Hi guys, besides all the performance issues my biggest gripe w the sim is when flying airliners. Above 18000ft there is a major degredation of the ground textures. It turns off and on like clockwork above 18000 ft. The ground looks like an 8 bit tile literally. It looks terrible. LOD is set to 150 so its not that. I have a 5800x and 3080 FTW so , I should have enough horsepower. I noticed the video card memory load is very low only like 6GB/10GB. I know this sint xp11 but in xp11 with ZL16 orthos video card load was always near maxed out. Anyone else seeing this issue? For me it ruins it totally to fly high . 

I think it was mentioned in one of the QA sessions that they were looking into increasing the textures when you're high up.

21 minutes ago, wiler said:

Hi guys, besides all the performance issues my biggest gripe w the sim is when flying airliners. Above 18000ft there is a major degredation of the ground textures. It turns off and on like clockwork above 18000 ft. The ground looks like an 8 bit tile literally. It looks terrible. LOD is set to 150 so its not that. I have a 5800x and 3080 FTW so , I should have enough horsepower. I noticed the video card memory load is very low only like 6GB/10GB. I know this sint xp11 but in xp11 with ZL16 orthos video card load was always near maxed out. Anyone else seeing this issue? For me it ruins it totally to fly high . 

Did you set texture resolution to Ultra?

I noticed it last night for the first time. I think asobo is working on the fps issue with their terrain as a result they have downgraded the sim. Sadly even with the visual downgrade i still got bad fps issues going into KATL last night. frames dropped from 60 to 15 fps on external view.

For most parts of the world, there are two layers of orthophotos used. The high resolution detailed terrain you see when flying at low altitudes is generally based on aerial photographic surveys made from aircraft. Since the “platform height” where these images were taken, is closer to the ground, the native LOD is much higher.

At high altitude, the sim switches to the base satellite imagery taken from orbit. The native image LOD is lower. No matter how high you crank your in-sim LOD settings, there is only so much sharpening you can apply to an image that is lower resolution to start with.

You can see this same thing happening in any of the popular mapping apps from Google, Bing or Apple. If you zoom out, (moving the viewpoint to higher altitude) there will come a point where the image switches from aircraft aerial photography to satellite, and the change is very noticeable when it happens.

I agree that the switch seems to occur at about 18,000 to 20,000 feet AGL. The switchover used to be at a much lower altitude in the alpha and early release versions. In that regard, the sim is better now than it was originally. 

There are many remote places in the world that only have satellite imagery available, which is why the terrain does not look as good even when flying low, as compared to places like the US or Europe. AI can enhance vegetation and autogen structures when close to the ground even in these locations, but the terrain won’t look as good as in those places in the sim world where aircraft imagery is available.

I’m sure the high resolution imagery could be used at even higher altitudes than it is at present, but at what cost to performance? High LOD imagery occupies a lot more VRAM, and the higher one flys, the more horizontal extent has to be rendered.

Edited March 22, 20215 yr by JRBarrett

4 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

For most parts of the world, there are two layers of orthophotos used. The high resolution detailed terrain you see when flying at low altitudes is generally based on aerial photographic surveys made from aircraft. Since the “platform height” where these images were taken, is closer to the ground, the native LOD is much higher.

At high altitude, the sim switches to the base satellite imagery taken from orbit. The native image LOD is lower. No matter how high you crank your in-sim LOD settings, there is only so much sharpening you can apply to an image that is lower resolution to start with.

You can see this same thing happening in any of the popular mapping apps from Google, Bing or Apple. If you zoom out, (moving the viewpoint to higher altitude) there will come a point where the image switches from aircraft aerial photography to satellite, and the change is very noticeable when it happens.

I agree that the switch seems to occur at about 18,000 to 20,000 feet AGL. The switchover used to be at a much lower altitude in the alpha and early release versions. In that regard, the sim is better now than it was originally. 

There are many remote places in the world that only have satellite imagery available, which is why the terrain does not look as good even when flying low, as compared to places like the US or Europe. AI can enhance vegetation and autogen structures when close to the ground even in these locations, but the terrain won’t look as good as in those places in the sim world where aircraft imagery is available.

I’m sure the high resolution imagery could be used at even higher altitudes than it is at present, but at what cost to performance? High LOD imagery occupies a lot more VRAM, and the higher one flys, the more horizontal extent has to be rendered.

thats the difference between xp11 and this sim. XP11 doesnt need to switch because its not being streamed. What if ... what if we have the ability to download the base layer to disk and then run it as a stand (wont switch to the lower res) and wont have to be streamed. yes we need to load the server with a download, but once its on the hard drive it will probably stay there. Just a thought. For me the low res tiles ruin the entire game for me. they look like ZL 10 or less, just horrible. Im sure MS can do better then this!! 

