(Warning - grumpy old git alert)

I just fired up the sim to have a little buzz round in the H145. Picked KDFW for no particular reason. Now, I've been flying around there a couple of time recently and it's been fine, but this time I just gave up after 5 minutes. The PG was truly, truly appalling. Jagged blocks of the ground poking up, the dreaded vegetative concrete pillars, and a whole bunch of completely b*ggered rooftops everywhere.

Heading out of the airport towards the city, nothing special about the scenery I'm flying over. Yes, I'm flying lowish (about 1000ft) but it's a helicopter - that's the point of the **** thing. And no noticeable stutters or pauses, flying was very smooth, so it didn't feel like the normal weekend server slowdowns.

So if 2024 is going to do anything about the PG - bring it on.

Now.

word not allowed, phrase not allowed, intitials not allowed, evil thoughts not allowed, nothing word not allowed allowed!

Gosh, it can be jolly annoying sometimes.

(not looking for advice or suggestions - just venting!)

So true in many places though not all.  Palm Springs KPSP is always awful which suggests it's not only server side issues, it's geolocation based apparently as well.  You can always turn it off but I've never tried to be geo-selective on that or how possible that is.  It's definitely a major issue to be addressed.

Off topic, but what the hey happened with graphic sharpness and lighting quality?  It mysteriously took a turn for the better a few weeks ago, though part of that or more may be from a change in NVCP, but I kinda doubt is since it was there before I made the change which may have improved that also.

Edited June 16, 20232 yr by Noel

I've always turned off PG. It's way too inconsistent.

I have turned OFF PG and Bing ... And I'm fine with the default, even if FSX-ish scenery .... Performance Boost too after that, not that it was bad, not at all, but now it's even better 🙂

Yes I notice more building popups as I go along the short final at Lisbon LPPT 02, but heck, I'm aiming at the runway, not the building, unless I'm on an helo 🙂

I leave it on but just don't get too close and it won't look as weird. Viewing it from a distance is kind of the point of the MSFS PG, it's not meant for close inspection. It's just to represent it from a distance for the most part. The California coast around San Diego up through Monterey looks good in PG, very good I think. As you go inland from the coast, it does get a lot sketchier though, but at least you have the coast.

 

Edited June 17, 20232 yr by Alpine Scenery

Did I not read somewhere that it could be your ISP throttling your connection when gaming rather than MS servers which may be why MS can't do anything about it?

Certainly something is causing the reduced bandwidth particularly at peak times. Sometimes it's OK but other times it can be terrible

44 minutes ago, Alpine Scenery said:

I leave it on but just don't get too close and it won't look as weird. Viewing it from a distance is kind of the point of the MSFS PG, it's not meant for close inspection. It's just to represent it from a distance for the most part. The California coast around San Diego up through Monterey looks good in PG, very good I think. As you go inland from the coast, it does get a lot sketchier though, but at least you have the coast.

That is rather difficult if you are flying in and out of city airports. EGLC London City is a good example. Whilst I do not have Microsoft Flight Simulator installed, ORBx tried a bit of PG with the Canary Wharf buildings in TrueEarth Great Britain South for P3D. Unfortunately, it did not work. The textures on those buildings were very low resolution, and there was no lighting on them at all. Since Canary Wharf is very close to EGLC London City, these ugly buildings were visible close up every time that I visited the airport.

Thankfully, I was able to replace them with the vastly superior version of Canary Wharf included in the Aerosoft VFR London X package. In fact, I was surprised that I got these to work so well!

Edited June 17, 20232 yr by Christopher Low

I never fly with PG on. I don't see the point when it's such a resource hog and is so inconsistent. The delayed texture loading, the spikey looking trees, just isn't for me.The way I look at things, with PG turned off, 2020 still looks 100% better than any of the other sims put together! 

Low  rise residential suburbs generally are fine, high rise buildings - not so much.

Also some cities are reliably good, the Queensland Gold Coast for example while some others (London looking at you) are consistently bad.

1 hour ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

Also some cities are reliably good, the Queensland Gold Coast for example while some others (London looking at you) are consistently bad.

Shortly after the release of the UK World Update, it was announced that they will update London with their own photogrammetry at some point (the current version is form an external company). The new version can already be seen in the Windows Maps app, which could be an indication that a new update is not too far off.

Edited June 17, 20232 yr by Shack95

Hopefully it's something they improve in MSFS '24. Not just talking updating the photogrammetry but how it's rendered, especially the aggressive LOD model can be really jarring with everything turning into spiky towers as you get further away. Also feel the performance of it can be improved, you can almost reliably trace any tiny stutters back to patches of photogrammetry loading or the LOD model is switching.

You want a bad day on purpose - simply turn on PG. What's the point?

oh!, I get it, your day was just going to good and you felt guilty/

2 hours ago, Shack95 said:

which could be an indication that a new update is not too far off.

I wouldn't hold my breath. They are in general globally months behind in all updates to the map, whether PG or no PG. If you go to Bing you will find various areas throughout the world that have long been updated since the initial release of MSFS but those areas have still not found their way into the sim.

For example, part of northern Poland and Lithuania, in Germany the huge area east of Hof, which in the sim is just default textures, the winter images near Mauterndorf, Austria, have all been updated with better images.

All these are still not in the sim, and I really scratch my head why not. A simple upload to the server, running Blackshark to populate the Autogen for 24 hours, that should be it. 

 

And all the new added PG areas are also not in the sim yet.

Edited June 17, 20232 yr by Farlis

Flying over Miami and the vicinity is always a joy with PG ON. The same happens over Paris, New York, New Jersey and London. Having external landmarks installed (Miami Latin VFR, Paris/London ORBX Landmarks, NYC Landmarks freeware, etc.) certainly helps. I always fly with PG ON.

Edited June 17, 20232 yr by edpatino

I flew around Dallas just a week or to ago and the PG looked fine to me overall. Don't remember seeing those artefacts you describe, but it does seem consistent with a slow connection or incomplete download of the PG data.

I do agree with @edpatino on this: for cities I frequent I search for external landmarks packs. There's tons on flightsim.to. They typically enhance the city a lot. That said, I always fly with PG on, landmarks or not.