LOD Radius Hard Line Projection of Autogen

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Morning fellows.

I had a complete HD failure containing all my sims. But I have a great backup system so I am doing a reinstall (that sucks) of the sims.

I also have been focusing on XP11 for last year and half.

So I am staring though with P3DV4.5+, I do not the hotfix installed yet.

I have loaded in all Orbx Global, All Orbx Regions, and about 1/2 of my Orbx airports of which there are some 100+ using Central which works like a charm.

I have done no tweaks and I have lost all those wonderful small things that need tweaking here and there but I'll get to that.

So please look at this screen shot. Somewhere along the way, perhaps I missed something that changed, but I have a terrible hard line in the distance where the autogen stops, it looks terrible...I don't recall it looking like this in the past so perhaps its my old age. Can someone provide me comment is this the new normal for LOD distance? And can this be "fixed"?

Bryan

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Oh heaven, I thought it was me...and then I searched and found this! 

This just sucks. I mean really sucks that this is this bad, I thought that it used to "fade" in - in the distance.

Edited May 25, 2019 by 1st fltsimguy

[Bob Scott 7,716]

If you use ActiveSky, you can effectively mitigate this issue by setting your visibility so that a realistic haze layer mostly obscures the LOD line in the distance.  The visibility in your screenshot is not typical of what you see looking out the window of a real acft...if you set your max vis to 12-15 nm you'll find you have to look for that LOD line rather than having it assault your senses as in the screenshot.

Regards

 

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Good point on visibility.  I use REX Sky Force, which at this point I have to reinstall, its in the queue.

Perhaps this is why I did not notice it recently. I can make those adjustments in REX.

[LRBS 943]

The problem here is that "realistic" not every day is a hazy day, we have days when is crystal clear and see for miles and miles away from the airplane.

His picture out the window (as visibility wise) is very common, unless you are in a area where (city etc)  is well known a polluted  one.

The problem here is that LM P3D from Version 4 broke something in respect to where autogen draw distance ends and the transition is not smooth (this is what you see as a hard line where it ends)  that's where the real problem is. 

Yes we can mitigate this by creating  a haze layer (that's actually what I have it done with TomatoShade) but we as customers should not have to fix their shortcomings, we should have a fix for it from LM, especially when there are so many complains about this for years by now.

[Flic1 972]

4 hours ago, 1st fltsimguy said:

So please look at this screen shot. Somewhere along the way, perhaps I missed something that changed, but I have a terrible hard line in the distance where the autogen stops, it looks terrible...I don't recall it looking like this in the past so perhaps its my old age. Can someone provide me comment is this the new normal for LOD distance? And can this be "fixed"?

This is not normal and I do not experience anything like this in 4.5, nor do I recall this issue at all in the recent past.  In fact, I cannot even reproduce it with a low autogen draw distance.  I keep my autogen draw on high with extremely dense vegetation and no autogen buildings.  Do you have speed trees enabled?  I cannot tell in the picture if those are trees, building or both.  I use TerraFlora trees but had ORBX trees also and never saw this.  Having to set visibility to fix that will make it look very "soupy" and you shouldn't have to do that.  Something else is going on there....??  

Edited May 25, 2019 by Flic1

[pmb 5,137]

I made a list of 7 issues of the Prepar3d terrain engine here at AVSIM a few months ago. This one and the other one you mention in another thread (mesh morphing) were among them. One of the 7 (blurry photo scenery) has been solved so far but the other 6 have been waiting for a solution until today.

I can only suggest complaining at the Prepar3d forum. I did that and made even a couple of videos on the autogen issue (still there). This came up at lot of times over the last years and there are ever clever people saying it's my (or others') weak machine.

It is not. I can pull sliders to the left up to exactly one and the issue remains. The one is the autogen+scenery distance slider. If you set it to Medium, autogen will fade in continuously, as it should. Unfortunately at a radius comparable to that of Prepar3d3.x which was small. All settings above Medium give autogen popping in and a sharp line. 

Yes, you can mask this by haze, and if you fly at FL350 or in clouds it's not an issue as well, and also not in narrow valleys or over deserts etc. For me, as a mostly VFR pilot who likes to fly in fine weather it is.

Kind regards, Michael

[Flic1 972]

To follow up on my previous reply, I think the reason I do not see this effect is because I never use Autogen buildings.  I just turned them on and went to the same location and I see a similar effect with them even with a High autogen draw distance.  With only my vegetation turned on (extremely dense) I do not see this effect at all.  Maybe it is due to the size of the trees, not sure.  I can only suggest maybe ditching the autogen buildings as I don't think they look realistic anyway. Although those still look more like trees to me in your pic.    

[LRBS 943]

 

 

 

2

58 minutes ago, pmb said:

This came up at lot of times over the last years and there are ever clever people saying it's my (or others') weak machine.

Kind regards, Michael

Yes, this is the big problem with people like that, they don't do any good to the sim community especially when there are pictures, short clips, and many customers complaining about this issue for such a long time.

I'm happy that they have no issues, at the same time I wished they refrain from wrong statements, especially that they can't provide any solution and the proof or evidence it is well documented.

It's just people having nothing else better to do, just fight and argumentative despite everything is provided to support this issue. 

Very sad that some of us can't accept (don't see it or just ignore it)  that there are problems and we want them fixed for the benefit of all. 

Then, there is another problem that I noticed with LM P3D forum, they (people working for LM) chose what is convenient to answer.

