I know this was discussed years ago (early XP 10); but has anyone found a way to increase the LOD in XP to get rid of the buildings fading (going transparent) at a near-distance? My view distance settings are at max with extreme objects; flying around Miami is annoying with buildings only coming into full view when I am near them. It would by nice to see solid buildings on the coast line from a distance instead of these ghost buildings!

The LOD is defined for each building. This a common complaint for World2XPlane, where the default LOD is calculated based on the building height. Small buildings have a LOD between 5-13km, and tall building can have a LOD up to 30km. The default X-Plane autogen, and buildings in the R2 library also are similar.

 

This is obviously to increase performance on heavily populated areas. If you're flying 20km outside of downtown, it makes sense not to render all of the smaller buildings until you're close enough to see them. However, X-Plane shows the buildings as slightly transparent as you approach them so they don't just pop-in to view like they do on FSX.

 

You can increase the LOD, but it will take you a while with a text editor. If you do a search for the words LOD and ATTR_lod, you'll see they are followed by 2 numbers:

 

ATTR_lod 0 4000  - Means this building is visible from 0 to 4km. Increasing the last number will increase the buildings visibility

LOD 0 13000 - Used in facades, but same deal as above

 

Simheaven modified the world-models on their website and FF library to increase the LOD, so you could use that as well

You can override the related art control. It is set to 0.5 by default. If have mine set to 0.9 which almost kills the ghost buildings but still avoids the nasty pop-up. Looks way better than the default setting IMHO.

You need a lua script and the fly-with-lua plugin for that. I can't access my x-plane computer for a couple of days to look up the script. But if you know how to handle lua scripts just search the art controls for something like "terrain_fade_ratio" (best guess) and set it to 0.9 or even 1.0.

 

Good luck

Flo

And if you use Real Terra Haze (highly recommended), this is included, change the value bottom left with the mouse wheel and observe.
But I recommend to have the FPS counter visible, it is easy to drown your framerates in the single digits. Try to keep them above 20 (around 25~30 seems acceptable for me, but below 20 the simulation will slow down to keep up with the flight calculations).

 

I have that value between 0,85 and 1,5, but in some situations (ex.: landing in a dense area) I must put it at 2 or higher (I believe the value is reversed, higher in RTH means less details).

Is this RTH setting altering the fade ratio or does it actually increase the LOD?

I'm asking because the fade ratio will obviously not "allow" to be set to more than 1.0.

Otherwise you will screw up the whole thing.

A higher fade ratio (>0.5) is not too bad on the FPS because it mainly makes the ghost buildings solid ones which is almost the same in terms of performance... 

 

Best you give both a try and see what happens

 

Flo

Thanks for the help guys...

The LOD is defined for each building. This a common complaint for World2XPlane, where the default LOD is calculated based on the building height. Small buildings have a LOD between 5-13km, and tall building can have a LOD up to 30km. The default X-Plane autogen, and buildings in the R2 library also are similar.

 

This is obviously to increase performance on heavily populated areas. If you're flying 20km outside of downtown, it makes sense not to render all of the smaller buildings until you're close enough to see them. However, X-Plane shows the buildings as slightly transparent as you approach them so they don't just pop-in to view like they do on FSX.

 

You can increase the LOD, but it will take you a while with a text editor. If you do a search for the words LOD and ATTR_lod, you'll see they are followed by 2 numbers:

 

ATTR_lod 0 4000  - Means this building is visible from 0 to 4km. Increasing the last number will increase the buildings visibility

LOD 0 13000 - Used in facades, but same deal as above

 

Simheaven modified the world-models on their website and FF library to increase the LOD, so you could use that as well

 Thanks...where do I search for LOD nd ATTR_lod? in a file or in a directory? I have FF, R2 and World-Model folders in my custom scenery. Do I search in all of these folders?

 

What is the difference between  building and facades?

Search the entire directory for FF, R2, world-models and the generated scenery. You'll find quite a few ;-)

 

Buildings (or more correctly .obj files) are 3D objects pregenerated in some 3D software, e.g. The small houses, supermarkets, etc. They are fixed objects and don't change appearance 

Facades are textures wrapped around an extruded polygon inside X-Plane. Most of the skyscapers and industrial buildings are these. Facades fit the exact shape of the polygon (these can be complex shaped buildings). Facades tend to look like lego-bricks and aren't as nice as objects

To Flob: the number you see in RTH is just a calculation, don't put to much value to it. It ranges from 0 to 10, with 0 being everything that is on screen displayed (and thus asking more power), and with 10 almost everything is transparent.

