9 minutes ago, turbomax said:

MSFS addresses many different segments of the hobbyist market. they live in perfect harmony side by side on my keyboard ....

Oh Lord why don't we... 😉 

1 minute ago, martinboehme said:

Oh Lord why don't we... 😉 

Clever....love it 🎶

7 hours ago, JetClipperJR said:

I need many more reasons to migrate/"upgrade" (one of them being Microsoft's commitment to its gaming division, for example...) than knowing that the ground 30,000 feet below is “4000 times” (ahem) more “detailed” than what I have and that has served me so well. 

Many flight simulators look good at 30K feet though. And this includes FSX (with mods) and P3D (with mods) as well.

Obviously, having a more realistic ground is beneficial to bush flyers.  A lot of people in the flight sim community enjoy bush flying.  

Not every plane is taking off from a paved runway.  Actually, let me rephrase this - not even every business jet is taking off from a paved runway.  For example, this:

Now if I cand find this exact location, and use the exact same business jet, maybe I can try to reproduce this takeoff in MSFS 2024 🤣🤣🤣

21 minutes ago, dusty_sourdough907 said:

Clever....love it 🎶

Thanks, but it was really @turbomax who made the perfect pass and brought the ball right in front of goal. 😉

Team effort, indeed 💪❤️

1 hour ago, abrams_tank said:

Now if I cand find this exact location

Colombia, Medellin jungles?

when ground detail matters:

according to your youtube: Guatemala

"Thanks for flying Cartel Airways.We know you don't really have a choice and if we don't get paid for our product...you'll be flying with us again.Adios!" 😁

https://www.twz.com/32127/guatemalan-air-force-pilot-deserves-a-raise-for-flying-out-this-stranded-drug-running-jet

Ѕеvеrаl rеѕіdеntѕ оf Duсkrun 3 іn Веlіzе tоld ВВN thаt ѕhоrtlу bеfоrе 11 lаѕt nіght, thеу hеаrd а lоw flуіng аіrсrаft іn thеіr соmmunіtу. Тhе соmmunіtу іѕ lосаtеd ѕоmе 8 mіlеѕ аwау frоm thе Веlіzе-Guаtеmаlа bоrdеr.

a Hawker Siddley 125 business jet that landed on a very rough strip in Guatemala on January 27, 2020. But it’s not just the fact that the plane made it down safely and was subsequently flown out from the undulating dirt strip by a ridiculously brave Guatalmalan Air Force pilot.

That narco-jet was a Hawker Siddeley HS 125/Hawker 800 derivative—an aircraft known for its hardy airframe and landing gear that was designed over half a century ago to be able to access smaller improved airfields and even hardened grass airstrips, under some circumstances. Its big air brakes and slotted flaps help bring the mid-size private jet to a stop quickly. Still, the improvised airstrip depicted in the video, which seems more like a rough road than anything else, is a far cry from anything this plane was designed to handle. The fact that it made the landing at night is even crazier. 

 

only in MSFS2024: pebbles!

 

https://www.twz.com/32496/captured-gulfstream-narco-jet-loaded-with-69-bales-of-cocaine-is-biggest-bust-in-belize-history

"These GII aircraft are largely out of service now around the globe, making them incredibly cheap to acquire for this type of one-way flight. They can be had for the low hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars"

Edited December 1, 2025Dec 1 by turbomax

2 hours ago, turbomax said:

according to your youtube: Guatemala

"Thanks for flying Cartel Airways.We know you don't really have a choice and if we don't get paid for our product...you'll be flying with us again.Adios!" 😁

https://www.twz.com/32127/guatemalan-air-force-pilot-deserves-a-raise-for-flying-out-this-stranded-drug-running-jet

Ѕеvеrаl rеѕіdеntѕ оf Duсkrun 3 іn Веlіzе tоld ВВN thаt ѕhоrtlу bеfоrе 11 lаѕt nіght, thеу hеаrd а lоw flуіng аіrсrаft іn thеіr соmmunіtу. Тhе соmmunіtу іѕ lосаtеd ѕоmе 8 mіlеѕ аwау frоm thе Веlіzе-Guаtеmаlа bоrdеr.

a Hawker Siddley 125 business jet that landed on a very rough strip in Guatemala on January 27, 2020. But it’s not just the fact that the plane made it down safely and was subsequently flown out from the undulating dirt strip by a ridiculously brave Guatalmalan Air Force pilot.

That narco-jet was a Hawker Siddeley HS 125/Hawker 800 derivative—an aircraft known for its hardy airframe and landing gear that was designed over half a century ago to be able to access smaller improved airfields and even hardened grass airstrips, under some circumstances. Its big air brakes and slotted flaps help bring the mid-size private jet to a stop quickly. Still, the improvised airstrip depicted in the video, which seems more like a rough road than anything else, is a far cry from anything this plane was designed to handle. The fact that it made the landing at night is even crazier. 

 

only in MSFS2024: pebbles!

 

https://www.twz.com/32496/captured-gulfstream-narco-jet-loaded-with-69-bales-of-cocaine-is-biggest-bust-in-belize-history

"These GII aircraft are largely out of service now around the globe, making them incredibly cheap to acquire for this type of one-way flight. They can be had for the low hundreds of thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars"

Excellent summary! That’s what I read about for this video as well. This is the kind of stuff that MSFS 2024 would be great at in recreating these scenarios.

