The imagery is great, the DEM is great, but the morphing‘s still as bad as before as far as I can tell.
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+1
The terrain is still morphing extremely close to the player.
It’s a real shame, because the most detailed mesh is worthless if it constantly changes shape.
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Here’s a more realistic scenario. Cockpit view, Terrain LOD set to 200, caching set to Ultra.
Honestly, at such close distances only the source data should be visible. Despite the issues with shape retention, there is still a lot that could be gained by simply tweaking the LOD rings.
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I know I should have just stayed away for longer, (like ChaoticSplendid suggested!) but I couldn’t help myself.
After WU6 I just had to have a look and see if my great nemesis “morphing” had been resolved.
Fired up the fully updated sim and …Nope!! not even a little!!
see you folks in another few months
I’ll see myself out!
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Try setting the terrain LOD to 3 (or anything higher your rig can take) in the usercfg. I have been flying yesterday in Austrian and today in Swiss alps in a GA with LOD set to 3 and this morphing has been almost completely eliminated. It is absolutely stunning.
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Thanks for the tip, although I doubt my connection can handle it I will give it a try! If performance is not too bad I’ll attempt to make a comparison video too.
I wasn’t able to update and test WU6 until today and after tweaking my system again what I am seeing in general is a big improvement but not a total fix yet in regards to the terrain morphing. For me it was always worst in areas that have had World Updates than areas that didn’t and with the NZ mesh add-on flying around that island nation is pure pleasure to the eye. I have to struggle to see any morphing at all there. So my take it is that it’s getting better and to me it seems like a mesh related issue that hopefully will get improved globally at some point. Now waiting on SU6 to see but with trepidation.
Some games use tessellation in a way that increases triangle count as you get closer to an object without producing those abrupt and startling changes in LOD. Increasing terrain LOD in the game beyond 200% is a horribly inefficient way of accomplishing better LOD for close-up terrain.
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The NZ Mesh is using a proprietary LOD compilation method by Orbx to reduce morphing, which is why you’re not seeing the issue there (the same also applies to mesh add-ons that utilise BGL heightmaps, for some reason their LODs are a lot more consistent than standard CGL mesh). These improvements have existed for quite a few months now and are not new.
I haven’t had time to test out lots of different areas after the DACH World Update, but from what I could tell, the morphing in Switzerland is just as bad as other areas with extremely detailed mesh (like Mount Rainier after the USA World Update), while the morphing in Norway is just as tragic as it was when it arrived with the Nordics World Update (consequently it was a good area to test the scenery culling). Unfortunately I don’t think there’s been any improvement from Asobo’s side.
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Thanks ChaoticSplendid. Yes, still annoying as hell and I just hope they make the improvements like we are seeing with that NZ Orbx model as it seems to work. I only bought that for testing but not intending to plop any more cash down to improve something that just should be there already! I fly all over the globe to try different regions and some random remote places just do better. I personally won’t be happy until it’s all gone. I’m running 4k with Ultra everything, 30fps locked and everything else that I use in the sim works for me except for this huge loss of immersion feature.
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I gave Terrain LOD 300 a try. Here’s a video and my observations.
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The morphing is less visible overall, but unfortunately there’s still plenty of it around highly-detailed areas, especially when the camera gets close.
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The sawtooth pattern and coastline glitch fail to be properly resolved until the camera gets very close as usual.
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High Terrain LOD settings place a huge load on the connection, I had wait several minutes for the loading screen to end and for the terrain to be fully loaded after that.
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I quite liked how this improved the appearance of distant mountains.
For anyone who has a good enough system and connection, increasing the Terrain LOD value from the UserCfg.opt file is a viable solution to improving the general appearance of terrain and making the morphing as least visible as possible.
However, it’s such a bad issue that even brute force cannot fully correct it. Considering that LOD values are the square root of a percentage, it means that even setting Terrain LOD to 500 (~223%) will probably not completely eradicate the morphing either.
The easiest change that Asobo could make right now is tweak the LOD rings to what they were before the USA World Update, so that the LOD switching does not happen so aggressively when the camera is close. But the true solution is to fix the shape retention so that the mountains do not change shape so drastically with different levels of detail, and they retain more detail in the distance.
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Asobo should simply give us control over the LOD ring ranges. We need more distance sliders too for things like terrain mesh, imagery, trees and photogrammetry.
That way everyone can be customize their setup without Asobo having to tweak constantly.
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I agree, it is very discouraging to see that, even though we have posted lots of good feedback and evidence on this issue, the developers didn’t seem to know that it exists even. I sincerely hope that since May they have done more investigation, and the fact that this thread has received special tags is a good sign. Maybe next week’s refreshed Feedback Snapshot will shed some light onto this.
To be fair, I believe it was Sebastian who seemed to ignore the issue and failed to provide a good explanation. While Jörg didn’t know any better, being the head of the project and not an engine programmer, at least he seemed more concerned about it, and I think the issue being escalated was his doing. It would be great if they had someone like Lionel to answer questions of this kind, his interview with Digital Foundry is proof he really knows his stuff.
