It may also be intended to reduce the download size because lower quality means smaller file size, hence the MSFS server’s network won’t be hit by a huge bandwidth of data volume from millions of MSFS players.
I’m fairly sure it’s just from a different provider, which has different quality data made with different software at different times.
I don’t understand why anyone’s talking about Xbox here. It’s unrelated in every way.
It’s disappointing in that I, and along with many others, still have the bombed out apocalyptic terrain look despite high end systems many months after release. I reported this a few times yet no reply. So MSFS has been a brick on my drive since September. I thought after a few updates things might get better, but nope. I’ve done 2 complete re-installs with no luck.
My system for what it’s worth: 2080 Ti, i9 9900KS, M.2 SSD, 64GB RAM. 1 GB internet. I’m in the heart of the Bay Area, right in the middle of silicon valley so internet speed is never an issue.
No matter what graphic settings I have- low medium high, it all looks bombed out. 
I’m just glad I didn’t pour any money into add ons.
I wonder what does MS do to show flawless photogrammetry in their pictures and videos.
That’s the million dollar question. Although if I recall, you rarely see their fancy shots with airliners and my hunch is because the draw distance is terrible when you’re flying as fast as they go
Yep. Same as mine. Sigh
I experience the same thing as you all. For some time I believed it was my hardware- despite the fact it is brand new and high-end components. Then I believed the internet was fast enough to download the imagery. Not the case either.
I have tweaked graphics left and right. Where I am at now is when flying 500-1000 slow and low- the cites look fine but once you peak and climb above 1000 and so on and you began being able to see farther out. Not the horizon of the city but between that and just below/surrounding your aircraft it’s triangle shaped trees and basically flat buildings or melted shape.
Of course when you fly within that magic distance it LODs and looks fine.
I don’t let it ruin my enjoyment. Still love the sim. I hope they will optimize or allow us to adjust the LOD based on our systems in the future. I feel I have been seeing more and more of us experiencing this issue.
Well stated – this is exactly what I believe to be the specific problem as well (also airliners see it much worse than a GA/prop because we’re flying typically way faster and higher…) I don’t need it be 4k spectacular when it’s 50 miles away, but I definitely want buildings to show as buildings and not pyramids or melted blobs.
Anywho, looks like Asobo plans to improve PG in SU 6. We shall see.
Covid has taken a beating on those ships. 
My favorite is that amazing pyramid/steeple photogrammetry. So realistic. 
Is this the bottomsite up stonehenge camouflaged with tree, it must have sunk through the earth which must be flat, not round than. Have you already checked if the top half is still in the UK. 
In areas where the custom built scenery does not exist, code must use algorithms to decide from elements in the overhead image downloaded from Bing where to place things such as buildings and trees. If those overhead images were not taken at times when there was little to no shadowing, the algorithms work rather well but ask yourself how you would decide what is a clump of vegetation if you have this darkened area in the middle of other bright sections. The quality and sharpness of the overhead image also plays into this problem. I notice that for the most part they are pretty darned accurate where sections of trees end up but when the AI gets it wrong, it can be laughable. We have an area in West Phoenix called Litchfield Park which has a huge number of tall palm trees lining streets and around homes and for some reason the algorithm renders them as these spiked mounds in terrain. While human eyes can instantly see the problem, imagine designing the computer code algorithm that figures out what a tall palm tree looks like from directly overhead just from pixels in an image.
The cure for all of this of course is custom scenery work where actual humans go in to each photogrammetric area and decides where trees are, how houses are designed, manually sets river banks, deals with cliff faces, etc. The task is immense to cover the entire world in that level of detail not to mention the terabytes of data involved.
Well you’re assuming the algorithm that builds those 3d objects actually knows they are ships. It doesn’t. It merely knows it’s some kind of raised object with some additional info about colors and protrusions based on Bing’s own 3d interpretation from various angles. Both platforms could be considering those ships to be small islands. Plus it doesn’t help that when the Bing overhead photo was taken, sections of the ship are shadowed and some of those shadows may match exactly the criteria for what an actual section of trees looks like.
Now some scenery designer could replace those ships with actual 3d objects and problem solved.
You can call it what you want, it’s just off!
I’m not expecting programmatry everywhere, thats not possible for most hardware. But it should see a tree as a tree, a windmill as a windmill and a house as a house, and not as objects covered in humongus plants
Now that’s bad – are you sure your data settings are all on? What resolution are you?