Taken from the MSFS for folks that don't venture over that minefield:-

 

 

Autogen LOD:

Description:

Synthetic buildings and vegetation made from a collection of generic 3D objects.

Building and Vegetation settings set the object details ranges (more or less complex representation of the same objects aka LOD).

Building and Vegetation settings set the distance rings where the different object LOD are displaying.

Problems:

Below a certain distance to the outermost ring, objects used to fade-in, now they seem to pop-up instead.

This is mitigated because they are displaying over their footprint picture found in the aerial ground texture displaying underneath.

Photogrammetry LOD:

Description:

Realistic buildings and vegetation made from textured mesh based on aerial photography of the real objects.

Building and vegetation textured mesh has different LOD built-in.

Lowest resolution LOD is displaying the farthest, then increasing resolution LOD are fading-in in place as the view is getting closer.

Terrain LOD setting set the distance rings where the different textured mesh LOD are displaying.

Problems:

Below a certain distance to the outermost ring, textured mesh is popping in over the flat aerial ground texture.

The LOD rings are smaller than pre-release therefore the lowest detailed mesh LOD is displaying too close.

It is often referred to as “melted buildings”.

Ground Texture LOD:

Description:

Realistic ground texture made from aerial photography.

Lowest resolution texture is displaying the farthest, then increasing resolution is popping up over as the view is getting closer.

Terrain LOD setting set the distance rings where the different texture resolutions are displaying.

Problems:

The LOD rings are smaller than pre-release therefore the lowest texture resolution is displaying too close.

It is often referred to as “blurry ground texture seen at altitude” and wrongly attributed to network bandwidth.

Analysis:

There is a single setting, Terrain LOD, which is affecting both ground textures and photogrammetry LOD, which makes sense when you’re considering the outermost ring where photogrammetry and ground texture meet must share a similar resolution.
The LOD distances (v1.8.3 and v1.9.3) are trading off distance for performance but they are adjusted to render objects at 1:1 zoom view in 4K (both photogrammetry and ground textures).
At this zoom level and in 4K, photogrammetry mesh and ground textures are displaying just the right amount of details to fill enough pixels on the screen for their respective projected surface size.
In short, the renderer is dropping some resolution and details which are imperceptible to the eye under a given viewing condition (zoom 1:1, distance to objects).
It is similar to JPEG compression which is displaying similar picture quality to the original at 1:1, but it is showing compression artefacts when zooming in.

What’s wrong:

The LOD ring sizes have been reduced since pre-release and this is affecting mostly photogrammetry and ground texture.
Photogrammetry and textures were popping in with previous versions but it was less noticeable because it was happening farther away.
Because LOD ring distances are now closer:

ground texture quickly drops resolution when viewed from not so high an altitude.

the simulator is displaying too low resolution texture too close to the aircraft and this is especially visible when flying over non-photogrammetry areas.

you can’t zoom-in otherwise you’re viewing magnified lower resolution mesh and textures.

A few solutions:

Decouple photogrammetry and ground texture LOD with 2 sliders instead of 1 so that each user can balance performance/details depending on hardware and preference.

Revert LOD ring distances to pre-release values.

If FS2020 ships with same setting levels for both PC and Xbox, add a “Extreme” setting just for PC restoring the previous LOD.

5 minutes ago, rob0203 said:

No before it was only the NAV now also the HDG bug zigzags

It doesn't matter. Carenado need to fix it, it's their aircraft. This is not an Asobo problem. Updates break addons, and 3rd party developers are aware of this.

Apparently, Carenado have a fix and Asobo will add it to the marketplace soon, as an update.

32 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

There are PLENTY of screenshots over the official forums. Plenty.... go take a look. Ps this isn’t a new car. 

I have realized over the last few weeks not to take initial blowups on any forum related to MSFS too seriously. I will let the dust settle. For me, the new patch has been 95% good. The only weird thing is the thunder and lightning in clouds that likely shouldn't have that.

This is going to get an interesting read. 20 pages about the new patch. Seems like Asobo failed again.

90 minutes until the Dev Q&A on Twitch. This should be interesting 🙂 I am sure the moderators over there will be busy.

Well yeah, I must agree here. I was on alpha/beta team, I was very skeptical when they announced the release date, I waited, and at that point decided to get the 1€ xbox subscription. Since then, I left it running for two months, I think 2nd month cost me €4 or something like that. Now I cancelled the subscription and won't be buying. Albeit I love most of the visuals, I will return to P3D, as this is in most of the other aspects than visuals (and with the current patch, that is questionable too), more usable sim, and will check MSFS in 6-12 months.

I just went for another flight over an area I've flown over many times (so I'm quite familiar with it), and I have no doubt that draw distances have been seriously nerfed. I'm very disappointed, as the visual degradation is not just visible, it's palpable.

I can see how low flying bush pilots or high flying airline pilots might not notice as much, and I suspect large areas of photogrammetry also continues to look good (I haven't tested that), but for my preference of flying, which is 5000-10000 ft AGL over rural, forested autogen towns, this "nerf" is obvious.

Ironically my performance is much improved, but I rather control that myself by dialing back my settings. On my modest computer, ultra settings SHOULD tank my framerates. Now I'm using using ultra settings and the scenery looks worse (and the performance seems better) than it did when I was using high settings before this update.

