I was poking around in some of the AIG models to see if there is anything that can be done to the LOD setup and to my surprise the models do have LODs (5 of them in most cases):

took a look at the FAIV_B7378.xml file and the LODS seem to be defined:

So the AIG models do appear to be following the MSFS 2024 requirement for more than just LOD0.

So I tried to use an off the shelf glTF 2.0 viewer these don't work with Asobo "special" glTF files as they aren't following glTF 2.0 specification.  

Next stop is ModelConverterX (which BTW can generate LODs) ... I couldn't find v1.8 so used v1.7 ... but I didn't see any attachment points ... hmmm.

Onward ... I don't currently have 3DSMax, but I do have Blender v5.0 installed ... install the MSFS 2024 SDK ... locate the blender add-in folder ... and ... ugh ... only Blender 3.3.x and 3.6.x LTS are support by the MSFS 2024 plugin.

... off to bed, will tackle this another day.

Yes, Kai has stated previously that the AIG models have multiple LODs. However, these were presumably developed for MSFS 2020. I guess that the MSFS 2024 LOD system works in a different way, which is why the landing gear of the AI planes is culled earlier than it should be.

This isn’t an issue of aircraft models having too few LODs. The problem is how MSFS 2024 handles LOD switching. And it’s not limited to disappearing landing gear. The same behavior shows up with many small airport objects through pop in and pop out, and even with house roofs and other fine details on approach. How noticeable it is seems to depend on how many objects are being rendered at the time, and most importantly on the distance at which different LODs are triggered.

Ultimately, only Microsoft and Asobo can improve this at the engine level, and I’m not optimistic it will happen anytime soon. I’m trying to get used to it, but in certain situations it’s really difficult to ignore.

This was clearly introduced for performance reasons - especially for consoles, which is understandable. Still, I really wish they would give users an additional LOD behavior or transition distance slider, so we could tune it to our hardware and priorities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2025Dec 13 by Nemo

2 hours ago, SayAgain said:

I was poking around in some of the AIG models to see if there is anything that can be done to the LOD setup and to my surprise the models do have LODs (5 of them in most cases):

I'm not really surprised - this is exactly what I'd expect them to do to achieve good performance with lots of AI traffic (whether in 2020 or 2024).

One thing I notice is that they've set the minSize for the highest LOD level (lowest detail) to 0.5. This essentially hard-codes MSFS's current behavior of not displaying an object if its size is less than 0.5% of the screen. If MSFS lowers that value (and I've heard talk of this), the model won't take advantage of that and will still be hidden if it's less than 0.5% of the screen size. What I would do instead here is to set the minSize of the highest LOD level to 0 and have MSFS override that with whatever it thinks the minimum screen size for an object should be. I believe this is also what the SDK documentation recommends.

But all of this said, I'm not sure if the landing gear issues have to do with LODs per se. I've seen screnshots of aircraft with missing landing gear that were so close to the player that I can't see how LODs would be the culprit.

And I saw something in the SU4 release notes about fixing a bug where model behaviors weren't being run for objects that are hidden because they're too far away. I think this could be related. Say an AI aircraft is initially so far away that it's hidden, so its model behavior to extend the gear doesn't get run. Now we get closer to the aircraft, so MSFS displays it, but the model behavior doesn't get run again, so the landing gear remains retracted.

What seems to invalidate this hypothesis though is that this bug was supposed to be fixed in SU4, yet people are still reporting missing landing gear post SU4. Maybe the bug didn't get fixed entirely though? I think it's certainly worth looking at model behavior more closely to see if it is the culprit.

Edited December 13, 2025Dec 13 by martinboehme

Keep in mind that there are 2 issues with missing landing gears on AI aircrafts.

1) LOD issue where the gears are down but when viewing the aircraft from a distance they disapear. Moving closer to the aircraft the gears appear again.

2) Gears are not down on some AI aircraft when they approach the runways and this is caused by a MSFS AI enginge bug/issue. 

37 minutes ago, Cap737Delta said:

Keep in mind that there are 2 issues with missing landing gears on AI aircrafts.

1) LOD issue where the gears are down but when viewing the aircraft from a distance they disapear. Moving closer to the aircraft the gears appear again.

2) Gears are not down on some AI aircraft when they approach the runways and this is caused by a MSFS AI enginge bug/issue. 

Thanks for pointing out this fact. I sometimes feel like some are mixing up things.
While I'm absolutely fine not seeing any landing gear at an aircraft on the other end of the runway, it absolutely breaks immersion when someone's parked right next to you at the gate and he's just hovering around it it's some kind of spaceship.

