While the terrain morphing was not completely gone at any point since the FSX/P3D days (I can't say for X-Plane and aeroflyFS myself), it should be noted that subsequent updates have made it much worse. The USA World Update changed the LOD distances which made it a lot more frequent across the entire globe, and introduced the sawtooth pattern on coastlines and mountain peaks. The UK World Update raised the coastlines globally (to prevent the water from creeping up), and the result is what we're seeing in the first video. The new DEM introduced with the Nordics World Update suffers from extremely poor shape retention, and particularly Norway has the worst morphing in the planet.

Since the issue is getting worse, I think we need to alarm Asobo before it's too late. In the May Q&A they said that it's not caused by the polygon rendering but rather the TAA and data streaming, which is totally incorrect. I'm concerned about the DACH World Update, the Swisstopo mesh is exquisite but if it's a morphing mess it's going to destroy the region.

1 hour ago, DJJose said:

Squawk it as another issue that we have to deal with for supporting this sim.

Here's a list of squawks:

*The sim now takes twice as long to load to the main menu.

*Slow loading objects in the distance.

*Clouds look washed out after SU5.

*Scenery looks washed out at times.

*Payware airports & Airplanes are still being broken by new updates.

*Live weather is still not accurate.

*Lighting still shows up when it should not.

*FPS are worse than they were 6 months ago.

*Panning now induces stutters.

*Pauses are still prevalent.

*External views sometimes shows black squares.

I'm patient because ASOBO still has 9 years to get this sim right. 😀

Jose

Maybe it's all the stuff you have in your community folder but the sim has been loading faster than it's ever been. That's on the things they worked on.

Fps has been better too. I still have videos from the first beta and performance testing. 

I don't get any stutters when panning around or black squares in external views. Those issues might be self inflicted using mods or settings way too high for your system 

1 hour ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

I'm concerned about the DACH World Update, the Swisstopo mesh is exquisite but if it's a morphing mess it's going to destroy the region.

This MFS morphing is incomprensible for me. I have few of it in mountainous terrain that I fly a lot but quite a bit on shores, specially on sea shores (less on lake shores). I hardly see any in Peru which has a good mesh (and beautiful lakes), but recently flying into Malta, the island coast was a morphing orgy. 

The trend that you describe is worrying. Asobo doesn't seem to be on top of the issue.

3 hours ago, pmb said:

And yes, other FSX/ESP-based simulators share this "feature" as soon as you add high-resolution mesh (or even without it).

This is one of the things that I very much keep in mind. I have a video that I posted on YouTube quite some time ago of me flying a fast plane in P3D, and the buildings and mountains having horrible morphing issues.

In fact the buildings themselves remained black rectangles for quite some time, with the textures only filling in once I was halfway into the city.

If I survived that, and other issues (for years) think I can probably survive the occasional morphing mountain for a while till Asobo gets a handle on the issue. 😀

50 minutes ago, devgrp said:

Maybe it's all the stuff you have in your community folder but the sim has been loading faster than it's ever been. That's on the things they worked on.

Fps has been better too. I still have videos from the first beta and performance testing. 

I don't get any stutters when panning around or black squares in external views. Those issues might be self inflicted using mods or settings way too high for your system 

Most of my initial testing after any update is done without add-ons in the community folder. I also could easily run on ultra without stutters or popping scenery.

I'm glad it works perfectly for you.

Howard,

may I suggest to open a topic for the next Q&A under

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/c/community/dev-q-a-ask-questions-here/286

and link your video there. Occasionally Jane, the Community Manager, isn't quite clear in expressing issues, and this might help her to identify it.

You can be sure to get my vote. There are several questions in this Q&A thread which I would consider minor compared to that long-standing morphing thingy. 

Kind regards, Michael

16 minutes ago, HiFlyer said:

In fact the buildings themselves remained black rectangles for quite some time, with the textures only filling in once I was halfway into the city.

Have you tried MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000?

Credit to Rob Ainscough

 

 

13 minutes ago, DJJose said:

Most of my initial testing after any update is done without add-ons in the community folder. I also could easily run on ultra without stutters or popping scenery.

I'm glad it works perfectly for you.

Its not perfect, but maybe if you turn your settings down you'll have better results

4 hours ago, pmb said:

This is a basic flaw in the terrain engine, and we should insist this to be resolved. Neither XP nor AeroflyFS have this popping (or at least very mildly and rarely only).

 

3 hours ago, ChaoticBeauty said:

Since the issue is getting worse, I think we need to alarm Asobo before it's too late. In the May Q&A they said that it's not caused by the polygon rendering but rather the TAA and data streaming, which is totally incorrect. I'm concerned about the DACH World Update, the Swisstopo mesh is exquisite but if it's a morphing mess it's going to destroy the region.

I couldn‘t agree more. They really need to find a solution for this if they want to be a next-gen sim. Fancy new mesh and imagery is not enough. I really hope they are aware of it and that they have a plan. When it was raised in the Q&A in spring it didn‘t look like they had. 

Edited August 22, 20214 yr by Shack95

I have created a question for the next Dev QA for this, please vote it up below so that they get a chance to 1.) acknowledge the issue and 2.) fix it! 

To the OP, I have used your video, I hope that is ok?

 

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/when-will-the-terrain-shifting-and-morphing-be-investigated-or-fixed/444784

Edited August 22, 20214 yr by Ianrivaldosmith

This terrain morphing is a blackbox to me. While I have little to no morphing in Austria with the Troglodytes mesh and in NZ with the ORBX mesh, terrain morphing is utterly present in Swiss Alps, no matter what mesh I use (including default mesh). Even worse, most can not reproduce it, telling me that the underlying issue might be very specific to the hardware/addon combo you use... Just sincerely hope as well that the DACH region somehow "fixes" it at least in the Alps...

5 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I have created a question for the next Dev QA for this, please vote it up below so that they get a chance to 1.) acknowledge the issue and 2.) fix it! 

To the OP, I have used your video, I hope that is ok?

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/when-will-the-terrain-shifting-and-morphing-be-investigated-or-fixed/444784

Done. Thank you.

Kind regards, Michael

I completely agree.

Terrain morphing was one of THE things I hoped to finally get rid of with the new sim.

This really is something that should be at the top of their list. As long as this terrain morphing is still there, MSFS just can't be considered a real next-gen sim.

Still I'm worried they don't even understand what we are talking about.

 

Edited August 22, 20214 yr by RALF9636

11 minutes ago, AnkH said:

While I have little to no morphing in Austria with the Troglodytes mesh and in NZ with the ORBX mesh, terrain morphing is utterly present in Swiss Alps, no matter what mesh I use (including default mesh).

Orbx are using a proprietary LOD compilation technique in order to make the shape retention more consistent and reduce morphing, while any add-on mesh products using CGL heightmaps also results in less morphing for some reason, even though it's documented by Asobo. The issue seems to occur only with standard BGL heightmaps, like the default mesh.

48 minutes ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

I have created a question for the next Dev QA for this, please vote it up below so that they get a chance to 1.) acknowledge the issue and 2.) fix it! 

To the OP, I have used your video, I hope that is ok?

 

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/when-will-the-terrain-shifting-and-morphing-be-investigated-or-fixed/444784

Cool Ian. Thanks for supporting the issue.