MSFS - the significance of TLOD

[mmcmah 408]

34 minutes ago, Cpt_Piett said:

the relevance being to compare MSFS to RW of course

STUNNING!!!!

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

29 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

STUNNING!!!!

Thanks! I did spend some time editing those photos, lol. Btw the aerial photo is taken from the passenger window on a Widerøe Dash-8 flight en route to Lofoten IIRC. I probably went a bit crazy with saturation on that one though 😅

1 hour ago, mmcmah said:

I would love to visit Norway. Farthest north I've gotten is Denmark.

I'd be more than happy to show you around Norway if you do get the opportunity to visit 🙂

Edited March 19 by Cpt_Piett

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

TLOD gradually changing from 975 to 50, demonstrating the impact on terrain draw distance:

 

 

[mmcmah 408]

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

I'd be more than happy to show you around Norway if you do get the opportunity to visit 🙂

Thank you kind sir, as long as you're not serving me up as one for Lord Vader to take his anger out on! 😉 

I may just have to take you up on the offer.

[mmcmah 408]

4 hours ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Re: very high OLOD close to ground: Agree, 1000 sitting on the ground is useless. At low altitudes though: huge difference, absolutely massive! But to appreciate this one really needs to fly over a metropolitan area. 

You are absolutely correct. The OLOD settings do have a massive difference on the buildings. At very low OLOD settings, the buildings look terrible. But as of 100, they improve significantly. I am going to add screenshots are various levels below. I am looking from Central Park towards LaGuardia and am looking at the changing details and straight lines in the buildings bordering the park and then a but farther in the distance. To my eye, OLOD 400 is nearly indistinguishable from OLOD 1000 and OLOD 500 is indistinguishable. I am therefore, going to set 500 as my max in case it allows me to wring out a few more TLOD levels in challenging scenery.

All of my individual screenshots failed to upload, and Imgur compressed the images too much, so here goes a different place to post the pictures: https://postimg.cc/gallery/v82WqzF

 

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

47 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

Thank you kind sir, as long as you're not serving me up as one for Lord Vader to take his anger out on! 😉 

Don't worry. If I'm alive after all my catastrophic mistakes and misjudgements, you should be quite safe. Quite being the key word here as we know how unpredictable the Dark Lord can be! Further analysis can be found below:

https://www.quora.com/How-can-Admiral-Piett-survive-seeing-Vader-umasked-in-The-Empire-Strikes-Back-Does-Vader-simply-not-care

https://www.quora.com/How-did-Admiral-Piett-manage-to-avoid-the-wrath-of-Darth-Vader-in-ESB-and-in-ROTJ

57 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

I may just have to take you up on the offer.

I hope you do 😄

31 minutes ago, mmcmah said:

You are absolutely correct. The OLOD settings do have a massive difference on the buildings. At very low OLOD settings, the buildings look terrible. But as of 100, they improve significantly. I am going to add screenshots are various levels below. I am looking from Central Park towards LaGuardia and am looking at the changing details and straight lines in the buildings bordering the park and then a but farther in the distance. To my eye, OLOD 400 is nearly indistinguishable from OLOD 1000 and OLOD 500 is indistinguishable. I am therefore, going to set 500 as my max in case it allows me to wring out a few more TLOD levels in challenging scenery.

Still in the middle of a test session here. I might have been wrong in my OP as it seems OLOD pertains to object detail, not draw distance. Alas, no OLOD video yet, as MSFS was not happy about me setting TLOD 975 and OLOD 1000 whilst flying Vader's TIE Advanced droning through the streets of lower Manhattan! In other words - I managed to break MSFS - but I haven't manage to break AutoFPS yet - despite trying every single test build @Reset XPDR has released. 

Your observations are interesting though. TBH I've been so preoccupied with TLOD that I haven't had the chance to test OLOD much. I'm about to capture a new video though, if MSFS lets me. 

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

I'm wondering if OLOD only affects building draw distance. I've been up and close to some KJFK objects and I can't see any difference in visual quality between OLOD 10 and 389. Can't get any higher at the moment as AutoFPS intermittently goes to FPS 0. 

@mmcmah I downloaded your screenshots to be able to change easily between them in Win11 photos app. Can't say that I can see a difference in detail level. These are all PG-buildings though. 

OLOD 1000: 

OLOD 50: 

KJFK

OLOD 10:

OLOD 389:

Initial impressions:

• TLOD has a significant impact on both terrain draw distance and photogrammetry visual quality (low TLOD = melted buildings)
• OLOD: object draw distance

Edited March 19 by Cpt_Piett

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

I finished another test: TLOD and photogrammetry. 

