Performance gain 1.8.3.0 by sacrificing LOD radius?

[webstef68 52]

Isn't it truer to reality that way ? Just my thought...

[lopentan 18]

1 hour ago, B787Pilot3222 said:

I think the issue is the textures been streamed into the sim.

You are right, my friend.

[steve 86 287]

100% they changed the LOD slider i have went from 100 to 175 and now it looks the same as before the patch, pure lazy for devs to do this and claim they have made the game run better 

[Colonel X 1,430]

1 hour ago, Mark_A said:

Is the Apple HQ from a Google model? It's not present for me.

https://www.flightsim.to/file/618/apple-park-apple-inc-hq

[Colonel X 1,430]

1 hour ago, Tom_L said:

• Render Scaling: overall quality of objects/textures
• Terrain LOD: Mesh quality
• Object LOD: Distance in which a certain LOD version of an object is drawn, but NOT the distance in which the object is drawn at all.

 

You got that a little wrong...

Render Scaling: This is just the internal resolution, is has no effect on objects or textures, just delivers a sharper image when above 100, affects only GPU.

Terrain LOD: The draw distance of objects (Photogrammetry and everything else except trees), affects only CPU.

Object LOD: The draw distance of object detail, for example airport clutter, affects only CPU.

[Tom_L 533]

27 minutes ago, Colonel X said:

Terrain LOD: The draw distance of objects (Photogrammetry and everything else except trees), affects only CPU.

Hmmm, thanks. I tried the slider in a very sparse environment against some mountains (Marakech heading south) and didn't notice any change in the distance in which buildings appeared, but significant change in the details of the mountains. Seems I need to do some more testing...

[Lange_666 167]

2 hours ago, steveuk1 said:

100% they changed the LOD slider i have went from 100 to 175 and now it looks the same as before the patch, pure lazy for devs to do this and claim they have made the game run better 

At (new) standard settings they did. And better is not the word to use, it runs smoother (at a cost).

[AnkH 2,267]

Well, another decision I can barely understand: you implement a LOD slider from 1 to 200 and to improve performance, you simply reduce the maximal possible LOD draw distance instead of just telling the user that he needs to adjust this freakin slider??? *******... Sometimes I do not get why devs think that all users are stupid like hell... At LEAST they could have simply switch to a "low", "medium", "high" and "ultra" setting with "ultra" being the 200 from before the patch. Then maybe people would have guessed that using "medium" or "high" should be the way to go if their machine is not powerful enough for "ultra".

But like this, they basically downgrade the sim for ALL users, irrespective of whether or not they had any performance issues at all. Really do not get this decision...

The only possible thing that would make sense is: they realised that to much data is drawn from their servers and they limited the data consumption by limiting the draw distance. BUT, and that is a HUGE BUT: if this was the reason, then good luck for the future, if they already started to downgrade some aspects due to data consumption being to high. Means: they could reduce the looks of their sim in no time to way below what we should have just because. And we could do NOTHING about it (except complaining), as all this stuff is streamed. 

But then, if I download a region into the manual cache, isn't then everything stored locally? So why the draw distance is that rubbishly short even when using manual cache? 

Edited September 21, 2020 by AnkH

[dogmanbird 269]

^ I'm experimenting, and although it might contribute to some of the gains, I'm not sure this is entirely what's going with the smoothness

[devgrp 1,233]

4 hours ago, steveuk1 said:

100% they changed the LOD slider i have went from 100 to 175 and now it looks the same as before the patch, pure lazy for devs to do this and claim they have made the game run better 

Calling the devs lazy is kinda pushing it don't you think? I'd like to see you build and optimize a game of this caliber. Personally I don't see why people are complaining about lod. Even if you could see clearly for a hundred miles, people would still have something to complain about. 

In real life you can't see that far out anyway, so if they can limit it to help performance, I'll take it. Unlike some of you guys, km not zooming in miles out trying to read signs or trying see my house 

[AnkH 2,267]

1 hour ago, devgrp said:

Personally I don't see why people are complaining about lod. Even if you could see clearly for a hundred miles, people would still have something to complain about. 

