Last gen tree texture quality

Compared to other textured models in the sim the quality of trees and foliage textures leaves a lot to be desired. Despite being rendered with normal mapping (which is fine) the output resolution is too low. Every closeup (less than 30 feet) looks horrible fuzzy and blocky. Last year I had high hopes that we would see polygonal trees blended in for shorter distances in this “Next Gen” FS.
I can understand why they took this road. But still, there is a mismatch if you look at e.g. the resolution of buildings textures. So I think, doubling the res would help for now.

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Sure, let’s waste our time rendering complex trees 99.9% of users won’t ever see up close.

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I very much expected such a response: It’s a flightsim! What do you want!. Then why is there grass and detailed buildings? Even textured roads (which by the way look similar like yesterday).

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sorry but no building is detailed.
It’s called a flight sim for a reason.

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I meant detailed in terms of texture resolution.

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No need for high textile resolution: it’s a flight sim.

And by the way, the trees in your first pic look more than acceptable to me.

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Trees are changing to be smaller in SU5 (see recent Q&A), this may help with their appearance. But yeah at the end of the day as long as they look good from above that’s all that matters, having them fully detailed on the ground matters not at this stage (plenty of other areas need improvement graphically first).

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@tangledbikini: You did not open the pic to full size, did you?

In my opinion these are by far the best trees in any flightsim, when you’re flying. They look real in motion and in your peripherals.

Yes, if you’re walking to your house with the drone cam I would agree that there is more to be desired…

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Yes I did. For ground textures in a flight sim they look excellent. They’ll look pretty much flawless from 500 feet.

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I never said tree textures look bad from 500 feet or above. I said they look bad at distances (less than 30-50 feet) whereas other objects still have crisp textures at “Ultra” settings.

The trees, like buildings and other ground objects, are made to look good enough from the air.

Making them look good from 50 feet away on the ground, like in a different type of game where you spend your time running around on the ground, would simply be a waste of resources (both developer resources and PC resources).

Conversely, first person shooters and such don’t have clouds that would look realistic if you were 5000 feet up.

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Then it’s a bit of a shame that they litter areas where you will see them up close like airfields.

…and I never said you did.

All I’m saying is that for gound textures these are excellent whether viewed from a height as intended, or from the ground level.

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Sure, for AP pilots getting up above the clouds in 10 minutes, flying straight for hours and land again in 10 minutes, these stories you’re telling may hold… . Good trees and good sceneries just spoil your landing framerate. Trees are irrelevant for aviation, same with fauna, buildings, water, POI’s, airport life and airport buildings. You are not alone. But you are also not the only MSFS customer. Hoards of other people like to fly around at low altitude in GA aircraft and in that case (if you would do that) you would notice the issues.

In short: you can’t decide other people’s expectations. We have 177GB MSFS on our disks… and 99.5% of that volume is dedicated to high quality textures and scenery. Saying that a wish will only cost resources is not an answer to the question, it is evading the question and disregarding wishes of others.

I hope trees will be improved with the 27/7 release. Leafs are not correctly rendeded… and especially the pixelated tree tops spoil it for me. See image below. That is at least 200 feet distance. When I’m flying in the mountains and I want to take a good screenshot, I can’t have any trees in the foreground. Actually trees get worse on shorter distances very quickly, even in Ultra mode,

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i think the trees look good enough

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I disagree with that, trees can be improved and they should be improved. Quality and distance.

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Aside of lacking texture resolution fidelity it seems the used compression of data also affects colour rendition (quite small colour palette) which leads to unnatural colours. See screenshot from ArcanePhyton.

Hoards of other people like to fly around at low altitude in GA aircraft

Low altitude in GA aircraft is all I do in MSFS. Don’t assume things.

While we can always hope for continued improvements, there is a point where enhancing the visual fidelity of ground objects simply makes no sense from a developer resources standpoint (at least for Asobo - if some third-party developer wants to invest time in rendering every leaf, more power to them) and will also crush the frame rate for those of us who like to fly low and slow enough to notice.

The quality of ground objects in MSFS are already head and shoulders above those of any other sim. But expecting them to stand up to the fidelity of ground objects in games where you spend the entire time on the ground is simply not realistic.

So you like to fly at the same altitude as I do ? You didn’t notice anything ? Keep in mind you can fly with lower settings, you don’t have to use Ultra all the time, and suffer from framerate loss… when trees and scenery are not important for you, go Medium, you’ll get 20 frames more.

Who are you to decide ? are you part of the Developer team ? You are a marketing person for Microsoft ? Just have a look at the wish lists and bug lists… Last year the majority of these wishes was aircraft handling, ATC, procedures, AP tools. Nowadays, this year, G1000/3000 is still on top (because it is not solved) but 80% of the new wishes have to do with ground scenery ! MSFS attracts a lot of tourists, these customers should be served too. Wish #1 is helicopters… we all know at what altitude helicopters fly normally.

Do you think there is another worldwide sim ? Have you ever been to Amsterdam, or London ? did you have a look at photogrammetry in these places… there’s a lot to improve, especially at ground level. MSFS is fantastic for weather, sunshine, clouds, cockpit… super… but imho it does not fulfill its promises in most cities, even WU cities. A choice for frame rate over scenery is not always appropriate, the Nordic update has proved that. We had topics with 200 complaint submits in 2 days.

Talking about trees, there is a third issue, that is solid trees, like these:

Also notice the tilted windows and the distorted building shapes. These photogrammetry errors are everywhere you look…

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