Switzerland mesh by FSDreamteam (marketplace)

[Fielder 3,673]

Way back after SU7 several, but not all, previously perfectly fine meshes started stuttering hideously. The Marketplace Switzerland mesh by FSDreamteam is one of them. Just a headsup to not buy this in the marketplace until reports online say the issue has gone away. Many others work just fine.

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/stutters-and-freezes-after-world-update-7-with-third-parts-mesh-dem/495627

(By the way, here's Manny Others who's Dos Equis mesh still works perfectly).

 

 

 

[Glenn Fitzpatrick 3,798]

If you approach FSDreamtime with proof of purchase they will provide you with the non marketplace installer.

[sluihn 68]

Fsdreamteam  updated the mesh I believe a week or more ago. Make sure you run their updater to get the latest. 

Peace

Steve

[Fielder 3,673]

There is no update in the marketplaced version where I purchased mine. The forum at fsdreamteam shows another poster today with the same issue as me: He did not purchase in the Marketplace. I did.

I don't have stutters anywhere else in the world, only in Switzerland if I install the Swiss mesh in the MSFS content manager. Stutters go from horrific to none at all with Swiss mesh removed.

Umberto Colapicchioni of fsdream team also posted, he says his mesh was made according to the SDK and there were few complaints until the last WU.

Not a big deal. The mesh was cheap, and if I remove it and set global MSFS graphics to ULTRA, 200 on all the sliders, Vsync on, and lock the frame rates;  them my lowly computer gives smooth constant performance, but with rounded mountaintops. Then Switzerland just looks like Austria, Northern Italy, S.E. France, and S. Germany with similar terrain. I'm happy with that.
 

[Nemo 1,305]

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

There is no update in the marketplaced version where I purchased mine. The forum at fsdreamteam shows another poster today with the same issue as me: He did not purchase in the Marketplace. I did.

I don't have stutters anywhere else in the world, only in Switzerland if I install the Swiss mesh in the MSFS content manager. Stutters go from horrific to none at all with Swiss mesh removed.

Umberto Colapicchioni of fsdream team also posted, he says his mesh was made according to the SDK and there were few complaints until the last WU.

Not a big deal. The mesh was cheap, and if I remove it and set global MSFS graphics to ULTRA, 200 on all the sliders, Vsync on, and lock the frame rates;  them my lowly computer gives smooth constant performance, but with rounded mountaintops. Then Switzerland just looks like Austria, Northern Italy, S.E. France, and S. Germany with similar terrain. I'm happy with that.
 

Since quite some time (WU7 or a bit earlier) many mesh add-ons are producing stutters and sound crackling. MS/Asobo must have changed something in the background which is causing this.

[virtuali 4,421]

10 hours ago, Fielder said:

Way back after SU7 several, but not all, previously perfectly fine meshes started stuttering hideously. The Marketplace Switzerland mesh by FSDreamteam is one of them. Just a headsup to not buy this in the marketplace until reports online say the issue has gone away. Many others work just fine.

And why you are saying "many others works just fine", pointing on a thread which CLEARLY tells otherwise, that this is an obvious regression in SU7 ? You even said it yourself "previously perfectly fine meshes", and the forum post you linked indicates the problem happens with LOTS of other 3rd party meshes so no, it's not that "many others works just fine", it's the opposite: "many others that USED to work perfectly fine, all started to have issue after SU7" so, clearly, SU7 is the problem here.

So, why SOME of them STILL work fine ?

Some of them might just reside in an area in which the default mesh is very light on memory, because...it's bad so, even if it's made with the exact same method, you won't see any problems. But since WU6, the default mesh for Switzerland has improved, so it seems that, with SU7, the simulator is doing a worse job handling both meshes together, something that clearly didn't happened before, since nobody reported any issues with the Swiss mesh after WU6 ( Switzerland update), it ALL started with SU7, which updates the actual simulator code, not just the scenery.

Some of the mesh that have no problems are likely using the .CGL method instead of the terraforming .BGL method we (and many others as well) use for the Switzerland mesh.

