Issue with elevated scenery?

[Mejjo 33]

Hi all,

I'm just trying to establish if this is an issue my end or just normal for P3D. When i'm flying low around elevated terrain ( mountains, hills etc.. ) I can see that part of the scenery kinda move. It looks like it suddenly re-loads or adjusts itself. Popping scenery if what i've been calling it haha, I hope you know what i mean as its a little hard to explain. I can take a video and youtube it if need be. I do have ORBX Global, Open LC Europe and America installed. 

I'm running at i7700k and GTX 1080ti.

Thank you :) 

[FalconAF 213]

There is a Level of Detail (LOD) "radius" of different areas around your aircraft that determines the "resolution" of the scenery you see.  The closer to your aircraft, the higher the resolution displayed.  This also applies to the "resolution" of Terrain Mesh...the part of the sim that produces elevation changes for hills, valleys, mountains, etc.  It sounds like you are seeing the Terrain Mesh "kinda move" or "re-load" or "adjust itself" (all your words) as you are flying.  The more distant scenery will be at a lower Terrain Mesh "resolution", and as you get closer to it the resolution will get "higher" and the sides of hills, valleys, etc will "pop" into place to present a more accurate elevation change of the closer scenery. 

Note that this "popping" will appear much closer (or farther) away depending on the ZOOM setting of the window being displayed on your screen.  At a 70% zoom level, it would be happening at what would appear to be a farther distance from your aircraft.   At a 100% (or higher) zoom level, it may look like it is happening right in front of your aircraft.  (Your zoom level will also have the same effect on how close/far AUTOGEN looks like it is "popping" into your scenery display).

[pmb 5,137]

That has been an annoyance for ages, notably for pure GA flyers like me. Like Rick states, it depends on certain settings and indeed quite essentially on the Zoom setting, but also on the LOD setting. It mainly happen within hills and mountains, but not only there. According to my experience, there is scenery, like FTX Norway or Catalina, where it's really pronounced. It also seems to depend on a high-resolution mesh used. Making a search within AVSIM and other fora you will find quite a number of older threads on this "feature" and much debate on it - but no working solution. 

I have been unable to ameliorate, but not complete eliminate it, although others write they don't see it (or at least don't feel disturbed by it...). LM seems to have declared it as unavoidable and I am not under the impression they are actively pursuing this (albeit I am pretty sure having seen this mentioned on their forum as well). 

It may be interesting to note that other Simulators can well do without these terrain readjustments. I've yet to see it once in AeroflyFS2, which may have the most up-to-date base engine among our simulators, and I also can't recall having seen it in X-Plane, albeit I don't fly this often. On the other hand, I observed it in FSW as well. This way I am quite sure it's a basic feature of the FSX/ESP engine. At least it seems to be possible to do without it in other sims.

Kind regards, Michael

 

[pmb 5,137]

Sorry for a couple of typos, should have read  "I have been able to ameliorate, but not completely eliminate it..." 

Kind regards, Michael

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

This issue exists because we don't have unlimited processing power or memory.  A first person shooter game can load the entire area into memory and display it all at the same resolution (which isn't realistic), because the post area processing is devoted almost purely to moving the shooter or item around the loaded scenery.  In flight sim, we not only go long distances but we travel there at pretty fast speeds.  This being the case, and with limited processing power and memory, we simply can't load at the area for a entire flight.  If you were to take off in a GA aircraft and fly within a mile radius then you likely would see never little or no popping.

Best wishes!

 

[pmb 5,137]

Dave, I (nearly) only fly the C172 and I see that issue. I take off from KSFO and fly over the hills to KHAF (FB KSFOHD + FTX NCA +  FTX KHAF). With my present zoom setting and no 3rd party mesh (except the ORBX internal Holger mesh) active it's not that distracting and the moving patches are smaller but there are still some left. And I've seen it in Prepar3d3 and Prepar3d2 (maybe even before but I don't really recall, but I have been told by people who even saw/see it in FSX).

Kind regards, Michael

 

[FalconAF 213]

As Dave said, it happens because of limited processing power.  But the end user can also contribute to it happening by the type of addons they use and their simulator graphics display setting.  On my "up to date" computer, I would never see any "late" popping of the terrain mesh using JUST the default P3Dv4 installation and settings.  But after I add additional scenery areas (like an ORBX "full fat" region with more demanding graphics capabilities, including some areas with higher resolution terrain mesh), throw in a weather addon with 4096 cloud textures (and set my sim to display 4096 textures), max my graphics sliders to the right, and a plethora of other things, I can "make" it happen even if flying a low-and-slow GA like a Cessna 172.  I'm just over-taxing my system's ability to keep up with everything I'm "demanding" it to display.  Do all of the above and try to fly a complex PMDG aircraft, or even the P3D DEFAULT F22 over the scenery at low altitude and 450 knots hair-on-fire speed, and it's almost a guarantee there WILL be slow loading blurry ground textures with late loading "popping" terrain mesh...and that's assuming those files will EVER get a chance to load at a "high" resolution before I even pass over the area in question.  And if you end up with THAT happening, the sim NEVER catches up to loading "clear" textures anymore...unless you PAUSE the sim and give it time to "catch up" for the LOD area nearest your airplane's current position.  It becomes a vicious cycle once your sim gets "behind" in texture and terrain mesh loading.

[Mace 1,904]

Isn't there a setting re: Tesselization?  (sp?).  Would that have any impact on the popping behavior?

[FalconAF 213]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 10:30 PM, Mace said:

Isn't there a setting re: Tesselization?  (sp?).  Would that have any impact on the popping behavior?

From an earlier version of P3D's User's Manual.  Scroll down and read the section about Terrain Mesh and the Tesselation slider

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv2/LearningCenter/getting_started/options/display/scenery_settings.html

Bottom line is still the same...if you increase a slider farther right than your computer hardware can handle, you will suffer the consequences.  And how far is "too far" will be different for each user's computer depending on the hardware AND what other "stuff" (complex addons, etc) they are running with their own flight simulator.  

 

[Clutch Cargo 384]

Hey Michael (or anybody reading this), have you every seen the scenery "shift" at night when just using 100% default P3D?  I started seeing this but I can't remember if that has always been there or not. 

It's very noticeable.  I though maybe it is an LOD adjustment but  the textures seem to shift dramatically... not so much as sharpen.  Sound familiar to anybody... or better yet care to take a look and see if this happens to you. Again 100% default, no add-ons activated at all and fly over a city at night.

Clutch

[pmb 5,137]

3 hours ago, Clutch Cargo said:

Hey Michael (or anybody reading this), have you every seen the scenery "shift" at night when just using 100% default P3D?  I started seeing this but I can't remember if that has always been there or not. 

Unfortunately I can't comment on this as I neither (i) have a 100% default P3D available (all sorts of addons installed, including all ORBX sceneries) nor (ii) do I fly at night (only VFR).

Kind regards, Michael 

[cyyzrwy24 127]

I am complaining since dark ages (FSX) and I can't solve the problem, KSEA is at least about 60-85 ft bellow where needs to be, it lies in nice square box?! I had it in FSX and now in v4....But researching I learned that ORBX has issues here and there and it's well known fact (?). Same for KMCO, I have a beautiful houses and trees on runways and taxiways, and it's so colorful that when I land I don't see terminal building...LOL... soon I will see there BBQ smoking.....So I am not using KMCO anymore....