Hi All,
I was getting frustrated with the triangle spiked photogrammatery at a distance that looked awful and started messing with the usercfg file. The below images are taken from near KMSP.
Before doing this make sure the Terrain LOD is set to 200 in game. It can be done simply by opening the usercfg file in a text editor, and editing the Terrain LOD Factor to different number such as 3.0 or 4.0, after this save your changes and set the usercfg file to read-only. At the highest i went to 9.0. This maxed out my 32GB of RAM and the game took about 4 times longer to load. I found 4-5 looked great and didnt really affect my fps that greatly.
None zoomed LOD factor at ingame setting of 200 : https://ibb.co/nC1B3vd
Max zoom - LOD 4.0 https://ibb.co/mFgpqF1
Max zoom - LOD 9.0 https://ibb.co/1QZ7Kp1
You can see the buildings/tress in the background being drawn at a much greater distance
NYC Screenshots/Comparison -
NYC External at LOD 2 - https://ibb.co/TrvLTPc
NYC External at LOD 4 - https://ibb.co/y64zYKq
Zoomed view, see how the bridge is rendered at greater detail further out aswell as additonal buildings:
Zoomed at LOD 2.0 - https://ibb.co/CnZHXm6
Zoomed at LOD 4.0 - https://ibb.co/02Yx0tW
Framerate Difference -
LOD 2.0: https://ibb.co/tL94p9X
LOD 5.0: https://ibb.co/3hcGbHL
45 Likes
Did you change both terrain and object LOD?
Nope, just terrain. Setting the file to read only afterwards was the key otherwise it reverts back from what I saw.
3 Likes
Would be good to see some fps benchmarks using this. Following with interest.
2 Likes
Ok i will give that a try!
The best way I can reccomend to try is to start a flight at the max in game setting. Save the flight, then change it to 9 and see how much difference it makes. I noticed between 3-4 it was mainly distant trees and buildings that began to render further out. LOD 9.0 absolutely battered my system
What specs is your PC? I running an i7 9700K, 32GB Ram and a 2080ti so should be able to ramp it up (although I’m running 1440p ultra wide) but will try this later on.
I think one of the spiked buildings is the Federal Reserve Bank. It almost looks better as a spike - it’s a really odd building 
i710700k, RTX 2080 Super , 32gb Ram. I’m guessing its down to the ram that affected the framerate more than anything as this was the only thing being pushed to the limit
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Framerate Difference, Increasing from LOD 2.0 to 5.0 lost me roughly 19fps, increased Ram and VRAM a fair bit
LOD 2.0 https://ibb.co/tL94p9X
LOD 5.0 https://ibb.co/3hcGbHL
3 Likes
19?.. Dang, was hoping it’d be less than that much. Bummer LOD is still such a big issue with modern day tech. Also by making that file read only, what happens when you adjust other in sim settings?
Thing is though, even increasing it to 3 or 4 should make a great difference. I need to test it at high altitude to see if clarity improves aswell
4 Likes
thank you for the tip, try it out now and hope it has an effect on the night lighting too !
3 Likes
Thanks, please post a comparison if you can, I havent had time to test out anything else really 
}
{Terrain
LoDFactor 6.000000
}
{ObjectsLoD
LoDFactor 2.000000
11,000 ft over Toronto at a LOD of 3.0
Draw Distance has improved and there’s no spiked buildings without zooming far in
2 Likes
Where do I find the required file please?
I can certainly say that this looks far more crisper and more sharper than what we have currently. Are the devs holding back to try and accommodate all system configurations?, Although I still think that we as PC simmers should have more options to tweak the graphic setups than a standard Xbox user.
5 Likes
C:\Users*yourname*\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache
Hidden files and folders need to be enabled
2 Likes
Only reason i can think of them holding back is to stop Azure getting hammered even more, either way it’s solved my only major gripe with the sim