.

Edited February 23Feb 23 by Stearmandriver
Dupe

14 hours ago, MrBitstFlyer said:

You are suggesting your PG does not have melted building or odd looking PG trees, which just isn't believable.

No, I am not suggesting this. I have melted buildings and odd looking trees where internet bandwith is not the cause for those effects. Wasnt precise in this aspect, sorry

Always on, obviously.

Always off.

If they could restore the windows to the buildings I’ll be happy.

The main reason I leave PG off is it seems to introduce the occasional loading stutter on my modest rig that’s absent with autogen.

I really like X-Plane’s/AFS4’s autogen plus key POIs like major buildings and landmarks, and wish Orbx would release their West Coast POIs without ortho like they did for the UK.

9 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

Autogen - buildings and vegetation both - got quite an upgrade in 2024 compared to 2020.  I've noticed that the placement algorithm also seems improved, in terms both of positioning buildings and choosing a model that is the correct shape and general appearance.  (Of course, some of that is due to more options being available).

Here's two screenshots of the Seattle area - first with photogrammetry, second with autogen.  There is no comparison; the autogen version is far more accurate as well as lacking deformed buildings and vegetation.  The photogrammetry version is just... I mean it's just ridiculous.  The PG vegetation alone obscures most of the buildings.

 

I agree that the PG trees in your pic are way overdone and look ridiculous. You don't specify the exact location of your shots, so I went looking in the Seattle area and compared PG with non-PG representations of several places in that region, but couldn't find anything as extreme as the trees in your pic. Downtown Seattle looks fantastic in PG, whereas the same area in autogen looks, of course artificial -- which is fine if you don't mind fake buildings, but I do. 

This argument seems destined to go on forever, between the 70+% who like PG and the 28% who don't like it (according to the current poll). But the fact that PG is so easy to turn on and off without disrupting anything (you can do it in mid-flight, in seconds) enables everyone to suit himself or herself. I don't mind in the least that there are folks who dislike PG. Why does it bother anyone that I, and others, take a different view? 

I would have been interested to see the skyline of Seattle in the second screenshot, as rendered with autogen.....

72% for PG 27% for AG currently … I think Chris’s purpose of this poll was to encourage 3rd part scenery/airport developers to adjust their scenery/airports to fit smoothly with both PG and AG.

Chris’s desire (if 3rd party implement) means that 3rd party scenery/airports would have to provide “static” option in the scenery package to use an AG version or PG version and of course this means that one can NOT switch between AG/PG on the fly as the airport would be set to whatever static option was selected at the vendors configuration options panel.  

The additional developer work required to do both AG and PG variants would likely increase the cost of the scenery/airport (it is extra work).  I personally don’t mind if the cost goes up to support both AG/PG, but I know many people will object to an increase in cost.

6 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

Chris’s desire (if 3rd party implement) means that 3rd party scenery/airports would have to provide “static” option in the scenery package to use an AG version or PG version and of course this means that one can NOT switch between AG/PG on the fly as the airport would be set to whatever static option was selected at the vendors configuration options panel.  

 

Not sure I follow. The PG on/off option in Settings/Online will of course remain, regardless of what addons provided by developers are loaded. In other words, you could still switch PG on or off generally -- it just wouldn't work with the addon. Frankly I will be surprised if any developer is interested in making two versions of an airport, i.e. one with PG and one without.

24 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Not sure I follow. The PG on/off option in Settings/Online will of course remain, regardless of what addons provided by developers are loaded. In other words, you could still switch PG on or off generally -- it just wouldn't work with the addon. Frankly I will be surprised if any developer is interested in making two versions of an airport, i.e. one with PG and one without.

So, how will it, we think, work...hypothetically speaking...?

Say, iniBuilds builds two versions of EGLL:

1. EGLL(PG)
2. EGLL(AG)

If I buy their product, I get both (PG/AG) versions in the same purchase (just as we sometimes get both MSFS2020 and MSFS2024 versions in the same purchase).

If I set PG "on" in my Configuration, the "EGLL(PG)" component of the development will be invoked.

