Question about melted lego block looking building scenery

Make sure the Bing check box is ticked under ‘Data’ in the FS options. Mine was off for some reason and I’d see the “melted legos” mixed in with normal photogrammetry as well as good autogen in certain areas. As soon as I checked it, the issue went away.

As in all of your scenery are now like the landscape to the left?(picture I posted above)
In NYC,Miami and LA under 1000 feet or ground level ?
Can you post a screen or a video?Out of all the videos and screenshots released this would surely be the first time I’ve seen such.

It does feel like something screwy is going on in SoCal that wasn’t happening before. On day one my trip down and through OC seemed way more detailed. I’ve checked my data settings and everything is activated. I’m not even talking about the way the game interprets palm trees either. I’m getting more melted Legos in the area. Other places do seem fine though. Anyone else been to KSBA and have the landscape around the airport look extremely “modern art?”

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Photogrammetry ON


Photogrammetry OFF

Let me run the FPS tool…because if the FPS hit is negligible then why even use photogrammetry?
Unless some folks just want the utmost IRL terrain accuracy?
Also roads are much more textured and defined with Photogrammetry OFF.

NYC and Miami are some of the hardest hitting most performance demanding places in the sim.

Miami
Photogrammetry ON


Miami
Photogrammetry OFF

NYC
Photogrammetry ON


NYC
Photogrammetry OFF

As you can see I gained 3 FPS in Miami with Photogrammetry OFF
I lost 5 FPS in NYC with Photogrammetry OFF

This is on a Ultra Settings with
200 Detail of Terrain.
100% Render Scaling

On
1080ti/8700K
32GB RAM
Latest Windows 10 and Nvidia Updates

I do see the differences with the overall terrain image, I think I’m a non Photogrammetry type of user myself.

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I’m not seeing a lot wrong with that picture, I’m not sure what you are expecting? The photogrammatery is definitely better IMO as it looks much more realistic and the buildings are the right buildings. This is especially true along place likes coastlines with big beach condos where the actual building will make a huge difference. The auto gen buildings are good, but are not the real buildings and it can throw up some wierd stuff - still great compared to xplane garbage - but a little odd sometimes. From anything above 500 feet it all looks great anyway. It’s all down to personal opinion, and at least you can toggle it on or off.

You can see that in some of the historic cities too … example Florence below. Photogrammetry gives the right skyline and is overall more accurate. BUT - even here the autogen is pretty good if you’re just zipping by and not sightseeing.

Photogrammetry does seem to throw up obelisks and those giant mutant monster trees all over the place; autogen is pretty crisp as said above. Take your pick - I guess it depends what you want to do.

Interestingly, here I was getting steady 38-40 fps in Photogrammetry; varying 22 - 40fps with autogen depending how much I’m looking at.

Florence - Photogrammetry on (38+ fps)

Florence - Autogen scenery (22 - 40fps)

As stated before I’m a dense autogen object type of user who likes to drone around ground level and explore places. So yes Photogrammetry OFF is the best option for me when wanting to do so.
Instead of looking at a nuclear melted lego block wasteland when I touch ground in some areas.
This is actually a great feature…now if only it switched from ON/OFF quicker(takes 2-3 minutes)

So I thought I’d do a little comparison. Here are 4 pics of the same place - Southampton in England - the only place in the UK to have photogrammetery. The first is Google Maps in 3D, the second is Google Earth, the third is MSFS with photogrammatery ON and the fourth is MSFS with photgrammatery OFF. I know which I prefer and looks most like the real thing.

GOOGLE MAPS 3D:

GOOGLE EARTH:

MSFS PHOTOGRAMMATERY ON:

MSFS PHOTGRAMMATERY OFF:

Going much closer in, you get the effect you are talking about here. Here is one street with PG ON and one with it OFF.

MSFS PHOTGRAMMATERY ON:

MSFS PHOTOGRAMMATERY OFF:

Interestingly I didn’t move the camera between these two screenshots, but it looks like the angles have changed etc. I wonder if the photogrammatery is doing something with the ground height too?

