2 hours ago, cianpars said:

We didn't have melted buildings at launch.  I assume they melted them to give users a few more FPS.  Why they are still melted on ultra settings with all the sliders up, I'm not sure.

Other than that, I think most of the messes ASOBO made with their updates were patched or fixed in future updates.

I really thought we would have a replay function by now as well.

Just curious, how can there not have been melted buildings when the Photogrammetry resolution is limited at the source?
Maybe you just didn't notice it before, or maybe the area you were flying prior didn't have PG turned on yet...
Photogrammetry will always look like melted buildings unless they use AI to restructure the objects, which has never really been done before AFIK...

And to the Replay feature
Yes, this is ridiculous, we need a replay, my god been too long...

 

CTD's have gone, Weather and clouds seems to be improving (certainly over Europe) Now for the bad... the likes of 747. 787 really need the AP sorted out, and better flight realism.. floaty airliners need a lot of work. They look great, but sadly lacking on  the systems side.

If Asobo or MS don't want to do the leg work, open them up and let the community sort them out... they'd be done in a few months.

PG turned on OK.  Maybe my perception of how it looked before may be clouded though.  I really think the buildings look more melted than they did. Pity I didn't take any screenshots priir to the updates.

I wonder if anyone has any pictures to prove or disprove.

Edited May 10, 20215 yr by cianpars

14 minutes ago, Mike S KPDX said:

Why?

To save space on the MSFS drive, I would think..

I have it on the same drive, just to keep things together.. 🙂

1 hour ago, cianpars said:

PG turned on OK.  Maybe my perception of how it looked before may be clouded though.  I really think the buildings look more melted than they did. Pity I didn't take any screenshots priir to the updates; 

I remember having melted PG right from the start. In some places it just looks better than in others. Hard to say if the „meltedness“ has increased. If it has, then not significantly. I think Alpine Scenery‘s point that it depends on the source makes sense. London and Paris for instance (both from BlueSky) are definitely inferior in quality compared to other PG cities. We can only speculate but if I had to guess I’d say it was the price that convinced MS/Asobo to buy the data from them. 

Edited May 10, 20215 yr by Shack95

4 minutes ago, Shack95 said:

We can only speculate but if I had to guess I’d say it was the price that convinced MS/Asobo to buy the data from them. 

This has nothing to do with the price of the data, but to the low quality polygon reduction algorithm they are using. I don't know if this low poly count mesh comes directly from Bing, or if the poly reduction is solely done live in FS2020, but in the end, it is badly reduced.

In short, take a building. This takes at least 10 triangles (omitting ground). If you want to reduce the number of polygons, you'd inherently change the rectangle shape into a pyramid of some sort. This is what is going on but at a much higher number of triangles per building (the PG mesh is a continuous mesh, not n x individual objects).

Technology exists to help but results may vary. I've documented more about this here:

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/bad-performance-low-fps-with-world-update-3-and-new-london-photogrammetry-possible-memory-leaks/366973/179?u=cptlucky8

19 minutes ago, RXP said:

This has nothing to do with the price of the data, but to the low quality polygon reduction algorithm they are using...

Thanks for the clarification. I‘m a complete layperson in this regards and, as I said, it was pure speculation. Why, do you think, do they use a low quality polygon reduction algorithm and why do some places look better than others? Performance? I’m just wondering because the performance in London is pretty bad.

1 hour ago, Shack95 said:

I remember having melted PG right from the start. In some places it just looks better than in others. Hard to say if the „meltedness“ has increased. If it has, then not significantly. I think Alpine Scenery‘s point that it depends on the source makes sense. London and Paris for instance (both from BlueSky) are definitely inferior in quality compared to other PG cities. Just watch the videos on their website and you can see that PG in those videos looks exactly as bad as in the sim. We can only speculate but if I had to guess I’d say it was the price that convinced MS/Asobo to buy the data from them. 

ok  what is this "meltedness" that people are referring to...  Not trying to be antagonistic or anything here, but I just don't understand what it is that people are seeing that either I am not, or that I am just accepting.

