5 hours ago, devgrp said:

Do you think they can just pull performance out of the air? It seems some of you guys like running on ultra and have the sim running like a slide show. And from the release you had people complaining, so there will always be complainers. If I was Asobo, I wouldnt even bother listening to people on avsim. They dont represent to entire flightsim community and and most are a bunch of old men stuck in their ways

5 hours ago, Chock said:

Yup. Some people would rather be able to see the Chrysler Building as they turn onto the runway at Heathrow and require a 4,000 quid PC in order to do so, than have a flight sim which smoothly replicates flight and then worries about the visuals after.

I know everyone is entitled to their opinion, but frankly those kind of flight simmers get right on my t*ts.

These two responses sum it up for me. I have been simming for long enough to know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If FPS suddenly increases, you know there will be a compromise. And the bigger the FPS increase, the bigger that compromise has always been, historically. So of course, in this case a jump in FPS means that the way wherein objects are loaded has become more aggressive in terms of when NOT to load. There are plenty of cases where you just don't need to see far, far away. Of course it'll look better if you can see all the way to the horizon, but seriously, go stand on a mountain in the real world and you won't be able to distinguish all the detail that far out, so why on earth would you need it in the sim?

For me, there are things I do want to see though. I don't need t see the Chrysler building when at Heathrow, but it'd be good if I can see it from JFK at least 😉 I believe that people will have to fiddle with individual sliders until they get the performance vs visuals that they want or need. This is how simming has always been and you really shouldn't expect that to change with MSFS.

I will add this though. When I initially got MSFS a couple months ago, I was pretty saddened by it. The controls were so finicky, the AI was a joke, ATC seemed worse than in P3D, and the sim ran terribly for me in areas that matter to me. With SU5, at least performance is stellar. Never have I seen look NYC better and still perform so smoothly. And I personally have no issues with buildings popping in... The way they do it is often more discrete than I'm used to from other platforms.

 

39 minutes ago, VFXSimmer said:

True to a point, but there is a form of popping when there is too much change between two LOD steps.  That’s 100% the responsibility of the developer.

The spec includes a screen percentage for each LOD level - this is allowed to be set by dev (although in my tests I’m not sure if these are being overridden by the sim?). You can also use the same geo for each level if you are really convinced the performance impact is negligible.  That is your choice to weigh the pros and cons.

Just keep in mind that we will continue to keep asking for more and more out of the sim.  Better AI traffic, improved weather and effects, more complex aircraft systems.  All of those take processor time so even if a developer feels their addon is running fine without the extra work of setting up the LODs when you run that concurrently with other tasks the extra processing time might have an impact in the final tally.

As for the rest - I don’t see a reason why they couldn’t put back in sliders/options to restore behavior of loading out of view geometry, loading bigger texture maps etc.  The graphics options page is already one of the few areas of the UI that are different between PC and Xbox.  Adding these options wouldn’t break their grand plan of a single code base.  This outcome is consistent with everything Jorg has said in multiple streams and interviews.

I understand peoples current frustrations but I don’t have any worry about the long term potential of the sim.  It’s still the “best sim in town” by a country mile from where I’m looking.

I am just explaining the "expected" behaviour. LOD implementation / configuration is up to each individual developer.

If it was up to me, I would have make these options settable with the "default" values as now and allow users to set it the way they want it for the PC version.. unfortunately Asobo didn't ask my opinion lol

Point being, LOD behaviour is the same as prior the SU5 update, Asobo has state it.. and explained it.. if you guys see popping.. it is not because LOD culling.. it is due to another change on the engine, as I said earlier, I asked them for clarification.. they are very busy at the moment and haven't answered my question to understand the behaviour better.

Particularly, I don't think the texture blur in VC cockpits is related to LODs.. I think, it is probably an anomaly caused to some users due to some settings, personally I don't see on my system any issue whatsoever with blurry textures.. or less quality on the VC cockpits.

S.

What are you working on that was unbroken by this update, just curious...

As far as the update goes, it had a lot of needed stuff added, yah I know, but they killed the workflow, it's not that approachable or even worth trying to be frank. I even wrote an app to fix a lot of the issues automatically in the XML to create a sort of X/Y validator for each version, and was going to give it away free to everyone, but the problem was Asobo makes so many changes so fast, I couldn't keep up and keep my regular job, so I vaporized it.

 

3 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Having a thick skin does not mean that we should enjoy people whose only agenda is to unload their sour bile here.

 

As an "old man" part of me laughs and the other part grimaces when I see derogatory statements like the one that initiated the off-axis conversation.  I can't recall a single forum of any kind where there weren't users who created issues or started bru-ha-has, so Avsim is really no different than any other since it is used by people.

