I would never skimp on a PSU having had one or two go bang in the early days. Mine is utterly silent and I haven't come close to putting it under any real load yet. Go for the best you can afford.  

6 hours ago, SayAgain said:

From a developers prospective that seems odd?  Object culling is typically not on a case by case basis and is global to the render pipeline.  Now, I'm really concerned this will not get addressed. 😞 

EDIT: does anyone know what exactly Asobo are doing to the AI models to make the landing appear?  Are they just making the geometry larger so as to not be culled?  Would love to get more explicit details from Asobo or modeler?  Really hoping the claimed performance gains are NOT due to more aggressive culling and hence less objects to render.

As I understand it Rob, it's due to the LOD system changes between 2020 and 2024.  2024 applies a different ruleset, so if the model LODs aren't updated to the 2024 rules (as set out here: LOD Technical Information) they will be culled at an inappropriate time.  So the solution is either a) change the LOD system, and Asobo have already engaged in discussions with developers and changed the LOD curve as a result of that; and/or b) for model assets to be reworked to display appropriately within the amended 2024 LOD rules.  

As correctly identified above, default assets are the responsibility of MS/Asobo, and third party assets the responsibility of the creator/owner.

From the SDK...

Additional Information

The vertex count and the minSize are the two main metrics which will decide the LOD that is displayed in the simulation, but there are a few other things that will be taken in to consideration:

the last LOD minSize value is always forced to 0.5%.

The second to last LOD minSize value is always greater than or equal to 1%, unless it is the user aircraft.

As a consequence of the two points mentioned above, an object that has a screen size of less than 0.5% is never displayed.

What this means in practice AFAIK is that undercarriages (attachments to the base model element) are displayed or not depending on:

1. Vertex count - ie how complex the modelled part is for any given LOD; and

2. How the developer specifies the minSize in the model definition; and

3. The size of the object in the scene in pixels relative to the display size of your monitor. 

As can be seen, there are 3 distinct and different parts to the end display result, depending on Asobo's LOD system for 2024, how the model is built and defined by a developer, and the additional element of the user's display hardware itself, which neither Asobo nor the developer can influence.

Asobo have relaxed the LOD curve, developers need to rework model assets to display properly within that.  Some will, some won't.

 

Edited November 26, 2025Nov 26 by kevinfirth

3 hours ago, kevinfirth said:

As a consequence of the two points mentioned above, an object that has a screen size of less than 0.5% is never displayed.

This is culling and not Level Of Detail.  For there to be a level of detail an object must exist.  LOD is almost always defined as texture mapping, not both culling and texture mapping.

So Asobo released 2024 knowing most of their own airports would be victim of their aggressive culling?  So this is how they perform optimization?

So SU4 will not solve this … hmmm 

Ok I’m out … shame … might return in 2028, but this is a show stopper for me.  Fortunately I have a lot of hobbies (probably too many).

 

6 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

This is culling and not Level Of Detail.  For there to be a level of detail an object must exist.  LOD is almost always defined as texture mapping, not both culling and texture mapping.

So Asobo released 2024 knowing most of their own airports would be victim of their aggressive culling?  So this is how they perform optimization?

So SU4 will not solve this … hmmm 

Ok I’m out … shame … might return in 2028, but this is a show stopper for me.  Fortunately I have a lot of hobbies (probably too many).

 

As I think you've said before Rob, there should be a PC slider to vary this value depending on whether your hardware can cope with it.  Then at least it would be customisable to suit one's own preference of balance between performance and culling, rather than meet an arbitrary standard imposed by the developer to improve performance in lower specification use cases.

 

With a horizontal pixel count of 3840 at 4k, the 0.5% result means objects smaller than 19 pixels are not shown.  To be fair to Asobo, we need to understand whether this is in fact actually the case, or whether objects are not being shown at greater sizes due to improperly model definitions and geometry.  If all undercarriages displayed at 19 pixels I think I could live with that, but I'm suspecting they don't, in some model cases (possibly due to the model definitions remaining as per the 2020 system and the model being 2024 'compatible' rather than native.)

For airport signage, Asobo need to be held with their feet to the fire to update the default resources. and scenery consumers need to demand that scenery producers make native 2024 content optimised for that simulators LOD system.

Edited November 26, 2025Nov 26 by kevinfirth

5 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

So Asobo released 2024 knowing most of their own airports would be victim of their aggressive culling?  So this is how they perform optimization?

So SU4 will not solve this … hmmm 

Ok I’m out … shame … might return in 2028, but this is a show stopper for me.

That's a shame, you have some valuable insights.

17 minutes ago, bobcat999 said:

That's a shame

Indeed, but I’ve gone thru this before with P3D … new features added or changed from versions and a handful of airports updated to support for a fee (some free upgrades most not).  This is just another rinse and repeat from P3D experience leaving me with 90% 3rd party airports that don’t render correctly.

Asobo defining optimization as “render less” isn’t what I would try to pass of as “optimization”.