5 hours ago, dikkeduif said:

I think it was mentioned in one of the QA sessions that they were looking into increasing the textures when you're high up.

yea its been on the list forever, but they never really mention it... 

6 minutes ago, wiler said:

yea its been on the list forever, but they never really mention it... 

As mentioned, the switchover between aerial and satellite imagery used to happen at a much lower altitude when the sim was first released - it used to happen around 8000-10,000 feet AGL. I know it is automatically assumed by many users that the sim gets “downgraded” with every update, but this is one area where the high altitude LOD is better now than it was in August. This is something I specifically test after each and every sim update by slewing upward with the drone camera.

Some users, at some point, may have modified the UserCfg.opt file “sharpen” parameter from “1” to “0” based on forum advice that doing so would improve the issue with pixelated clouds. That mod did indeed help with the clouds, but if that parameter is “0”, it will very definitely have a negative impact on the appearance of terrain textures at high altitude. This is something to check for anyone who may find the high altitude terrain unusually blurry.

10 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

As mentioned, the switchover between aerial and satellite imagery used to happen at a much lower altitude when the sim was first released - it used to happen around 8000-10,000 feet AGL. I know it is automatically assumed by many users that the sim gets “downgraded” with every update, but this is one area where the high altitude LOD is better now than it was in August. This is something I specifically test after each and every sim update by slewing upward with the drone camera.

Some users, at some point, may have modified the UserCfg.opt file “sharpen” parameter from “1” to “0” based on forum advice that doing so would improve the issue with pixelated clouds. That mod did indeed help with the clouds, but if that parameter is “0”, it will very definitely have a negative impact on the appearance of terrain textures at high altitude. This is something to check for anyone who may find the high altitude terrain unusually blurry.

sir , for me doesnt matter if it is 'better' then before or not (personally its worse then beta , in my opinion!) . At any rate, currently it looks very very poor and a next gen sim shouldn't be out done in this category by either p3d or xp11, period. They want the more 'serious' simmers to come over well  then they need to fix this  type of basic stuff. ZL 10 or lower looking terrain just aint gonna cut it.

Isn’t this the trade off due to the fact you are streaming the scenery from servers, so it’s probably a bandwidth issue balanced out across multiple servers.  You can’t compare with XP because you have to spend days downloading 10s or 100s of gigs of data which then sits on your hard drive and no one else is dependent on it unlike MSFS which is of course is “out of the box” ready.

Edited March 22, 20215 yr by sidfadc

One of the first things I noticed when I started using msfs and comparing it against Xplane 11 ortho. 
Look down at a runway from around 2000-5000 foot. I’ve said this many times bit it looks like a mine craft runway. 

3 hours ago, wiler said:

. They want the more 'serious' simmers to come over well  then they need to fix this  type of basic stuff. ZL 10 or lower looking terrain just aint gonna cut it.

Wait I thought serious simmers only cared about "study level" aircraft and pushing buttons in cockpit view 95% of the time talking on vatsim, they actually care about visuals  in other sims?

It has been like that since the release, vote this thread and hope for the best: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/ground-texture-low-resolution-internet-incorrect-bandwidth/142932

24 minutes ago, BiologicalNanobot said:

It has been like that since the release, vote this thread and hope for the best: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/ground-texture-low-resolution-internet-incorrect-bandwidth/142932

Over 500 votes for that, and we got orbit airlines livery from FSX........ hope indeed is what one needs...

5 hours ago, wiler said:

sir , for me doesnt matter if it is 'better' then before or not (personally its worse then beta , in my opinion!) . At any rate, currently it looks very very poor and a next gen sim shouldn't be out done in this category by either p3d or xp11, period. They want the more 'serious' simmers to come over well  then they need to fix this  type of basic stuff. ZL 10 or lower looking terrain just aint gonna cut it.

To me, they do not look bad. This is a screen shot I took near the south shore of Lake Erie, with the new CRJ. This is at FL280.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/crj-550-crj-700-screenshots/379517/33

This is far better than P3D with Orbx textures and landclass at the same location and altitude. XP with ortho might be better, but I have no way to test that. If you think the underlying terrain is “awful” I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. It looks even better on my 4K monitor in game.

I you have not done so, I would urge you to check the “sharpen” setting the MSFS UserCfg.opt file to see if the setting for “sharpen” is “0” or “1” There are two places where that setting occurs in that file. Even if you yourself have never changed it (to improve pixelated clouds), something else might have modified it. There are many reports of MSFS spontaneously changing user settings without being prompted.

If that setting is set to “0” it absolutely will have a negative impact on the appearance of terrain from high altitude.