Checked the Dents du Midi. Unfortunately, the morphing is still horrible in that area of Switzerland, with the mountain peaks constantly shifting upwards. Video taken with LOD 300, pretty much the exact same situation as my old videos of that area.
It’s worth noting however that, when turning off the ground textures and inspecting the mesh only, there is still popping but the shifting seems to be less pronounced. As a result, I think that part of the morphing problem is how the satellite imagery is mapped on the underlying terrain mesh, rather than the polygon rendering exclusively.
So a few things are for certain now:
- The area around the Matterhorn (Pennine Alps discovery flight) has been improved greatly in regards to the morphing. Previously, even at LOD 400 there was this constant shifting of tiny mountain peaks and edges that drove me crazy, but now even at LOD 200 I found the flight quite enjoyable, and the terrain looked a lot more stable all around.
- Unfortunately it seems that this improvement is not global, and perhaps only the area around the Matterhorn has been “fixed” so far. It remains to be seen whether this is a manual improvement because the Matterhorn is one of Switzerland’s advertised highlights and is featured in a discovery flight, or an automated mesh data compilation improvement that will be rolled out to the rest of the world eventually. I think this should get asked in a Q&A because it’s been long since they’ve talked about the morphing (and the Feedback Snapshot isn’t giving us much information).
- Problems like the flickering LOD transitions and the raised/flattened coastlines remain. This is on Asobo to fix, but sadly not anytime soon it seems.
Still a long way to go, but I am fairly sure this is the first instance we’ve seen of Microsoft/Asobo/Bing actually tackling the morphing mess so it’s rather huge. Still this shouldn’t be considered resolved, especially considering the recent disasters that occurred to Gibraltar and Lord Howe.