Morphing and popping

[chass32 138]

Don´t think it has something to do with ESP engine at all. If you use Google earth you´ll get the same morphing you can see in MSFS2020 videos. I´m more worried about speed of the plane used, because when you land with a jet it can be a morphing feast somehow.

cheers

Carlos

[pmb 5,137]

3 minutes ago, chass32 said:

Don´t think it has something to do with ESP engine at all. If you use Google earth you´ll get the same morphing you can see in MSFS2020 videos. I´m more worried about speed of the plane used, because when you land with a jet it can be a morphing feast somehow.

cheers

Carlos

According to my experience, it is much dependent on mesh resolution in mountains in Prepar3d. When I used Pilot's high-resolution Ultra Mesh the continuous morphing in mountains was that terrible that I finally uninstalled it, so the 80 € were for the birds. 

This is Prepar3d. There may be the same or other causes in MFS. Or, the same base issues showing just another way.

Kind regards, Michael

[FDEdev 955]

16 minutes ago, chass32 said:

Don´t think it has something to do with ESP engine at all. If you use Google earth you´ll get the same morphing you can see in MSFS2020 videos

Again, this doesn't happen with e.g. Aerofly FS2 and x-plane, don't know what Google Earth has to do with a flighsim. 

[Quasimodo 505]

I'm looking into my crystal! Ah the mists are clearing. I see history repeating itself. I see another Microsoft Flight fiasco in the not to distant future.🤣

[FlyerNYC 82]

2 minutes ago, FDEdev said:

Again, this doesn't happen with e.g. Aerofly FS2 and x-plane, don't know what Google Earth has to do with a flighsim. 

Google Earth is streaming in texture data in a similar way as the sim so... It actually has very much to do with flightsim.

Edited November 16, 2019 by FlyerNYC

[ca_metal 2,021]

1 minute ago, FDEdev said:

Again, this doesn't happen with e.g. Aerofly FS2 and x-plane, don't know what Google Earth has to do with a flighsim. 

 Because it's a photogrammetry issue... those morphing and popping issues are not happening outside the photogrammetry areas. 

Something they will have to tweak, if possible.  

[FDEdev 955]

Just now, FlyerNYC said:

Google Earth is streaming in texture data in a similar way as the sim so... It actually has pretty much to do with flightsim.

No, since the requirements for a flightsim are completely different.

[Dominique_K 10,143]

19 minutes ago, pmb said:

According to my experience, it is much dependent on mesh resolution in mountains in Prepar3d. When I used Pilot's high-resolution Ultra Mesh the continuous morphing in mountains was that terrible that I finally uninstalled it, so the 80 € were for the birds. 

This is Prepar3d. There may be the same or other causes in MFS. Or, the same base issues showing just another way.

Kind regards, Michael

  The relief morphing  seems indeed very much related to high def meshes in P3D, 19 m and below. But the popping is another matter.

[RALF9636 1,956]

38 minutes ago, pmb said:

According to my experience, it is much dependent on mesh resolution in mountains in Prepar3d. When I used Pilot's high-resolution Ultra Mesh the continuous morphing in mountains was that terrible that I finally uninstalled it, so the 80 € were for the birds. 

Same here 😉

Actually I haven't noticed the mesh popping in mountains so far in the MSFS clips (but maybe I just missed it). It was most striking for me with the buildings and the ground texture.

Edited November 16, 2019 by RALF9636

[pmb 5,137]

3 minutes ago, RALF9636 said:

Same here 😉

Actually I haven't noticed the mesh popping in mountains so far in the MSFS clips (but maybe I just missed it). It was most striking for me with the buildings and the ground texture.

Indeed. But isn't photogrammetry scenery similar to a very high-definition mesh? Just thinking.

Kind regards, Michael

[Mucker 93]

I think it is an issue that they will be aware of but it is good to let them know it should be a priority as far as visuals are concerned.

The thing is we don't know what is causing it, it could be a combination of things.

I am assuming it is not easy to solve or they would have done it already or possibly it could be that we are just seeing some unoptimised areas on the videos as some areas seem far worse affected than others.

Certainly it would be a great shame to have photorealistic scenery that really immerses the user only to have that destroyed by constant popping.

For now it is enough Asobo know it is an issue we would like to see ironed out and no doubt we will hear more about it as alpha builds progress.

[cepact 517]

this is what we want : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i-ot-XhlwA

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a1cf/d984fa8b9349dcc0adbef1739f61815c016f.pdf?_ga=2.201851025.1680693587.1573918963-473537288.1573918963

 

not only for terrain but for the buildings also

Edited November 16, 2019 by cepact

[RALF9636 1,956]

17 minutes ago, pmb said:

Indeed. But isn't photogrammetry scenery similar to a very high-definition mesh? Just thinking.

 

Probably.

By the way I am not too impressed so far by the mesh resolution in mountaineous areas we've seen, but that would be a different topic. Nevertheless the less detailed the mesh resolution the less mesh popping of course.

 

Edited November 16, 2019 by RALF9636

[Paraffin 2,197]

2 hours ago, 238932 said:

Caching has nothing to do with this, its  a LOD issue. If you were to render every trees 100km around with a high level of detail you would need an unpractical  amount of memory and graphics power to store the data and render it. It just can't be done with current computers. All you can hope for is a smooth transition between different levels of detail.

"Smooth transition" yes, but the point is that it shouldn't be a noticeable transition, or it breaks immersion.

This isn't a problem that can't be solved, because pop-in and texture morphing doesn't happen in X-Plane and other sims. The outside world loads smoothly and realistically with no artifacts. Just a very slow fade-in of distant details that happens before you notice anything. I don't have Aerofly FS2 but apparently it's not an issue there either.

I'm not too worried yet about the new MSFS because we're a long way from final optimization. The devs do need to understand that this isn't acceptable in a modern flight sim, no matter how sexy the eye candy looks when it finally pops in. So this is a good thread to express those concerns.
 

1 hour ago, domkle said:

 Is it a question of processing power or RAM/VRAM capacity ? In any case, this is a reason why I think it is too early to think of specs for a new hardware.

I'm not a programmer but I'll make a wild guess anyway that it's related to amount of system RAM. The devs can't assume that everyone is using an ultra-high-speed SSD, so scenery you're flying into would be cached in RAM and faded in before you see it.

Maybe they're testing a lower minimum RAM spec that can't hold enough cached data? There really isn't an excuse for this kind of artifact if the minimum system RAM spec is at least 8 GB like XP11, or maybe 16 GB for 4K resolution. I hope they're not shooting for a minimum required spec of just 4 GB like P3D. 
 

44 minutes ago, FlyerNYC said:

Google Earth is streaming in texture data in a similar way as the sim so... It actually has very much to do with flightsim.

I wouldn't draw any direct comparisons with Google Earth because it doesn't do much pre-fetch and caching for areas with photogrammetry data for 3D buildings. It seems more limited by connection speed. On my previous connection speed of 10 Mbps it could take almost a minute for textures to fill in when viewing a dense urban area like downtown Seattle or Osaka. I recently upgraded to a wired 250 Mbps connection and the textures now load much faster in Google Earth, almost invisibly in some cases.

[rhumbaflappy 113]

I haven't noticed the terrain mesh morphing. I definitely have seen the popping of objects at their LOD levels. This can be solved by either of 2 things. First, do not use LODs in models (not very good as memory requirements for objects skyrockets). Second, fade object LODs in and out simultaneously using an algorithm that does not have them fading at the exact same distance. They will still morph, but it should be much less noticeable.