Please Fix Photogrammetry and/or LOD

SvenZ · February 27, 2021, 3:03pm

When do you get the warning? (you can ignore it anyway)

How fast do you fly at what altitude?
London consumes 4.4GB at 500 ft altitude at terrain detail 200, straight line, 1.3 GB at 2,000 ft altitude straight line. Depending on how fast you fly you need well over 100 mbps over the center of London.

What are your ping times to the servers used?
(You can see in the resource monitor where FS2020 downloads its data from)

What does a speed test rate your connection? Is it stable?

The server can have issues as well or simply be under high load. Last weekend it wouldn’t give me over 40 mbps, avg 20mbps, and once I got that warning blaming my end (which reported 97 mbps available bandwidth at the time). On a Tuesday morning 8 AM, it was maxing out my connection consistently.

There are many variables, one thing you can do is download the area to the rolling cache (manual cache is broken) by flying slow over the area to get it all stored. Then you can fly normally from cache. (Or at least to the point where you reach the next bottleneck in your system)

SvenZ · February 27, 2021, 3:07pm

Does you system keep up with processing all that data? You might have the memory to fit LOD 9 data, but it still needs to prepare it all before the GPU gets its hands on it.

If you pause the game, does the scenery improve over time while paused? That’s a clear indication that your LOD is higher than your system can keep up with.

MrTonySM · February 27, 2021, 3:26pm

It keeps up with it. However I do have just barely enough bandwidth. 40Mb and usually only get 20 to 25 megabit. Waiting on 150Mb already ordered. Got lucky I’m in a rural area. Star link. If I fly Nyc I have to reduce to a LOD 8 only because my downloading can’t keep up. My resolution scale also depends on the area. It’s smooth on the ground, at take off and landings. I can typically run 160 anywhere. 3440x1440 monitor…

Edit. I also run Rex weather with Aerosol on. My sim runs smoother with this going. I think it leaves more bandwidth for terrain

Azphilosopher · February 27, 2021, 3:36pm

Once again, fully acknowledging that Asobo still has work to do on optimizing things, when a new update comes out highlighting a particular area, you all do understand that all of us at once go to fly in that area and that we are all going to Asobo servers to get that info. In essence there’s this uptick in overall server traffic which interfaces with Bing data (which we all know is marginal), and that all that traffic is bottle-necked to one particular area of data. Depending on how that data is arranged physically at the servers, you would certainly see exactly what we’re seeing. I think for a legitimate test of new updates, we should all be a bit patient in the order of a few weeks before we really start our evaluation.

Azphilosopher · February 27, 2021, 3:42pm

Bandwidth is not only your system but the overall bandwidth of the full communication. Any time a new update comes out all of us jump into software and head to that area putting massive load on those servers and data areas within them. In reality what we should do is intentionally stay away from MSFS for about a week after each release. Laughs. I liken it to the mass rush to buy the latest and greatest computer hardware at the moment it’s released to stores (good luck with that). You’d swear your workstation is locked up.

MrTonySM · February 27, 2021, 3:57pm

I def have noticed that. I can only sometimes pull 3 to 6 megabits tops per second and then it gets choppy. Looks like the game running on one of those old viewmasters, click here to advance one frame

MrTonySM · February 27, 2021, 4:14pm

Im also Running 2 NVMe for MSFS One has Windows10 and msfs and another has community folder with hyperlinks from Orbx and Addon Linker going to my main community folder. All other games get the bump to SSDs. I can’t put another NVMe without loosing some Sata or my thunderbolt3

SvenZ · February 27, 2021, 4:16pm

Higher bandwidth will help.

From my measurements the game needs about 1.2 GB at 2000 ft over London.
At 180 knots it needs that in about 5 minutes = ~32 mbps.

That’s at LOD 2. Double the LOD is about 1.6x the data needed.
LOD 8 would need about 3 GB and 82 mbps at speed.

If you fly low, at 500ft it’s just over triple the data of 2,000 ft, thus > 250 mbps needed to keep up at LOD 8 180 knots.

FlyHighDude7 · February 27, 2021, 4:18pm

Well you can by the screenshot I don’t get that problem, so what do you think is not possible?
I get what I get with my specs as above, run at 900mbps d/l and 120mbps u/l, other than that I don’t know why you get it at 900 LOD?

MrTonySM · February 27, 2021, 4:18pm

I can tell when my bandwidth can’t keep up, it starts to feel latent in the game. Will happen for a few seconds sometimes entering high density areas. Also at these times my graphics card usage will dip. It typically runs around 70 degrees celcius with these settings

SvenZ · February 27, 2021, 4:34pm

I’m running on a potato compared to your setup, good for finding bottlenecks. Even with all the data in the rolling cache, LOD has a big impact on melted buildings appearing.

On my gaming laptop (all data from cache) flying fast and low over london (187 knots 500ft). Looks fine at first yet after a few minutes it looks like this

LOD 0.5

LOD 1.0

LOD 2.0

Compared to LOD 2.0 at 30 knots (quarter sim rate) where my potato can keep up

Hence my thoughts that bandwidth is just the start of the puzzle. For me it’s RAM then CPU. It will run better on my laptop once my memory upgrade finally arrives, but then the CPU will be the bottleneck.(2.2 Ghz)

Anyway if it looks fine without any latency after its all in the rolling cache, then your CPU has no trouble keeping up. Otherwise LOD is too high for low level flight. There needs to be an option to have dynamic LOD depending on altitude. Or rather fix the way LOD works.

pmb2019 · February 28, 2021, 12:16am

That’s exactly what I did yesterday as it seemed plausible. I flew the very same route on a map from EGLL to EGLC along Thames river. 1st time no rolling cache (as usual). 2nd time I switched rolling cache on. 3rd time rolling cache still on in the hope it would be used.