I'll simply state that I have helped as many "young persons" who were having difficulty over the years as those who were older.  🙂

2 minutes ago, Benjamin J said:

Never have I seen look NYC better and still perform so smoothly. And I personally have no issues with buildings popping in... The way they do it is often more discrete than I'm used to from other platforms.

Yep agree. There is no "free lunch or free fps". People want fast sim, stunning graphics on "normal" PCs. People seem not to get the idea that to achieve that, it has to be a compromise somewhere. Personally, I find the popping thing not bad, at least I can enjoy NYC with very good and smooth experience.

 

 

2 minutes ago, simbol said:

I am just explaining the "expected" behaviour. LOD implementation / configuration is up to each individual developer.

If it was up to me, I would have make these options settable with the "default" values as now and allow users to set it the way they want it for the PC version.. unfortunately Asobo didn't ask my opinion lol

Point being, LOD behaviour is the same as prior the SU5 update, Asobo has state it.. and explained it.. if you guys see popping.. it is not because LOD culling.. it is due to another change on the engine, as I said earlier, I asked them for clarification.. they are very busy at the moment and haven't answered my question to understand the behaviour better.

I'm trying to understand where you are coming from in all honesty.

Expected behavior of what, popping isn't the main gripe I don't think, it's loss of detail, popping main gripe for some (not me). LODs can cause popping in the majority of game engines for varying reasons. Some engines are more resilient to it than others, some engines can even auto-lod or generate the textures with scripts (which is what MSFS should have forced from day # 1).

The fact remains they changed the rendering engine, when you come in here to get too specific about model LOD's which is a totally separate issue from overall LOD. The LOD you generate is not a 1 to 1 translation first off, as it's post mastered in various ways by the engine. Secondly, it's hard to say what all interpolated post-mastering is going under the hood.

None of the above is what we were talking about, we were talking about the detail of specific things in the game that has been changed, not the LODs of custom buildings.

 

4 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

 30% MS cut

Is that what that is? I was always wondering about that, thanks for the info!

2 minutes ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

I hope MS/Asobo get on top of this quickly ... I don't think any developer wants to increase their workload just to satisfy a rather old school approach to LOD (which seems to be geared primarily for XBOX) ... that's going to increase product delivery costs.  The 1 LOD approach seemed to work well enough prior to 1.18.13.0 ... but I agree, in MSFS defense the SDK makes it clear of the 4 LOD recommendation but still ... that's a lot more work for $9.99 airport less 30% MS cut.

UE5 removes the requirement to author LODs per here.

Cheers, Rob.

true, its a massive endeavour, specially on a plane. But to that also mean you open up to a huge market (xbox). 

And to be quite franc, im pretty sure you can get away with one LOD. These are recommandations, but the validators that work at the MarketPlace dont seem to care all that much. 

We were only asked if we made our plane compatible with the Xbox. We said "of course!". And that was it really. Nobody seemed to check that extensively. That moght change though.

8 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

I'm trying to understand where you are coming from in all honesty.

Expected behavior of what, popping isn't the main gripe I don't think, it's loss of detail, popping main gripe for some (not me). LODs can cause popping in the majority of game engines for varying reasons. Some engines are more resilient to it than others, some engines can even auto-lod or generate the textures with scripts (which is what MSFS should have forced from day # 1).

The fact remains they changed the rendering engine, when you come in here to get too specific about model LOD's which is a totally separate issue from overall LOD. The LOD you generate is not a 1 to 1 translation first off, as it's post mastered in various ways by the engine. Secondly, it's hard to say what all interpolated post-mastering is going under the hood.

None of the above is what we were talking about, we were talking about the detail of specific things in the game that has been changed, not the LODs of custom buildings.

 

I am answering a questions from another user, he wanted me to explain the LOD behaviour, which lots of people are miss understanding and confused thinking the PC version is now enforcing and culling LODS because the XBOX release.

I have explained it now several times this IS NOT the case, because ASOBO reverted that change and leave it as it was prior to update SU5.

If people are experiencing issues (and not everyone is) with loss of detail, is NOT related to LOD behaviours or LOD configuration on the objects, LOD rendering techniques were left unchanged (if you disagree, you are welcome to go to ASOBO and tell them, they did the statement, not me).. therefore to conclude, any VC texture blurrines, etc. IS NOT because LOD culling, that hasn't change.. if anyone is experiencing this, is due to other reasons...

Once again, I have ZERO blurry textures on my system for any add-on. If this was the engine, then EVERYONE would be experiencing the same instead of some people experiencing and others not.