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Just a little rant. No helpful suggestions, no visual demonstrations, no insightful diagnosis and nothing of any real substance included within. Skip this post if you are sick of hearing another grown man whine about a video game. You’ve been warned! haha!
My routine since the USA update.
Wait for new world update or sim update to fix morphing. Read through this forum and Avsim forum to see what to expect. Hesitantly fire up the sim, go to my standard testing area. Fly around for 5 minutes and observe morphing terrain (and various other newly introduced bugs), turn off sim. Click onto this forum, click on the bugs & issues section, click on the scenery section and see if this particular thread has any new info regarding a resolution to morphing. Find nothing, leave disappointed. Turn off computer and go work on house renovations/ yard work.
Repeat… (for almost a year now!!!)
The result: House looks great, computer is dusty and my ability to stay optimistic about this sim is declining! I have been using DCS alot more, but to be honest, flying general aviation around the world low and slow is my real passion.
After the first few builds of MSFS, I truly thought that I had found my holy grail. It was so good in fact, that at the time, I dismantled my dedicated racing sim rig, purchased a thrustmaster warthog and trackIR, built a dedicated flight sim rig and was even considering building a new PC with a 3090. Well needless to say, I haven’t done that (the new pc anyway) because with every new update MSFS has introduced new bugs, declined in overall quality and still not fixed the morphing. (also graphics cards got stupid expensive! lol)
I’m only really posting this “rant” because I’m actually thinking about dismantling my flight sim rig and returning it to its former racing rig setup then firing up Assetto Corsa and forgetting about flying completely. Well, for a long while anyway!
Someone please tell me NOT to!!! Tell me that you think this sim is going to start getting better…soon! That Asobo are going to fix all of the problems that they have introduced, in a timely manner. C’mon I’ve got the screwdriver in my hand and the racing steering wheel is out of the closet, someone stop me …please! haha!
Cheers (20% joking 30% serious 50% too much time on my hands!)
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The fact that many visual issues which have existed for a long while are finally receiving the [BUG LOGGED] and “ado” tags aligns with my expectations that, after getting Sim Update 5 and the Xbox release out of the way, the team are now finally focusing on those.
I’d say hang in there for as long as you can! Although it sucks that we don’t have any new information on how they plan to tackle them, I’m feeling a lot more optimistic that they are going to do something in the shorter term. For example, the mountain seams have received a small fix to make them a lot less apparent, which suggests they are looking into issues related to the terrain engine.
In case it helps, I would recommend avoiding mountainous areas and limiting yourself to highlights with flatter terrain, like cities, deserts, tropical water and so on (some good locations can be found on flightspots.co). I don’t know how much you’ve tried World Update 6 out, but I can confirm the new culling setting works beautifully (it’s called “Offscreen Terrain Pre-Caching” and it must be set to Ultra) by removing the awful pop-in when panning the camera, photogrammetry distances are back to where they used to be, and the overexposure seems to be mostly gone.
I generally prefer flying close to mountains and coastlines so it’s not really a solution to just avoid them, but from time to time it does give me some enjoyment and helps me feel that my investment didn’t just go to waste while patiently waiting for the morphing fix.
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Have you guys seen the video featured in the latest Dev Update? https://youtu.be/Ec_DLNz-oFM Check at 5:55 if you’re lazy to watch everything.
This is a great example of how bad the issue is! I’m glad the Bug logged tag was added. 
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Thanks for the reminder, forgot to check it out. Lots of horrible morphing throughout the entire video! I guess some of the panning shots are really zoomed-in which exaggerates the issue, but it still ruins what could have been a beautiful video.
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Thank you as always for the great suggestions. Unfortunately, just like you, I enjoy flying close to mountains and coastlines (I live in British Columbia & that is pretty much everywhere and like to fly around my neck of the woods!) so I’m still rather buggered as it is.
Your informative and optimistic posts are about the only thing keeping me around. Well also the fact that I really want this stupid sim to succeed. I’ve seen how awesome (at least from a graphical perspective) it can be and the desire to have that back is a very strong motivator.
It just seems that as the weeks and months pass, my motivation is waning. Well, I guess I’ll put the screwdriver away for now, but I swear if the next update is another step backwards (or even a stationary non step) …it’s away with the rudder pedals and back to a gas, brake and a clutch!! lol
Thanks again ChaoticSpendid!
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And that is why, in any official MS promo videos, you will notice they use the drone camera. The camera is still and the aircraft is moving. Thus, no/little terrain morphing. So sneaky!
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Indeed, and even with that shooting method they still can’t completely avoid the morphing in some specific shots. Quite baffling that the video team have probably been aware of this the entire time but the developers have not.
Also rather disappointing that there is no update in the Feedback Snapshot regarding this matter after a two-week break. Now we have to hope the Q&A will bring some good news…
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