Request: How good can scenery be around my home?

[Halichopter]

I have not upgraded MS2020 in the last couple years and my scenery add ons are very old. Flying over my home on the shore of St Albans Bay in Minnesota the buildings and docks look flat and nothing like reality. Yet Google Earth shows the area quite well (see uploaded screenshot).

My request: Could someone navigate over my home which is near the marina and docks on St Albans Bay, near the town of Excelsior, Minnesota USA and take a snapshot at a similar tilt and compass heading as the image I uploaded? This would help me understand what I should expect for local scenery and hopefully give me the incentive to start again on MS2020 as well as guide my steps on what I need to do to improve my simulator scenery.

Thanks to anyone who might help out!

Halichopter

[cowreth]

Helllllo

Here’s the picture I can get that, it seems, is the closer.

If you don’t mind jumping with me in a Cabri G2, maybe a short video will be more helpful ?

Excelsior Bay

I’ve got a pretty good rig, Terrain LOD is 200, Objects LOD is 400, and I play in 4K-HDR. Also, you want to know that I forgot to disable Accuseason, a mod that changes trees quite a bit.

The picture above has been taken after, with the drone view. Though, the view can be seen (I think) somewhere at the 13mn mark in the video.

Enjoy your day !
Seb

[Halichopter]

cowreth, thanks so much!

I feel like my sim is lightyears behind yours (even thought it is only a few years old) but my complaint with my scenery is more fundamental than resolution. In your video the buildings look like the real buildings and the trees are approximately right. (The docks are like flat objects painted on the water which is the same as I have. Really somewhat of a nit pick on the docks.) What is required to get the real buildings and trees looking right? I feel like I need to be pointed to a basic tutorial to get local scenery looking more like your video.

[cowreth]

Hey Hali !

Ahah, I’m glad it helped. It was fun coming here and having “a mssion coming from the real world”

And now we know your sim “can” do better. Agreed that the docks are kind of flat. Also, the boats are painted on the water. Which is very visible when flying an heli so low, but when doing “normal VFR operations” somewhere over the 1000ft, looks actually pretty good (without putting your computer on the knees ^^).

Let’s try to find some ideas for your sim. I’m not an expert, but here are some ideas.

It’s a big computer, with details on Ultra

It’s probably important to start with that : I’m on PC. I think an XBox can achieve the same level, but I’m not 100% sure. My setup is pretty powerful : it’s an RTX4090 graphical card with a intel i9-13000 processor. It can render a lot of things with a pretty good framerate.

Todo : I should try to redo the video with graphical settings at the lowest position, to see what does it look like.

World updates

My sim is kind of raw, in that part of the world, the only thing I have installed is the World Update 2 and the World Update 10 : USA. Minneapolis might have been overhauled for on of this update.

To install the World Updates / City update, it’s free, and it’s in the marketplace, in the sim, in the “World Category”.

Photogrammetry

I’m not a big expert of that point, but I think that photogrammetry here plays a role in how the buildings are being rendered. If I look at this map (which is a community effort, thanks to the authors !), it seems that Minneapolis and Saint-Paul may have received some work .

It’s worth checking in your config in the sim that “Data > Photogrammetry” and “Data > Bing Maps data” are checked. For the record : I don’t use any mod about “map enhancement”, what you’ve seen there are pure MSFS data.

Trees and Accuseaon

I’m gonna have to check how much Accuseason have changed the trees. But I already can say that it doesn’t add trees, by the ads. It cut them short in height, sometimes. And change their colors, always (to make it look like in Spring, or Winter …). And it remove some of them in large cities (for example when you have trees on large roads). So, forests remain basically the same, except that the canopy can look more natural.

Todo : I should try to redo the video to see what it looks like without Accuseason.

I’m probably going to make that 15mn flight with some changes in my setup, just to see.

Oh, and by the way : very nice place ! Thanks for having me flying there
Seb

[cowreth]

Okay, maybe I’m taking too much fun there. But here’s the last one, promises.

TL;DR; // Conclusions :

• Bing Data plays a major role on trees and building being present
• Photogrammetry plays the major role of building looking more like their real counterpart
• Graphical Settings are not as important; il will render the terrain more groovy, enhance some details, but compared to the impact of Bing Data & Photogrammetry, it’s not much

For the tests mentionned in the previous post, I made a first video then a short second video, as the first was lacking “Full Graphics / No Bing Data / No Photogrammetry” test. I cut the video, one last time, to remove time spent in the menus. I was hoping that the transition (and, hence, the differences) would be seen better. It’s definitely better, but compression / frame jump / video-encoding-things are messing with it.

Still, here’s the video, without menu. The one with the menus is here.

Excelsio Bay - Cut

Picture versions

So, while I was at it, and instead of taking a video, I extracted pictures of the frames. Here are the shots.

From “Low-End Graphics, Bing Off, Photogrammetry Off” to “Bing On”

Trees ! More Trees !

From “Bing On only” to “Photogrammetry On added”

Look at the dock, which is now… a dock

Again

Same dock, from an other point of view

Again, before-after

The buildings looks more like the real ones, but shape is a bit crazy

PG On, graphics on “Low End” then “Graphics on Medium”

Most of the visible things on these next shots are the sadows, in my opinion

PG On, graphics from “Medium” to “Ultra”

PG On, graphics from “LowEnd” to “Ultra”

No shadow or dark places in Low, full of them in Ultra

Again

the water seems way better, too

Ahah I had fun in this. It started with a simple question, I’m sorry if I did too much - I really, really had fun.

Enjoy !
Seb

[BegottenPoet228]

Really nice work, Seb!

Folks like you, who are willing to take time to help others, are a big part of what makes this such a great forum.

[CaliFlyer46]

FS2020 gets my house almost exactly correct right down to the old 3ft satellite dish on the roof, the trees, the deck, the two chimneys and the picnic table but it shows my neighbors house which is the same single story height as mine, as a huge 3 story block affair made of bricks. Nobody ever builds 3 stories with bricks in CA!!