This is not a problem only for VR/trackIR users. This is huge issue for players like me, who use mouse or joystick to look around to admire beautiful scenery. I hate this new engine. I just bought 6800xt and SU5 experience is worse now than SU4 with my previous rx570. Those awful pop-in and stutter, stutter and pop-in drives me mad. And looking at my gpu 16gb vram to see only 6gb is used makes me more sad.
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Thank you for sharing these videos, they are perfectly illustrating the point!
I shall add after watching the interview with Lionel, which I personally enjoyed a lot watching (and I thank Lionel again for his sincerity and openness in sharing these technical details), the problem with the “shape retention” might have a much simpler explanation now.
In effect, if I understood correctly, they are optimizing the rendering of mesh in “skipping” vertices (sorry if this is too technical)! They seem to be using the index buffer for this which in turn would tell the GPU to only render this or that triangle, instead of both (just to keep it simple). In this case, it is no wonder you get non-shape preserving mesh LOD rendering because you’re essentially cutting through the shape, instead of displaying a lower polygon count of the same shape.
Sebastian hinted (I believe around Dec. 2020) they were (re)implementing their task scheduler for handling tessellation in a more effective way. Maybe they are not just done yet with this, or actually what he meant back then was just to handle this “index buffer manipulations” in a task instead of in main thread. Only Asobo knows.
My engineering side is wondering whether they are not using Simplygon because it didn’t deliver, because it is not suitable for this, or because for example they now have better solutions. One thing is certain here, the current implementation is not shape preserving and this is really distracting.
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Now imagine someone with a 24 GB card, who just invested $6,000+ in a completely new rig, dedicated to running FS2020 exclusively. Oh this poor, poor guy… 
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Lets hope that Asobo just hasn’t time to do it properly. I believed that everybody worked on xbox version and just integrated all changes to pc without time to redesign it. So we just got simplified xbox version and just now they are working to bring back changes specific to pc.
Lets hope that Microsoft won’t be pushing Asobo to have both version the same. This would be the worst news.
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Another TrackIR user here experiencing huge fps drops when looking around. Frames drop from solid 60 to 20 just by moving the head.
While i appreciate the performance improvement when not moving the camera, this issue is a deal breaker for the type of flying i am doing.
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Same here. When looking around, that is moving my head, I get severe stuttering despite otherwise smooth frames. This did not occur for me with SU4.
11900k
RTX 3090
471.41
32GB
100Mbit/s
HP G2 WMR/OXR latest
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An 66% drop sounds remarkable. What is your CPU if I may ask?
hope so 
It’s not just pop-in though. The density/quality of buildings also changed.
I use Track IR and don’t experience the issue. Settings are on Ultra with LODs at 200. I do not have the redraw/pop and don’t get any stutters at all. Silky smooth with TrackIR.
As a heads-up, there will be an option to give us control of how much off-screen scenery can be cached in World Update 6. Should make use of spare RAM, and help assets not currently in view redraw a lot more quickly. Sounds interesting!
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I do experience this issue. TrackIR and Ultra as well.
Internet: 1 Gbit
CPU: AMD 3900X (Water cooled, not overclocked)
RAM: 64 GB RAM at 3200 via XMP
GPU: NVIDIA 3090 (All graphic settings on Ultra. 4K, 38" UW)
SSD: 2TB 4Gen NVME Samsung Pro (reads and writes at around 6000 MB/s in my system)
OS (Win 10) and MSFS (via Steam)
Flight stick and throttle from Thrustmasters Airbus edition.
TrackIR
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Very good news indeed. For reference on specs with this issue:
Internet: 300mb
CPU: AMD 3900X AIO Loop Auto OC
RAM: 32 GB RAM @ 3600 Stock
GPU: NVIDIA 1080 (Ultra Base, de-tuning of clouds, water and windshield effects, 1440p)
SSD: 1TB Samsung Evo NVME
TrackIR.
Flat areas, low density its fine. Mountians or cities its a sutter fest when move your head left to right.
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This request has made it in the Feedback Snapshot! It is currently under investigation, with a projected release in 2021-2022.
I guess this means it might be different from the off-screen scenery cache slider detailed in yesterday’s announcement. That’s interesting. I guess we will know for sure next week.
Thanks to everyone here for voting and participating in a peaceful way, and to Asobo for swiftly investigating our feedback!
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Today’s Feedback Snapshot confirms that the “Offscreen Terrain Pre-Caching” setting that will arrive with the DACH World Update will fulfil this request. Thank you for the support!
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Yes that’s good to see. I strongly hope this includes the building and tree popping and not just terrain/textures.
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Hi all,
I’ve spent some time the past few weeks gathering some details to share on this new feature and how it works. As you know there is a new setting coming on Tuesday with World Update 6 called “Offscreen terrain pre-caching” and will be available on PC. This option defines what level of detail your offscreen terrain will stream into memory.
The definition of “Off screen terrain” is anything not currently visible behind the user.
First question I saw was, “If set to Ultra, all the offscreen terrain will be cached at full quality - does this include buildings and trees in addition to ground terrain?” Yes, this includes not only terrain but buildings, trees, photogrammetry, textures, and everything else in the world.
It will have four settings:
- Low - This setting will improve performance but a lot of terrain data is streamed at a lower quality behind the user, while FPS drops may increase when turning your head.
- Medium - This is what you currently have right now in the current build. The terrain behind the user is streamed at a lower quality and reduces the impact on memory and FPS, but when turning your head will need to stream the terrain.
- High - High will be an intermediate state between Medium and Ultra
- Ultra - This is will have no offscreen caching at all, and everything will be maxed out based on your graphics setting. The quality in front of the user is the same as from behind the user, so nothing needs to be loaded. This could come with some FPS drops when turning the head, but would result in higher FPS and lower memory usage when looking forward and not turning your head quickly.
Hope this answered some questions, and I am working on gathering information like this to help out with new features in future updates as well.
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Fantastic information. Thanks for the very detailed information. Much appreciated.
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Thanks a lot for the detailed explanation, it is really appreciated! I would like to point out a couple of things:
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I think it would be better if the setting were called “Offscreen Terrain Caching”, rather than “Pre-Caching”. This wording suggests that terrain will be pre-loaded before the flight begins or something similar, which could cause some confusion regarding what it’s supposed to do. It might be too late now since the build is probably very close to completion, but hopefully the developers will consider renaming it in the future.
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I think the explanation of the Ultra setting is incorrect in a couple of areas. “no offscreen caching at all” probably means “no offscreen culling at all”, since the offscreen scenery will remain in memory. Also “This could come with some FPS drops when turning the head, but would result in higher FPS and lower memory usage when looking forward and not turning your head quickly” is probably more appropriate for the lower settings, because having all the scenery remain in memory means higher memory usage of course, and there shouldn’t be stutters when panning the camera (but rather the frame rate will remain consistent no matter the camera’s position).
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Thanks for pointing that out! I don’t know what the final setting title is, so I can’t comment on if it’s “Offscreen Terrain Caching” or “Precaching” or perhaps a variation of that.
And on your second point, you’re correct there too. There would the a chance for FPS drops turning your head on lower settings.
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