4 hours ago, Nemo said:

This isn’t an issue of aircraft models having too few LODs. The problem is how MSFS 2024 handles LOD switching. And it’s not limited to disappearing landing gear. The same behavior shows up with many small airport objects through pop in and pop out, and even with house roofs and other fine details on approach. How noticeable it is seems to depend on how many objects are being rendered at the time, and most importantly on the distance at which different LODs are triggered.

Ultimately, only Microsoft and Asobo can improve this at the engine level, and I’m not optimistic it will happen anytime soon. I’m trying to get used to it, but in certain situations it’s really difficult to ignore.

This was clearly introduced for performance reasons - especially for consoles, which is understandable. Still, I really wish they would give users an additional LOD behavior or transition distance slider, so we could tune it to our hardware and priorities.

It's not even just the LOD switching.  I think it's how sub-components of models are displayed in 2024.  See, its not the actual aircraft models itself, we see that.  Its the sub component of the landing gear that I think is the problem - possibly exceeding the vertex counts at anything other than LOD0/1?  If its model specific like this, it could explain why issues don't appear consistent across users, because we aren't comparing the exact same models and conditions against each other?  I dont really understand modelling sufficiently to accurately say what the problem is here though, at sub model level with attachpoints etc 😞

Unless you have studied the new 2024 modular modelling, you will quite likely not be able to draw the correct conclusion about the issue:

Modular Aircraft SimObjects

The structure, @SayAgain posted in his first post is 100% MSFS 2020. A modern model probably should have own gltf files just for the gear.

Edited December 13, 2025Dec 13 by fsiscool

1 hour ago, fsiscool said:

A modern model probably should have own gltf files just for the gear.

Ok but why?  Having multiple variants for landing gear (ski, float, etc) is the exception not the majority use case.  

Also suggest as attachments, some of the AIG models do define attachments.  

 

I think there is more to this issue that Asobo need to clarify or fix.

Hopefully more clarity comes after Asobo investigates with Kaiii's test dataset/package: 

 

Edited December 13, 2025Dec 13 by lwt1971

Couple of things I'd like to see out of the SDK:

1.  Official plug-in support for Blender 5.0

2.  Official support for VS 2026 (stops at VS 2022) which was release before SU4 official release.

I have a 3DSMax Indie subscription, but Blender 5.0 is a really good choice (it's come a long way) and not just because it's free.

I wonder if it has more to do with the AI engine of the sim than anything. Using PSXT which injects the ai through Simconnect I only get missing gear on traffic that is further away maybe around a 1000m or more as a guess. Very similar to how it was with MSFS 2020. 

16 hours ago, SayAgain said:

Ok but why?  Having multiple variants for landing gear (ski, float, etc) is the exception not the majority use case.  

There are other reasons for modular design like reuseable components over multiple variants of the same aircraft. E.g. the cargo and the pax version of an airliner can reuse the same gear models. Another reason are if multiple instances of the same model can exist (e.g. like tires or seats). Loading a model once and render it multiple times can improve the performance.

Anyway I have quickly loaded the Asobo Max and the Virtual File System is showing separate attachments for all 3 gears. So we can conclude that the discussion about the gear needs to consider modular design principles in 2024. And, that the AIG models quite likely are not fully modular:

 

1 hour ago, fsiscool said:

There are other reasons for modular design like reuseable components over multiple variants of the same aircraft. E.g. the cargo and the pax version of an airliner can reuse the same gear models. Another reason are if multiple instances of the same model can exist (e.g. like tires or seats). Loading a model once and render it multiple times can improve the performance.

Anyway I have quickly loaded the Asobo Max and the Virtual File System is showing separate attachments for all 3 gears. So we can conclude that the discussion about the gear needs to consider modular design principles in 2024. And, that the AIG models quite likely are not fully modular:

 

We already knew this, as @Kaiii3said before the AIG models are 2020 ones.  They _should_ according to @MattNischan follow the 2020 LOD rules.
We also know AIG are submitted a package to Asobo for some reason.  Its not clear what that is, but logically there wouldnt be any reason for them to do so unless they think they've identified a core system bug?

So we wait to see how this develops.  But I agree, the ideal situation would be for all model assets in 2024 to be native designed including landing gear attachments.  However, with AI packages containing multiple hundreds of models, redoing all of those natively as such is unlikely to happen at all, and certainly not quickly.

The ideal situation would be for Asobo to include support for MSFS 2020 LODs, so that hundreds of existing models do not have to be rebuilt, and the flight simulation community can relax and be confident that the word "Simulator" at the end of the product title actually means something