Something to be Aware of Regarding 3rd Party DEMs & Photogrammetry

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Hello all!

Sorry for the long post.

I wanted to post a sort of PSA regarding the recent flood of 3rd party DEMs that are either being sold or made available for free lately. Full disclosure, I have to admit that I purchased 3 DEMs and downloaded 4 freeware DEMs for areas that I love to fly around. I think each type of rendering (i.e. with photogrammetry or not), has it’s unqiue advantages and disadvantages.

The Issue

Photogrammetry appears to be missing, either completely or partially, in areas that are covered by these 3rd party DEMs. So for example, if you doanloaded and installed a DEM for the entire country of Spain, you’ll find that ALL of the photogrammetry cities for Spain are now gone. In my particular case, it appears to happen regardless of whether or not it was payware or freeware. In addition, it doesn’t seem to matter how the DEMs were created. DEMs that modify the LOD heights, as well as the DEMs that apply changes to the elevation data by terraforming rectangles, both seem to cause photogrammetry areas to disappear. The result is orthoimagery (land) completely devoid of any objects in the areas where photogrammetry is normally covered.

Temporary Fix

Unfortunately, the only fix at the moment that works for me is to manually add or remove the folders.

In other words, if I want to fly around areas with improved DEMs, I manually add the DEMs to my sim’s commnity folder.
When I’m in the mood to fly with photogrammetry in the areas covered by the 3rd party add-on DEMs, I remove the add-on folders from my community folder.

I suppose you could turn off/on photogrammetry within the sim, but that only fixes half of the problem. It would add objects back onto the affected ortho, but you won’t have photogrammetry.

Pros/Cons

IMHO, both have their benefits. There are areas where vast improvements to the visuals of the areas are made by these 3rd party add-ons. For instance, flying over the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands in Spain with a 5M DEM, a 3rd party GCLA airport, and new ortho for some of the islands is incredible and breathtaking. Additionally, I love flying over areas with photogrammetry, such as the West Hills of California, USA (34.197154, -118.668161). This area is so well done, and is in my opinion a poster-child for the case for photogrammetry.

Either way, the bottom line is that both scenarios show how important it is to have a good DEM (Digital Elevation Model) for a great visual experience.

With that said, I am loving MSFS these days! The rate at which 3rd party developers are creating add-ons is simply staggering! And Asobo / MS are doing such an amazing job, especially with that latest update (SU4 as of the time of this writing)! You guys are crushing it!

This platform is so vibrant at the moment, and it’s a great time to be a flight-sim enthusiast. There is a renewed sense of excitement within our hobby, and it’ll only grow larger with the XBOX version that will soon join us. I say, “Bring it on!”.

Happy simming!

6 Likes
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If you use DEMs from https://de.flightsim.to/profile/Troglodytus you can contact the author. He says: "Affected Sceneries:

Any large Payware and Freeware Airport I could think of, has been excluded from the mesh. So hopefully the glitches will be minimal.
Please report any bugs with sceneries or airports and I will see what I can do!"

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As much as better DEMs do something for visual fidelity, for example, 20m DEM does not look that much different from standard 30m DEM from Asobo (Asobo stated that most of the world is covered by 30m DEM). Unfortunately, the new DEMs introduced quite a mess for add-ons. Maybe some creators made exclusions for major airports, but what about many smaller freeware ones? Looking at flightsim.to, some creators decided o support the DEMs, many others do not support them (I just checked for Austria and Switzerland and most mods do not support those DEMs and some authors decided to stop support DEMs), now it is hard to see which scenery update is with DEM and which is without. Quite a mess.

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One of only three airports I have installed got updated for height changes that are casued by a MESH.

What is this nonsense. I don’t use that particular MESH. I don’t use any MESH.

It’s up to the MESH makers to exclude ALL airports ands their surroundings, not the other way round.

So it’ back to complete vanilla for me, no airports, no MESH (never used them). I don’t need this chaos.

1 Like
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That would be great, but I do not think it is viable as the exclusions are done manually? I hope I am wrong though.

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Can you share any insight into any performance differences observed?

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I have talked to some creators, there is a good solution to solve incompatibility issues. Now the creators integrate a small piece of the new meshes into their airports (only the area of the airport), so the airports will work fine with or without the extra DEM. Very good solution for everyone! Bravo!!

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Regarding the loss of photogrammetry, this is happening because the PG buildings are, in reality, just terrain that has been extruded. Therefore, if you change the terrain you also change the buildings.

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Interesting topic. I recently bought the 10M DEM for Tenerife and the accompanying new 8K ground texture for the whole island that goes with it. It does look spectacular. I thought I would have a go at adding some photogrammetry from google (Google Earth has quite a lot of good photogrammetry for Tenerife) but the sim was having none of it. Just wouldn’t appear over the new DEM and ground image. Bit of a shame.

I agree that the 20m DEM’s are only a small improvement of the sims usual 30m DEM’s. It really needs to be 10m or higher I think to be worthwhile.

Just out of interest. Does anyone know where whoever made that 8K ground image for Tenerife would have sourced that image from? I’d be interested to know the process for doing that. I make most of the Scottish based scenery mods that are available over on flightsim.to.