I read the terrain LOD and occassionally Object LOD being mentioned in the forum quite often, and even more after SU5… can someone help explain specifically what each does?
And with reference to what users have been complaining about this pop up/ pop in issue or distance sceneries looking blurry etc… which setting/ slider in MSFS should one increase to improve the mentioned issues. E.g. I have both currently at 100. I am currently experiencing objects like trees and buildings appearing and dissappearing only when coming closer or looking in that direction which can affect immersion… which slider shd i increase?
And with SU5, knowledge on this items or setting will be increasingly/ very useful for average MSFS users, whom may or may not be too familiar with these specific settings.
I think terrain lod is the main one, With the increased performance from this update you should really set it to 200.
I’m actually not too sure about Building lod, I think it controls the LOD switching range of buildings though I don’t think it’s that simple and is interrelated to the terrain lod setting. Try setting it to 200 too for good measure.
Also you can go into your user.cfg file found under c:\users\your username\appdata\roaming\Microsoft flight simulator. You’ll need to show hidden folders to get to see the appdata folder.
You can set terrain Lod higher by increasing above 2.0.
Be aware though pushing above 200 (2.0) LOD will take back a lot of the performance gains you got from the update.
Thanks for info…yes i am hoping to regain a bit in term of scenery issues mentioned…but without losing all the performance gained from SU5… i shall try setting to 200 for both as a start then.
LOD or “level of detail” is a setting that dictates how much detail will be shown.
In MSFS you have a ring around you where detail is loaded and this is visible by looking towards the horizon, at some point it won’t render anything. This is more or less obvious on most systems and is dictated by the LOD setting.
There is also “culling” this is to remove objects from being rendered when not in view. This has changed with SU5 and is more obvious when looking around quickly. This is not adjustable and depending on your system is more or less noticeable.
In the video above I used LOD 200 (2.000000 in usercfg) and tried 4.000000 but it didn’t give any results. Subjectively, it is getting better, but still not the same as it was before the update.
I put a short video in my post on the other topic, showing building pop in on both LOD 100 and LOD 200. In my experience LOD 200 can sometimes look worse as it is popping in objects further away, but more of them. As discussed on my post there is also a similar but different issue of nearby buildings/trees “upgrading” themselves from lower quality models to higher quality models when you move your head (not shown in the video).
@Hugothester
But i guess that mean losing all the performance gained in SU5 as well ya e.g. the occassional stutters and poor fps + stutter in big city? I am experiencing with 200 in different landscapes for now… i dont have a powerful computer but a 4 year old i7-7700k @4.2. Gtx 1080.
This is unfortunately not correct. As per my long reply to you on the other topic linked above, previously there was only pop in on moving the aircraft - Now there is pop in on moving the aircraft or moving the head.
Yeah but in exchange you got 40 fps as I just replied to you. That is a legitimate complaint but just an opinion, in my case for example I don’t radically move my head around while flying and with track ir I don’t notice the pop-in.
I have seen this around, it seems to give great results, but I don’t know what it does exactly
Let’s be clear it is not when “radically moving the head”, it is when looking out the window to make a base turn. But I understand everyone is different so let’s agree to disagree !
