Any of You Who have "Great" Photogrammetry in Cities... Please Read

Something else: flying towards Manhattan, buildings start to look great when I get close. When I fly away, they go back to looking terrible. They look good again when I get far away. Given that the streamed data is cached (and I have a 100GB rolling cache), if it were a bandwidth/latency issue, I would except building to remain good-looking after they had been first streamed to the client.

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The photogrammetry “melted” buildings or low LOD related problem is not related to the internet speed at all (unless this prevents downloading data altogether). Case in point: take a slow aircraft, fly over a photogrammetry city at 100ft height, pause the sim and look from the outside. You shall have highest LOD resolution on your buildings like the picture posted above:

The problem is most likely only related to LOD ring distance and there was a long discussion post Q&A about this. Hopefully the developers are now aware of the issue and are looking into this.

For a complete picture (no pun intended) of all the LOD bugs I’ve extensively documented and illustrated:

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I think it’s hard to say that it’s a bug - maybe more of a “feature”. I think the PG is doing the best it probably can given the current data and tech. What could change is the zooming in - I think the sim could redraw the image from where you would be if you were seeing the zoomed image without the zoom if you get my meaning. That way it would be drawing more detail onto the screen. In some ways it feels as if they’ve taken a bit of an easy way out with that.

Think of it like a photocopier - you can enlarge your page from A4 to A3, but that doesn’t add any extra information, it just makes it bigger. I think that’s what is going on here.

We should probably wish list it, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I also have no idea what impact making this work “properly” would have on FPS etc.

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Fair points. I am going to test other cities and will report back on the thread. Thanks EVERYONE for helping and at least testing with me, this is more than I’ve had in weeks!

For those who want to vote on the issue (whether it’s LOD or photogrammetry, maybe the title of the bug is incorrect) here’s the thread --> Please Fix Photogrammetry and/or LOD (Latest Patch Has Made it Worse)

How have I missed your post?? Thanks for sending me the links, looking at it now. Hoping Asobo will review as well.

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Thank you for your comments! Please note the post I’ve linked above is a little bit sarcastic, meaning when you read me writing “it is no longer necessary” you’d have to read the opposite!

Here are the links to my follow up posts in the same discussion with more information:

The last one ends with a good note:

PS: there are good news though and we’re making progress, because of all these documented bug reports, at least the latest (LOD distance using square root of its value) is not just closed:

Thank you for submitting your report, we’ve added it to the Development Team’s Internal Bug Tracker!

In a real plane I can’t zoom either, so I don’t care. Nice to have but not necessary. I have voted just because it would be comfy and many user complain about, despite that has nothing to do with reality.

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Maybe there are several reasons why it gets like this, but for me it looks absolutely perfect at times, both from distance and closer up. While at times ity just this messy melted appearance.

So I don’t think it’s related to settings or LOD in my case, but more the Xbox networking/servers.

When I flew over Chicago the other day the photogrammetry was perfect, before the session I logged in and out of my Xbox profile in MSFS. Not sure it was coincidence or not, will need to test that a bit more.

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True. And you’re right (as well as Gordon) that I needed my expectations set a bit when zooming in so much.

However, it is even noticeable when I’m not using a camera mode and just in cockpit at times and that’s my biggest complaint.

This whole issue with LOD and houses with strange textures seems not to have taken into account zoom feature on the sim.

Firstly most of the pictures included to illustrate the issue are take outside of the plane. (What are you doing outside of the plane. This is supposed to be a simulator)

Very rarely are people including any refference of zoom factor used in the pictures.

Just flew over Manhattan to check for myself and thought I see no problems here. Everything looks alright.

Then I pop out of the plane and zoom in. There they are, skyscrapers that look like they were melted.

If you want to get a closer look at something in the distance you cannot just zoom in and then expect the sim to enlarge the details as you zoom. You have to fly there and look.

If you want to explore then use the showcase camera.
There you can move freely around.

When all this is said I would also like to be a le to move the camera/wiev point in external wiev, closer to or further from the plane.

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That is because you are zoomed in in the picture it looks like that.

If you move to that position in the cockpit using the move feature alt up arrow you wont get this.

Why MS/Asobo have chosen to go with a zoom rather than move viewpoint feature I dont understand.

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That seems to be an issue with internet bandwidth. You can have 3333333333 mb/s, but if it’s clogged or throttled when you fly, you’ll see this.

Have you done an actual speedtest at the time of flying?

More importantly, have you tried to manually cache the areas you’re flying over? If the manual cache works, it means it’s a bandwidth issue.

I don’t think it’s due to bandwidth. I’ve never had any trouble with bandwidth, but I do see these horrid landscapes in most cities with Photogamatry. Sometimes you can ignore the effects just by not looking closely, but at other times the colors are so bad that you can’t help but notice the lack of quality.

One problem with diagnosing the problem is that there are so many variables involved, it could be due literally to anything.

Doesn’t have to be bandwidth issues on your end of the line. Could be on microsofts side, or somehwere in the network connecting the two, or at your ISP.

I just mentioned how to test it. It may not “have” to be, but assuming it’s not is bad practice.

That’s the silliest response I’ve read so far. So we’re supposed to not use the camera view and by no means use the ZOOM, as this is a flight sim.

Ahhh got it. Thanks for making me feel so much better. pfft.

Some of our examples are showing an 80% zoom, but others that I’ve posted are when flying into a landing and Chicago isn’t rendered or San Diego isn’t rendered and you just see steeples and pyramids vs actual buildings. Has nothing to do with zoom.

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Flying the plane from outside wiev IMHO is “fun” and good for gamers I am sure.

If you are flying and wieving the plane from the outside in external wiev and want to move closer you are in fact zooming in. If you switch focus from plane to surroundings you are enlarging the picture and offcause you will reveal buildings/details not rendered as up close. You will only get a “true” picture at 50%enlargement.

The issue for MS/Asobo is the fact that they have not enabled move wievpoint closer/further away in the external wiev ( only in showcase wiev and hidden away in cockpit wiev)

Feel free to use zoom but it will bring along the same issues that plague a zoom lens, lower quality the further you zoom.

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Yes. I didn’t think of that.

Has everything to do with zoom. Some ot your fellow posters have grasped it.

If we keep continuing comparing pictures taken at 80%-50%-30% we are comparing apples and pears.

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