Does anyone have any have any evidence of the the difference between ULTRA and HIGHEND in the quality of scenery. I have tried and other than a drop in FPS in ULTRA I cannot see any,
All quality settings seem be raising or lowering the distance at which certain elements are visible they don’t outright remove them. So the difference of high end and ultra is marginal. Approach smokestacks/skyscrapers and monitor at what distance they become recognizable. On ultra it’s slightly sooner.
The clouds look a little better, but it’s mostly just nuisance differences. As @Sath68 said, the LOD is the main reason also for the performance impact.
If you don’t see a significant difference and get a better performance that you like, go for the high-end settings and enjoy. No need for fear of missing out 
I recommend using a preset and tweaking it. The Object LOD is quite important for me, so I’d first raise that one since it also has the most impact on visuals when flying low.
If you want to see more details about the settings and what kind of impact they have, check out the HowTo:
I did some tests based on your question, and to be honest, the differences seem to be minimal. I do see some effect in the clouds (the look just a bit more detailed in ULTRA), and I have set the LOD to 170. But for the rest, I’m now on HIGH END, which gives me quite some extra FPS over the standard ULTRA settings.
Similarly I can detect no significant difference in visual eye candy or performance between Medium and High, which is my default graphics domain.
Thanks for your replies. That is my impression too but different eyes may see different things. I will stay on high and increase LOD.
There a YouTube video that shows the difference. Very little difference between High and Ultra and like you saw, you get a decrease in FPS in Ultra.
Window reflections are much better at ultra.
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