FSDT releases Switzerland Mesh for MSFS 2020

[GSalden 4,657]

Are you going to do the other parts of the Alps too ? If so I will buy Swiss today .... 😎

[AnkH 2,267]

2 minutes ago, GSalden said:

Are you going to do the other parts of the Alps too ? If so I will buy Swiss today .... 😎

The more important question would be: does the FSDT Swiss Mesh blend well not only with MSFS Default Mesh, but also with the addon meshes from Troglodytus? As the FSDT mesh is based on the free Swiss Landestopo Data, I doubt that the rest of the Alps can be done equally by FSDT, as the data simply is not available and if yes, for sure not for free...

[GSalden 4,657]

1 minute ago, AnkH said:

The more important question would be: does the FSDT Swiss Mesh blend well not only with MSFS Default Mesh, but also with the addon meshes from Troglodytus? As the FSDT mesh is based on the free Swiss Landestopo Data, I doubt that the rest of the Alps can be done equally by FSDT, as the data simply is not available and if yes, for sure not for free...

That is true.

I simply want a good looking Alps + the surrounding mountains from France / Germany / Italy.

I do have all 20m mesh from Flightsim.to. But looking for the best compatibility with the airports in those regions.

And anxiously waiting for France, as now there is only the Mont Blanc area.

[Noel 4,503]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

1.  Yes, we sent them to Microsoft for approval already.

2.  Everything you add to the sim affects your system in some way. The mesh resolution is what impact performances the most but, of course, it depends on your LOD terrain slider, the higher you go, the most you'll have some impact on performances. Which doesn't necessarily mean "framerate", mostly it's RAM or VRAM taken so, if you have plenty of it, it will affect you less.

1.  Great!

2.  Yes, I knew this already thanks.  I asked about CPU and GPU load w/ respect to mesh, however you bring up RAM/VRAM, thanks for that.  Now, all else being equal, do you think it's around a 50:50 in terms of load on CPU & GPU, irrespective of RAM/VRAM considerations?  I have a somewhat weaker GPU and as you know many to most of us are already 'GPU Limited'.  In order to keep a little CPU headroom for more complex aircraft as they arrive, it would be helpful to know how much higher resolution mesh impacts this, versus as I say GPU utilization/load.

I want to mention here a giant THANK YOU Umberto for insuring your airport offerings include the ILS fields in the G3000 MFD > Waypoint Info > Airport > Freq tab that allows for the very user friendly auto-loading of ILS freq w/o needing to look outside the sim.  I value this functionality and you are one of the few who have bothered to make sure this is retained.  I won't by any airports that omit this, and near as I can tell most devs don't appreciate it nor work to learn about how to deal with this.   Sorry folks I bring this up wherever possible in the hopes airport devs and Asobo visitors might notice as I've zendesked it and let 3 other devs know, and thus far only FSDT & Roman Design have addressed this seeming omission in the airport SDK.

Cheers & Thanks again!

 

Edited May 27, 2021 by Noel

[ChaoticBeauty 6,692]

5 hours ago, mrbump said:

That is totally not a fact. If you see "terrain morphing" in let's say ItalyDEM it's because it was built on a an early version of the tool by muumimorko which does downsampling wrong. It has nothing to do with the CGL format.

The terrain morphing is a big problem with the default mesh as well. The shape retention at lower levels of detail has always been mediocre, but since the USA World Update which tweaked the LOD rings, the morphing is a lot more frequent and prevalent. It's also badly affecting the coastlines as well, which these mesh products seem to remedy.

More information can be found here: https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/mountains-coastlines-constantly-morphing-since-the-usa-uk-world-update/339453

[AnkH 2,267]

I am not really convinced by this product so far (just tested the 10m version), flying from Grenchen via Bern and Thun, Interlaken to the Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau, terrain morphing was extremely visible, stutters were quite annoying and the peaks (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau) constantly changed shape the closer I got. Then, several other issues were visible as well, here just two screenshots to illustrate this (I see that with the balearic mesh as well, but not with the Troglodytus meshes...). Might be that those meshes only work properly with a rolling cache and once loading fully in? I do not know, I will now test if it is better with the 20m variant...