Regards,
Simbol

 

4 hours ago, Bobsk8 said:

As I posted the other day, MSFS is now set to the lowest common denominator, and that is what PC users will have to get used to. 

Hi Bob, I took these just now for you.

I will just leave the screenshots and you can deside if there just what your seeing.

Your Screenshot

Mine trying to match yours, I think I am move zoomed out

Two more for you.

I hope that helps?

 

4 minutes ago, simbol said:

If people are experiencing issues (and not everyone is) with loss of detail, is NOT related to LOD behaviours or LOD configuration on the objects, LOD rendering techniques were left unchanged (if you disagree, you are welcome to go to ASOBO and tell them, they did the statement, not me)..

 

 

Most of them aren't developers or rendering experts, you are explaining the LOD of how a person that uses Blender explains LODs. They are talking about the entirety of detail in the game, whether that be LOD rendering or not. I didn't have time to go through all the documentation to be honest, I just came back after a 3-month hiatus.

All I know is it reset my autogen to look blurry and appears to be enforcing a lower detail across varying rendering situations. I agree this does NOT appear to be happening to the third-party LOD system or custom buildings (as far as I can best tell). We agree there.

I think I've done a total of 2 flights so far, and I haven't even messed with the config files yet, so I have no idea what Asobo did or didn't do to cause the issue, or how they are rendering the auto-gen LOD. I am just going by what others were saying in that it was related to rendering changes and not just my settings being reset in some weird way, but honestly I haven't had time to check every setting either yet. I am waiting for others to weigh in on things they find as well, so I don't have to go in circles finding everything myself.

They absolutely changed the grass and auto-gen, they even went so far as to change the height of the grass. To state that no changes have been made is not even part of the discussion as every developer is way past knowing that. To try to hone in on a particular type of DEV LOD change isn't the point really, it's just they did some rendering change.

Edited July 29, 20214 yr by Alpine Scenery

2 minutes ago, Nyxx said:

I hope that helps?

Thanks Nyxx,

This is exactly what I see on my system too, no degradation.. 

S.

4 hours ago, devgrp said:

"... floating roofs and missing jetways and most of the other issues are right at the bottom of anything to get upset about, especially a video game lol"

I essentially agree with the thrust of your comment, and that is why I am not so very often seen complaining about [very many] things here. But at the end of the day, MSFS is indeed a product sold to paying customers, it is not simply & only a "video game". As such, the product, any 'manufacturer's' product..... all products, should be as deficiency-free and as excellent as is conceivably possible. But then again, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?

Living with imperfection is part of life; tolerating mediocrity, when excellence is otherwise within reach, should not be.

Should I find myself frustrated with MSFS for any given reason, there is [still] always Assetto Corsa, PGA Tour 2K21 and, um, heaven forbid, rl with the wife... yaayyy! 🤣😉😎🍺👍☮️

Edited July 29, 20214 yr by RustyFlyer

15 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

Most of them aren't developers or rendering experts, you are explaining the LOD of how a person that uses Blender explains LODs. They are talking about the entirety of detail in the game, whether that be LOD rendering or not. I didn't have time to go through all the documentation to be honest, I just came back after a 3-month hiatus.

I totally understand what they are talking about, there were assumptions made here that such degradation is due to 3rd party developers not configuring their LODs inside their 3D models correclty and as a result MSFS was just making them disappear (the pop).

There were also assumptions made on this thread, that the VC becoming blurry, was also due to such LODs (inside the 3d model) being implemented to aggressively by the platform because the Xbox requirements.

Therefore I have been explained this is not the case, Asobo is implementing different LODs rendering techniques for Xbox vs PC, they left the PC LOD rendering / culling same as prior to the SU5 for the PC version, which means any rendering degradation they see for the PC version, is not because 3rd party developers hasn't implemented all LODs as required or because the back engine is now culling LODs more aggressively.

The reason is something else, what? we don't know.. but not everyone is experiencing it..

There is also a confusion with objects disappearing from the view when you do not look at them, and being re-rendered when you look at them again. This is new to SU5 for both platforms, once again this is not related to 3rd party developers LODs (3d model configuration) for their add-on's. This is MS way to improve performance by using texture rendering savings... if something is not in your line of view, it gets cut from the scene. I asked more details about this, but I haven't got any response yet.

Hopes this helps everyone to understand, signing off to expend time with my family.

Simbol

 

Edited July 29, 20214 yr by simbol

I did a test flight with DC-6 yesterday. I didn't experience blurry textures. I DID experience the same performance as before SU5 though.