From my point of view, both London and Paris are looking really good whether at higher or lower altitudes.

Let me give you 2 examples from my files..  one at medium altitude ovcer London and one at much lower altitude over Paris.  Both of these running at 45 FPS on my system.      I am quite happy to be shown something I don't really see  as an example, but I would like to understand what this is about?     For example, I know some people can see the difference between 30 and 60 FPS, but I can't because I am too old now 🙂  So just trying to get some understanding here.

 

Regards

 

Graham

25 minutes ago, Moria15 said:

ok  what is this "meltedness" that people are referring to...  Not trying to be antagonistic or anything here, but I just don't understand what it is that people are seeing that either I am not, or that I am just accepting.

Your shots look good indeed. The point is some people fly over Paris at 300' AGL or something and then buildings look indeed "melted". Even worse, MS/Asobo do the same with their current "title" image.

However, there are cases where you MUST approach low to a Photogrammetry City. Take CYTZ  Billy Bishop with the Toronto Skyline in the background which inevitably looks melted (and moreover morphing) upon approach.

Kind regards, Michael

Just now, pmb said:

Your shots look good indeed. The point is some people fly over Paris at 300' AGL or something and then buildings look indeed "melted". Even worse, MS/Asobo do the same with their current "title" image.

However, there are cases where you MUST approach low to a Photogrammetry City. Take CYTZ  Billy Bishop with the Toronto Skyline in the background which inevitably looks melted (and moreover morphing) upon approach.

Kind regards, Michael

okay so I need to go lower than 600?  I will try and see what happens.

Thank you for that..  seriously, I am just trying to understand the issue as I haven't personally noticed it 🙂

Regards

 

Graham

48 minutes ago, Moria15 said:

ok  what is this "meltedness" that people are referring to...  Not trying to be antagonistic or anything here, but I just don't understand what it is that people are seeing that either I am not, or that I am just accepting.

Like pmb said, you can see it when flying very low. PG looks great from a certain altitude, but when too low (or high) the illusion somewhat falls apart. Esp. structures such as cranes or power lines look sort of „melted“ from up close. 

I was actually not criticizing PG as such, I was only responding to a claim that it got worse, which I don‘t think it has (which doesn‘t mean it couldn‘t be better). In some places PG just seems to look better than in others, London being one of the less convincing examples (eg around Canary Wharf). 

Replay feature is so simple that I can’t understand why it’s not in there yet. No need for something fancy, copy paste from fsx and it should work

1 minute ago, fgiraudo said:

Replay feature is so simple that I can’t understand why it’s not in there yet. No need for something fancy, copy paste from fsx and it should work

Is it simple, though? You not only need to record the state of all possible controls and forces at any moment and then replaying them ending with what hopefully still is the current state, but you have to do it for all possible aircraft, default, third party, and a mix of the two. Sounds pretty complicated to me, especially if you want to freeze it half way and resume flight from that point onwards.

8 hours ago, fppilot said:

What has gotten worse for me since release are my expectations.  Very disappointed in lack of meaningful progress on core flight simulation elements.

@767lover I wanted to write a long reply but what fppilot said in his reply sums it all up

3 hours ago, Shack95 said:

I remember having melted PG right from the start. In some places it just looks better than in others. Hard to say if the „meltedness“ has increased. If it has, then not significantly. I think Alpine Scenery‘s point that it depends on the source makes sense. London and Paris for instance (both from BlueSky) are definitely inferior in quality compared to other PG cities. We can only speculate but if I had to guess I’d say it was the price that convinced MS/Asobo to buy the data from them. 

Different source different results. Definitely lower quality and on top of that some of the Buildings in the london financial district really require some cleanup. using way too many polygons to render some of the buildings. Asobo themselves have admitted this. I hope they revert to the previous source going forward but i assume they will stick to this stuff since for some reason they think this is acceptable.