Terrain and Objects LOD 200 vs 900

[styckx 1,871]

I saw a topic earlier in the week which I can't find and it really didn't sell me too much on the differences so I figured I'd finally get around to playing around with this..

Warnings:

This will use more VRAM

This will use more RAM

This will will use more CPU

 This will increase load times

This will decrease FPS 

In UserCfg you can set the LOD above 200 here

Quote

    {Terrain
        LoDFactor 2.000000
    }
    {ObjectsLoD
        LoDFactor 2.000000

 

Simply increase each value by a factor of one to increase above 200..

ie: 2.00000 = 200  / 9.00000 = 900 (I've seen no difference between 900 and 20000.. Yes I've tested that far.. It's up to you to find a happy medium based on your hardware)

Here is the max in game default LoDFactor (for both) 2.00000 (200)

 

Here is the increased LoDFactor (for both) of 9.00000 (900)

Edited August 31, 2020 by styckx

[Todd2 2,095]

Is it worth it with loss of performance?

[styckx 1,871]

Just now, Todd2 said:

Is it worth it with loss of performance?

I've settled out at around 5.0.. Although I'm very lucky to be running the hardware I am to get away with it. (see sig)

[sightseer 895]

I just asked a related question - is there an adjustment for objects per LOD that you know of?

[bonchie 2,305]

Pretty cool to know you can do this even if one doesn’t have the hardware right now. The hard LOD ring for autogen buildings in FSX was a big handicap. P3D finally increased the range with v4. 
 

Two years from now, this tweak will be really useful for more people.

[wthomas33065 994]

1 hour ago, styckx said:

I saw a topic earlier in the week which I can't find and it really didn't sell me too much on the differences so I figured I'd finally get around to playing around with this..

Warnings:

This will use more VRAM

This will use more RAM

This will will use more CPU

 This will increase load times

This will decrease FPS 

In UserCfg you can set the LOD above 200 here

 

Simply increase each value by a factor of one to increase above 200..

ie: 2.00000 = 200  / 9.00000 = 900 (I've seen no difference between 900 and 20000.. Yes I've tested that far.. It's up to you to find a happy medium based on your hardware)

Here is the max in game default LoDFactor (for both) 2.00000 (200)

 

Here is the increased LoDFactor (for both) of 9.00000 (900)

At that altitude, I don't see much difference at all.

It would be interesting to see what that looks like at say 30000 AGL.  But then again my i5 potato is struggling with LOD of 25, so there's that.  Hopefully, the i7 I have arriving Thursday will unclog that CPU bottleneck a bit.

And with the wider swath, I imagine your data usage is going up as well with more higher res data being fetched.

[styckx 1,871]

Just now, wthomas33065 said:

At that altitude, I don't see much difference at all.

It would be interesting to see what that looks like at say 30000 AGL.  But then again my i5 potato is struggling with LOD of 25, so there's that.  Hopefully, the i7 I have arriving Thursday will unclog that CPU bottleneck a bit.

And with the wider swath, I imagine your data usage is going up as well with more higher res data being fetched.

Look straight ahead of the airplane.. 2.0 - There is a vast barren landscape out in the distsance. 9.0 and it's all filled in. This is stuff you'd otherwise notice "popping in" as you approached.. It makes a difference. 

[Kilo60 660]

10 minutes ago, styckx said:

Look straight ahead of the airplane.. 2.0 - There is a vast barren landscape out in the distsance. 9.0 and it's all filled in. This is stuff you'd otherwise notice "popping in" as you approached.. It makes a difference. 

I still can't see much of a difference...

 

Guess I'm expecting the clarity to get better at distance which doesn't appear to change much at all.

[IdleTalk 8]

I can see some difference but I can certainly live with 100. Looking forward to crank those numbers up to 5.0+ in two or three years. Hope this software will utilize all the capabilities of future hardwares.

[ryanbatc 12,834]

Neat tweak - my aging CPU won't able to go past 200...already stutters as it is....

[Nate1 163]

For me the realistic setting is what I can see with my own eyes in real life. And I definitely can't see objects many many miles away with any clarity. In fact I often find simulation more convincing when the blur reflects realistic eyesight. Maybe someone has vision as sharp as the screenshots above?

On a related note - I'd quite like to see heat haze (i.e. the TBM exhaust effect applied to landscape). Could be amazing - particularly at night when one gets that twinkling effect.

 

Edit - I appreciate that the blending at the LOD border is not perfect at the moment & perhaps this is the more significant factor?

Nate

Edited August 31, 2020 by Nate1

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

Where can I find the user.cfg?

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

I have a usercfg.opt in the root of my document folder. Isn't that a strange place for it to be?

Edit: after some searching I found a usercfg.opt in this location:

C:\Users\Andreas\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache

Edited September 23, 2020 by Andreas Stangenes

[captain420 3,099]

I can definitely see a difference even at 1500 AGL. Going from 200 to 300 I can clearly see the buildings and texture being much sharper out in the distance. This makes a huge difference in visual immersion for me. I find the sweet spot with my current settings to be at 300, because it can eat up RAM/VRAM like crazy and my old 1080 only has 8GB of VRAM.

[FlyBaby 659]

Does anyone know if the GPU performance hit is limited by VRAM? If so, would the RTX3090 24GB allow for the higher settings?

Edited September 23, 2020 by FlyBaby