Different Graphics MAYBE arebeing sent from the Cloud depending on your flight type and configuration

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1

I don’t remember seeing this discussed in another Topic.

I have for the past several months only flying the WT CJ4 while learning
IFR/ILS on a single Flight Plan, KJFK to KEWR at 3,000 feet.
This is a “saved” Flight Plan.

Today, I decided to take the default C172 G1000 on this flight.
Selected the C172 G1000.
Loaded Flight Plan.
Takeoff & when in air, AP and NAV.

Takeoff was smooth (only had to keep the C172 on the runway).
As soon as AP and NAV was clicked, the C172 changed course and started to follow AP.

The flight was fine with everything OK. Followed ILS and made touch down.

What was interesting was that the graphic display was different.
No changes made to the FS2020 graphics settings. (4K Ultra scaling = 100).

The scenery was great but it was different from what it was in the WT CJ4.

I don’t know why.

My guess is if ASOBO changes the scenery being downloaded due to plane or plane type or other graphic settings, we are all viewing different graphics.

It seemed that the C172 scenery was more detailed. It was definitely different.

As if the ASOBO “downloading scenery program” decides that a CJ4 jet
will be flying very high and requires a different scenery that a C172 flying very low.

Does this make any sense?
I swear, I can see it. Am I crazy?

Edit: 5/18/2021
I may be starting to realize that there are things happening that I was not aware of.

I was just looking at my General Options and noticed that the option:
“Terrain Level of Detail” is set to 200.
I have always used 100 for both sliders.

That could be that cause of different graphics detail that I have been stating.

I know that one time, the Nvidia driver install program or Geforce Experience
changed my General settings. But that was downgrading the graphics from “Ultra” that I use.

It is stated by replies that the change in flight speed will change the level
of detail that is displayed and is not due to a “Cloud” activity.

Which is curious that the “Cloud” always downloads the maximum detail of scenery
and the local FS2020 program on your PC/GPU determines what level to display.

Seems like overkill to download all that scenery that wont be used.
( to my GTX 1660 TI)

2

Assuming your photogrammetry was on in both cases, the difference is probably a bandwidth issue. With the CJ4 you are likely moving much faster which would require more bandwidth to keep the scenery in sync with your position. The C172 would be moving much slower and would require less bandwidth. Assuming a constant level of bandwidth, the C172 would allow a higher fidelity stream.

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3

Yes, It is on.

So, you are saying the downloaded scenery from the Cloud is different?

4

I’m saying that it sounds like you don’t have enough bandwidth somewhere to handle higher quality when you are flying the CJ4. One possibility is your network bandwidth other possibilities are your video card, or processor, etc. Whatever the bottleneck is, when you fly a faster airplane, something can’t keep up with the amount of data being pushed and you get a degraded quality. It isn’t that MSFS is making choices based on the specific aircraft you are flying, it is likely just software dealing with the fact that there are limits on how much data can be processed over time for a given hardware configuration. Assuming no limits on your hardware or network bandwidth, you wouldn’t see a difference.

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5

Wow, so you are saying that it is the FS2020 software that is on my PC that is making the difference? Or my network bandwidth?

That is interesting.

I’ll have to think on that for a while.

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He’s saying it’s possibly your internet bandwidth, which he has a good point,

Cj4 is a plane that will be moving much faster then the Cessna,

Which gives your bandwidth more time to download the image, and render it, if your going faster it might not keep up, and I. Theory could render scenery in whilst your litterally on top of it

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No, I’m saying that either your network bandwidth and/or your PC is not sufficient to handle displaying the amount of data being generated when you fly the CJ4, so bits are being dropped as part of dealing with that and you end up with lower quality. Apparently, when you fly the C172, less bits (or no bits) have to be dropped because less data is required. As a result, you get better quality with that airplane. An analogy is that you have an infinite number of buckets and a hose. You pick up a bucket, fill it with the hose, hand off the bucket and grab the next one for filling. When you start, the valve on the hose bib is half-way open and at that level of flow, you can fill buckets without a problem. However, when the valve is opened fully, water flow is increased and it comes too fast for you to make the transition from one bucket to the next without spilling large amounts of water on the ground. The spilled water corresponds to the loss of display quality. The person filling buckets in the analogy could be any piece of hardware or software that is involved in the process of streaming bits to your computer and then displaying them on the screen.