Anyway, up close OFF looks much much sharper and more realistic - but the buildings are not the right ones. For me, it looks much better from above - which I suppose is what was intended after all.

As I said, at least we can choose, and all of it looks miles better than anything I’ve seen before

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Yea same with my Los Angeles pics above.
I didn’t move the camera positions either.
Some sort of terrain height change when switching modes

Yea definitely Photogrammetry ON or OFF
Both look and perform leap years better than P3D/FSX/XPlane11.

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Thanks for those comparisons Southampton is pretty good … wonder why the only place in UK for photogrammetry is there. Probably no easy answer to that!

It’s a good problem to have - take your pick depending what you want. Both are better than anything we’ve had before. Orbix TrueEarth is excellent, I think the default MS autogen is as good or better - and of course we just got the whole earth!

Interesting about the camera position - I was perhaps too high to notice in Florence, but the autogen scenery there is taller than the photogrammetry…

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As the developers have stated before, about this new FS being a ten-year project, do you think they will be upgrading/improving the quality of photogrammetry cities over time? Or is it better to wait for addons?

Judging by all the people who don’t have this problem on YouTube it appears to be a bug of some kind but we don’t know what causes it. I’d like to see it addressed. I was cool with it at alpha launch but the fact that it’s still an issue post rtm is annoying me.

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I have no problem with the quality of the scenery in that shot except for the awful texture seam where the satellite imagery doesn’t match. I’ll take that over autogen for sure.

The New York shot is ok cause I’m right over it but doing laps around Manhattan I go over midtown it looks great but then downtown melts. I go back to downtown it looks great but then midtown melts. Then you look at airports like Boston and Vegas where the runway is right up against the building and it’s a melted mess. From that distance it should render the main skyscrapers at least. Maybe not every house or square inch but the skylines are barely discernible from those runways.

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I know some people claim manual cache won’t work, but would you give it a try to create a highres manual cache for the melted lego area?
I tryed Rome Colosseum earlier, and it went from melted lego to solid concrete gradually as the scenery downloaded. After doing manual cache it worked straight away.
Maybe European Azure server cluster has better size/performance than American?

Colosseum itself looks good. Just like other landmarks. If you fly to Seattle, the space needle is crips is hell. But everything around it is just a mess. Even if you download the manual cache around it. The funny thing is…when i watch the intro video, there is a flyover by some city…That is the way it is supposed to look like…And it looked like this first few days. I am sure they flipped the switch in azure as they were not expecting such a load…The fact that anyone can grab it in game pass exponentially increased the user base…

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I’ll give it a try to cache Seattle in the evening to see how it looks. You may be right about Azure servers being overloaded.

Here are 3 pics from the top of the Space Needle.

This one is with photogrammetry OFF:

This one is photogrammetry ON - ONLINE data:

This one is photgrammetry ON - MANUAL CACHE:

So, for me, PG ON is much better than OFF, and I can see no difference between ONLINE and MANUAL CACHE (caching was HIGH resolution)

Hope that helps

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That’s my experience too.

I tried without photogrammetry, but apart from the scenery being less attractive, I also experienced lower frame rates and more stuttering. From high up I noticed even whole cities not being there. I’d rather see them melted than not at all :slight_smile:

It was more pleasant overall with the setting on.

I tried Seattle yesterday, it was a 21Gb manual cache size after I diligently selected all the areas for high. It looked great, no melted lego blocks. Then I deleted my Manual cache, came back to the same location, and it looked identical (didnt take screenshots, just had to rely on my memory).
So most likely I have good internet connetion/luck with Azure clusters in Europe, and able to stream real-time, no visible benefit of Manual cache. By the way, my rolling cache is only 8 Gigs.

Caveat: I usually fly small props, but for yersterday I tried the Airbus too, and as it flyies much quicker (and hence covers more area in a given time), I got occational stutters as my PC tried to prbably stream the scenery.

I’ll put Manual cache aside, as I couldn’t justify the tedious work and time it takes to select the mini rectangles vs no visible quality gain.

One thing I wonder though, whether putting the rolling cache on an SSD would make things a bit smoother…