Research on Terrain/Ground texture blurriness after SimUpdate 5

[aerovin88]

Hi Guys,

This is for those of us who fly airliners/business jets. Most of you may have noticed that after SU5 update, the terrain texture looks blurry after reaching the cruise level. Therefore i did a quick research to find out what has changed in this update causing this issue and here are my observations.

1. First of all, i have configured my terrain LOD slider to 200 (Max).
2. Jumped into a cessna longitude and used the slew mode to climb to an altitude of 26,000ft. I can see the textures are sharp and looking good.

3. So i slowly increased the altitude and as soon as i cross 30,000 ft, the ground textures started blurring and by the time i reached 32,000 feet the textures are completely blurred.

4. Now i started reducing my altitude and as soon as i descend below 30,000 ft, the ground textures became sharp and clear.

This made me think why exactly at 30,000ft. So i went and manually configured the terrain LOD in the usercfg.opt file from 2 (200 in UI) to 4 (400). I restarted the sim and did the entire testing again. The textures did not get blurred even after crossing 32,000 ft. So decided to push on further to 44,000ft and the textures are still sharper. However i did lose 4-5 FPS but it is expected.

So here are the breakdowns for the LOD value.

a. For LOD level of 200 (2) - You will get clear textures upto 30,000 ft.
b. For LOD level of 300 (3) - You will get clear textures upto 40,000 ft.
c. For LOD level of 400 (4) - You will get clear textures upto 50,000 ft.

Therefore based on my observations, this is NOT a bug!. I believe asobo finally fixed the LOD ranges properly. But they need to automatically increase the terrain LOD based on the altitude. Also extend the LOD range slider in the UI, for those who prefer static LOD at all altitudes.

For.e.g when on the ground, setting terrain LOD to 200 along with objects cause a massive FPS drop. Also you do not need LOD of 200, when you are on the ground, since you will be seeing mostly the airport area. But as we climb higher let us say after 10,000 ft, LOD can be gradually increased from 100 to 200, then after crossing 30,000ft LOD can be increased to 300 like wise. This will help us in keeping the FPS since the objects like buildings and trees starts to disappear as the aircraft climbs leaving more space for the textures to takeover.

The same reverse concept can be applied while descending.

I would strongly advise not to fiddle with the configuration files, unless you know what you are doing. Please let me know your comments. Thanks

[AppliedPython94]

LOD 3 … AND sharpening 0.5 / 0.17 in nvsia control center dis magic to the looks

I actually was impressed.

[aerovin88]

Yes but with LOD 3, i am getting a massive 10 FPS drop while on the ground.

[KevDawg111]

Dynamic LOD would be awesome

[GamingCat2130]

LOD 4 can easily managed by and good mid-range computer. Sharp textures up to 50.000 foot height is impressive. But no airplane except the U2 or the SR-71 can get up that high.

[Hugothester]

Great job researching this. Asobo needs to offer inside the menus the possibility of increasing the LOD slider up to 400 at least, it is really easy to change but I feel like the game should give you the option in the menus.

[aerovin88]

Mig-28 can reach, i mean most of the fighter jets can reach. I was just saying keeping the top gun DLC in mind.

[ExpressTomato52]

“https://youtu.be/rs6mz39O5QE?t=455”

“Bye Bye IFR in MSFS? - #63 by ExpressTomato52”

[dumpsterfire248]

i have every setting on ultra and manually set LOD to 6. Still becomes blurry above 34000 feet

[alirayzaw]

OP is 10000000% wrong …
it was fine before SU5 with LOD at 100 let alone 200 or higher … …
everything was sharp and crisp and they looks so awful right now …
its definitely a bug …

[Alpen7]

They also have changed the values behind numbers. I can’t get same draw distance with lod 200 now that I had with lod 150 before update. Optimized.
So in my personal tests old lod 200 in game is now 4.0 in game files. At least somewhere around that.

[DensestSnail693]

Blurriness experienced over the last couple of days can be discounted as pressure on both the internet and Asobo’s servers will have meant that some data streams were reduced. You may or may not have been affected but without diagnostic data who can say?

[AppliedPython94]

So how does that explain adapting setting does solve ? Editing LOD 3 would not help if the data is corrupt or not downloaded

[DensestSnail693]

We all saw some of the bad screenshots folk were posting while the chaos was at it’s height and since then at least one simmer has posted a follow up in perfect focus.

[AppliedPython94]

Nah … chaos is over … removing lod 3 still gives badtextures. Adding shows sharp textures ….

[DensestSnail693]

I don’t doubt it but until I get a real gpu instead of this toy I’ll never get to test it.

[DonSimone80]

The LOD conundrum rabbit hole goes far deeper than we actually think, the computational degradations happen from about 97ft above the ground, there are 7 in total, LOD linked to texture resolution, in SU5 LOD has an effect on draw distance too. Wanna see something cool, set LOD to 40, climb to 36000ft, you’ll still hit good frames, just don’t pan too much, CPU usage doubles but it looks phenomenal:)

[AppliedPython94]

Lod3 covers to fl400 ft right ?

See video below also …
By the way … now i watched below video i actually like the “overexposure”. It is not … it was just WAY to dark before the update.

Because we where used to that it now feels as being to bright but actually look more realistic.

Microsoft Flight Simulator - Sim Update 5 Performance Comparison - Before and After

[Ivusenko9629]

@aerovin88

For.e.g when on the ground, setting terrain LOD to 200 along with objects cause a massive FPS drop. Also you do not need LOD of 200, when you are on the ground, since you will be seeing mostly the airport area. But as we climb higher let us say after 10,000 ft, LOD can be gradually increased from 100 to 200, then after crossing 30,000ft LOD can be increased to 300 like wise. This will help us in keeping the FPS since the objects like buildings and trees starts to disappear as the aircraft climbs leaving more space for the textures to takeover.

This is something I have in mind since the release of the game. It would be really nice to hear the dev’s opinion about this…

[DensestSnail693]

And similar to something I’ve already suggested re. cloud quality when landing although when all is said and done this latest update certainly helps