerate of say: 20FpS at the High setting.
Of course, to execute my plan, a certain standard benchmark is needed. it should cover all aspects: scenery, trees, mountains… I propose a LOWI approach with C152, low altitude, from the direction of Innsbruck city, at sunset, scattered clouds 
with LOWI installed, of course…
My proposal for PC is to make a difference between hardware. Reserve Ultra mode for the very best and scale the other three modes (Low, Medium, High) for the hardware, as set by the user. Default choice is the detected hardware, of course. High mode should run at least 20 for your board, that’s the idea.
For instance, what if General Option settings a, b, c (say: Low, Medium, High) would work as follows… in 4 groups:
MX-330 class __ a|b|c
1080Ti class ___ b|c|d
2080 class _____c|d|e
RTX3080 class _ d|e|f
For the older 1650 boards and e.g. MX-330, there will be High mode quality c. There is no quality d because that would inhibit flying at 20FpS approaching LOWI. You’d get less… e.g. 13-15… For 1080Ti, a mode d can be used as High, but it will start making noise. For 3080, level d quality is the starting level… and f is High mode at 20FpS. In High mode, a 3080 will perform at its max, it will get hot. Low and medium will provide, say, 60 FpS (for d) and 35 FpS (for e)
In above system, there are actually 6 quality levels to choose from, that is ranging from the very low (a) to the superb (f) and each of these levels can be set. But the user would have to tweak its GPU choice in the settings, to get more. GPU choice could be disabled, on the first release. Choice of policy…
The initial wish to reserve Ultra mode stands. Ultra needs not to be flyable. It could also be possible to introduce a mode for screen shots (a stills mode) that would go 2FpS on a 3080 and e.g. 2 seconds on a 1650 board… absoute top quality rendering and not flyable. To do screenshots exclusively.
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MSFS already publishes various hardware recommendations from minimal to ideal. However there is nothing in MSFS to stop a user with low or medium spec hardware from using ULTRA settings. Then when performance drops below 10 FPS, it is because 1) MSFS is limited by main thread using only one processor, 2) DX12 hasn’t been implemented yet, or 3) the code needs optimization because all the FPS games on the hardware run at 100 FPS.
There is a gap between user expectations and what MSFS delivers that MS/Asobo created. Because there are so many possible hardware configurations and so many graphics settings, it is impossible for most users to determine which global performance setting should be used for best FPS and graphics quality.
There are legitimate performance and quality issues that are being addressed by Asobo. But the problem of higher user expectations compared to what MSFS delivers might not ever be fixed. If hardware specs are not good enough to use ULTRA or HIGH settings, maybe there could be a warning message before each flight saying that hardware specs are too low for the graphics settings impacting FPS, stuttering, and MSFS stability.
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Of course we all know there are recommendations published and any photographer goes to Ultra before making a screenshot, regardless of hardware. Issue is, there are only 4 levels and advanced GPU owners currently expect to be able to fly with Ultra, supposedly also on XBox/4K ! But to achieve that performance goal, all quality settings were scaled down ! That would not have been needed, when more settings and hardware-scaled settings had been used…
Sure. I think the issue is caused by marketing ! I’ve never seen any stutters in video’s released. Recently, RTX3080 people suddenly had 70FpS, but also popping mountain tops and lousy textures. I have MX-330 low grade, I can fly Ultra on 15 FpS now. This topic attempts to provide a solution for that, preventing the need for “scaling settings to the lowest common denominator” and making more levels of quality available…
Please read my proposal. This is not about protecting users against settings that give bad performance… Everyone has his/her own responsibility to make choices. I advocate providing a system that allows people to actually take that responsibility and choose for themselves. Also when they want to accept 15FpS… or 10FpS… Currently, settings are tuned to serve performance promises for one specific, mid-range hardware configuration.
I don’t own a big GPU board, I got used to flying 15-17FpS on Low/Medium mixed and after the Nordic update, I suddenly got 25-27FpS on all Medium. And complaints popped up everywhere, about scenery comprimised. Also my complaints. Thing is, I want to be able to set optimal quality for scenery, accepting 0.5FpS whatever that takes. I don’t need to fly while I use Ultra. Just a fantastic picture.Until recently, Ultra gave me 1-2FpS, I could count the frames… And now… I can just resume active pause and fly away ! With Ultra left on… and short tree distance, bad terrain… and crunched photogrammetry textures, optimized for performance, not looking like Amsterdam…
Maybe users should be protected from bad marketing! Asobo published prior to launch several videos with very high quality, detailed scenery. I remember that MSFS displayed a message during the initial install stating that the best settings for my hardware is xxxxx. I just ignored it and started using settings I read on the net. I haven’t seen that message since.
Anything that provides info to users for them to make decisions and choices about their settings is a good thing. Because of the frequency of updates and the availability of CPU and GPU upgrades, maybe updated recommendations can be displayed with each update.
FWIW, the first computer I used for MSFS was barely met the low LOW end specs except for one item. After the install when I started MSFS, it displayed a message stating that MSFS cannot run due to my low hardware specs. It exited without giving me any options.
These videos are not RL, they were made with MSFS… possibly, they used a GPU from space, or tweaked the video frame rate ? I don’t know and it’s off topic here, to speculate about that. You’re right, as a result of these crispy videos, hoards of users expect MSFS to run 35-60Fps on a 2060S, it simply can’t provide that quality.
In fact, top scenery quality is the whole point here. I want that super quality back for the user as Ultra mode, to make proper screenshots and prepare for our future RTX 4080 / i12 / 64MB PC’s… MSFS can do it, but because of frame rate considerations, things got tuned down. My proposal is to leave the best quality in. It should be an option, even if your board cannot render it quickly…
With MX330 on HP-Envy, I still see that annoying box every day. But it won’t terminate the application, I can fly around 20FpS on my laptop. Maybe your old PC had a GF 640 board ? Or an old driver wouldn’t grab the initialisation… or it could not do the terrain tesselation in 2MB GPU memory… Developments went very fast, since 2012 things improved drastically.