Does anyone else share my dislike of the grass in MSFS. It just looks so overdone and unrealistic to my eyes. Perhaps it would be possible for a third party dev to produce something similar to what was available in FSX? Didn't Orbx release HD grass or something? Just wondering how easy/difficult it would be. Trees also would be a nice option IMO.

For trees, your best solution would be Bijan's addons (4 Seasons Pack, 3D Trees, Islands, Sunken Boats). See at SimMarket and several threads on the official forum. They don't replace all tree structures globally by new structures but provide seasons everywhere and  have adapted fitting tress for certain regions (like Africa). Japan, e.g., with flowering trees in Spring looks gorgeous.

I don't think there is a grass addon. There may be room for improvement but personally I think there are more urgent things to take care of (remove those nuts cars from taxiways...).

Finally, MS/Asobo intend to introduce their own season system in 2022, so I think they will take care of all those assets at this point (but probably not earlier).

Kind regards, Michael

There is a vegetation mod for New Zealand that adds a lot more tree types that looks pretty amazing and much more like the real life New Zealand -  but the dev is still working on performance issues post SU5. 

In particular he is still trying to sort a stutter when panning issue for the first 20 - 30 seconds after you spawn. This stutter is better with caching on "Ultra" but still there.   For me it is STILL worth the money, and the hassle of needing to pan around for a bit after spawning, in order to get the far better visuals -  however hopefully he will sort it out, as many people do expect a "jump in and fly" experience without these sort of issues.

Regardless -  the point I am making is there is more to this than meets the eye. The Bijan mod seems to work by swapping out the trees within the existing limited tree set. You are not getting more trees, you are just changing some of the trees available for a different type based on season and location.  Mods that add extra types like the NZ Vegetation mod seem to be quite tricky to get to perform well.

Edited September 8, 20214 yr by Glenn Fitzpatrick

1 hour ago, pmb said:

Finally, MS/Asobo intend to introduce their own season system in 2022, so I think they will take care of all those assets at this point (but probably not earlier).

I do believe they are engaged in a concerted effort to teach the planet patience 😉

59 minutes ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The Bijan mod seems to work by swapping out the trees within the existing limited tree set. You are not getting more trees, you are just changing some of the trees available for a different type based on season and location.  

Bijan has several products out and it's not quite obvisous at first sight what they do. Recent versions of his 4 seasons product include a 3D Trees package as a separate zip. These are really new  tree "archetypes" not just modified default trees. The official forum has a few really stunning pix, scroll for 3D trees

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/4-season-pack-multi-season-available-on-pc-and-xbox/376161/980

As far as I understand, these are rather supplemental than a substitute to the default trees, and they are limited to specific places, though.

In the beginning it needs a bit patience to understand how his products work (together), but I have high respect for the speed he's adding new contents.

Kind regards, Michael

2 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

There is a vegetation mod for New Zealand that adds a lot more tree types that looks pretty amazing and much more like the real life New Zealand -  but the dev is still working on performance issues post SU5. 

In particular he is still trying to sort a stutter when panning issue for the first 20 - 30 seconds after you spawn. This stutter is better with caching on "Ultra" but still there.   For me it is STILL worth the money, and the hassle of needing to pan around for a bit after spawning, in order to get the far better visuals -  however hopefully he will sort it out, as many people do expect a "jump in and fly" experience without these sort of issues.

Regardless -  the point I am making is there is more to this than meets the eye. The Bijan mod seems to work by swapping out the trees within the existing limited tree set. You are not getting more trees, you are just changing some of the trees available for a different type based on season and location.  Mods that add extra types like the NZ Vegetation mod seem to be quite tricky to get to perform well.

Just so you know and to clear misinformation, his mod does not add any more trees that what's available by Asobo. 🙂 As Michael said I have far more trees which includes 3d trees:

Baobab in Madagascar
Sequoia giant trees
Pinus sylvestris
Giant Redwood Trees
Bamboo trees
Joshua trees 
Birch
Plumeria Red frangipani
Plumera Pudica
Plumeria white Rubra
Plumeria Rubra ‘Gabrielle’
Plumeria alba
Plumeria Confetti
Banana trees
Dragon Blood trees
Rhododendron (azalia)
Japanese red maple
Magnolia
Persian Silk tree
Italian Cypress
30 different species of bare winter trees with no leaves
 

He doesn't have any of these.

Edited September 9, 20214 yr by BijanStudio

4 hours ago, pmb said:

(remove those nuts cars from taxiways...).

 

That right there is very annoying!

1 hour ago, BijanStudio said:

his mod does not add any more trees that what's available by Asobo...

I have far more trees which includes 3d trees:..........

He doesn't have any of these.

Edited September 9, 20214 yr by irocx

Thanks for the replies and all the insight fellas. As usual, very helpful. You're right Michael of course, it would be great if Asobo did indeed concentrate on some of the existing bugs.

Edited September 9, 20214 yr by Rockliffe

Allow me to disagree with you here Howard. Yesterday, I did a couple of take-off and landings from small fields in Southern Germany, in the grass. I loved it. The grass is an order of magnitude better than what we had before (read in P3D), nicer in shape, colors and concentration. I had the feeling to really roll in the grass. Are we forgotten so fast ? 

I quite like the grass, but it does look like it needs to be mowed.  It looks right at remote airfields, but not quite so suitable at major airports.

38 minutes ago, Dominique_K said:

Allow me to disagree with you here Howard. Yesterday, I did a couple of take-off and landings from small fields in Southern Germany, in the grass. I loved it. The grass is an order of magnitude better than what we had before (read in P3D), nicer in shape, colors and concentration. I had the feeling to really roll in the grass. Are we forgotten so fast ? 

Agreed it looks  good, but the grass is way to long when compared to actual real life grass strips.

4 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

Allow me to disagree with you here Howard. Yesterday, I did a couple of take-off and landings from small fields in Southern Germany, in the grass. I loved it. The grass is an order of magnitude better than what we had before (read in P3D), nicer in shape, colors and concentration. I had the feeling to really roll in the grass. Are we forgotten so fast ? 

The issue is the length of grass.  Unrealistic to take off and land in 2 feet high grass.  

I fly very often from  and to small airfields, everywhere in the world and I have never seen 60 cm grass, sorry.

8 hours ago, Rob_Ainscough said:

Yes the grass can be done better and more variants ... this change happened with SU5, same for Trees and other vegetation ... all GUID based now so there is no limit to what can be presented via Tree Arrays (3DSMax and Substance).  The more GUID variants (unique trees/vegetation) that is added the more load on the rendering engine as uniqueness means less instancing performance.

I haven't had time to test SU6 to see if I can do real time updating during a flight (or at main menu), this is something I've requested with Asobo as it was broken by SU5.

It'll be interesting to see what Asobo do for their version of "Seasons" but as far as I can tell, everything is in place to do full daily vegetation updates.  The only missing piece is real-time updates during a flight ... I haven't spent enough time with WASM to see if this is possible ... I sadly couldn't make this happen with MSFS version of SimConnect ... but the SDK is evolving.

Cheers, Rob.

 

This Is very interesting!

Do you have a source about that? Can't find anything in the documentation!

Are you saying that one can change default trees/grass with custom models in a modelLib? 

Default models change their color According to underneath imagery, should be pretty triky to create models with that behaviour