Michael, as you did I had a few topics on that forum and this is also one of them, they didn't even bother to answer. I watched closely many threads and most of them have snappy and unprofessional and accusatory replies (not from LM P3D). Not a good place at all where you expect professional customer service.

I find here at Avsim forum more help and courtesy treatment versus from theirs where there we are paying customers for their product.  

 

[1st fltsimguy 466]

1 hour ago, Flic1 said:

To follow up on my previous reply, I think the reason I do not see this effect is because I never use Autogen buildings.  I just turned them on and went to the same location and I see a similar effect with them even with a High autogen draw distance.  With only my vegetation turned on (extremely dense) I do not see this effect at all.  Maybe it is due to the size of the trees, not sure.  I can only suggest maybe ditching the autogen buildings as I don't think they look realistic anyway. Although those still look more like trees to me in your pic.    

Thanks for your input.

My system is robust, have spent the past year and half almost two years flying almost exclusively XP11+ but there are things that I liked about P3D that I enjoy that are not part of XP11.

So after loosing everything, I have gone about a full and renewed install (still in progress) but I test things out as I go and found these issues I mention in this post and another with the morphing terrain, I missed out on several P3DV4 updates as I just didn't care up until now. So now that I am totally up to date I see that I have these issues which are extremely annoying. Michael above has confirmed that these are something that needs addressing.

I fly mostly GA therefore am not at those higher flight levels, so the scenery is important to me.

It also sounds like there is some negative interface happening with LM for some reason or other.

I enjoy having my setting at full as my system can take it. I am not interested in workarounds but rather actually fixes. Gees I sure hope these things are addressed.

Bryan

[1st fltsimguy 466]

1 hour ago, pmb said:

I made a list of 7 issues of the Prepar3d terrain engine here at AVSIM a few months ago. This one and the other one you mention in another thread (mesh morphing) were among them. One of the 7 (blurry photo scenery) has been solved so far but the other 6 have been waiting for a solution until today.

I can only suggest complaining at the Prepar3d forum. I did that and made even a couple of videos on the autogen issue (still there). This came up at lot of times over the last years and there are ever clever people saying it's my (or others') weak machine.

It is not. I can pull sliders to the left up to exactly one and the issue remains. The one is the autogen+scenery distance slider. If you set it to Medium, autogen will fade in continuously, as it should. Unfortunately at a radius comparable to that of Prepar3d3.x which was small. All settings above Medium give autogen popping in and a sharp line. 

Yes, you can mask this by haze, and if you fly at FL350 or in clouds it's not an issue as well, and also not in narrow valleys or over deserts etc. For me, as a mostly VFR pilot who likes to fly in fine weather it is.

Kind regards, Michael

Bingo. Thanks Michael your note suggests that I am not alone and that these issues have been raised. Given how far along we are with P3DV++ I would have expected that these would be taken care of. In fact as I mentioned I recall LM doing the slow fading in of autogen a ways back, and who wants to lower the settings and thinning out of autogen to get and improvement.

Bryan

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

4 hours ago, killthespam said:

Then, there is another problem that I noticed with LM P3D forum, they (people working for LM) chose what is convenient to answer.

 

First of all, LM staff tend to ignore most posts that have anything to do with 3rd party add-ons. They almost invariably leave the responses to other users.  Second, they often don't address specific complaints about the core sim because they need to duplicate the issue on their test systems. Given the wide variety of hardware in the user base, that is really the only option.

Forget about obvious problems that you guys are talking about for a moment. Think about the very minor issue with the bright green SpeedTrees. LM has never acknowledged that problem probably because it is such a peripheral issue. In V4.5 they did add several hundred new tree types, so it's not like they completely ignored STs. Recently I edited all the incorrect textures and posted a screenshot demonstrating the improvements (both here and on the official forum). Did LM staff respond? Nope. My guess is either they either A. don't care, B. don't have time to spend on such a minor issue, C. Are trying to duplicate my work or D. the ST license prevents any alteration by LM.

My point is there may be a lot more going on behind the scenes in resolving an issue.

[LRBS 943]

 

 

 

5 minutes ago, jabloomf1230 said:

My point is there may be a lot more going on behind the scenes in resolving an issue.

Hi Jay,

I agree with the above statement.

At the same time when they start not to care, to spend time to fix issues that many customers complain about they gonna find themselves in a very bad position, especially when there is competition out there.  People like us, with this hobby, don't mind spending the money on a product, at the same time when the customer finds issues that are documented to be related to their own product (not related to the 3rd party ones) and ignored  I don't think that it will attract any more potential buyers. 

Any major or minor issue should be treated and fixed equal, this is a paid product at the end, not a free one. 

To be very honest with you, the way they treat the customer and how they ignore issues I don't think that I want to pay (sponsor) for the next release.

And to be noted I'm one of the people who got the very first professional version of P3D.

I dearly hope (for their own good) that LM will come around and provide us the "customer" a much better service, like many others.   

[TravelRunner404 596]

Just put in a new rendering engine already.

[pmb 5,137]

4 hours ago, jabloomf1230 said:

Forget about obvious problems that you guys are talking about for a moment.

I saw your SpeedTrees thread on the LM forum, too. It's actually something certainly not requiring rocket science to do, and I would prefer the modified trees, too. In case of licensing issues, they could at least make a short statement on that. Most probably it's anyway just the rendering technology rather than the trees themselves they licensed, but who knows.

Kind regards, Michael