 

To the original poster: the difference betweens Tony's and my solution is that mine is controlled through datarefs, it can be changed on the fly, while Tony's is hardcoded in the scenery files, you must go into each file and change the value. 

I know of some command line tools in Linux that can do that for you, possibly it exists also for Windows.

I have done this, but there are disadvantages: 

- you must change those values each time there is an update to the scenery objects (and this happens with W2Xplane).

- once it is hardcoded, it is there to stay the whole flight, if you are not happy, change the values again, and restart x-plane (or reload the scenery only, which takes almost the same amount of time).

- I was still missing sides in some complex buildings, very annoying. Only when I got up close, it displayed correctly. Very rare, but it happens.

 

I think the solution with the datarefs is much more flexible, and there are tools that can change it for you, like RTH and autolod 1.3 on the Austrian X-plane page. Of course, your results may vary.

For me the aim was to see the buildings further away then standard in X-Plane, and changing this dataref does to the trick..

Search the entire directory for FF, R2, world-models and the generated scenery. You'll find quite a few ;-)

 

Buildings (or more correctly .obj files) are 3D objects pregenerated in some 3D software, e.g. The small houses, supermarkets, etc. They are fixed objects and don't change appearance 

Facades are textures wrapped around an extruded polygon inside X-Plane. Most of the skyscapers and industrial buildings are these. Facades fit the exact shape of the polygon (these can be complex shaped buildings). Facades tend to look like lego-bricks and aren't as nice as objects

 

Thanks...more than a few...but thanks for the heads up.

 

To Flob: the number you see in RTH is just a calculation, don't put to much value to it. It ranges from 0 to 10, with 0 being everything that is on screen displayed (and thus asking more power), and with 10 almost everything is transparent.

 

To the original poster: the difference betweens Tony's and my solution is that mine is controlled through datarefs, it can be changed on the fly, while Tony's is hardcoded in the scenery files, you must go into each file and change the value. 

I know of some command line tools in Linux that can do that for you, possibly it exists also for Windows.

I have done this, but there are disadvantages: 

- you must change those values each time there is an update to the scenery objects (and this happens with W2Xplane).

- once it is hardcoded, it is there to stay the whole flight, if you are not happy, change the values again, and restart x-plane (or reload the scenery only, which takes almost the same amount of time).

- I was still missing sides in some complex buildings, very annoying. Only when I got up close, it displayed correctly. Very rare, but it happens.

 

I think the solution with the datarefs is much more flexible, and there are tools that can change it for you, like RTH and autolod 1.3 on the Austrian X-plane page. Of course, your results may vary.

For me the aim was to see the buildings further away then standard in X-Plane, and changing this dataref does to the trick..

 

Does this dataref method only target tall buildings? I tried the lod setting in rth, but it seemed to affect all structures (houses etc) around the aircraft and brought my fps to a slide show.

 

I will look into the autolod 1.3...thanks.

ok, I see what you want to do.
I am not sure it is possible, the dataref targets all man made objects, and adds/removes details depending on the distance, it just changes the radius at which this happens. As I said, this can bring the most powerfull machine to a crawl.

The other option is to change the LOD with a text editor, or some scriptin algorithm.

 

On Simheaven you can find world-models library with extended lod (as Tony already pointed out): 

http://simheaven.com/?wpfb_filepage=w2xp_world-models_ext-lod-7z

And on the org the extended ff library:
http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=12836

But also here, you pay with framerates  :wink: .

ok, I see what you want to do.

I am not sure it is possible, the dataref targets all man made objects, and adds/removes details depending on the distance, it just changes the radius at which this happens. As I said, this can bring the most powerfull machine to a crawl.

The other option is to change the LOD with a text editor, or some scriptin algorithm.

 

On Simheaven you can find world-models library with extended lod (as Tony already pointed out): 

http://simheaven.com/?wpfb_filepage=w2xp_world-models_ext-lod-7z

And on the org the extended ff library:

http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=12836

But also here, you pay with framerates  :wink: .

Thanks for the links.