Tree Draw Distance / LOD Issues

Is it possible to create a mod for community folder with these extra LOD settings?

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Hopefully the team is watching and will provide sliders in game for these settings. I think it’s important for everybody to know what the min and max values are for each of those settings. Yes it is possible to make a mod but it won’t be me. I’m full of bugs.

The tree fix is in the above mentioned CptLucky8 post,

The other file is USerdfg.opt there are 2 settings there, the LOD for terrain and Objects. Default MAX in game 2.00000 for both. Mine are to 2.5 LODterrain and object to 8.5 LODobject.
Do a windows search for it in the directory you have MSFS installed.

Hope that helps LivingFood.

Cheers, stay safe,
PACO672

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All of the above information is now moot. I no longer use any of these settings. A 3rd party as made a tree LOD fix mod which I now use. Now you can see trees as far as the eye can see. See top of post for updated information.

Cheers, stay safe,
PACO572

Which 3rd party?

See top of post for updated information.

Cheers
PACO572

@Paco572

You’re post here is a bit cryptic. How exactly have you done this and what have you done that makes this a solution? When I read @CptLucky8’s posts I can’t see the solution you are referring to. I’m sure this is pilot error on my behalf. Are you able to explain further?

Many thanks

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I can’t explain it any further, I’m just a user. For now it’s the only solution I use until there is a better solution.
I think the picture speaks for itself.

Cheers and stay safe,
PACO572

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Can you post a link to the solution?

PS: don’t forget to vote too!

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Am I the only one who think trees lod, for generated trees, is way too low in the release version?. It’s kind of weird because it behaves very oddly/differently depending on the place you’re flying over. Some times it might look just ok, but others it looks really bad (maxed out settings). Look at these screens (LA, USA):

Look how sparse the trees are given how pretty ■■■■ close to the plane they are. Also, the shadowing on them looks quite bad and out of place unless extremely close.

Here are a few shots showing how the density abruptly changes as you get closer to a near hill:



Note how the zone has some dense trees cover, however, unless really close to them they are not being loaded at all (maxed settings).

Another issue is that the far rendering technique (with respect to the old alphas) is, imho, not very good, as trees seem to be loaded picking random units inside a denser group which creates a bad visual effect of emptiness and size mismatch over mountains and with respect to other trees once you are closer to the forest (also look weird over the hills crests).

Example:

This wasn’t the case in the first alphas, where a better technique was used (or maybe just the better LoD made it less evident) . It can be shown in old screens, where trees were loaded at amazing distances:


I understand performance optimizations, but I think they were a bit too far trimming trees LoD. And maybe it is not that much the loading radius what makes things look worse, but the odd looking fading (especially for the bigger trees), which doesn’t look like the old one. In any case, I loved how dense and perfectly blended trees looked in the old builds :disappointed:. I wonder if Asobo could bring it back, or maybe a new “insane” setting could be added to make trees load like before and with a higher LOD radius :kissing_smiling_eyes:.

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Trees need lots of tweaking to be honest.

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yes there should be a tree lod slider - this was one of the first things I noticed in the release version - the LOD has become smaller even with nightlighting - but I don’t really see any significant performance difference.

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Most of the trees seem to be the same size.

There’s another thread where someone has made an app to change tree size. Maybe a search will,help. I personally haven’t paid attention to this.

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Trees are very broken in the release. Previously they ‘seemed’ to go to the ‘apparent’ horizon - same with buildings.

In the release they fade out to spindly little things and then nothing within about 2 miles from the plane - settings don’t fix it - even manual tweaks to the cfg doesn’t improve it.

I have filed a detailed report on this to Zendesk some days ago complete with screnshots of prior and current visual ability of the sim in these areas. I hope they fix it soon as it is currenly pretty poor. 2 mile final and the airport has no trees and few buildings in many places. Over the final 2 miles they all POP UP so obviously.

I think this is one reaosn some people are complaining it just looks like FSX/P3D.

It was so much better before, and I cannot see any performance increase for the current poor state of affairs.

I could post before and after shots here as proof, but then I’d have to go to prison.

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Absolutely man! Trees don’t look anywere near as good as they used to. As you said, they fade as odd thin spikes, looking really bad pretty much everywhere but particuraly over hills’ crests. Pines look much better but common trees (the big ones) are, for some reason, being rendered at way too short distance. Massive trees amount as well as massive rendering distance (almost to the horizon as you said) was an amazing feature of this sim, because for the very first time you couldn’t see where they were loaded which was great for inmersion. Sadly since few last alphas and the release this is not the case anymore. PLEASE ASOBO do somehing about this!

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I notice this too. Depending on where I fly, I seem to have a different tree draw distance. Today, I was flying in Alaska from Fairbanks to Denali and the draw distance of of trees was awful. Definitely not normal compared to flying in other regions. Not the first time I noticed this anomaly either. I have no idea why trees would have a reduced draw distance in some areas more than others. Today was the worst I have seen though. I wonder could it be anything to do with the MS servers being overloaded and Azure struggling to keep up with calculating where the trees should be drawn.

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Definitely there is something wrong with trees draw distance. Just made a flight in New Zealand and they looked awful:

This is maxed settings. Also tried changing from ultra to low just to confirm it is not a problem with my settings and nope!, they are like that :cold_sweat:

Asobo said if something is worse than before, it had to be a bug because they are aiming to improve things and not the opposite so I hope that’s the case with trees.

Imho, trees are much more important than cities/buildings, because they are way more common arround the world (there might not be a building but there will surely be vegetation) so I would give priority to trees drawing distance over any other 3d object.

In first alphas they were amazingly good, as well as the insane rendering distance. I hope asobo gets this solved asap as, at the moment, I can’t consider this to be working as supposed to.

Already submitted a ticket to zendesk about this (although it says “awaiting MY response” :flushed:)so please, all of you concerned about this should do the same, trees are a really important graphic thing in a FS.

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I certainly think trees make a huge difference to the way particular landscapes look. Get the trees wrong either in size, quality, number or variety and it can cause an area to look completely wrong or really poor.

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