comment: wow, the sim  loads up WAY faster than I thought it would. For real. Loading up cold and dark on ultra settings in Auckland, NZ takes just over 30 seconds. I had read horror stories on how it takes some people 5 minutes to start up the sim. I honestly believe it has to do with your true internet download speed. Some people may think they have fast internet but a lot of times they don't actually test speeds/or know what "fast" really is. I have a consistent 220mpbs connection that I test regularly (and restarting router regularly helps). I think that is the magic trick to load up fast. A 20mbps connection is very slow these days so that may be the bottleneck.

Question: anyone know what ortho ZL levels are used in sim? I have "terrain level of detail" set to 200 and it doesn't look any better than a ZL16 in most of New Zealand (which has very high ortho resolutions available for most of the country). I would assume that if you cranked it up to the highest you could get ZL19 if you wanted. Does the "terrain level of detail" actually equate to ortho resolutions?

thanks!

Edited August 19, 20205 yr by dresoccer4

also, the terrain mesh quality for seems very low in most places. using ortho4xp in x-plane generates much more life-like meshes (hills, valleys, mountains, cliffs, etc). I thought that msfs2020 would have even more high quality meshes, especially in places that provide that data (like new zealand). I'm hoping they'll add in a setting in the future that allows you to adjust the quality of meshes you want to download.

i would attach screenshots to show what i mean but i haven't figured out how to do that on this forum yet... 😕