[Shack95 2,658]

15 minutes ago, AnkH said:

I am not really convinced by this product so far (just tested the 10m version), flying from Grenchen via Bern and Thun, Interlaken to the Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau, terrain morphing was extremely visible, stutters were quite annoying and the peaks (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau) constantly changed shape the closer I got. Then, several other issues were visible as well, here just two screenshots to illustrate this (I see that with the balearic mesh as well, but not with the Troglodytus meshes...). Might be that those meshes only work properly with a rolling cache and once loading fully in? I do not know, I will now test if it is better with the 20m variant...

Interesting. On my first (and so far only) flight with the 10m version I flew over the Jungfraujoch as well and I didn‘t notice any of these issues. I‘m pretty sure I‘d have noticed it, had it looked like in your screenshots. I didn‘t have rolling cache enabled. I‘ll try it again tomorrow and report back if I see anything similar. 

[GSalden 4,657]

23 minutes ago, AnkH said:

I am not really convinced by this product so far (just tested the 10m version), flying from Grenchen via Bern and Thun, Interlaken to the Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau, terrain morphing was extremely visible, stutters were quite annoying and the peaks (Eiger, Mönch, Jungfrau) constantly changed shape the closer I got. Then, several other issues were visible as well, here just two screenshots to illustrate this (I see that with the balearic mesh as well, but not with the Troglodytus meshes...). Might be that those meshes only work properly with a rolling cache and once loading fully in? I do not know, I will now test if it is better with the 20m variant...

Let us know if the 20 m mesh is better regarding performance.

Perhaps it is not comparable, but for P3D I use 10 m mesh for the Alps and several places are 5 m mesh. Never head any stutters....

Could it be that MSFS is not that good in handling more detailed mesh ?

Nect question would be : how about lots of AI aircraft ( particular airlines / types of ac ) in MSFS ?...

[AnkH 2,267]

With the 20m mesh, issues persist, stuttering is less but still there...

Ok, now I am utterly confused, uninstalled FSDT mesh, reinstalled the Troglodytus mesh and guess what, exactly the same? Even the same errors, like this one here:

What the heck?

So, either there is something wrong with my sim today, I did not notice any morphing with the Troglodytus meshes before because of whatever reason or those meshes simply do not show up at all? I will check without the Troglodytus mesh now, this is utterly strange...

EDIT: well, without any addon mesh, the difference is clearly visible, however, terrain morphing is drastically reduced compared to both 10m and 20m FSDT meshes and also compared to the Troglodytus 20m DEM mesh. Something is strange, I let it sit for one day, might be something wrong on another side...

Edited May 27, 2021 by AnkH

[mrbump 2]

5 hours ago, virtuali said:

they *cannot* conflict with airports (if there's no rectangle there, it cannot cause troubles...)

Well, since "protecting airports" seem to be a high priority for you, have you considered doing the exact inverse of what you are doing now?

Let me explain:

As far as I understand you, the traditional approach for airport developers is this: Asobo gave us a crappy initial mesh and we built our airport on it conforming to the crappy mesh. Now the mesh has to stay like this forever, therefore we can only allow heightmap-"meshes" with holes for the airports, where the crappy mesh can persist for all eternity. For those wanting to install a better mesh we just have to say "Sorry, incompatible". Well the problem with that approach and cloud streaming scenery is, that sooner or later a world update will come and break your airports anyway.

The inverse approach would be to future proof YOUR airport from the inside RIGHT NOW. The heightmaps are the right tool for that. Your Airport will look great with a highly detailed and correct elevation model. The coming world update will not break it and custom CGLs that will inevitably be coming are playing along just fine. After the world update you can decide if you want to leave the heightmaps in or whether it's fine to remove them.

A picture to illustrate:

LSPH has had dams and troughs for a flood retention basin built around it a few years ago. These structures are quite prominent so I wanted to have them. Hence I plastered the airfield area with heightmaps. Now I'm experimenting with CGLs (test patterns etc.) I find, that LSPH is still looking exactly the same, no matter how broken the base mesh is. "Protected" as you call it. But without restrictions for the rest of the world.

In my opinion this is the way to go. But yes, it's just my opinion.

Sorry, this is getting a bit off topic for a user forum....