Observations:

• TLOD has a huge impact on how PG-buildings are being rendered.
• TLOD affects terrain draw distance, PG level of detail as well as PG draw distance
• OLOD does not affect PG whatsoever

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

Last test for now: OLOD and objects + TLOD and airport textures

Compared to my videos regarding the influence TLOD has on terrain and photogrammetry, the difference here is very subtle (at least to my eyes), even though I was switching between OLOD 10 and 1000. The only difference I could see is that the number of objects increased somewhat at 1000. I didn't see any significant impact on CPU or GPU load.

Previously I suspected that OLOD heavily influenced the number of buildings, but as seen in the video, this is not the case. Both number of buildings as well as building detail level seemed to change at all. That's the reason I went to Rio by the way, as the area has a huge number of buildings. 

I did take the opportunity to show the effect TLOD has on airport textures though, as I'm sure this will be relevant to most simmers. Notice the change in detail level especially on the runways. Much like the comparison images in my OP. 

Please share it if anyone has different experiences with OLOD. Is there a better way to test it?

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

One final (at least for today!) test demonstrating the impact of TLOD on terrain draw distance. 

As the Lofoten archipelago is one of my favourite places in the world (been there several times IRL, I thought it would have been unfair not to subject it to my rigorous testing. I can't think of a better place to appreciate the effect TLOD has on how detailed the terrain is in the distance.

From the camera location just northeast of ENSH, the aerial distance to the southwestern tip of the islands (just visible in the far distance) is 54nm (100km).

I'll let the viewers judge what would be a reasonable TLOD setting here. Or, rather than using a fixed setting, we can let AutoFPS change it for us dynamically. I see no reason not to set TLOD to maximum as AutoFPS will only increase it as long as there's headroom for it. 

I realized something new: TLOD not only affects terrain textures, but also mesh resolution.Which does matter here if one wants to fully appreciate the very high resolution digital elevation model (DEM) introduced in SUXV.

By the way, can anyone spot the aircraft? That's my 787 at 5000ft 😉

Edited March 19 by Cpt_Piett

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

I made a little video as a tribute to AutoFPS and the way it has transformed our simming experience. Thanks @Reset XPDR!

Settings: Expert VFR mode, TLOD max 975, FPS sensitivity 5

Edited March 23 by Cpt_Piett

[P_7878 6,630]

Watched it...amazing and enthralling video...🙂...both scenery and action...

(...with some daredevilry that Bond will be proud of...🙂...)

[skylane182 12]

Thank you @Cpt_Piett for all your work comparing different settings and your explanations in the other threads regarding this topic.
Are the framerates mentioned with native FG or do you reach these framerates without FG?

[Cpt_Piett 4,694]

On 3/24/2024 at 12:34 AM, P_7878 said:

Watched it...amazing and enthralling video...🙂...both scenery and action...

(...with some daredevilry that Bond will be proud of...🙂...)

Sorry that I missed your comment! Yeah, that was some nerve-wracking and hazardous flying I did there. And oh so much fun! 😄 

1 hour ago, skylane182 said:

Thank you @Cpt_Piett for all your work comparing different settings and your explanations in the other threads regarding this topic.
Are the framerates mentioned with native FG or do you reach these framerates without FG?

Thanks - glad you find it useful! It means all of my crazy experiments have not been in vain 😅

I'm using FG with different FPS targets in AutoFPS. Previously I've used 77 FPS (with FPS RTSS-locked at 80), but more recently I've lowered it to 65 (to allow for even higher TLODs). For the highest TLODs (up to 975 which is max in the app), I've been running FPS unlocked. AutoFPS will then crank up the TLOD as my FG-FPS will be much higher than my target. In remote areas it's possible to reach very high FPS with FG. 

My latest project: 

Settings: 

Quote

Expert: True Mode: FG ATgtFPS: False FltType: IFR TgtFPS: 63 TLODAMtd: 1 Tol: 3 TMin: 200 TMax: 975 TMinEx: true CloudQ: True CRecovT: 100 Pause: True TLODBAlt: 1000 MaxDesRate 2000 CustomOLOD: True OLODB: 1000 OLODT: 20 OLODBAlt: 2000 OLODTAlt: 10000 

 

Edited March 27 by Cpt_Piett

[skylane182 12]

Thank you for the clarification, that is also an important info as I consider buying a RTX4000-series graphics card to be available to use native FG.