Edited September 30, 20205 yr by Keto Ketchup

A simple solutions -> re-set all Yours sim settings and save them and re-start sim...

34 minutes ago, espent said:

90 minutes until the Dev Q&A on Twitch. This should be interesting 🙂 I am sure the moderators over there will be busy.

I think it's in 2 hours from now actually. 10:30 AM PDT according to the forums.

1 minute ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I think it's in 2 hours from now actually. 10:30 AM PDT according to the forums.

You are right. Thanks for correcting.

I'm doing more testing compared to pre-release and launch screenshots.

From the official "let it snow" video;

4k in-game with LOD sliders to 200. Not super noticeable differences.

Pre-release SF screenshot. Note this is a very high resolution screenshot that was likely taken using developer tools.

And in-game at 4k and max LOD. This was taken immediately after loading;

And another screenshot of the same location after I moved the camera over the city a bit - there are some minor differences with the far LOD.

 

Now some comparisons with screenshots taken from this thread; https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/582032-sightseeing-kuala-lumpur/

Kuala-Lumpur is mostly auto-gen buildings with a few custom models for the major skyscrapers, ie its not photogrammetry like the two above cities.

andy1252 screenshot;

Same location in current patch. Really distant buildings seem about the same;

andy1252 screenshot;

Same place which again looks to have about the same LOD for distant buildings;

https://i.imgur.com/198cT5y.jpg[/img]

Moving closer to downtown things start to get interesting.

andy1252 screenshot;

And in the current patch. Most of the buildings here took a long time to load, and when they did they did so in stages, ie midrises then single and two story buildings. But if you look at the lower right you'll see some buildings didn't load at all compared to the early patch screenshot - perhaps this is just autogen changes.

 

And another andy1252 screenshot;

Current patch;

 

The last two sets of screenshots are the most illuminating imho. The draw distance appears to be the same, or perhaps even slightly better in the newer patch. However they clearly did something with the mips for the buildings. Building textures look worse now because they are using a higher level of mip for a given distance.

 

Additionally loading for photogrammetry cities seems quite bad. This is what I encountered over Chicago;

 

Basic summary; autogen draw distance appear to be the same but building textures look worse. Photogrammetry is the real 'downgrade' but how much of that is due to loading issues isn't yet clear.

Edited September 30, 20205 yr by L3m0n

18 hours ago, Beru said:

Did you expect a complex product as a flight sim to work flawless from day one? MSFS is way ahead of any sim in the market already. It's the base for others to build upon. It will take time and more patches to fix all the problems. No offense, but  f you cannot take it, then go back to P3D or X-Plane and wait until then. 

Stockholm syndrome on your part. I never left and stay with x-plane 11.50 vulcan. So much better still. After the latest update, I can't even start msfs 2020 anymore. The shortcut leads me to the Microsoft store page. Game installed it says ... and that's it. 

This has to be a bug with the new patch, right?  I mean why would they lessen the LOD multiplier when we have a slider in game?  Just allow the user to ramp it up if we want to.

I do agree, after this new patch the game looks much worse due to this tree issue, I'm not liking it and I hope they revert whatever it is they did.

5 hours ago, DJJose said:

As soon as you load the sim it forces you to update. This is the only sim that I've used in 20 years that forces updates up our throats.

ASOBO needs to consider giving users the option. Some users are NOT happy being beta testers, while other love to test.

It's probably the only silver lining on this thread.

I've been advocating for a separate opt-in Beta branch like XP11 and many Steam games use. On further thought, it might be more difficult for MS/Asobo to manage with the sim using streamed content. You don't usually see a parallel Beta branch with online games like WoW or Elite Dangerous because everyone needs to be in the same streamed "world" for the game to work at all. It might be that setting up a completely separate Beta server stream might be too difficult, or (more likely) too expensive.

Without a Beta branch, the rigid "every two weeks" patch release schedule rears its ugly head as the central problem. They're releasing patches on a timed schedule without the necessary QC, or the ability to delay and hotfix as needed. 
 

4 hours ago, Ricardo41 said:

To be honest, given the fact I'm using MSFS on a 5 year old rust bucket, I'll take any performance improvement I can get.

I looked at the pictures that folks posted: yeah, sure, there is pop in, blurriness, but if it improves performance, then it doesn't bother me that much.

I can understand your perspective. I hope you can understand the perspective of those of us who had good frame rates and decent LOD in the earlier versions, and now have degraded scenery with no increase in frame rate. Because that's what I'm seeing on my setup.

55 minutes ago, L3m0n said:

I'm doing more testing compared to pre-release and launch screenshots.

The last two sets of screenshots are the most illuminating imho. The draw distance appears to be the same, or perhaps even slightly better in the newer patch. However they clearly did something with the mips for the buildings. Building textures look worse now because they are using a higher level of mip for a given distance.

Additionally loading for photogrammetry cities seems quite bad. This is what I encountered over Chicago;

Basic summary; autogen draw distance appear to be the same but building textures look worse. Photogrammetry is the real 'downgrade' but how much of that is due to loading issues isn't yet clear.

So far, all counter-evidence has simply been pretty much ignored. Perhaps you will fare better.