Terrain Loader Thread

The MSFS terrain loader code needs to be in a separate thread (if it’s not already).

The terrain loader needs to draw ground terrain / textures and all scenery objects within a certain radius around the aircraft. The radius size will depend on GPU VRAM.

The terrain loader needs to know how much total VRAM is available and load the maximum scenery or close to it into VRAM, continuously.

VRAM usage should be as close as possible to full use.

The terrain loader can remove all scenery objects from VRAM when climbing above a certain threshold ie 10,000 feet AGL? Then it needs to gradually load the objects descending below the threshold.

If developers can master the terrain loader we will have an extraordinary detailed world. No popins or stutters due to popins. Objects and trees etc far off into the distance. Scenery detail will be maximized to the available hardware, as it should be.

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It would be great if they can find a way to have taller buildings display at a further distance so we can actually see a city’s skyline from more than 10 miles away or whatever the distance is now.

It really kills the experience to fly around places like New York where you know you should be able to see the skyline but it’s just not there because you’re not close enough for it to load.

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Yes it should be tuned when climbing the cars will stop being rendered first, then houses / buildings and trees. Then at much higher level the buildings will not be rendered. Or maybe that the tall buildings will always be rendered for higher end rigs.

Yes I agree. I see in the new developer update they are talking about extending the photogrammetry distance which sounds interesting. Certainly it would seem to make sense to prioritise taller buildings.

I also wonder if they could also do anything with regards to relative elevation. For example from my house there is a distant hill with a tower which is not very tall, but is a local landmark and highly visible due to it being against the skyline due to being on a hill. In MSFS it is currently not drawn at all until it reaches one of the LOD distances which is understandable. However I wonder if they could triangulate what buildings and trees are on or near the skyline relative to the player’s current position, and prioritise drawing those ahead of some objects which are somewhat nearer the player, but much less visible/noticeable due to their position low against terrain, it could give the illusion of a much further draw distance.

I just constructed the below highly scientific image naturally using Microsoft Paint to try to explain what I mean :joy:
Yellow = Plane between player and terrain/sky, Green = Drawn buildings/trees, Red = Undrawn buildings/trees

It is probably the case they are already doing something like this or something much cleverer, I am certainly no expert on this :slightly_smiling_face:

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