Is it my setup or London look terrible in the sim?

[Christopher Low 5,390]

I have PG switched OFF, and London looks fantastic on my PC with ORBx London Landmarks installed. I am not keen on using PG because of problems like melted buildings/low resolution textures at close range/solid blocks underneath bridges/mismatched colouration at the PG scenery edges etc. The autogen buildings are light years beyond anything in P3D, so I am already enjoying a vast improvement in the scenery

[bobcat999 8,503]

16 minutes ago, Christopher Low said:

I have PG switched OFF, and London looks fantastic on my PC with ORBx London Landmarks installed. I am not keen on using PG because of problems like melted buildings/low resolution textures at close range/solid blocks underneath bridges/mismatched colouration at the PG scenery edges etc. The autogen buildings are light years beyond anything in P3D, so I am already enjoying a vast improvement in the scenery

Yes.  This is it.  Photogrammetry is a good concept in principle, but not always the best implementation in MSFS. 

I think Asobo / MS may have been better handcrafting the buildings in the major cities (like Orbx do etc.) rather than trying to implement this imperfect photogrammetry.  It looks alright from up high, but close up, not so good.

As you say, the auto-generated buildings aren't too bad at all, especially when mixed with the odd scenery pack.

 

[andy1252 3,977]

PG is definitely of variable quality. I'm really big on scenery, and I've found quite a few places (big US cities etc) where the PG is almost as good as modelled stuff, even up fairly close. I've also found places where it is consistently rubbish, and London is one of those for me.

One of the main issues for me is the PG "greenery", where what are obviously meant to be trees are converted into green concrete blocks - I think of them as PG "uglifacts".

Plus - all this is definitely affected by service quality on the MS/Asobo/Bing or whoever it is servers. I often find the quality of the PG goes down here over the weekend evenings, when I assume the servers are more heavily loaded.

And I really wish they'd change that error message to read "WE don't currently have sufficient bandwidth etc etc" rather than "YOU don't have sufficient bandwidth . .", because that is what is actually happening!

 

[MarcG 3,031]

Not a bad idea actually, turn off PG and buy the many City Packs available now, good thinking chaps.

[Shack95 2,665]

7 hours ago, MarcG said:

"[On London] I have some regrets looking back when we did the England [World] update. We put it out when the time we said, but I still don’t think London is up to snuff to what it should have been. The photogrammetry data is complicated, but it’s massive. TBs of data and then crunch it into something we can stream. I’m going to re-do London." - Jorg Neumann

In Bing Maps London already has new photogrammetry. Half a year ago when I last checked it was only partly new PG. So the update might not be that far off.

Edited January 17 by Shack95

[Dillon 2,198]

2 hours ago, tonywob said:

The photogrammetry data they licensed wasn't particularly good (Bluesky I think), hence they didn't have much to go off to start with, but it looks very much like you have a connection problem, as even on my relatively slow internet it at least looks way better than this. Photogrammetry has always been hit & miss for me, sometimes it looks great, other times blocky and not great.

I don't have this problem in most of the world including the historically problematic (in sims of the past) NY.  Since I don't fly in London and Paris that much it's not a big deal for me.  Just the same I see a problem in (old world enhanced) cities that have very condensed streets and buildings.  Newer (none 250 year old) cities like Brisbane, Sydney, Toronto, LA, NY, and Miami don't suffer from this on my end so I know it's not a connection problem with my computer.  I'm glad the smaller Venice doesn't have this issue for me.  I love that city.🍺

[JYW 2,989]

Yes, London is hugely disappointing in MSFS.  You can have a good experience flying around, if you have something like Orbx Landmarks (London or GB South) but in terms of the core photogrammetry, it's really poor.

Add to that the fact that on release (and still now) the UK was/is hugely lacking in handcrafted airports (large and small) as compared to say France and Germany.   At release there were a lot of conspiracies around this and the fact that there is a lot of rivalry between the UK and France; not always good-natured.   Asobo being French, if you know what I'm getting at..... 😜    I personally think the north of England looks better in terms of photoscenery, than London and the south, which looks washed out.  Manchester and Newcastle look great out of the box.    But for all photogrammetry in the uk.. it's just weak.