Anyway, been down this road before, not doing it again.  I’ll see what 2028 brings.

10 hours ago, Matt Sdeel said:

What is the wattage of your PSU? I'm thinking of buy a pre-built PC with a 5080 and a 9800X3D .  It comes with a 1000w PSU which I think is overpowered. 

1000Watts. 

PSU and Case I always go bigger/better than needed because these are long lived components. I have a good case (Fractal Arc Midi) that I purchased a decade or so ago that was running my PC till Sep, when I bought my new machine and finally upgraded the case.

Now I have a LianLi O11D. Point is, the Fractal case went through 4 different full upgrades, and I only had to get a new PSU with this build.. and that only cause I wanted to use the Fractal for something. I had an 800Watt PSU from 10 years ago..

Edited November 26, 2025Nov 26 by JonathanC

Aggressive LOD, blurred ground textures and some other things were done by mademoiselle Jorg intentionally to satisfy XBox and now PS5 users. 

2 hours ago, SayAgain said:

This is culling and not Level Of Detail.  For there to be a level of detail an object must exist.  LOD is almost always defined as texture mapping, not both culling and texture mapping.

So Asobo released 2024 knowing most of their own airports would be victim of their aggressive culling?  So this is how they perform optimization?

So SU4 will not solve this … hmmm 

Ok I’m out … shame … might return in 2028, but this is a show stopper for me.  Fortunately I have a lot of hobbies (probably too many).

 

The problem is they also reverse engineered this "feature" into 2020 so I forget exactly when it happened but at some point 2020 went from AI that never had an issue with things like landing gear to suddenly floating around the airport until they are with ~2,500 ft or so because I can only see them for about 1/3 of a full length runway.  

So this isn't "just" about developers changing to new LOD standards it's also that Asobo made some fundamental changes that broke things and were also back ported into 2020 😞  

https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/too-strict-lod-rule-on-aircraft-landing-gears/709715?u=eddrik84

 

Please vote, this have been a isssue for to long!

Edited November 26, 2025Nov 26 by Cyrex1984

Quote

We have created an internal ticket to see if our team already has this logged, and if not they will attempt to reproduce the issue and create a new bug report.

Attempt to reproduce it? Now that's funny 

2 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Indeed, but I’ve gone thru this before with P3D … new features added or changed from versions and a handful of airports updated to support for a fee (some free upgrades most not).  This is just another rinse and repeat from P3D experience leaving me with 90% 3rd party airports that don’t render correctly.

Asobo defining optimization as “render less” isn’t what I would try to pass of as “optimization”.

Anyway, been down this road before, not doing it again.  I’ll see what 2028 brings.

Rob my friend, its ok for us with powerful systems to feel hard done by in respect of this, but we need to remember that we aren't representative of the user base.

If we didn't move forwards with new tech, we might as well all stay on MSFS2020 forever.  If anything, the problem is twofold.  First developers who still try to pass off compatible products because they don't want to incur the redevelopment costs.  (this is entirely their prerogative though, its often a cold hearted business calculation for which I don't blame them), and secondly, we, the users, arent demanding with our wallets new products that take full advantage of the new simulator.  That's also nothing blameworthy, as often we try to reuse old compatible products wherever we can.  Thats ok, as long as we realise the performance hit or visual degradation that comes inherent in that.  Most users don't they just assume a scenery or aircraft being compatible means it should work exactly the same in both out of the box.  We are both long enough in the tooth to understand that isnt the case.

I am only purchasing 2024 native products now, thats my contribution to supporting the developer ecosystem to follow and take advantage of MSFS2024's new opportunities and SDK.

I would respectfully suggest your knowledge would be better brought to bear educating people here as to why they need to demand native 2024 products rather than canning it all by throwing your teddy out of the pram until 2028! 😄

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

LOD is almost always defined as texture mapping,

The most important component of LODding is simplifying the geometry, i.e. reducing the number of polygons in the object. At higher LOD levels, textured materials can be replaced with uniformly colored materials, and the number of materials can also be reduced.

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

So Asobo released 2024 knowing most of their own airports would be victim of their aggressive culling?

I haven't personally seen overly aggressive LODding / culling at default airports. Where do you get this?

2 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Asobo defining optimization as “render less” isn’t what I would try to pass of as “optimization”.

Every game engine does this. Whether Asobo implemented this well is up for debate, but you can't get good performance if you render all objects at all distances at maximum detail.

I think that we can all agree that missing landing gear on aircraft that are clearly visible to the user is unacceptable. Flight simulation is all about immersion. When that immersion is shattered, the believability of the simulated world shatters with it. Whether it is easy or hard to correct this issue is not the point. It needs to be rectified if you want to call your product a simulator.

Edited November 26, 2025Nov 26 by Christopher Low

1 hour ago, Vitold69 said:

Aggressive LOD, blurred ground textures and some other things were done by mademoiselle Jorg intentionally to satisfy XBox and now PS5 users. 

you mean to create sales for xbox and ps5 users. Its about money, nothing else