Terrain and Objects LOD 200 vs 900

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

This induces stuttering as its is heavily CPU bound, and no modern day CPU can cope with it properly in dense areas. That was my findings any way and of course that is my opinion.

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

On 8/31/2020 at 5:06 PM, Kilo60 said:

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.

You have to literally be blind to not see it.....holy cow lol

[ahsmatt7 1,199]

On 8/31/2020 at 5:25 PM, Nate1 said:

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

I love these comments. “I can’t see objects with clarity in real life...”

the difference between real life and the sim is that in real life, they are actually there. In the sim, they are not. In real life, you can still see objects in the distance you just can’t make out minute details. I’m sure the sim could do this too but it’s still probably too CPI intensive to have oblong objects be drawn.

[AnkH 2,233]

Those blind folks not seeing it: simply add a layer of snow, 50cm is enough, and you will instantly see the difference, especially in regions with hills and mountains. 

Only question for me: does this also affect draw distance of trees?

[Colonel X 1,428]

2 hours ago, AnkH said:

Those blind folks not seeing it: simply add a layer of snow, 50cm is enough, and you will instantly see the difference, especially in regions with hills and mountains. 

Only question for me: does this also affect draw distance of trees?

Trees have their own LOD setting, keep them on Ultra to get the largest draw distance.

 

Well guys I am shooting super smooth approaches at LAX with LOD at "80", and I don't think I need more...

[YVRLHRDXB 321]

Keep in the mind the higher the setting, the longer the load times.

[MikeT707 1,181]

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

Trees have their own LOD setting, keep them on Ultra to get the largest draw distance.

So just to clarify, are you saying that Terrain LOD and Objects LOD have no effect on how far trees are drawn?

[Evros 310]

1 hour ago, Colonel X said:

 

What's up with your screenshots? Why are they so smeared outside of center point? I feel like looking at some terrible 3D image without 3D glasses.

[gunther 167]

5 hours ago, MikeT707 said:

So just to clarify, are you saying that Terrain LOD and Objects LOD have no effect on how far trees are drawn?

Terrain LOD has some impact, but the major factor with tree draw distance is the Tree Quality setting.

[AnkH 2,233]

Bummer, because the low draw distance of the trees is what bothers me most. This is just ridiculously short even with the setting on 200...

[Nyxx 6,993]

6 hours ago, Evros said:

What's up with your screenshots? Why are they so smeared outside of center point? I feel like looking at some terrible 3D image without 3D glasses.

All the filters he users.

[StoreyedTrain 13]

I actually never understood why they never implemented a logic like how Just Cause 2 renders Lods.

 

In Just Cause 2 if you go higher you see the rainforest lose detail, but the general color doesnt change.

 

While in every flightsim if there are no buildings/trees you see the ground texture which has a completely different average color.

If that base color would be gray (like in the case of the city skyline like the pictures from TS), pop-in would be way less disturbing, and you could leave the performance penalty to a minimum.

Also generic darkening of the base/ground texture would make bunches of trees look much more like a forest, since most of the time on the forest floor there are more smaller plants to diffuse the light and therefore generate near perfectly diffuse ambient occlusion (requiring 0 calculation penalty since its not directional ambient occlusion), shading/coloring that could be baked/generated with the planted tree-textures before they get "planted".

 

btw anyone know how you`d increase the precision of the terrain tesselation ?

Sadly enough the function that seems like it can do that (VectorDataTessellation) cannot be set higher than 3.

Edited September 24, 2020 by StoreyedTrain

[bobcat999 8,442]

8 hours ago, Evros said:

What's up with your screenshots? Why are they so smeared outside of center point? I feel like looking at some terrible 3D image without 3D glasses.

The Colonel is experimenting with the native Nvidia Experience shaders and filters - very cinematic!

PS.  I am using LODs of 3.0 in the user config file (Would be 300 on the slider).  Seems to be better in the distance without any noticeable performance loss or extra loading time. (1080Ti at 1440).

Edited September 24, 2020 by bobcat999

[MrFuzzy 2,117]

On 9/1/2020 at 12:22 AM, 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)

 

Have you noticed that with LOD 900 close objects popped OUT? The parking on the lower right side of the 900 LOD screenshot is empty.

[gunther 167]

3 hours ago, AnkH said:

Bummer, because the low draw distance of the trees is what bothers me most. This is just ridiculously short even with the setting on 200..

Due to the age of my rig I'm running the sim mostly on Med-High settings, but I've set my Tree Quality to Ultra and my Terrain LOD to 200, and I have to say it looks pretty nice. Trees blend into the distance and there is no popping. Mind you I'm running a 1080 display. 4K might be more of an issue.