I hear that you can make XP11 looks as good as MSFS

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

8 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Crop out what you cannot see from a cockpit, I suppose though you might not be familiar with that concept, since no MSFS planes have working cockpits yet, and from those shots the scenery will look pretty terrible if you use it.

Nope, you just chose to ignore it in the post you quoted

And the EGLL shots shortly after.

LOD bias controls how quickly quality falls off with distance, 1 means no quality loss the further you get into the distance (vis falls with pixel density), 10 means falls off at 10 times the rate.

If you increased the LOD falloff, those two would look rougly the same at a distance, - no buildings on the horizon, missing bridge, no discernible markers to determine location and direction, borken water that should be invisible/occluded. 

Whatever Mr. Sparks.  You lost your argument.  Now you're just flailing.  Adieu.

[RXP 2,338]

26 minutes ago, mSparks said:

If you increased the XP LOD falloff to 10, those two would look rougly the same at a distance, - no buildings on the horizon, missing bridge, no discernible markers to determine location and direction, borken water that should be invisible/occluded. 

I'm sorry to say but I fail to match your description and the screenshots?! Do you mean the XP11 screenshot above is using a LOD bias of 10 and the screenshot is supposed to show the effect of this dataref??! You might want to circle some key points on both pictures to show what do you see wrong between the two maybe?

[mSparks 2,086]

15 minutes ago, RXP said:

Do you mean the XP11 screenshot above is using a LOD bias of 10 and the screenshot is supposed to show the effect of this dataref??!

Not sure what my screenshot was set to, I've slept since then, 1 if I remembered to change it, 5 if I didn't, its probably 1 but 1 to 5 isn't immediately obvious with ortho unless you are looking for things (bit like the missing buildings around the airport earlier).

the MSFS shot is equivalent to about XP @ 10 (with ortho - very roughly speaking) - even higher in the EGLL pic I pulled off discord.

Once I touch down in KJFK with this 744 flight test I'll do a quick video showing what that dref does, its one of the few left in Vulkan you can use to tune performance.

 

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

46 minutes ago, mSparks said:

the MSFS shot is equivalent to about XP @ 10 (with ortho - very roughly speaking) - even higher in the EGLL pic I pulled off discord.

 

That's the trouble with pulling images off the internet as opposed to investigating stuff yourself.  I've seen images like that EGLL pic in MSFS all of .. never.  It looks like whomever took the photo had their LOD distance slider dragged to zero or had no internet connection / broken cache.  The dead giveaway is that your msfs EGLL shot shows nothing but the streamed orthos with no buildings, trees, anything.  That doesn't happen without an errant setup of some kind.  If you bothered to boot it up... (oh right sorry, your wagon's hitched to Linux).. you might see that to be the case with your own eyes.  

Kinda similar to showing a shot from someone with a screwed up scenery config file and using that to critique XP.  

And your LOD argument is a bit scattered.  You're saying that you can correct your XP11 NYC image to actually show buildings in the distance like the MSFS one does?  What setting would that be?  Make those changes and repost an image with XP that gets as far as what you're seeing in MSFS and repost so we can compare.  At least get XP draw all the buildings in Manhattan before it cuts off.  

 

[mSparks 2,086]

Just now, VFXSimmer said:

It looks like whomever took the photo had their LOD distance slider dragged to zero or had no internet connection / broken cache.

Yes, pretty much what I said a few times in this thread.

same applies to the NYC shot, that was you took that wasn't it?

what happens if you turn the LOD slider up to match XP11 so you can see the bridge in full quality?

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

5 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Yes, pretty much what I said a few times in this thread.

same applies to the NYC shot, that was you took that wasn't it?

what happens if you turn the LOD slider up to match XP11 so you can see the bridge in full quality?

Avoiding answering my questions?  I get it 🙂  You know you cant get it match to the MSFS image.  No worries.  You tried your best.

What settings do you need to get buildings that look like New York City?

[mSparks 2,086]

8 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

Avoiding answering my questions? 

You mean:

14 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

What setting would that be?

8 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

You know you cant get it match to the MSFS image.

Not sure why you would want to, but as I said, I'll do a video as soon as I finish this test flight, currently 60nm from TOD to KJFK

Edited April 1, 2021 by mSparks

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

1 minute ago, mSparks said:

You mean:

Right.  You've shown it.   The setting control's not there.   You cant help it right now.  Thats as much as XP can give you.  What I figured.

