To me the question whether to activate it or not falls to the subjective preference of what a "photorealistic scene" actually means; personally, I much rather the "autogen" approach, i.e. a generic portfolio of regional art assets like Blackshark's, all obey to the proper materials & shading setup.

Photogrammetry kinda reminds me of what assets used to be 20 years ago or so, you have this 3d model & copy paste a picture (literally) on it's UVs, then you bake some light maps to make the building look right under as many lighting circumstances you possibly can. That latter part is not possible as you can't edit photogrammetry textures, and this entire practice Is against any coherency you expect from a modern PBR engine.

In practice, you end with a low quality non-optimized 3d models, wrong materials & shading (it's clearly seen even in the OP's shots imo), no night lighting with awful LOD characteristics, all always remind that it's just attempting to be a good looking replica of the real thing while it's a bad looking render despite it being more "accurate". It can make pretty pictures, but when in motion it immediately gives it away imo.

But we have both options so that's good, my true scenery dream however would be to let us edit GIS data through a gateway, so Blackshark autogen can really have detailed meta-data to resemble their real life counterparts on more than a footprint level & AI attempts to get the proper roof color from an already lousy ground texture.

Edited May 16, 20242 yr by Inu

Photogrammetry, even with melted buildings, is just so much better than anything we've had in any other flight simulator, ever.

Hmm, nobody seems to have performance issues but me. I repeatedly encountered single-digit fps during take-off and landing at airports located in or near a city with photogrammetry. It gets fine quickly, but when I pick up speed and am low above the ground, my planes can be uncontrollable because of that. It usually happens with payware airports, but payware airports in a region without photogrammetry don't have the same problem.

4 hours ago, qqwertz said:

Hmm, nobody seems to have performance issues but me. I repeatedly encountered single-digit fps during take-off and landing at airports located in or near a city with photogrammetry. It gets fine quickly, but when I pick up speed and am low above the ground, my planes can be uncontrollable because of that. It usually happens with payware airports, but payware airports in a region without photogrammetry don't have the same problem.

That used to happen to me, I found. I have limited hardware as you can tell but I use the AutoFPS and FG mod. AutoFPS was just updated and I am on the latest sim 15 beta. I have since turned PG back on and it's a lot better for me overall. Less stutters overall.

The stuttery takeoff and landing issue you likely get is the same for everyone else: the closer you are to the airport, especially at speed, your sim/cpu is loading a stupendous amount of objects all around you. You already know that but my second point is using the autofps app that will help tone down the TLOD which is the real FPS killer.

However, I still find that MSFS's autogen buildings are good enough for me. Even though I fly GA and IFR often.....I am usually not focused on what a building looks like a mile away. With PG....I find that sometimes....regardless of my settings ( I tried them all) that it can look really nice or like complete garbage.

Good luck!

15 minutes ago, Sonosusto said:

 

The stuttery takeoff and landing issue you likely get is the same for everyone else: the closer you are to the airport, especially at speed, your sim/cpu is loading a stupendous amount of objects all around you. You already know that but my second point is using the autofps app that will help tone down the TLOD which is the real FPS killer.

 

I think a good example is taking your drone camera away from your airport to look at other things for a bit, then hit the drone reset and watch the drone zoom back to your plane. Lots of stutters.

I am using FS Traffic since AIG is having trouble limiting planes around me with the GA traffic mods as well. So, great performance even at KJFK.

8 hours ago, Inu said:

To me the question whether to activate it or not falls to the subjective preference of what a "photorealistic scene" actually means; personally, I much rather the "autogen" approach, i.e. a generic portfolio of regional art assets like Blackshark's, all obey to the proper materials & shading setup.

Photogrammetry kinda reminds me of what assets used to be 20 years ago or so, you have this 3d model & copy paste a picture (literally) on it's UVs, then you bake some light maps to make the building look right under as many lighting circumstances you possibly can. That latter part is not possible as you can't edit photogrammetry textures, and this entire practice Is against any coherency you expect from a modern PBR engine.

In practice, you end with a low quality non-optimized 3d models, wrong materials & shading (it's clearly seen even in the OP's shots imo), no night lighting with awful LOD characteristics, all always remind that it's just attempting to be a good looking replica of the real thing while it's a bad looking render despite it being more "accurate". It can make pretty pictures, but when in motion it immediately gives it away imo.

But we have both options so that's good, my true scenery dream however would be to let us edit GIS data through a gateway, so Blackshark autogen can really have detailed meta-data to resemble their real life counterparts on more than a footprint level & AI attempts to get the proper roof color from an already lousy ground texture.

I believe you, but what you describe is totally different from the photogrammetry I see in MSFS2020. Twenty years ago? There is no comparison whatsoever. I have been simming for more than 40 years -- back to FS2 -- and never saw anything remotely comparable to what we have now.

2 minutes ago, cobalt said:

I believe you, but what you describe is totally different from the photogrammetry I see in MSFS2020. Twenty years ago? There is no comparison whatsoever. I have been simming for more than 40 years -- back to FS2 -- and never saw anything remotely comparable to what we have now.

I don't know...I tend to agree with him.   Sometimes PG looks awful, like 20+ years ago photoscenery.  At other times it looks great.

