Ground texture - Low resolution - Internet incorrect Bandwidth

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Further on this, I’ve tried analyzing the different files and what is happening behind the scene. It is not bullet proof a conclusion but here is:

  1. The simulator is using Bing Map REST API through a DLL installed in the “protected” WindowsApp folder.

  2. This DLL is using an external configuration file located here:

C:\Users\login_name\AppData\Local\FlightSimulator\overrides.json

  1. The file stores the various REST API strings the simulator needs to send to the Bing map server.

  2. It looks like this file is versioned and you can read there are 2 known versions: “KittyHawk” and “teolin”. I don’t know if “teolin” is patch #2 or if this is a provision for the next Japan DLC.

  3. It seems to be supporting whether Bing maps servers return compressed textures or not. I suspect the later makes the computer compressing the raw texture pixels bitmap then, because when trying this out I’ve seen the CPU activity and temperature rise a lot for a sustained period, but it is just speculation.

  4. “gpu_model” is supporting the following values: “minimal”, “low”, “medium”, “high”, “ultra”

  5. The json file is a missing a supported key name “graphics_supported” (using same values as gpu_model) but this doesn’t seem to make any difference.

  6. I’ve not tried altering this file much in changing only few of its values, like “compressed_format_support”, but if you do, you might want to set the file to read-only otherwise it gets overwritten by the simulator.

There is one thing I’ve not tried but I’d like to is removing all settings related to the “teolin” entries and see what it does. However I’m not convinced the issue with texture LOD comes from this.

In effect, whether you create a local cache or just use the global cache, you can see that when close to the ground, textures are ok, and when higher up in the sky you can see the change of texture resolution in adjusting the Terrain LOD setting.

I’d suspect this is just a bug only, if not a feature Asobo is testing with us PC users prior deciding which LOD is best for console users. If this is a bug, it has to do with the simulator code using the Terrain LOD setting value to pick up the downloaded texture from the cache wrongly, because the highest definition texture is certainly already in the cache as you can see it when near the ground.

Something which makes wondering though is whether the issue is not just due to a typo because I find it peculiar having 2 similarly named keys: “graphics_support” and “graphics_supported” (even if semantically they have 2 different meanings).

[update 15FEB2021]

There are much more LOD distance related problems now documented:

LOD: settings and suggestions
LOD problems - Trees Fix Revisited
LOD Problems - Distances revisited
Trees draw distance is different per-species AND per-Trees LOD setting
Some trees are disappearing then reappearing

[update 20FEB2021]

Something which makes wondering though is whether the issue is not just due to a typo because I find it peculiar having 2 similarly named keys: “graphics_support” and “graphics_supported” (even if semantically they have 2 different meanings).

It seems this entry is now gone which might indicate it was indeed a left-over from older versions.

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