Discussion: December 10th, 2020 Development Update

[CptLucky8]

Thank you for the latest Development Update, I’m glad to see LOD problems and Night lighting is being investigated, this is encouraging. I’ve just posted the following information in another discussion and I’ll take the opportunity to paste it here so that it helps finding all the LOD issues I’ve documented:

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@GreatGreyBeast

but the bigger problem to me right now is BUILDING lighting, at least in big cities. Building windows should be brightly visible over the same distances as the street lights, but (I assume because they are part of the texture map), they fade quickly, with the effect that every major downtown skyline looks like a black hole amid the grid of searing street lights until you are actually among the buildings.

Explanation:

I believe this is all related to the specific LOD bug I’ve reported back in October. In turn, because the windows are fading away sooner than the walls, the illuminated windows are also fading away sooner than the walls:

@CptLucky8

About Blackshark AI autogen shortcomings

Besides, there is another LOD/distance issue with autogen buildings made by Blackshark AI. I’ve been doing some tests over the weekend in following up my “skyscraper fix”, and there is something which is really annoying to me:

the autogen buildings are using auto-generated windows overlaying auto-generated walls, and the LOD distance windows are fading-in is farther away than the distance walls are fading-in. The problem with this is buildings at a distance appear like solid color bricks instead of textured walls with windows and this is distracting.

Facts and illustrated comparison between previous versions and v1.9.3 - Community / General Discussion - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

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There are specific LOD problems which all seem to have the same underlying cause: a difference between the distance computation and the threshold value making different objects appearing/disappearing non uniformly.

Part of the problem is the LOD ring algorithm is also factoring in the object size and I suspect the code is doing this unconditionally. This means 2 related objects (building wall + windows, small and large tree at the same distance) will be popping in/out independently.

Here is a detailed analysis of these problems from a user point of view (given the tools available):

I believe there is a bug in the FS2020 code using the Terrain LOD % slider not as a percentage, but as a square root of the percentage which is unexpected.

LOD Problems - Distances revisited - Self-Service / Bugs & Issues - Microsoft Flight Simulator Forums

If this is a programming error, this could explain:

• Why trees draw distance is different per-species AND per-Trees LOD setting .
• Why some trees are disappearing then reappearing .
• Eventually why trees size affects trees draw distance too abruptly .
• Why many are finding the draw distance is shorter than pre-release .

In addition:

Having both ground texture resolution and object distance controlled with a single Terrain LOD setting is a problem too. In effect, many are reducing Terrain LOD in order to reduce the number of objects (buildings, trees, photogrammetry) in the distance and save fps, but in doing so it is also reducing ground texture resolution too quickly and makes the ground appearing too fuzzy too close to the aircraft. Therefore, it would probably be beneficial you do offer 2 sliders: one for ground texture and another one for ground objects, instead of binding the two in a single Terrain LOD slider.