Now, we already explained this several times, while the .CG method IS more efficient from a memory point of view, it has many shortcomings:

- The .CGL format is completely undocumented. Whatever is known of it, has been obtained through reverse engineering. There is no way to create a mesh .CGL using any of the tools in the SDK so, the actual resulting binary file is made with tools acting on a file format that is still not entirely known. The terraforming rectangles in .BGL we use, are compiled by the official SDK tools, which embedded are in the simulator itself.

- The free tools that generate .CGL files haven't been updated in more than a year.

- According to the documentation of such tools, the maximum resolution that can be achieved it's level 12, that is 40 meters at the equator, increasing as you go north.

- The minimum tile size that will be generated is 600x600 km, and there's no way to "blend" the default mesh in. Clearly, such size is not suitable for Switzerland, which is about 350x170 km in size so, even if we did it using this method, we would end up overwriting other countries like France, Italy, Germany and Austria. This opposite to the .BGL method that can be finely tweaked to generate terraforming rectangles that stays exactly inside a precise area that doesn't even have to be regular, like a Level 12 .CGL tile will be, so the mesh won't have any problems being used together with others, while the .CGL method is an "all or nothing", only one tile from one add-on will be used, according to package priority so, either we would be covered by others, or we would cover other mesh from bordering countries. This is not right, it would work for something like OrbX NZ ( a big island with hundreds of miles of ocean around it ), but not in central Europe when so many different countries are so close together.

- A level 12 .CGL tile, which the highest res the available .CGL can generate, will always "lose" in case there's an equal ( or better ) online data on Bing/Azure. This means, in order to see the mesh, you would have to turn off online data. This is not a problem with .BGL meshes.

- .CGL mesh tiles cannot have "holes", which means you risk affecting airports. Terraforming rectangles in .BGL can just not be made inside an airport perimeter, so we can be absolutely sure we are not messing the airports, since the added elevation is just not there.

We HAVE been in contact with Microsoft and Asobo, trying to understand why this is happening after SU7.

Because, while I agree that for SOME projects the .CGL method might be better ( larger isolated countries or islands, like NZ, Australia, the Canaries, Hawaii, etc. ), it's really unsuitable for a small country in the middle of Europe, that is bordered by several other countries that all have add-on mesh and all have fairly significant elevation exactly along borders, so we must try to make the .BGL method to work, at least until there will be official tools to generate .CGL files, possibly covering smaller areas and/or with better resolution and/or without being overwritten by other mesh or online data.

For example, if Asobo could tell us exactly how the loading strategy works for these .BGL terraforming rectangles, we could adjust their number/size to work better with their own loading method. I'm fairly sure there must be some kind of loading range but of course nobody other than Asobo really knows that, we could just to experimental tests and the current subdivision of the 20 m version in 28 .BGL files DID work well until SU7 but, it's possible that using a different subdivision strategy ( maybe more smaller files ), it might work better post-SU7, and this we can tweak easily, and way more easily if we knew exactly the parameters of the loading strategy, which clearly must have changed in SU7, since the scenery worked perfectly fine before.

Edited March 13, 2022 by virtuali

[Fielder 3,673]

I appreciate your response and I take no issue with any of what you wrote. Orbx meshes seem to have all, or mostly all, remained stutter free, such as Himalaya.

[Bert Pieke 7,585]

6 hours ago, virtuali said:

We HAVE been in contact with Microsoft and Asobo, trying to understand why this is happening after SU7.

I hope you are successful, because living on Vancouver Island, I am dependent on 3rd party mesh to fix the terrible coast line problems that MS/Asobo caused with the US World update. This 3rd party mesh is indeed a bgl based mesh, and it worked great up to SU7.

Now it causes stutters and sound interruptions..

I have posted this at MSFS Zendesk after SU7 and again after SU8, without any answer..

Edited March 13, 2022 by Bert Pieke

[Fielder 3,673]

By the way, the Swiss mesh from FSDT, back when MSFS still displayed it properly, was what I thought was the best looking scenery area in all of the MSFS world.