I've been simming since 1985 and sometimes PG looks like a retrogression, back to the late 90's when we started seeing the first photoscenery.  At other times / places it looks revolutionary.   That's the real quandry about PG in general.  Maybe it will be more consistently good in MSFS 2024.

3 minutes ago, Mace said:

Maybe it will be more consistently good in MSFS 2024.

It depends on the data source. It will be impossible for it to be consistent.

2024, based on what we know, will have the same photogrammetry as 2020 + more (the Grand Canyon being the only example right now of 2024 exclusive photogrammetry).

 

Edited May 16, 20242 yr by Tuskin38

1 hour ago, Mace said:

I don't know...I tend to agree with him.   Sometimes PG looks awful, like 20+ years ago photoscenery.  At other times it looks great.

I've been simming since 1985 and sometimes PG looks like a retrogression, back to the late 90's when we started seeing the first photoscenery.  At other times / places it looks revolutionary.   That's the real quandry about PG in general.  Maybe it will be more consistently good in MSFS 2024.

To me, the curious thing about photogrammetry in MSFS2020 is how widely its quality varies among users. I have an ordinary setup with pg turned on always, and have never see it "awful" as far as buildings are concerned (trees are another story) -- for me, it is somewhere between excellent and fantastic. I wonder if monitor size/resolution has something to do with this (very large ones tending to be problematic). Otherwise I have no explanation.

Alienware Aurora R11, 32 GB ram, Intel i7-10700F, GeForce RTX 2080 Super, Ultra/high  graphics settings, 27” monitor, 1920 x 1080 resolution

 

 

31 minutes ago, cobalt said:

To me, the curious thing about photogrammetry in MSFS2020 is how widely its quality varies among users. I have an ordinary setup with pg turned on always, and have never see it "awful" as far as buildings are concerned (trees are another story) -- for me, it is somewhere between excellent and fantastic. I wonder if monitor size/resolution has something to do with this (very large ones tending to be problematic). Otherwise I have no explanation.

Alienware Aurora R11, 32 GB ram, Intel i7-10700F, GeForce RTX 2080 Super, Ultra/high  graphics settings, 27” monitor, 1920 x 1080 resolution

Could you help me out, and go to Ookla Speedtest and let me know what your download speed is?

I'm at 195 MBps.

4 hours ago, Sonosusto said:

I think a good example is taking your drone camera away from your airport to look at other things for a bit, then hit the drone reset and watch the drone zoom back to your plane. Lots of stutters.

I am using FS Traffic since AIG is having trouble limiting planes around me with the GA traffic mods as well. So, great performance even at KJFK.

why should the game engine support that without stuttering?

it's a flightsim and designed to support typical aircraft behaviour

2 hours ago, Mace said:

Could you help me out, and go to Ookla Speedtest and let me know what your download speed is?

I'm at 195 MBps.

I'm not sure download speed has a lot to do with it but,  I do accept it has some. The pics I posted were on my internet speed of 20 Mbps but because my wife was streaming TV at the same time it was probably more like 15Mbps. So when I first switched PG on, there was about a 5 second delay of just melted buildings but then it just popped. I think the MS server speed has a lot more to do with it since even at a full 20 Mbps I have had melted buildings in the past that just didn't go away.  So maybe this time it was a low load on the server or maybe MS have improved their server? 

And, as I stated in my original post, this was a smooth as butter flight around NY even with my mid range system locked at 30 FPS. I really thought the PG would have loaded the system up and created a stutter fest, but.....nope!  In fact my internet speed (which as you can tell is pretty poor by most peoples standards - it is rural wireless), has not been the cause of any of my stutter issues, which as many are realising now,  are more to do with TLOD in heavy built up areas and large airports.

Having said  all that I didn't have any AI aircraft or live aircraft or any weather turned on during that flight. When I have all this running, my system struggles a bit more, not so much for internet speed but at CPU and GPU processing level.

So as far as I can tell PG is not really internet bound and in fact I run Ultra on most everything and don't find the internet to be an issue at all except when waiting to download hefty updates!!! . But at 20Mbps I am certainly on the limit for MSFS and below about 12Mbps things start getting pretty flakey. 

 

Hope that helps,

Cheers

Terry

        

 

Edited May 16, 20242 yr by Lord Farringdon

3 hours ago, Mace said:

Could you help me out, and go to Ookla Speedtest and let me know what your download speed is?

I'm at 195 MBps.

190 MBps

5 hours ago, EGLD said:

why should the game engine support that without stuttering?

it's a flightsim and designed to support typical aircraft behaviour

That wasn't my point at all.

I was providing an example of the sim loading too many objects at one time (drone reset) and the stutters it provides. In a way, its like on final at large airports. The sim loads traffic, airport, other scenery, airport objects, etc etc.

I dont fly vfr, but for airliner IFR pilots PG is an absolute gamechanger,  I'm never usually right on top of city centers but when looking out the window ~5miles away and seeing almost photorealistic buildings at hundreds of cities across the world its absolutely way more immersive than anything previously offered.   I'll still get the city packs for locations I fly often or for downtowns that are close to the approach path but the vast dispersion on PG on a world stage is breathtaking.