I'm sure we've all seen this...you take off or land somewhere and the houses around the airport look like they've melted under some horrific heat wave.

It's my understanding that this is a faulted rendering of the data but my question is: How best to avoid this eye sore? I've tried deleting my Rolling Cache but I'm not sure that even has anything to do with it.

Any insight from you folks?

It’s a limitation of photogrammetry. AFAIK the only way to avoid it is to turn photogrammetry off. 

What you describe is associated with the photogrammetry of the areas in which this process is displayed in the sim, generally large cities and areas of interest. There are three things which affect what you see 1) your expectation 2) your internet connection/speed of scenery loading and 3) the quality of the data for the area you are viewing. Photogrammetry is the process of photographing areas with multiple captues from many different angles and processing the individual captures in such a way that the overlaying photos are processed into a single 3D image. I run a commercial drone business and we have used this technique to create 3D renders of structures. It is possible to create incredibly detailed 3D models of a structure or building in this way, but effectively, the quality of the final model is determined by several factors, but the main one being the distance you capture the photos. For the sim, the data for creating specific areas is captured, I assume, by survey aircraft and then the data will be made available through some kind of licencing arrangement with the user, in this case Asobo/MS. So the quality of each Photogrammetry area will mainly be determined by the quality of the final 3D rendered model of the area, and this will be determined by both the quality of the original data and it's processing. There is of course another thing to concern us and in no small way, and that is the speed in which a photogrammetry area is loaded into the sim and this will be determined by your internet speed and more likely the performance of your computer. The 'melted look' that we often read about can be attributed to one of the reasons I have described. Personally, I can't tolerate flying towards a city and seeing this happen, so I always fly with photogrammetry turned off, as do many others. 

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by Rockliffe

It's indeed photogrammetry and I've turned it off. Not only do a lot of those building look awful (melted) but also the colors are often dull and dark. It's just ugly in most places. I prefer the autogen (which is a thousand times better than in FSX and P3D)! Consistent colors and shading etc. all over the globe. The ONLY time I might enable photogrammetry is when I want to check out a specific photogrammetry city out with a low and slow plane and soar over the rooftops but for regular flying (99,99% of my time) the photogrammatry is off. The idea was nice but it just doesn't work for me.

As others stated, it's a limitation of technology and you can't do much about it. I tried several ways to improve PG (including pre-cacheing) but little did they help. 

Two points are worth noting, though:

- Quality of photogrammtey varies remarkably. London is certainly among the worst while Tokyo looks pretty good. As @Rockcliffe notes, quality of the raw data varies.

- Try various Zoom settings. I found quality (and performance) of PG depends on Zoom settings. Why you can't expect miracles, zooming in too far can ruin any photogrammetry.

Kind regards, Michael

It's Microsoft apocalypse simulator really.

As has been well explained above, it's limited by the way it is captured, processed, downloaded and rendered.

Whilst it may not look great at 250 feet, it does usually look pretty decent if you fly at The heights you are supposed to fly and is a huge advance on anything we have ever had before.

Personally I keep it on 99% of the time and accept it's limitations.  Who knows where we might be in 10 or 20 years time with this.  I started with FS2 and am amazed by where this might end up going in the future.

5 hours ago, Boeing_Driver said:

I'm sure we've all seen this...you take off or land somewhere and the houses around the airport look like they've melted under some horrific heat wave.

It's my understanding that this is a faulted rendering of the data but my question is: How best to avoid this eye sore? I've tried deleting my Rolling Cache but I'm not sure that even has anything to do with it.

Any insight from you folks?

Photogrammetry issues that depend on several factors, internet connection speed, quality of the graphical data from Bing. Sometimes it's good to rebuild the Rolling Cache if you are experiencing the "melted" buildings very often.

I still always have photogrammetry set to ON for each of my flights.

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by edpatino

The photogrammetry in the program allows me to go right down my street and park in my driveway.  My house looks a little distorted from close up, but starting right next door the houses are all melted. 🙂

One thing to consider is latency and filtering that may be active on routers / modems - quite a few threads on the official forums and how that can affect streaming / photogrammetry.

10 hours ago, Boeing_Driver said:

'm sure we've all seen this...you take off or land somewhere and the houses around the airport look like they've melted under some horrific heat wave.

It's my understanding that this is a faulted rendering of the data but my question is: How best to avoid this eye sore? I've tried deleting my Rolling Cache but I'm not sure that even has anything to do with it.

Any insight from you folks?

I can try recreating to see if it's something with the PG data for that location - did you have a location to try? 

18 minutes ago, DylanM said:

One thing to consider is latency and filtering that may be active on routers / modems - quite a few threads on the official forums and how that can affect streaming / photogrammetry.

I can try recreating to see if it's something with the PG data for that location - did you have a location to try? 

I fly around the Seattle area quite a bit. Many of the structures around the urban area seem to suffer from the melted look.

10 hours ago, Boeing_Driver said:

I'm sure we've all seen this...you take off or land somewhere and the houses around the airport look like they've melted under some horrific heat wave.

It's my understanding that this is a faulted rendering of the data but my question is: How best to avoid this eye sore? I've tried deleting my Rolling Cache but I'm not sure that even has anything to do with it.

Any insight from you folks?

What @DylanM is asking above.  Give DylanM your coordinates in the game, and he can check for you.

Often, it's your internet connection if the photogrammetry is poor.  So you can have another person check it for you and if they get better photogrammetry than you do, it's probably your internet connection.  If they get the same photogrammetry you do, then chances are it's the photogrammetry data that's bad.

5 minutes ago, Boeing_Driver said:

I fly around the Seattle area quite a bit. Many of the structures around the urban area seem to suffer from the melted look.

Metro Seattle photogrammetry is very good for me from one or two hundred feet above the houses in residential areas.  I personally like the photogrammetry in metro Seattle.  As I lived in Vancouver before (Vancouver, Canada), I wish Vancouver had photogrammetry like metro Seattle.  Unfortunately, photogrammetry for Vancouver is limited to downtown and just outside of downtown.

This video is more or less what I experience when I fly a few hundred feet above the residential areas in metro Seattle:

 

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by abrams_tank

Just landed at Ajaccio Corsica. From a distance all melted buildings and cartoon trees.From closeup it corrects itself.

I remember a year ago I did not notice this flying over the Netherlands at 3000 ft at 230 knots .. Amsterdam, The Hague and Rotterdam looked very good from a distance and closeby…

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by GSalden

14 minutes ago, abrams_tank said:

This video is more or less what I experience when I fly a few hundred feet above the residential areas in metro Seattle

Just tried it out on my rig, doesn't look half as good as in the video ...
(60/20 Mbit connection)

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by teletom

4 minutes ago, teletom said:

Just tried it out on my rig, doesn't look half as good as in the video ...

So it should look as good as the video if your internet connection is fast enough and your computer meets medium specs (my computer meets medium specs, check my signature for my specs).  I think high settings should give you something close to that video, you don't need ultra settings (I use high settings myself).

The first thing is, check your internet connection.  Hopefully you are on broadband or fiber.  Next, make sure you are not using WiFi because your connection will degrade over WiFi.

If you have a good internet connection, then delete your rolling cache in MSFS, and then recreate your rolling cache.  Also make sure Bing data and photogrammetry is turned on, under the Data section in Settings.

Edited January 17, 20224 yr by abrams_tank