I am noticing some "blank" airports when flying high above using certain scenery addons. For example, I am using Aerosoft Mega Airport Munich X, after taking off and viewing surrounding airports I notice they are missing buildings and objects. Shouldn't it use the default FSX ones to draw in these missing details? The same problem also happens in MegasceneryX Hawaii, but this time none of the airports have buildings. I have tried reordering my scenery list and putting it at the beginning but it doesn't fix it. Anyone else know how I may be able to fix it?

Have you tried increasing LOD in FSX.cfg (4.5 is the default maximum, but depending on your hardware, higher settings may be practical)?

 

I believe almost all payware airports do not render fully until you are quite close to them, for performance reasons. This is definitely the case at the FlyTampa and FSDT airports I fly to.

Ahh those 2 possibilities could be it. Let me try and fly closer and see if it loads the terminal buildings. My LOD is set to 6.5 I believe and my settings are all maxed out. When using Aerosoft Anchorage X, while flying high in the air I can see runways for GA airports with missing buildings, so for the reasons you mentioned I guess thats why I'm not seeing them. Makes sense and I feel a bit better knowing now. I thought there was something wrong with my setup again and that I'd have to reinstall FSX and all my addons all over again which would take an extremely long time and not worth all the trouble. Thanks again!

I believe some developers, such as Aerosoft, also implement airport-specific LOD limits (i.e., LOD at a certain airport is restricted) in order to improve performance. I am not sure whether increasing LOD in FSX.cfg can override these restrictions.

when i fly into my payware airports they are missing terminals and some buildings are missing also

There are many definitions of LOD (level of detail). The one in the FSX.cfg affects only the ground textures and has absolutely NO effect on buildings and scenery models.

 

Individual 3D models can be built to contain multiple LOD versions and the developer controls this completely. The LOD version to be drawn is determined by the number of pixels the object will occupy on screen. A single model file can contain multiple LOD models to help improve performance (no point in drawing a complex model when it will only occupy 10 pixels on screen as that is a waste of resources). For example there may a LOD_400 model which is drawn when the model is more than 400 pixels on screen, a LOD_100 model for more than 100 pixels and so on down to maybe a LOD_5 model.

 

The only user control over this is the SmallPartRejectRadius in the FSX.cfg. I believe this defaults to 5. This means that any object with LODs and that is going to occupy less than 5 pixels on screen will not be drawn at all.

 

Note that there are 2 types of model files, for simplicities sake I will refer to them as one's which have LOD's and ones which do not (there are other differences between the model types and there are good reasons why a developer may choose one type over another, depends on the application). The ones that do not are not affected by smallpartrejectradius.

 

Also note that 3D models are generally only drawn when within 15NM of the object. I think it is 15NM, not sure, can't remember the exact number, could be only 12NM. Either way, if the object is further than that distance it will not be drawn at all.

Another idea might be that you have some out-of-date versio of FSDT's addon manager installed. As far as I remember this can cause similar troubles - downloading the latest version  from here and installing it usually does the trick.