LOD Problems - Distances revisited

They need to give us the options to adjust the LOD distances ourselves!! This is ridiculous! My game looks like garbage now flying any higher that about 22k feet. Even at about 15k ft the LOD circle start encroaching while looking out the cockpit window. Instead of a made for PC game porting to Xbox I now feel like I’m playing an Xbox port on PC. This just looks awful. I’d gladly give back the half the performance improvement to get the visuals I used to have. Even the taxiway markers looks like yellow blobs instead of semi intricate objects. I feel like I’ve been bait and switched! I’m running on Ultra at 2k.

7 Likes

It’s bad at 1080p with the more blurry visuals of SU5 on top. The landing ‘training’ for airliners talks about the papi lights, but you can’t see them at all when they’re mentioned. By the time you can make out the color and where they are it’s far too late to make smooth adjustments to get on the glide slope.

The odd thing is when I render at 100 renderscale, the glass cockpit is perfectly clear, yet outside is all very soft and blurry. Rendering at 150 renderscale (1620p) and downsampling to 1080p brings the outside back to where it was before SU5 (minus the lod changes) yet the glass cockpit goes out of focus, softer and harder to read.

Compensating for LOD and softer visuals I’m basically back to my previous performance level with increased pop in in PG areas and added stutter when looking around. I just had it set up right and it looked great. 5 hours installing later and the visuals took a nosedive.

I’ve always been skeptical with people claiming consoles hold back PC, yet FS2020 is the proof. 32GB upgrade was basically for nothing…

Startup takes longer as well and the menu hangs for up to 30 seconds when going into activities or spotlight. Luckily the world map is unaffected.

10 Likes

Is it just me or… it seems in SU5, NOTHING but the POI has been rendered at all…I know the PG buildings are generally bad, but I didn’t expect as bad as this…

1 Like

Dam*, this is totally ridiculous…
Come on Asobo, please don’t make it a Microsft Xbox Simulator in terms of visual downgrading, nor Microsoft Windows Simulator in terms of bupdates, nor Microsoft Microsoft Simulator in terms of developing philosophy (i.e. kill the old good things). Maybe it’s time to slow down a little bit and make the beta program more meaningful. Eagle Dynamics, the builder of Digital Combat Simulator, may be a good example to look at…

2 Likes

Check bloom settings and turn it off, bloom makes all blurry. Bloom is default ON after SU5.

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After careful consideration I have determined that this message may be in violation of the guidelines, so as a precautionary measure it has been removed.

msg 307551/98

4 Likes

I started doing some data usage measurements in London this morning and figured I might as well check if render scale has an effect on how much data is streamed. It doesn’t seem to be the case.

I’m changing the terrain pre-cache variable here, flying the same route, 3rd person mode, not turning the camera (looking straight ahead the whole way)

London test, London city to Heathrow, Bonanza, 500ft, clear skies

Render scale 100 (1080p render and display)

Terrain 200, PG Data, Ultra 2.04 GiB 12.3 / 7.5 / 3.5 22 fps
Terrain 200, PG Data, High 1.98 GiB 12.0 / 7.5 / 3.5 23 fps
Terrain 200, PG Data, Medium 1.72 GiB 11.5 / 7.5 / 3.5 23 fps
Terrain 200, PG Data, Low 1.73 GiB 11.2 / 7.5 / 3.5 24 fps

Render scale 200 (1080p screen, 4K render)

Terrain 200, PG Data, Ultra 1.99 GiB 14.4 / 7.5 / 4.5 11 fps

The numbers are amount of data streamed, observed max committed RAM, Peak CPU ram and observed max GPU memory.

Peak CPU ram went to 7.5 GB on the first flight, never changed after (reported in dev mode)
The pre-cache slider has no effect on max used GPU memory (as expected)
pre-cache has very little effect on fps, small effect on ram use and bandwidth use

Rendering at 4K vs 1080p doesn’t have any significant effect on data streamed. It might display more of what’s in memory (it certainly looks twice as good despite halving the fps) but it seems to be fetching the same level of detail.

For comparison, pre SU5 (measured not long after UK update) this flight consumed 4.38 GiB of data at terrain detail 200. So for the amount of data being handled, the LoD is less than half of what it was before SU5. System RAM use is also still much lower with terrain pre-cache on Utra, about half of what it was up to before. (26GB to 30GB committed on this flight)

4 Likes

Is it me or has the Terrain LOD decreased in comparison to SU5 again? Especially on higher altitudes.

3 Likes

Yes they unfortunately broke it again. :cry:

2 Likes

yep broken… again, along with the clouds now looking awful

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I haven’t noticed the terrain having less resolution since the hotfix/patch after SU5.

Could it be issues w/ their servers? There were outages over the weekend according to the forums.

Nah, no data streaming issues here. It is more that the LOD seems to have decreased.

1 Like

I’d like to see dynamic LOD based on your altitude. I fly with LOD 500. This looks great while in the air, and you can see structures a long way away. But its frame heavy in some areas when on the ground, and oddly not always where you might think.

I don’t need to see that far out while on the ground, so it would be a nice if the sim lowered the LOD right down when on the ground, but as you climb the LOD ramps up to whatever high mark you have set.

5 Likes

I can only say that the sim never looked this good for me. When i started with Alpha and early release version i always had blurry terrain. With SU 5 it went better and is still nice for me.

Both screenshots are with the same settings, at least when it comes to terrain. Its crisp on even FL 350.

LOD 180 and settings around the High preset, some a bit higher, some a bit lower.
RTX 2080
16 GB Ram
I7700k
all non oc

Pre SU5
unknown.png (1833×1129) (discordapp.com)

unknown-8.png (2560×1440) (discordapp.com)

Now

EoSoo5F.jpg (2560×1440) (discordapp.com)

dcQN0s3.jpg (2560×1440) (discordapp.com)

Anyone feel LOD distances have been slightly reduced in SU7? Seems like the trees and buildings don’t go so far yet again.

Yes I also thought something has changed, in VR at least - I have bumped up my LOD slider a bit to compensate.

Yes, I did my test runs again while measuring data use and get a little less data now with the same terrain detail settings and slightly higher fps. It seems the LOD distances have been adjusted down a little bit.

Not much though. I noticed the biggest difference over NY, 10% to 15% reduction in data with PG data on, about 10% less data streamed without PG data over London.

For me it feels like the max tree distances, even on ultra trees and 300 Lod, are quite a bit down on where they have been before. I thought they mentioned in a q+a that trees now go to horizon? This isn’t the case for me, flying in VR with above settings.

1 Like

Can anybody help me. This ground texture issue is terrible. I hav no rolling cache an 400 mbit lan connection. Thanks



I have flown all over the world, but somehow fail to recognize the place :stuck_out_tongue: A location would help!

First check on Bing maps what it looks like. It will never look better than there. However Bing maps can still look better since FS2020 uses an older copy (2013 data unless updated with one of the world updates)

Squares not loading can be a server issue. The game doesn’t handle that very well. You can force a reload of the scenery by first switching all data off (wait for the default scenery to show up) and then turn it back on. That should re-download the area.