For whatever reason the Sim is loading two types of Satellite imagery at the same time:
Bing’s Above 2km imagery (Older, lower resolution, and washed out is the reason for the white squares you see in Palm Springs for example, sim shouldn’t be using this imagery any more when you’re in the sim flying)
Bing’s Below 2km imagery (Which is the only one the sim should be loading in when on the ground or flying around)
Thought I’d show the difference from Bing Maps itself.
Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
Yes
Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
As noted above, present in v1.5.15.0. Screenshots below are around Lake Havasu City. You can start a flight at KLAH & use the drone-cam to see them.
If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
Do you have a screenshot of that? In my experience, this is only noticeable when you are closer to the ground. I haven’t seen mountains in the distance show this behavior.
This is just a small example, but ill try and get some video footage. Always in the distant, mountains look like low rendered blobs. You can see the colour difference its not pupulated with trees. As you get closer they fade in.
Is this issue really specific to the SU3 beta? If this is related to mismatched layering of aerial imagery, and this same effect is not visible in the non-beta version, that implies that they are using a different set of aerials for the beta, either for the above 2km imagery (as identified by @TheCowTown) or the below 2km imagery or both. That seems unlikely to me.
Alternately, perhaps the beta is only using different layering/colour filtering (seasons) techniques or algorithms that results in more obvious contrasts between these layers than are visible in the non-beta versions.
In either case, I’m hoping it gets looked at closely and fixed.
I can now confirm this same effect is visible in FS2020 SU16 beta. The colour differences between the layers are not this drastic everywhere. But in the areas where there IS a large contrast between the two layers, the effect is very distracting.
Yikes! The saddest part of this is that although this issue has been around for literally years, I haven’t come across a single reference or acknowledgement that MS/Asobo are aware of it let alone how or if it would ever be fixed.
SU16 seems to have spread it to areas where I haven’t seen it before.