[JYW 2,989]

6 hours ago, Daube said:

PG cities are sceneries on your computer, not on the servers, as far as I know. They are part of the base sim content, or world updates content. As a matter of fact, it was recommended (in the community, not by Asobo) to uninstall the PG cities from the content manager to help with the scenery loading smoothness in flight, wasn't it ?

So servers and / or internet provider have most likely nothing to do with melted buildings.

This isn't correct.

It's only vector data for photogrammetry that is downloaded and kept on your PC.   If you check the actual "photogrammetry cities" entries in your content manager, that's why they're tiny (usually kilobytes).   The scenery/textures are streamed, just like the base photoscenery.

But whilst photoscenery always seems to load instantly, there's been an issue right from the outset with photogrammetry being very slow to load in (or stalling), which results in the 'melted' buildings.

Edited January 17 by JYW

[Dillon 2,198]

1 hour ago, andy1252 said:

And I really wish they'd change that error message to read "WE don't currently have sufficient bandwidth etc etc" rather than "YOU don't have sufficient bandwidth . .", because that is what is actually happening!

I couldn't have said this better myself.🍺

Edited January 17 by Dillon

[DD_Arthur 1,091]

I notice a lot of people posting screenies of 'stock' London but have obviously forgotten that they've got Orbx London installed. 

I know this as I've got it too.....unless Asobo have acquired it in an update I'm not aware of.....

 

[SierraHotel 987]

4 hours ago, F737MAX said:

It looks nice, but it appears to be abandonware.

To minimise the chances of incompatibilities, performance drops and/or CTDs, I strongly suggest not installing/removing any installed add-ons that have gone 6 (certainly 12) months without an update. The Sim Updates change the base sim too much to rely on outdated mods working as well as they were originally designed or even at all.

This was downloaded and installed today, there are a couple of dodgy areas but nothing too terrible and as I fly mainly airlines all I want is a nice skyline as I'm leaving EGLL,EGKK or EGSS. Anyway it's free, and it works pretty well:

 

[JYW 2,989]

8 minutes ago, DD_Arthur said:

I notice a lot of people posting screenies of 'stock' London but have obviously forgotten that they've got Orbx London installed.

I'm not sure they are all using Orbx London.   Many of the same landmarks that Orbx features are also in the stock scenery.  I remember when Orbx London was released (one of the first scenery addons for MSFS) and there was an uproar because many of the landmark models from Orbx were lower resolution and detail than the Asobo defaults.

[odourboy 1,290]

18 minutes ago, Dillon said:

I couldn't have said this better myself.🍺

Out of curiosity, what server do you connect with? I almost never have trouble with London including PG, RT traffic and weather. I just now tried a flight from London City to Heathrow and it was perfect.  I connect to USA East, 41 ms.

Edited January 17 by odourboy

[Dillon 2,198]

5 minutes ago, odourboy said:

Out of curiosity, what server do you connect with? I almost never have trouble with London including PG, RT traffic and weather. I just now tried a flight from London City to Heathrow and it was perfect.  I connect to USA East, 41 ms.

For awhile now it wouldn't give me the option to choose.  I'd have to get home and look.  I was locked into US West Coast servers (I believe, stopped checking) for awhile then it connected to east at some point.  If your reporting this makes a difference I'll be curious to check, hopefully I'm given the option and not locked into what ever Asobo/MS chooses.😎

[DD_Arthur 1,091]

12 minutes ago, JYW said:

I'm not sure they are all using Orbx London.   Many of the same landmarks that Orbx features are also in the stock scenery.  I remember when Orbx London was released (one of the first scenery addons for MSFS) and there was an uproar because many of the landmark models from Orbx were lower resolution and detail than the Asobo 

Yes, I remember but Tower Bridge and the Gerkin are a bit of a giveaway.