LOD issues - When will this be addressed?

Dear ED,

With respect, it seems that in order to counter the performance issues in DCS of late that you have further limited the draw distance within the sim. To the point where it is now almost unbearable to taxi around my new found Syrian airbases due to shadows popping in and out all over the place and so on and so forth.

Could you give a loose idea of how/roughly when this will be looked at or indeed whether it shall be looked at, at all?

It is visible from any altitude though most noticeable the closer to the ground you are and is something that the community have been upset about for some time. I do not believe that holding out for Vulkan/Vulcan will solve this issue as it will most likely revert textures to blurs if performance is impeached, as can be experienced in other sims which have gone down this route.

This is something which needs to be addressed and from what i gather from other games and sims is something that if done well can actually save a whole lot of processing power for other areas.

I know to the people developing this side of the sim this will most likely be a :doh: facepalm moment as I do not possess the experience or knowledge to lecture on this subject.

The lighting is looking grand, the new map tech is coming along very nicely, the bugs are being squashed slowly but surely and the other less obvious tweaks are awesome too (missiles etc.) BUT there is STILL this GLARING omission in that we have to contend with our imaginations to block out the hideous site of the *insert correct phraseology here* "LOD line" :(

Please advise as best you can

Much Love

FlyB :smilewink:

Hopefully clear from the images what i mean...

If you look at the shadows from the posts the "LOD line" is just feet from the aircraft and to me is now excessively limited.

+1

LODs, Color and Lighting a huge tuning part that can significantly change the perception of visual quality and realism (that said, I don't want DCS to look like over-saturated over-bloomed and over-reflected competitor products)

I'm not that touchy on postprocess effects, I'm not part of the crowd who sits and waits for the RTX reflections, a lot of it is just a bonus to me, my attention is more on the terrain texture LODs and terrain shadow LODs, I think they are too agressive, LODs levels are too rough (need more of them, gradual) and there is one particular near shadow LOD transition that is particularly noticable which produces an illusion of a line that keeps following you, but your camera has to be at a specific height and angle from the terrain to see this in action so it's not always a problem, but only at low level flight.

That said, this is hardly the biggest issue, as much as I want to say "hey it's annoying", but then again I need to hold back and put it in perspective relative to everything else and the focus of the simulator, it's not a module problem, it's not a gamplay problem, it's not affecting any system, so hopefully it gets fixed somewhere before or at least at the time of new rendering engine using Vulkan API is released.

LODs, Color and Lighting a huge tuning part that can significantly change the perception of visual quality and realism (that said, I don't want DCS to look like over-saturated over-bloomed and over-reflected competitor products)

 

I'm not that touchy on postprocess effects, I'm not part of the crowd who sits and waits for the RTX reflections, a lot of it is just a bonus to me, my attention is more on the terrain texture LODs and terrain shadow LODs, I think they are too agressive, LODs levels are too rough (need more of them, gradual) and there is one particular near shadow LOD transition that is particularly noticable, and it expresses it self like a line that keeps following you, but your camera has to be at a specific height and angle from the terrain to see this in action so it's not always a problem, but only at low level flight.

 

That said, this is hardly the biggest issue, as much as I want to say "hey it's annoying", but then again I need to hold back and put it in perspective relative to everything else and the focus of the simulator, it's not a module problem, it's not a gamplay problem, it's not affecting any system, so hopefully it gets fixed somewhere before or at least at the time of new rendering engine using Vulkan API is released.

THIS! absolutely.

I just feel that why bother putting the effort in to bring this beautiful terrain with the detail of the airbases and the shrubbery and foliage only for the very basic LOD configuration to let it down entirely. If you fly low level in Syria at around sunrise near the mountains you notice huge square shadows popping in and out where it is rendering a bush' shadow as a HUGE block until you pass within the LOD range and it shrinks down to practically no shadow as it should be.

It's a minor detail but at the same time has a huge imapct on immersion and overall wow factor. I love simulation as much as the next DCS fan but hey, if we didn't care about graphics there are other far less expensive ways to enjoy the hobby without DCS...

Any comments from ED regarding this?

Please post a track replay showing it happen and let us know your dcs settings, in particular shadow settings.

 

also let us know if you are using any shader or terrain mods

 

thanks

Hi, I didn't think it was necessary to post a track as you can clearly see it in the second screenshot, to be honest.

Everything shadows related is set to max and currently running SSLR on and MSAA x4. SSAA off for now due to performance issues. No mods what so ever. Has been an issue for as long as I can remember but is now a lot more pronounced due to more object dense maps being released.

It seems to me that the detail scaling is not refined enough at ground level/low altitude. You see it work fine as you climb, the detail drops out and you have basic textures etc but coming back down, the sim seems to struggle to pop the objects back in at a distance less noticeable to the eye. It may be more obvious to me as I have a larger monitor (its not huge though)

Just watching a trak mission replay from Lomac (flaming cliffs) 1.11. up on youtube circa 2005. It's amazing how much of the sim survives through to today (clouds, smoke stack effect, lod pop for various types of objects, wingman AI or lack there of, even HMCS on the A10A, A10 Hud graphics etc...). I can remember vividly the first time ED added a shadows option...enabling shadows on your exterior weapons brought everything to a crawl. For the time, that game version was amazing for what it did do and we overlooked the issues mentioned above...now 15 years on, seeing the same stuff sort of leaves you feeling like a fool for paying for the same problems like 20 times over.