In real life you can't see that far out anyway, so if they can limit it to help performance, I'll take it. Unlike some of you guys, km not zooming in miles out trying to read signs or trying see my house 

If you do not see this, fine, but don't blame others if they do. And no, we are certainly NOT talking about unrealistic distances. In contrast, somehow I really wonder, how blind some people walk through their life... Example:

A little bit closer, the formerly "tree-less" hillside is suddenly covered in full forest:

Even more in winter, when the otherwise green ground texture is not masking anything, with this lousy snow shader stuff: 

Flying up the valley, the formerly blank white hill in front of the plane in the screenshot above is suddenly covered by a dense green forest:

Now tell me that those distances are irrelevant because in reality, you never see that far? Ridiculous comment, sorry to say. And no, there was NO reason to help performance, people could have simply dialed down this slider to achieve the same performance gains, why you force people using 200 without any performance issues to have reduced graphics because some obviously not capable of using those sliders correctly? The only reason is this server traffic thing, I am almost sure about this the longer I think about it...

Edited September 21, 2020 by AnkH

[devgrp 1,233]

1 minute ago, AnkH said:

If you do not see this, fine, but don't blame others if they do. And no, we are certainly NOT talking about unrealistic distances. In contrast, somehow I really wonder, how blind some people walk through their life... Example:

https://abload.de/img/screenshot33nrkrc.png

A little bit closer, the formerly "tree-less" hillside is suddenly covered in full forest:

https://abload.de/img/screenshot34xhkvi.png

Even more prominent in winter, when the otherwise green ground texture is not masking anything, with this lousy snow shader stuff: 

https://abload.de/img/screenshot35ogj25.png

Flying up the valley, the formerly blank white hill in front of the plane in the screenshot above is suddenly covered by a dense green forest:

https://abload.de/img/screenshot36l6kha.png

Now tell me that those distances are irrelevant because in reality, you never see that far? Ridiculous comment, sorry to say. And no, there was NO reason to help performance, people could have simply dialed down this slider to achieve the same performance gains, why you force people using 200 without any performance issues to have reduced graphics because some obviously not capable of using those sliders correctly? The only reason is this server traffic thing, I am almost sure about this the longer I think about it...

First of all did Asobo said the reduced it? Seems like people just want to complain about anything. My lod is set at 100 and my scenery looks just fine. I could turn it up and lose performance, but why would I? I'm not interested in seeing 10 miles out super clear. I can't do that in real life lol and if you think the tree are not enough turn then up. 

I don't know what some of you think, that turning up settings too high will kill performance. It's that way with every game, more so with a flight simulator 

[AnkH 2,267]

Boy, don't you get that those people complaining have their setting already at 200? There is NOTHING to turn up anymore. If you are happy with a blank green (half acceptable) or white (in winter, totally unacceptable) hill only some miles (never 10 miles...) in front of you transforming into a fully covered forrestal hill when being really close, fine, that is your personal opinion. 

But don't blame those that do not like this. And Asobo did not say anything, the screenshots from the release version and the current version over in the MSFS forums clearly show the difference next to each other (they are not mine, that is why I can not post them here). 

How I hate this "in reality you can not see that far" argument... do you all live in smog cities or countries with only bad weather or massive air pollution? Here in Switzerland, I did several flights with GA airplanes on sunny days and I can clearly tell you from further away than 10 miles if the hill in front of me has a forest on his side or not. In the sim in its current status, it is a pure guess game and in winter, it looks like there is no forest at all further away on the last screenshot. Those slightly darker areas on the white flank to the left all turn into full forest if closer, dark green in colour...

[FAZZ3 815]

Seeing this reported by so many users it can’t be chalked up as coincidence anymore. 

Reducing scenery LOD and calling it performance optimization is not called optimization, it’s cheating. Plain and Simple.

Did not expect this from Asobo. 

[Farlis 2,287]

2 hours ago, AnkH said:

Really do not get this decision...

I have the suspicion that it has to do with preparing for the X-Box release.