Why Buildings are Rocks, Pyramids and Needles

[nhagag 26]

Hello

In MSFS 2020 before and after the last update, Buildings in cities e.g. London or NYC are showing like huge Rocks, Pyramids and Needles.

I am using Nvidea GTX 2070 Super with 8Gb. Scenery in general is acceptable except buildings.

Interesting Airports buildings are fine.

Any insights in what is the cause of this deformities.

 

Bill Hagag

[captaingoldfish 19]

I'd love to hear an explanation about this too from someone who knows what they're talking about. This has been a known issue since before day one, and fixes are in the works (how long, who knows), but I could really never understand the root cause.

[bobcat999 8,444]

Is it photogrammetry failing to load properly or too slowly?  You could test for this by turning it off for a while in the Data menu and then seeing how it looks.

My PC is fairly reasonable, but I tend to fly with photogrammetry off now.

Other than that, can you post a picture of what you are seeing?

[MegaRiceBall 99]

Are you talking about the LOD algorithm (polygon reduction) that is used for photogrammetry data? Unfortunately that's how it is for now unless someone manually sets which vertices should be retained at each LOD, which defeats one of the main benefit of PG data.

Airports and other buildings are either autogened or handcraftedd, which have a more curated LOD algorithm.

As I said on the official forum, a lot of the challenges could be alleviated by "smarter" algorithms that are trained using ML/AI models. They don't even have to deploy such algorithms on the client side. Instead, they could just use the algorithms to improve the data. 

[pmb 5,137]

First, I see this, too. Quality of photogrammetry seems to vary, but the recently released London certainly belongs to the worse ones.

Here's my interpretation: Photogrammetry is some kind of mesh. Mesh in all these simulators is usually provided in several resolution steps to be used on approach for performance reasons. Far away, you get a rough mesh with only few nodes which changes to a variety with more nodes later. Occasionally, this can be seen in mountains, too (not only in MSFS but in other FSX-code based simulators too) as ground morphing.

With respect to photogrammetry cities this means you only get a rough city when far away which switches to higher resolution later. I think this can be seen when buildings/trees gradually take shape upon approach. Obviously, the best resolution (i.e. the one which MS/ASOBO use on their new title photo) can never be reached, at least I can't get it. The open question is if this is (i) a bandwidth limitation or (ii) a PC performance limitation or (iii) a design flaw, Given, even people with super-high bandwidth and/or using caching experience this, I would rule out (i). Similar goes for (ii), thus my take is at (iii). Given, London is very hard on performance (at least that's what I observe), the highest resolution step would make the machine just stop, thus either it's just not delivered or not switched to.

But this is only my idea about what might happen which may or may not apply. There are several lengthy threads on this (one with a voting system) in the official forum already.

Kind regards, Michael

[jpe828 624]

This has been since day 1 for me... at a distance photog cities look horrific. 

[pmb 5,137]

But as an alternative experience, read here

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/595934-photogrammetry-differences/

Now tell me...

Kind regards, Michael

[captaingoldfish 19]

I don't know what to make of this. I have a 1gb fiber connection, so I know it's not that. I have a modest system, so maybe that's part of it- but people with high-end systems seem to have the same trouble. If I increase the LOD, it really doesn't help much either. I guess some imagery is better than others- because even if I fly low and slow and circle over an area with PG and it loads- half of the objects still look like obelisks. I do know that fixing PG is on Asobo's radar- but when or how it will happen is anyone's guess:-(

[captaingoldfish 19]

Thanks Michael- I'll read through all of that after dinner. I'm genuinely perplexed by PG- I guess because it's new to us, but also because it was after all a big selling point for the sim. It works great when I fly the drone cam around- and okay when I'm in a small prop- but awful in jets.

[nhagag 26]

The following are two images of flying over London (UK update) today

As I mentioned earlier, I see the same thing with other cities as well.

Photogrammetry is set to ON.

 

Bill Hagag

[nhagag 26]

another shot illustrating same problem

[pmb 5,137]

Why I see the London issue as well, yours is much more pronounced than on my system, and I would think here might be some room for improvement. First, I would try to lower zoom setting. That's one parameter often overlooked potentially causing performance issues, notably with photogrammetry, as I tested once.

Kind regards, Michael

 

[marsman2020 1,310]

The photogrammetry looks best when it's all loaded in and your are flying at less then legal altitudes over a big city to take advertising videos or screenshots to sell the sim.  Even better if you're looking mostly down, or back at the plane, or you do a quick 180 (slew mode?) so you're mostly looking at the areas that have already loaded and not at the things that still look melted off in the distance.

The AI generated autogen, even in the big cities, can look better at a distance because it's not all "melty".

This is nothing new, it's been like this since release. 

Honestly I don't think the photogrammetry as implemented in MSFS is actually a great tool.  More often then not I find it makes things look worse.  Even when it's fully loaded it gives things a greyish, "I Am Legend" city look.  I'd rather they improve the Blackshark algorithms to make more representative autogen of complex city buildings at this point.  Maybe feed the photogrammetry data into the Blackshark algorithm as an input.

Edited February 22, 2021 by marsman2020

[pmb 5,137]

Here's a shot from my system

I wouldn't call it "good" but I think it's better than yours. And I don't have a monster system, see my sig. (Albeit I have a 100 MBit/s connection which may help a bit.)

Kind regards, Michael

[nhagag 26]

Hi Michael

I happened to have a rig that is almost identical to yours except my GTX 2070 with 8Gb and 210 Mbit/s connection

I really can't tell the real reason other than photogrammetry and what Marsman is suggesting until Asobo offers a solution

Best All