If I set PG "off" in my Configuration, the "EGLL(AG)" component of the development will be invoked.

Just thinking aloud...

33 minutes ago, cobalt said:

Frankly I will be surprised if any developer is interested in making two versions of an airport, i.e. one with PG and one without

I have no idea what developers will do, but for P3D they often (not  in every case) did provide “special” integration options based on AG or TE or other Orbx scenery offerings they would adjust for.

6 minutes ago, P_7878 said:

If I set PG "off" in my Configuration, the "EGLL(AG)" component of the development will be invoked.

I don’t believe there is any mechanism to detect PG change in the SDK so as to trigger swapping the files in/out (PG/AG).  Certainly nothing once you start a flight (I ran into that issue when i was doing my seasons product for MSFS 2020) … Asobo prevent any such changes which forced me to abandon my Seasons product (this was 5-6 years ago so maybe SDK was improved since then).

3 hours ago, SayAgain said:

I don’t believe there is any mechanism to detect PG change in the SDK so as to trigger swapping the files in/out (PG/AG).  Certainly nothing once you start a flight (I ran into that issue when i was doing my seasons product for MSFS 2020) … Asobo prevent any such changes which forced me to abandon my Seasons product (this was 5-6 years ago so maybe SDK was improved since then).

In customary software development, the code often branches out depending on the (selected) value of a customer facing configuration parameter.

I’m surprised this is not the case here nor there exists a mechanism that can be utilized by developers.

5 hours ago, SayAgain said:

The additional developer work required to do both AG and PG variants would likely increase the cost of the scenery/airport (it is extra work).  I personally don’t mind if the cost goes up to support both AG/PG, but I know many people will object to an increase in cost.

I am just finishing up a regional airport for 2024 that is in a PG area.  There is an industrial complex adjacent to the airport and the PG looks pretty lousy when on the ground so I decided to exclude the PG in that entire area and just custom build all of the warehouse and business buildings.  Even with PG turned off, the AI buildings looked bad as well so in my case, the only solution was to rebuild that entire area. So regardless of user having PG on or off, that entire area will look very good.

Conceptually possible, but MSFS 2024 “supported” I don’t think so … open to being corrected.  If it were available in SDK, then I think developers would have leveraged the ability to switch airport scenery based on the PG setting, but so far I haven’t seen anyone actually successfully perform  this task.

Like I said, when I was developing my Seasons product for MSFS 2020 where vegetation would evolve over time (day by day) based on sim date to build the biome files and replace in my community folders, MSFS 2020 wouldn’t load them.  On initial release of MSFS 2020 it did load my modified Biomes, but then came along an SU and that functionality got blocked (changed the sequence of loading and claimed better optimization).  MS developer support simply told me my product was “not a good fit” … and that was that.

But that was 5-6 years ago, maybe it’s changed for MSFS 2024?

I guess you can probably validate … when at the In Flight screen with airport selected, alt tab to Windows file explorer and bring up you community folders and cut and paste the 3rd party airport to some temp folder outside of MSFS path, copy over some other vendor for the same airport into the community folder, then Alt Tab back to MSFS 2024 and hit Start to Fly and see what happens?

Edited February 23Feb 23 by SayAgain

4 minutes ago, Flic1 said:

Even with PG turned off, the AI buildings looked bad

I think user request is to automatically switch between PG and AG scenery configurations bases on what the user selecting in the MSFS 2024 Graphics settings for PG On/Off.

53 minutes ago, SayAgain said:

I think user request is to automatically switch between PG and AG scenery configurations bases on what the user selecting in the MSFS 2024 Graphics settings for PG On/Off.

Yes, that seems to be the customer requirement, but often the customers do not know what they really want ...🙂...

Is it as simple as PG on and off...?

As per @Flic1:

Say, Area 1 has now lousy PG (we all know how ugly PG can be at times), so, Area 1 PG must be replaced by enhanced AG, not what the AG is now in Area 1. However, Area 2 has good PG.

So, even with (user selection) PG flag "on", what might be ideal is to have a mixed mode of PG/AG...