Let’s try to recap and please feel free to correct me.
A few posts above is mentioning there are 2 different but related problems.
Autogen LOD
Synthetic buildings and vegetation made from a collection of generic 3D objects.
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Building and Vegetation settings set the object details ranges (more or less complex representation of the same objects aka LOD).
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Building and Vegetation settings set the distance rings where the different object LOD are displaying.
Problems:
Below a certain distance to the outermost ring, objects used to fade-in, now they seem to pop-up instead. This is mitigated because they are displaying over their footprint picture found in the aerial ground texture displaying underneath.
Photogrammetry LOD
Realistic buildings and vegetation made from textured mesh based on aerial photography of the real objects.
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Building and vegetation textured mesh has different LOD built-in.
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Lowest resolution LOD is displaying the farthest, then increasing resolution LOD are fading-in in place as the view is getting closer.
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Terrain LOD setting set the distance rings where the different textured mesh LOD are displaying.
Problems:
Below a certain distance to the outermost ring, textured mesh is popping in over the flat aerial ground texture. The LOD rings are smaller than pre-release therefore the lowest detailed mesh LOD is displaying too close. It is often referred to as “melted buildings”.
Ground Texture LOD
Realistic ground texture made from aerial photography.
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Lowest resolution texture is displaying the farthest, then increasing resolution is popping up over as the view is getting closer.
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Terrain LOD setting set the distance rings where the different texture resolutions are displaying.
Problems:
The LOD rings are smaller than pre-release therefore the lowest texture resolution is displaying too close. It is often referred to as “blurry ground texture seen at altitude” and wrongly attributed to network bandwidth.
Analysis
There is a single setting, Terrain LOD, which is affecting both ground textures and photogrammetry LOD, which makes sense when you’re considering the outermost ring where photogrammetry and ground texture meet must share a similar resolution.
The LOD distances (v1.8.3 and v1.9.3) are trading off distance for performance but they are adjusted to render objects at 1:1 zoom view in 4K (both photogrammetry and ground textures). At this zoom level and in 4K, photogrammetry mesh and ground textures are displaying just the right amount of details to fill enough pixels on the screen for their respective projected surface size.
In short, the renderer is dropping some resolution and details which are imperceptible to the eye under a given viewing condition (zoom 1:1, distance to objects). It is similar to JPEG compression which is displaying similar picture quality to the original at 1:1, but it is showing compression artefacts when zooming in.
What’s wrong
The LOD ring sizes have been reduced since pre-release and this is affecting mostly photogrammetry and ground texture. Photogrammetry and textures were popping in with previous versions but it was less noticeable because it was happening farther away.
Because LOD ring distances are now closer:
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Ground texture quickly drops resolution when viewed from not so high an altitude.
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The simulator is displaying too low resolution texture too close to the aircraft and this is especially visible when flying over non-photogrammetry areas.
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You can’t zoom-in otherwise you’re viewing magnified lower resolution mesh and textures.
A few solutions
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Revert LOD ring distances to pre-release values.
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Decouple photogrammetry and ground texture LOD with 2 sliders instead of 1 so that each user can balance performance/details depending on hardware and preference.
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If FS2020 ships with same setting levels for both PC and Xbox, add a “Extreme” setting just for PC restoring the previous LOD.
Other issues
LOD Problems - Distances revisited