Asking for a friend…
Maybe or maybe not, but there are a few addons over at flightsim.to that reduce the tree sizes. I use one called forest enhancement or enhanced forest which was recently added.
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There is a mod for it on flightsim.to
Note though, if you are using i.e. Rex Accuseasons then the mod is in conflict with that, as Rex Accuseasons has an option to decrease the tree height itself.
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Just had a quick look and according to the author it is compatible with Accuseasons. Not tried it myself though
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Wonder why this job is not going to be performed by the Asobo devs. Should we always use addons ,mods and workarounds for every bug ? For how long?
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This has been mention on a dev stream once or twice. I’ve posted the link for it before, so I’ll try to find that.
Basically, imagine a square of terrain, and that tile is covered in trees. To create the appearance of a forest you have to cover those tiles in trees. More trees equals lower performance. Fewer, larger trees gives better performance.
Larger trees as part of a huge forest isn’t that noticeable. But those same trees in a smaller assembly, especially if in a city, look way too big.
If they had a way to dynamically adjust those tree sizes based on how many other trees were in the vicinity, that could help. A small copse in a city park could have a larger number of smaller trees, and the impact wouldn’t be as great as those in a huge forest covering many acres.
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Addons have always been part or the eco-system and long may it continue. Remember, when they were creating the sim they would have been thinking how can we do this (“this” could be any aspect of a sim) better than any other sim we have today. They would not be thinking how can we do thing the best way possible. That is an iterative process that will happen naturally over time by either them (Asobo) or outside developers if the demand is there.
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I think the answer is no, we shouldn’t. And these mods can’t be used on Xbox. I worry if the highly adaptable dev community keep providing workarounds, it may have the impact of disincentivising MS/Asobo from addressing or at least not prioritizing. And then of course there’s always the likelihood of a later update negating the mod.
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And if Asobo does everything you will kill third party development, either paid or free because there would be no point
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I found my post about the video where they discuss tree size.
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Or maybe not, because they would shift focus to enhancements, not fixes to basic everyday errors
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Or perhaps they do what they do because they have a creative bent rather than to be bug fixers. I don’t know. Ask them. See what they say
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Think maybe you misunderstood what I meant, if Asobo are encouraged to fix obvious bugs rather than be disincentivised because the vocal amongst us end up using a Dev’s workaround that would would maybe mean more creativity for the devs/modders as they can/may prefer to concentrate on enhancements. That means in fact, concentrating on utilising their “creative bent”
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After trying some of the Mods to reduce tree size I relaised that in areas with PG the 3d tress are sometimes raller than the modded trees and therefore grow taller than AI trees and that doesnt look too pretty.
So I am quite sure, Asobo chose to have taller trees to hide ugly PG trees underneath.
They had to chose beteren 2 imperfect options and if we like the other choice more, we have to use a mod.
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I was actually thinking about the size of the trees yesterday, thinking they’re too large eg trees that are along residential roads and main city streets. Unfortunately I’m on XB and don’t have the option yet of a 3rd party add on.
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That’s exactly it however I have no doubt Microsoft/Asobo/Bing/Blackshark are working on an AI solution to remove the blocky trees and auto generate the PG textures they hide, currently that can only be done by hand which for the scope of the project is totally inadequate. Newer, better data and maybe a set of winter textures should help but there are billions of trees and shrubs so an AI solution it must be.
It can either be “focus on enhancements” or “creative bents”. However, someone has to do the dirty work of fixing the bugs .An architect who has a creative bent can make a nice building design but ,to realise it, it needs the support of many other people that does the “not creative job” from office designers to workers that are on the building site. Sometime I have the feeling we have purchased a beautiful project that is half done and that it will never be finished because of the new enhancements.Personally I don’t like to trade “Quality” with “Enhancements”. I purchased this sim 2 years ago…ages ago and my only previous experience on flight simulator was MSFS 2002 !! nothing else and have seen so many SUs / WUs always embedded with bugs eversince. I also have the feeling that many expert simmers do like finding workarounds. A game in the game. I must admit, sometime I like to do that too.
Cheers
FWIW I have been using another mod to reduce the size of trees (also from flightsim.to) for the past year which I believe works better than the Forest enhancement mod, which I have also tried.
Although made for New Zealand trees it appears to work quite well globally in MSFS.
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A question Xbox users ask every day
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All the solutions here are PC only 
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