So all this time, I have had tessellation set to off.  I figured I have a good mesh for the areas I fly; and I heard it was hard on the CPU.

I also have PTA v2, and the world looked pretty good - except for my weird light bluish lakes and rivers.  And I could barely see any cloud shadows.

 

Just for the heck of it, I turned tessellation 'on' tonight while experimenting, and - Christmas gift! - my lakes and rivers are darker, and while not dramatic, I can see moving cloud shadows.

 

Does anyone have any idea why this would be??  I thought tessellation was just for the details of the physical landscape.

 

Edit:  I have v3.2, GTX970 card, and almost new driver.  Tessellation is set one notch left of extreme right on all sliders.

Ron

Tessellation enables detailed water which is what you are seeing, there are moving cloud shadows without tessellation as well. How is the difference in performance though?

It seems to be acceptable.  Probably a stutter or two that might not have been there before; but the visual improvement is worth it.

Unless you have really old hardware you really want tessellation on.