Earlier MSFS2024 frame rate did drop at the point when the gears hit the ground. Could it be possible, that high resolution ground mesh was the problem? Too much new data in short time. The logical mesh loading trigger is the ground contact so the simulator cannot preload the high resolution ground mesh.

6 hours ago, Kassu62 said:

Earlier MSFS2024 frame rate did drop at the point when the gears hit the ground. Could it be possible, that high resolution ground mesh was the problem? Too much new data in short time. The logical mesh loading trigger is the ground contact so the simulator cannot preload the high resolution ground mesh.

I assume the ground in MSFS is made up of polygons.  My understanding is that the clouds in MSFS are using voxels, but that's the clouds.

MSFS 2024 probably has way more polygons that it renders, when the graphics settings are equal to MSFS 2020 (ie. same resolution, same setting of Low/Medium/High/Ultra, etc).  This is why the minimum hardware requirements for MSFS 2024 is higher than MSFS 2020.  Having said that, SU4 has further performance optimizations, so I think the performance enhancements in SU4 help to offset the increase in polygons rendered for MSFS 2024.

I'm not sure that actually touching down on the runway versus being a few inches from touching down, make a huge difference in the polygons rendered.  When you try to land at a major handcrafted airport (ie. iniBuilds Heathrow), there is a surge in polygons being rendered from all the various objects at the airport, etc, and I think that's why people often complain about stutters when trying to land at major handcrafted airports.  But as for the total polygons rendered between being a few inches above the runway, to touching down on the runway, I doubt that the polygons being rendered when you touch down is a huge increase over the polygons rendered when you are a few inches above the runway.

But it's possible that extra calculations by MSFS are done when you touch down.  MSFS 2024 probably kicks in the equations for ground handling and ground physics when you touch down, so maybe that can lead to stutters? Anyways, probably somebody on the MSFS team would know the answer to this.

Edited December 2, 2025Dec 2 by abrams_tank

7 hours ago, Kassu62 said:

The logical mesh loading trigger is the ground contact so the simulator cannot preload the high resolution ground mesh.

why can it not? lots of data is constantly being preloaded (around the players position bubble) for that very reason: avoid stutters. that's what is called optimisation. or JIT: just in time.

Edited December 2, 2025Dec 2 by turbomax

On 11/28/2025 at 5:36 PM, psolk said:

Slow news day I guess, had to go back and pull up an article from September of 2024 from the pre-launch for this thread for 2020 users who don't realize the ground is more detailed...   Pretty sure everyone has acknowledged this however correctly pointed out once "off" the ground and not flying in bush environments the "textures" are identical, hence pretty natural to say the look the same...   

Pretty sure this has been well covered in the endless threads about the ground, ground handling, AI generated rocks etc etc etc...    We've also covered how ground handling physics need to be opted into by the dev's Len has done a phenomenal job explaining all of this but apparently 2020 users still weren't realizing so needed a reminder.  

Kind of would have hoped and thought we were beyond these threads over a year after 2024 was released but if we still need 2024 is better than 2020 because threads then by all means...

Anyone participating in these forums over the past 6+ months well knows that @abrams_tank posts news, info, and tidbits about MSFS 2024. He is obviously excited about the sim, and shares that enthusiasm here on the forum, which is part of what this forum is designed for, correct?

Even if something has been covered before, there is no guarantee that everyone got the memo, so there is no harm in reiterating old news. Certainly not enough to “call someone out” over it.

On 11/30/2025 at 11:37 AM, psolk said:

I would wager that If someone was to go to the P3D forum and post that exact same thing because "P3D users don't realize how advanced 2024 is" either then it would probably be deleted.  

Agree to disagree.  We see it differently.  

 

Your analogy here fails as P3D has its own forum. MSFS is a “combined” forum…even after folk called for “separate” forums. Nonetheless, if someone is going to point out features about MSFS20 or MSFS24 in comparison to each other, users etc., then they have no choice but to put it in the combined forum.

I think that the holes in your analogy illustrates the leaps that someone has to go through to find something wrong with what the OP presented. And yes, we can agree to disagree…

@turbomax where is the last pic in your string of pics?  The one with the river and the cliffs next to it?

somewhere in the movie "american made" 😀

the movie was shot in Ball Ground,Georgia and Medellin, Colombia

Tom Cruise is a qualified pilot (flies a Honda Jet). He did all of his own flying scenes during filming.

Crew members experienced a tragic event on the last day of filming. On September 11, 2015, stunt pilot Alan D. Purwin and his Venezuelan co-pilot, Carlos Berl, were killed when their small, twin-engine Aerostar plane crashed during foggy conditions in the Andes, near Medellin, Colombia. The pilots had just finished their work on the film prior to the crash, which left a sole survivor, Jimmy Lee Garland, who suffered serious injury. Ten minutes before the fatal crash, Tom Cruise had been aboard a helicopter taking the same route in similar weather conditions as the ill-fated flight.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3532216/locations/

https://giggster.com/guide/movie-location/where-was-american-made-filmed

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3532216/trivia/