First of all, I have to say that visually this is obviously by far the best looking simulator we’ve ever had and I am very grateful for how good this sim looks. I really enjoy flying in it (most of the time). However, lately I noticed that the sims visuals are very poor from time to time and it gives me a slight feeling of FSX and 2010 vibes visually.
Here are some examples of what I mean. Mind you, this is with everything scenery related set to ultra.
Don’t get me wrong here. I do get mindblowing visuals most of the time. I just wish it would be a bit more consistent. I feel like since the game has been optimised for xbox it just doesn’t look as good anymore as it used to. I really wish Asobo could fix the autogen and blurry ground textures.
Happens to me quite a lot despite often flying in the same areas.
I wonder if Microsoft Servers get overstressed at peak times and that this effects the quality of visuals.
I even wonder (maybe I am being crazy here?) if Asobo/Microsoft have a few sets of streaming files (high resolution to low resolution) and they stream lower resolution textures when their Servers are being stressed.
One thing is for sure. Sometimes the textures (in identical locations) are amazing and at other times they are absolute ****
MSFS can look great at times but also bad at others. Sometimes the pixel mud especially from distant terrain textures gives a really bland and FSXish appearance.
It could be a combination of agressive mip mapping to save bandwidth, less than optimal (anisotropic) texture filtering, blurry anti aliasing. When the devs reduced memory consumption for Xbox release there was certainly a cut in fidelity for pc too. The way MSFS works, havily relying on live streaming, could always mean that the highest res texture isnt loaded for some reason. But this should not come into play with distant terrain textures I would assume.
I am quite convinced that server bandwidth and sheer numbers playing and also just terrible quality textures is behind this. I noted this particularly in the alps in Italy. Terrible smeared mountain terrain that lacked any detail and to be honest I felt looked pretty awful. I actually avoided flying around Cortina and other similar areas precisely because absolutely no justice was being done to those outstandingly beautiful areas.
Yep, its hit and miss for sure. Sometimes the sim looks amazing, PG for example in places like Ancona is really lovely but sometimes its just $$$$$ and rather disappointing. We have to take the rough with the smooth. Its why I tour and visit all the PG areas, its the best way to really enjoy the scenery in my opinion, see the best it has to offer.
Which of those pictures are like FSX and do you have an FSX picture for a true comparison?
You can often undermine your argument (it happens a lot in here) by overstating your case
Maybe it´s a little bit too difficult to bring the same visual quality (in the same highest standards the more interesting parts of the earth have) all over a fully simulated planet.
That’s exactly it, MS data is quite poor in places compared to what Google offer and of course in the past where scenery was bought as add-ons images that matched Googles quality was what was used. Its why the scree near WastWater in the UKs lake district looked much better in FS9 and looks absolutely abysmal now.
It mostly looks amazing, but I tend to avoid areas around the coastlines as there seems to be a real problem with cliff textures, they morph in and out, even with the visuals and data cranked to the max. Not sure if it is an internet speed thing, but it doesn’t seem to effect inland areas.
yes it is very inconsistent often for no logcal reason. For instance, USVI is abhorent while the BVI next door are much better.
eastern russia (next to alaska) is just what am i looking at here area that coveres a few thousand miles.
very disappointing
I can understand some areas just being ignored but if you fly the caribbean for instance it is glaringly obvious the variety of scenery quality including textures, autogen, landclass, vegetation, coasts… this has to be down to laziness.
It is down to what data was available. The Caribbean is a bunch of various island nations and territories. Often one island’s data is available through one country and another is not. The Dutch or Americans might be more forthcoming with good mesh and satalite data than say, the French.
This is also part of the reason why we get World Updates. New data becomes available and the world improves.
Also, the meshes in the extreme North and South of the globe are pretty low fidelity. This has to do with how satellites orbit around the earth. They don’t do the poles as well.
Then there are nations like North Korea, China, and Russia that might not be in a hurry to sell, rent, or lease their best mesh data and satellite imagery to a USA company.
And finally, server issues will sometimes take good data and make it look like trash.
TLDR: Sometimes good data is hard to find, or not cost effective to purchase, so some patches of the globe are less detailed than others.
I’ve noticed this as well especially flying during the day. At night the sim looks incredible, textures all load and it’s not a blurry mess. It must be related to the server load.
Ngl, normally I wouldn’t even bother to answer such a stupid reply; but I kinda feel obliged to show you that I am right. (Just stop beeing the guy in the comments who thinks he is the smart guy and has to make a court case out of every thread) Everyone who played FSX knows what I am talking about and nobody is making a fuzz out of it.
Anywas, having said that I don’t like ppl acting like you, here is a “comparison”. Obviously it is not a real one as I cannot recreat the same shot in FSX coz I uninstalled it like 5 years ago…
I am mainly talking about autogen and blurry ground textures here so don’t even bother with answers like " oh yeah but the colours look better" or “oh man but the clouds and the shadows…” I DON’T CARE!!! Apparently everybody in here knows what I’m talking about so here you have your stupid screenshot.
I don’t know if this helps but i’ve noticed same thing. But for me it’s really depending on the locations where i fly. I think the big cause is that the bing maps texture quality varies much depending on where we fly.
I could be wrong about your case here. I hope Asobo find the cause of your issue.
I also know it was some time ago there were an issue with server of textures and we got blurry textures in both worldmap and in flight. Check on worldmap if you get bad textures there too, then it could be server issue.
Source of old fixed issue (this i think all of the users experienced, Not sure):
Try also turn on photogrammetry if you have that turned off.