The result was sobering. I watched a particular group of “molten buildings”, I think the area is called Wandsworth. It looked exactly the same way broken in all three trials. And yes, the cache was ON.

For the record, I have a 100 Mbit/s connection (which was also reported to be exhausted once, but not in this experiment). System is in my profile. I have all settings at ultra.

Performance is a catastrophe with fps in the tens and heavy stuttering on approach to EGLC. This was in a C152. I wouldn’t even dare to try the A320 or my VR headset.

I have been pretty proud my system was able to handle more or less all MSFS scenery pretty well - including Fly Tampa Las Vegas - but London seems to indeed be a missed approach.

BTW, London with PG off and the revamped ORBX landmarks looks much better, even more as it sports consistent colors throughout.

coxo2436 · February 28, 2021, 3:51am

I have tried everything ,active pause ,1/2 sim rate,esc for 30 minutes ,IT JUST wont load PG . as a last resort i will have to spend $100 dollars per month to up my broadband to 100mbs this is bulshit. I am a pensioner so this means i now have to live on baked beans
please fix your servers so us poor people dont have to spend huge dollars to be able to enjoy this sim
I might even have to wait till 2022 when elon musks Starlink will be available in australia @ $139 AUD per month then i will be down to bread and water or maybe just water

coxo2436 · February 28, 2021, 12:20pm

so to be clear, If I use rolling cache of say 100gb does that mean that i can fly offline and still use the photogammetry?

nevs11 · February 28, 2021, 2:02pm

I have this exact same issue, granted im on a lower end system but I have a 200MBPS internet connection, tested at that. Is this normal? is it my system or an internet/firewall issue stopping the bing data from loading up properly?

I have noticed back when the game first launched in August, my data consumption would be waaaay higher per flight. Now its much much lower.

FlyHighDude7 · February 28, 2021, 2:16pm

So are we reckoning now it’s more down to Internet speed then, if so my ASOBO should increase the max/min spec required?

Here is Bristol PG on my specs, looks awesome, have walked all around this areas and apart from SS great Britain’s masts missings it looks very good indeed.

MrTonySM · February 28, 2021, 2:38pm

I live in a rural area myself, Elon Musk Star Link just became available. I ordered it. Break out the bread and grape juice. Going to be a feast when that arrives lol

ProfJones1582 · February 28, 2021, 4:16pm

Hi everyone,

Here’s a screenshot to show how it looks on my computer.

I’m running the game on a Ryzen 5 3600, GTX 1080 Ti 11 gb GPU and 32 go of ram. I have fiber internet with 900 mbps download bandwidth and 2 ms ping to the nearest server and I’m not using wifi.

To choose my graphics settings, I thoroughly followed the guide found on this forum. I have LOD on 100 for objects and terrain.

This is London, with the latest update installed. As you can see, It’s laughably bad and disappointing, especially when you consider the gear and connexion I have :

SvenZ · February 28, 2021, 4:17pm

If you have flown there previously with PG on, then it should still work afterwards while offline. First you need to get it in the cache (Until manual cache is fixed and you can download it that way) Of course you have to fly the exact same paths as any additional data needed when you deviate won’t be there.

To re-iterate again, melted buildings are cause by a lot of things

Bandwidth, if you can’t get the data fast enough, the sim falls behind
Ram, if you can’t fit all the data in memory, the sim falls behind
CPU, if you don’t have enough grunt to process all that data in time, the sim falls behind

Terrain level of detail increases the draw distance, more data to download, store and process
Object level of detail increases the quality presentation of the data

Lower Object level of detail means less strain on the GPU, but more strain on the CPU. The game has to create lower level detail of the data streamed in to ease the render load for the GPU.

It always has to do this for further away detail, but the lower you set object level of detail, the more work the cpu has to do to convert the PG data to lower LOD. I got worse performance on my laptop at Terrain 100, Object 100 in NY PG, compared to Terrain 100, Object 150.

Altitude also plays a big role, the lower you go the more detail the game downloads and uses. You see it in the manual cache, there are 3 level of details, high, medium and low.
At 500ft you get the high level detail, for London that’s 4.4 GB at LOD 2.0 in a straight line fly over.
At 2000ft you get the medium level detail, for London 1.2 GB at LOD 2.0 in a straight line fly over.

The game adjusts this data further depending on object level of detail setting, it never goes straight from the server to the GPU. Hence having it all in the rolling cache doesn’t mean it will always look good or that the sim won’t fall behind.

Fetch data → process data → render data

When either fetch or process falls behind your current rate of travel → melted buildings

SvenZ · February 28, 2021, 4:23pm

Laughably bad? That’s better than Google maps and the best possible with current consumer level photogrammetry technology. I don’t know what you expect from stereo photography taken by planes flying on parallel courses.

You got to realize this is new technology, comparable to the transition from 2D to 3D games. 2D games being the handcrafted buildings, 3D games the early ventures into 3D rendering. It looks rough up close, but will improve over time as technology advances.