Alas, with luck, those here on this forum who can take actual critiques can pass them on to LR so something can be done to move the ball forward.

[mSparks 2,086]

4 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

The setting control's not there. 

Its here:

Its an advanced setting, for people that don't like high quality at long distance. As I said, I'll do a quick vid after the flight test is done

Edited April 1, 2021 by mSparks

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

7 minutes ago, mSparks said:

Its here:

Its an advanced setting, for people that don't like high quality at long distance. As I said, I'll do a quick vid after the flight test is done

Ah, I see, so with that you can get XP to draw objects out farther than it usually does so it can get as far as my MSFS NYC image?  What about the buildings themselves?  Whats the best way to keep them from looking so generic?

[mSparks 2,086]

7 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

with that you can get XP to draw objects out farther than it usually does

No less further

Your MSFS shot is the upper of these two shots with the missing bridge on the left hand side and missing buildings hiding the water on the right hand side, both of which are in my XP11 shot.

Edited April 1, 2021 by mSparks

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

On 3/20/2021 at 9:58 AM, fppilot said:

hint: the ground is not visible

LOL.  Yep!

[VFXSimmer 1,310]

While my better sense is to just let this go... I figured that in the interest of an honest discussion of areas XP can improve its worth one more go.

.. yes... 'less further'.  If you blow up the very images you're using to make your argument you can see more buildings in the top image MSFS in the distance than in the bottom one.  Where are the trees in Central Park?  What Happened to New Jersey? - is this a period photo from when Linwood was still farmland?  As for the water on the right, that is the East river and the buildings are correct in the MSFS image above from this vantage point.

As for the GW bridge, I'll concede that one readily.  The default bridges in photogrammetry areas are 'meh' but those are being replaced by modeled versions at a pretty rapid pace.  One guy on flightsim.to has hand modelled about 9 Manhattan bridges so far.  XP suffers the same issue.. unless you believe the Golden Gate in San Fransisco should look like a flat slab of concrete.  Thank Mister X for fixing that monstrosity.  Regardless the bridge is there as is every other minor bridge ... as is every apartment, bodega and tire shop that abuts said bridges for that matter.

If you want a semi accurate NYC in XP, the current options are Drezwiecki Design's version or the freeware Manhattan Project.  They do a closer job of properly representing the actual buildings but are punishing on your framerates.  You also can get back the trees in central park with global tree packs .. but also with similar frame rate hits.

Nothing is free, increasing quality will always have corresponding down-pressure on performance.  I got a NYC I was pretty happy with in XP earlier last year that really pushed my machine, but now the one I get in MSFS right now blows that away with both looks AND performance.  Its not 60fps but neither was XP when I got it to look decent.  Even in VR I'd much prefer an image that looks great at 30fps than the compromise that is Spark's NYC image at 60.   If XP can up their game, I'd LOVE a sim with equal visuals to msfs and xp's flight model.  No die hard allegiance to either for me.  Happy to use whichever gives the best experience at that moment - which right now is msfs for me, but can certainly change if XP12 brings something great to the table.

[mSparks 2,086]

42 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

While my better sense is to just let this go...

You seem to think I'm in it for some kind of fight, I'm not, I'm just trying to explain why I dont find MSFS graphics that exciting - and also why any future XP12 with the same or better up close graphics are not the "huge" improvement people seem to think. They are nice to haves - not must haves.

44 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

Where are the trees in Central Park?

VR.

Basically, its a balancing act for VR, you'll see in this video my FPS is stonking - but as soon as you go fully 3D you have to turn the settings down, I do this two ways - thin out the trees, and increase that LOD bias value. both have barely visible impact in VR (pretty significant in 2D tho), and keep my FPS in the "not make you puke" range in built up areas like NYC.

I'm back on fully default settings for this, so they are back.

On to the vid. I didn't go as high as 10 (should be obvious why in the video) - one of the things XP does very well is give important objects priority, So by 3 all the buildings have gone - but the bridge is still 100%. 10 would probably be what you would need to go up to for the bridge to go - but obviously a moot point.

I dragged in your MSFS shot just to make it easier to see what I am taking about.

[tonywob 4,769]

On my system, X-Plane does have the higher LOD... i.e. trees and buildings are more visible out in the distance. However, MFS's superior lighting and clouds mask it well and it just looks better because of this.