[virtuali 4,421]

1 hour ago, AnkH said:

Ok, now I am utterly confused, uninstalled FSDT mesh, reinstalled the Troglodytus mesh and guess what, exactly the same? Even the same errors, like this one here:

This seems to indicate the errors you saw were coming from somewhere else.

Made a quick test flight over that area, with only our mesh installed, and I couldn't find any of the issues in your screenshot, especially that weird elevation artifact close to that ground texture shadow, which is just not there in my 5th and 7th screenshot.

 

 

I can't see any issues whatsoever, in fact, I'm still surprised how good the elevation matches the underlying Bing imagery we haven't touched: the crest lines are razor sharp and follow the textured shadows perfectly. And this is the 20 meter version!

Edited May 27, 2021 by virtuali

[mrbump 2]

45 minutes ago, AnkH said:

So, either there is something wrong with my sim today, I did not notice any morphing with the Troglodytus meshes before because of whatever reason or those meshes simply do not show up at all? I will check without the Troglodytus mesh now, this is utterly strange...

EDIT: well, without any addon mesh, the difference is clearly visible, however, terrain morphing is drastically reduced compared to both 10m and 20m FSDT meshes and also compared to the Troglodytus 20m DEM mesh. Something is strange, I let it sit for one day, might be something wrong on another side...

It's not that strange. This is the type of artefact you get all the time when you're tinkering with terraforming. What people need to realize is, that heightmaps are not "the mesh". They are a modifier to the base mesh that needs be resampled and applied to the base mesh (that is also in memory) constantly at run time. So the thread that occupies itself with this resampling task possibly just couldn't keep up. Too much to do...

[virtuali 4,421]

29 minutes ago, mrbump said:

Well the problem with that approach and cloud streaming scenery is, that sooner or later a world update will come and break your airports anyway.

No, it won't, because we know how to do airports that won't suffer for it, since we always put flattening polygons first and runway profiles as well, which both have an higher priority over the streamed .CGLs.

If the airport was ported over from P3D and it was really flat, there's not much additional terraforming, but we let the runway profile to guide the overall airport elevation.  If the airport had significant elevation changes and 3d structures modeled on it, we also add terraforming, using priorities as needed.

We already had TWO World Update ( USA and France ) that covered airports we already released before that ( KSDF and LFSB ), and none of them required any touch up after the World Updates came out.

In fact, it's exactly the opposite: by leaving a hole where the airport is, we not only prevent any issues to airport, but we also give the airport developer ( who might be us, or somebody else ) more freedom to enhance it with his own Heightmaps, using whatever resolution is required, without having to coordinate or having to agree on a priority order. Because, even if we could somewhat create a de-facto standard where "regional" Height maps should have priority 0 and, for example, airports higher numbers, we can't be sure everybody will follow. Instead, just not touching the airport, we fix the problem at its root, without preventing to further enhance it in the future.

And yes, Heightmaps are a great way to START a new airport from scratch. If you have good elevation data, it becomes way easier and better to start laying down the airport Heightmaps first, likely with something like 1-2 meters res, and THEN build on top of that. All more good reason to leave them out.

Edited May 27, 2021 by virtuali

[mrbump 2]

8 minutes ago, virtuali said:

We already had TWO World Update ( USA and France ) that covered airports we already released before that ( KSDF and LFSB ), and none of them required any touch up after the World Update came out.

Perfect! As expected.

So you're basically agreeing that mesh changes by CGL breaking airports are a non-issue if the airport is done properly (as we would expect from any reputable designer). Since the priority of the base mesh is always lower than any terraforming.

By the way: I wouldn't trust the height profiles. When measuring the resulting elevation of the defined points they are hardly ever where they should be. And the shape is only roughly correct, often totally wrong. I'm starting to replace those and the polygones with heightmaps which seem more trustworthy and more correct and allow sideways sloped runways and aprons (Les eplatures...)

[AnkH 2,267]

44 minutes ago, virtuali said:

This seems to indicate the errors you saw were coming from somewhere else.

 

 

But where? I double checked my folders, there is no other addon active in this region except some airport addons. Funny thing is, I have the same errors in the Balearic mesh, but not in the 20m DEM for Austria..

Do you have the rolling cache active?