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Fair point.

But I have Spectrum 200 Mb/s and don’t know the bandwidth.

I can check it with speedtest and it is ok, 287 Mbp/s .

9

OK.
My i9-9900K CPU and Z390 MB and 64 GB of SDRAM should not be a problem. I guess.

So the only thing left is my Nvidia GTX 1660 TI GPU.

Maybe someone with a GTX 3080 or 3090 or AMD can try it to see if there is a difference.

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Yes, the 1660 would definitely be a limiting factor. But, even a 3080 might not be able to keep up as the CJ4 is so much faster.

Put in another way, think of every square mile as a bucket, as you’re flying over that square mile, it’s loading scenery, but, if the software knew the next 10 square miles you’d be flying over, it could fill up all those buckets ahead of time. But it doesn’t know that.

Back to flying over the buckets. As @geoffda said, as you’re flying over that bucket, it takes a certain amount of time to fill that bucket. So, since the C172 is so slow, there’s plenty of time to fill the bucket. But the CJ4, on the other hand is on to the next bucket before the last one was filled, and now it needs to fill the next bucket, but then you’re on to the next and no bucket ever gets filled unless you spend time circling over that one bucket and give it time to fill, assuming your circle is small enough to only fly over one bucket.

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I don’t want to argue your point.

What If I fly the C172 at the maximum speed it will fly
and then the CJ4 at its minimum.

Will that resolve any thing?

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It might get better. I should have added as well, it’s possible the CJ4 uses so much graphics memory, there’s only so much room left for scenery as well. That’s where your 1660 would definitely be a limiting factor.

Basically, that means you need to fly the CJ4 at between 90 and 110 knots. Try it.

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Let’s not discuss possibles.

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Sorry, if you want an exact answer, you’re gonig to have to go to France and sit down with the developers with your computer and they can show you exactly how the graphics memory in your graphics card is being used and what they’re streaming to it.

The two scenarios I described is about all there is though. The plane has priority and uses whatever graphics memory it needs, and then they display the scenery in what’s left. That, and whatever memory is needed for the UI and menus and stuff.

Here’s a comparison of your card vs the 3080 - 6GB of space vs 10 GB, and you have 2/3 the bus width, and 16% of the gpu processing cores.

But, hey, if you want to believe they choose to send different scenery based on the type of plane you have, and they have some sort of database that says, “well, send this here, but this here, but now, if they have this plane, send this”, have at it.

Then again, you could have just been quoting a movie, and the jokes on me :flushed:

15

But hey, I was just describing what appears to be displaying on my screen.

If I believed it, I would not have needed to ask via the Topic.

As I said, I changed nothing but the WT CJ4 o the C172 G1000.

As you say, flight speed and or GPU determines graphics displayed.
The other was Internet bandwidth (bandwidth marked as a solution).

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And you can add GPU Memory size to that list as well.

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The GPU has very little to do with it, bandwidth, SSD, CPU, RAM speed are the limiting factors.

The GPU is the end of the line, Before the data gets there, it first gets downloaded, processed, scaled appropriately and then send to the GPU. If your GPU has plenty memory, setting object detail higher will reduce the workload on the CPU. Lower object detail means the incoming data needs to be down scaled / simplified before it can be rendered.

PG data comes in 3 states, low, medium and high. If you fly too fast for your system to keep up, you’ll end up seeing the medium level or even low level up close. You can easily test whether your system is behind by pausing the game. Your plane stops moving, but the game keeps processing the terrain. If the terrain still changes around you while paused, then your system could not keep up.

Sometimes there’s nothing you can do, either network congestion or throttling at the source often limits bandwidth from the server to below 40 mbps. While flying fast and low over London easily requires 120 mbps or more for the terrain to keep up.

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18

Different how?

19

Good.

I was just thinking that I have seen the graphics change with this
one GPU from:

i7-9500K to i9-9900K & motherboard
32 GB to 64 Gb
WT CJ4 to C172 G1000

But to your statement of GPU memory size.
That has me thinking. I’m planning on buying a GTX 3080 - 10GB.

Maybe I should wait for a GTX 3080 -12/16 GB (can’t afford a 3090)

20

You need more data to support this theory. No point arguing speculation