Trees are grass!

[greggerm 312]

I have had a similar experience to your "magic line" screenshot above only once, and I was able to remedy it. It was a very distinct north-south line up in Vermont near KFSO. Previous flights had all been just fine, but suddenly the airport was on the wrong side of this line and there were no trees - a half-mile west, and the trees showed up. I didn't follow the line to see how far south it may have gone, but I did get to working on the problem. I had been messing around with the rolling and static cache systems at the time... so I stopped using static cache and cleared my rolling cache entirely. All has been perfectly fine since.

As a New England sim pilot, I've only seen it that one time - I've flown "countless" times in RI, CT, MA, VT through the alpha and into release... that was the only time I saw anything of the sort. I'd be ripping mad if it was widespread and unrepairable, because this is my bread-and-butter flying area.

I think the cache engine is to blame. If you or anyone else is still experiencing the issue after clearing out all your cache files, pass along as specific of a location as possible for us to take a look at. (Get down to using Google/Bing Maps and street names and whatnot if you need to!)

KHFD, with 3D tree goodness...

 

Editing to add a comment based on an observation mentioned earlier in the thread:

"I've found that for me a large swathe of central Massachusetts (and parts of adjoining States) has no 3D trees - just ground texture. Going East (he meant "west") from Boston the trees start to go blocky, then patchy, before failing entirely around about W71.3. After that there's nothing until well past Northampton MA, until about W73, when they start again on a N/S line like a tile edge. The problem extends South into Connecticut, but I haven't had time to see how far North it goes. This is a large area!"

Just yesterday I did a flight into Northampton, and I can say with absolute certainty that there were trees everywhere - buzzed the Summit House on my way in and floated gently over the tree-lined river to landing.

This really seems like a local (aka: your computer) cache issue rather than a systemic scenery problem.

I don't dispute what others are seeing - I saw it myself once. But, after a quick clearing of all caches and elimination of any static caching files, all is well.

-Greg

Edited September 7, 2020 by greggerm
Updates

[bcuomo 143]

How does one clear the rolling cache?  Is there a way to do it in the sim or do you have to empty the folder?  And if the latter, where is the folder located?  I never set up a manual cache so that can't be the problem. 

[Keto Ketchup 240]

11 hours ago, bcuomo said:

I am having this problem as well.  Thought I was going nuts.  But it's not just one person's problem.  I haven't done any tinkering with settings (left things pretty much as recommended at first launch), nor have I installed any addons of any kind.  Just grass and buildings, no trees.  Haven't noticed this at any other location, although I've stayed pretty much in the eastern US so far.

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one! This way I don't have to keep wasting time trying to fix a problem that's not my fault. Since autumn is also "not a thing" in this FS, I'll be leaving New England behind for awhile, so hopefully this deforestation is limited to this area (though I am very disappointed that my old home state has been so neglected).

Also for those who say, "It looks fine to me", altitude matters! The 2D images of trees are still visible, so if you're cruising at 10,000 ft it might look okay to you, but if you're down at 2,000 ft in your Cessna enjoying a scenic flight, the lack of foliage is very obvious. I will give Asobo credit, when autogen trees work right, it contributes greatly to making the scenery look realistic.

UPDATE

See my next post, as I was able to get trees back! Now I just need to figure out exactly what the problem was. I suspect it's a bug in manual caching...

Edited September 7, 2020 by Keto Ketchup
Important Update!

[UAL4life 237]

Wait its all grass?    ....always has been. 🔫

Edited September 7, 2020 by UAL4life

[Keto Ketchup 240]

10 hours ago, greggerm said:

I think the cache engine is to blame. If you or anyone else is still experiencing the issue after clearing out all your cache files, pass along as specific of a location as possible for us to take a look at. (Get down to using Google/Bing Maps and street names and whatnot if you need to!)

I've tried turning off the rolling cache and even manually deleting the cache file, but that didn't solve anything. I've also created a new manual cache that preloaded a different city (not in CT), and that didn't help either. I don't see anyway to turn off manual cache, but I have created a new cache which I've left empty.

WELL SMACK MY BUM AND CALL ME GRANDMA! IT WORKED!

Okay, so here is what's different - I currently have rolling cached turned off (but I did this before to no effect), and I have the manual cache totally empty of ANY regions, and I took off from Hartford instead of Bradley where I normally fly out of. Autogen trees are back in Hartford! I'm heading north to see if the trees continue all the way up to the photogrammetry region near Springfield.

Next I'll start turning things back on and see if I can make the trees disappear again. There are two things I did differently from my previous failed attempts - 1) I deleted ALL regions from my manual cache, and 2) I took off from an autogen region rather than a photogrammetry region (Bradley is just inside photogrammetry zone). I'm very curious as to what the exact cause is now.

Anyway, thank you very much for proving that Hartford has trees and forcing me to try even more extreme measures (which worked) to fix the problem!

Edited September 7, 2020 by Keto Ketchup

[Keto Ketchup 240]

SOLUTION

The problem seems to be with the manual cache. However, the manual cache seems to poison the rolling cache, so deleting the manual cache isn't enough - BOTH caches need to be reset. And to make matters worse, it's not just the region selected in the manual cache that is effected, as I only had a small area around the Hartford to Springfield corridor precached, yet almost all of CT was treeless. So for now I've reset the rolling cache and have deleted the manual cache, which I won't be using until it is fixed (manual cache has many problems). The big negative is I get these "You're bandwidth isn't enough for photogrammetry" warnings, but I assume that if I fly over a city of interest long enough, it'll "fill in" with more and more detail over time, caching all this data into the rolling cache. Heck, if I have to choose between photogrammetry and trees, I'll pick the trees for all but the most iconic of cities. Hartford is autogen by default, and yet it still looks pretty good.

Goodbye manual cache! You had so much promise, but you're just not worth the trouble.

 

* Now I want to go back and retrace my steps to see how many other scenery-related issues I've encountered were due to using the manual cache system!

Edited September 7, 2020 by Keto Ketchup
additional comment

[bcuomo 143]

After resetting the rolling cache, I now have trees back as well.

[SierraHotel 976]

17 hours ago, Keto Ketchup said:

It makes me sad 😓

Don't be sad, report it to Asobo and it will be fixed, report it on Avsim and it won't.

[Keto Ketchup 240]

3 minutes ago, bcuomo said:

After resetting the rolling cache, I now have trees back as well.

Were you using manual caching like I was? In my case, the manual cache "poisoned" the rolling cache, so I had to delete both. I ask because I'm hoping that by not using the manual cache (it's now set to 0), my rolling cache will just work for now on. I hate throwing away gigabytes of data to solve a problem, because my Internet isn't that great (hence why I used manual cache to begin with).

Edited September 7, 2020 by Keto Ketchup

[bcuomo 143]

1 hour ago, Keto Ketchup said:

Were you using manual caching like I was? In my case, the manual cache "poisoned" the rolling cache, so I had to delete both. I ask because I'm hoping that by not using the manual cache (it's now set to 0), my rolling cache will just work for now on. I hate throwing away gigabytes of data to solve a problem, because my Internet isn't that great (hence why I used manual cache to begin with).

I was not using manual cache.  I haven't even looked at the settings for it.  I'm assuming it's set to 0 by default?