Sorry if this has already been answered in the forum (I have unsuccessfully searched), but I am looking for some guidance on the benefits/challenges of using manual cache to improve the PG in certain locations.
As most people experience, PG just struggles to load properly in highly concentrated areas such as London and despite my high powered system and very fast broadband, I am often presented with melted, part loaded buildings etc.
If I were to manually cache, at a high resolution, onto one of my NVMe drives, a location such as London (appreciate this maybe huge in file size), would the PG load correctly and fast enough to provide the desired visuals?
In Europe and the UK, MS must bring Bing maps on the same quality level as in North America and Asia.
For now, there`s a much to big difference in quality ( also inside MSFS)
From this point of view: âYes, a manual (âpersistedâ) cache helpsâ - simply because you download it in advance, for as long as it takes. But once you fly over the area the data is guaranteed to be there (in the level of detail with which you have cached it previously").
From a quality point of view: âOf course not. Because even when you donât cache eventually you will get the same data when dowloading it onlineâ. And the photogrammetric data âis what it isâ, so caching the data wonât magically produce âbetter PGâ (but that should be clear).
Now the time it takes to (fully) download the PG data (be it in advance, into a âmanual cacheâ, by selecting the corresponding map tiles, that is, or âas you flyâ) might depend on the area you live (and by implication which Microsoft Azure data centre youâre going to âhit with your requestsâ) and how many other people fly in that area at the time (there might be a data limit per region/per data centre/per application/etc.). And of course also on your âlocal setupâ, e.g. âhow much time FS2020 is able to allocate for downloading / updating dataâ etc. (*)
But only Asobo / Microsoft would know for sure
(*) That reminds me: so caching data might have even another benefit: because when you âmanually cacheâ the data FS2020 can âfully focusâ on downloading the data. It doesnât have to update physics and graphics at the same time (which have of course higher priority, I assume).
Photogrammetry data isnât meant to be viewed close-range though. As you can only have so much photograph to be able to render the buildings accurately.
Only problem is we are forced to look at it when landing and taking off at airports that have photogrammetry. Being able to set up and exclusion zone for photogrammetry would eliminate this problem but has far as I can tell you cant even do that when manually editing an airport with the sdk.
But which airports have photogrammetry? The ones I know are the horrible Google Maps photogrammetry airports conversions. But that needs to be manually installed.
The custom Airports I know that are included in the sim and payware airports are all handcrafted with custom buildings. Iâve flown over 600 hours in the sim, and Iâve never land and took off at airports that have photogrammetry. Either custom airports or generic auto-gen airports.
My home airport KVNC has it and the short hop down to North Captive a tree lined runway also has it. When landing and taking off you are treated to the weird melted whatever they are on both sides of your airplane
So why donât you just disable photogrammetry altogether?
And as my driving teacher used to say: âLook on the road, dude!â - I am not a pilot, but I am pretty sure that real-world pilots go through a similar training program like I did with my driving license
Because like Neo said it looks fine after you are at altitude. I would have to turn it off for take off stop and turn it back on for the flight and then stop and turn it back off for the landing
You just reminded me of my father. He use to teach drive training. He said if he would point out something to the left the student would always steer the car left instead of just looking left
Every system setup is different. Even to the point of how many servers the data bounces thru while getting to you. There have been numerous discussions about rolling cache vs manual cache vs no cache and the ony concensus was that there is no consencus.
Try it. If it improves your experience. Do it. No matter what any one here says.
FYI, I remember reading something from way back at release, or maybe even before, that said that the best resolution is only available direct from the server, live. I donât pretend to know if there is any reduction in quality for sure but that was what they intimated. I believe it has a lot to do with the quality of the data that you actually stream and whether you are losing any packets.
Can someone please explain to me why they think photogrammetry (when loaded correctly ofcourse) look worse then low res blocks with 8 polygons smacked onto a low res aerial image? I mean, i get that the melted building stuff is far from ideal, but for me this only happens at further distances away from my pov. As long as iâm not zooming in too much itâs not really noticeable. Also thereâs alot more stuff going on in the distance beyond where autogen would spawn so makes for better viewing distances (altough it might be low quality, still hardly noticable when not zooming in too much). Ofcourse at low level close to buildings it looks somewhat melted, but autogen low level looks horrible too. Also the photogrammetry texture images are of much higher quality then normal aerial images wich are combined with the autogen.
I agree that london, paris and amsterdam look worse then earlier photogrammetry cities (cities like rome, naples, milan, barcelona etc. Etc look great) itâs still way better then unrecognizable autogen buildings places ontop of low quality aerial images.
Ofcourse this might be different for people experiencing loading problems with photogrammetry wich will make it look worse ofcourse. But i have none of these problems and iâm curious about why some people hate it so much. I have never seen autogen cities and thought, wow this looks so much better then photogrammetryđ
There are some areas treated with photogrammetry which also have smaller airfields. Some of these look absolutely terrible with photogrammetry on but ok with just Bing maps data. (A lot of the area around Boston MA for example)
Iâm not sure if this is just because USA was the first attempt and the results might get better if they do it again some time as Iâve heard mentioned but really, some of it looks frankly horrible.
Well put @omarliew. The majority of screen shots I have seen showing â â â â â â PG scenery have been either low altitude exterior shots. I find that when flying near PG and looking out from the cockpit without zooming it looks pretty good. I can recognize specific landmarks and the scenery is not a distraction when on approach. Seems that it falls into the same category as the wrong kind of trees imaged on the countryside.
Thousands of hours flying over both populated areas and bush flying. Airliners to Cubs. Never really noticed what trees were under me. Just the fact that they were trees and I wasnât going to want to do an emergency landing in them. Donât remember ever trying to figure out what kind of car was parked in front of the deli while on approach.
PG looks way better that AG in nearly every case unless you are flying between the buildings trying to avoid street lights.
And I think thatâs the tragedy of this game. I think the authors assumed the real game was what one sees from 5000 -10000 feet.
I always fly well below 1000 feet, because I want details on far-away regions Iâve never encountered in person. The game I envisionned was the one hinted at in the old opening cutscenes. Specifically, where the AI takes the A5 for a spin around the Seattle Space Needle. It is that version of the game which is ruined and truly unplayable now. Bad, half-rendered visuals, half-second freezes and nonsense. Even single-player, without the UK and France photogrammetry installed.
Even though it worked as never before only weeks ago.
