Blurry/Pixelated landscape at altitude

[RedKestrel]

I posted in the stickied Graphics, Models and Maps portion of the forum but I am reposting here to see if other people can corroborate. I can't find the thread I originally saw people posting this about - I posted my info in that thread but finally was able to get a video and track. The video is not great but even at low resolution you can see the issue.

Basically, the terrain and landscape doesn't seem to render properly at a relatively short distance. It looks blurry, pixelated and jagged. You can also see 'seams' between the terrain tiles on the map. It becomes noticeable as soon as you reach higher altitudes. It happens in all maps but is worst on the Rhineland map, and worse in the winter versions - or maybe just most noticeable.

 

This only happens at higher levels of FOV. Zooming in, sometimes even just a few degrees of FOV, and the terrain will suddenly sharpen.

I have a GTX 1660 Super. I am on older drivers (445.75) and have not updated them yet. I may try that - if anyone else has fixed the issue with updated drivers, please post. However, if I remember correctly from the other thread, people with up-to-date drivers had the issue as well.

Here is the relevant info from the thread:
 

Brief description: Terrain, forests and cities appears blurry and low-resolution/jagged at full field of view
Detailed description, conditions:  Flying at middle to high altitudes, terrain appears very blurry and jagged in the distance at maximum field of view. Zooming in slightly will make it render properly. It is most noticeable on winter maps but seems to be on all maps in all seasons. Testing with different Distant Landscape Detail or Horizon distance settings does not make much difference, if any. 
Additional assets (videos, screenshots, logs):    Video at link  shows behavior when zooming in and out. Attached track is for the flight the video was taken from. MIssion on Combat Box server on the winter Rhineland map. Skip to time 0:29 to 0:40 for best example - watch the forest in the middle of the screen. Even with SD quality upload you can see the issue. Apologies for video quality, my upload speed on my internet is slow. 

 

Track File available here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OEpCnBr7mgneXP4vocPGgSJce5Md9ZM9/view?usp=sharing

System Info: i5-7500 @ 3.7GHZ, GTX 1660 Super with 445.75 drivers, 16GB DDR4 RAM, Windows 10 version 1909
All Nvidia control panel settings are default except Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias is set to CLAMP and Power Management Mode is set to Prefer Maximum Performance
Game Graphic Settings are here:

[IckyATLAS]

If you look well you see that you have around your airplane a circle that limits the detailed zone of the landscape with a fuzzier one.

This allows for less processing load.

Just to check if you can see the difference, set everything to the ultra-maximum in terms of distance, quality, details, antialising etc.

Your system will not handle it well, and you will have stuttering and a high drop in FPS, but at least you can check the visual difference and tell us if you still have this visual quality problem.

If it is solved or much improved, then no other solution than "invest" in better hardware. Flight simulators are CPU-GPU power hungry beasts.

 

[RedKestrel]

2 hours ago, IckyATLAS said:

If you look well you see that you have around your airplane a circle that limits the detailed zone of the landscape with a fuzzier one.

This allows for less processing load.

Just to check if you can see the difference, set everything to the ultra-maximum in terms of distance, quality, details, antialising etc.

Your system will not handle it well, and you will have stuttering and a high drop in FPS, but at least you can check the visual difference and tell us if you still have this visual quality problem.

If it is solved or much improved, then no other solution than "invest" in better hardware. Flight simulators are CPU-GPU power hungry beasts.

 

Thank you for the reply.

The video doesn't show it well, but it's not the same as the render bubble from the graphics presets. The pixelated portions are well beyond the render bubble limit, this is just the distant textures looking very badly pixelated, and only in portions of the screen - areas adjacent to the blocky areas are low res but fine. I wish that my upload speed was better so I could upload a better quality video to youtube to show it better, but even just these 45 seconds took a long while.

 

Instead of showing less detail, shadows, trees, etc...certain 'tiles' of the map just look extremely low resolution, then pop in to more detail if you zoom in a bit. Adjacent chunks will be find. Not like normal pop in like for trees and buildings within a sphere of distance from your plane at lower settings, where the buildings or trees aren't rendered - even rivers start looking like minecraft blocks, until you touch the zoom, then they render. It looks like at a distance the game is having trouble loading in even the lower res textures, and changes in FOV cause it to load properly.

 

At 0:33 you can see it fairly clearly. The 'render bubble' for trees is about a third of the way up the screen. Beyond that, in the centre, there is one 'tile' of very pixelated landscape. The areas next to it are fine - not rendered in detail, but not so blocky.





A change in FOV of about 8 degrees, and the tile pops in to its normal low-detail distant landscape. It't not any farther away than the tiles that do render properly.

 

Even with a worse graphic card before, I didn't see this, and don't recall seeing it before the last couple patches. 

 

In any case, I updated my drivers to the latest version to see if that helps. I am going to try setting my horizon distance to maximum, distant landscape to X4, and my pre-set to Ultra to see if that makes a difference in testing. I hope it is just a settings issue, then I can just fix it by lowering my settings. But my GPU and CPU don't seem particularly strained at that point in the flight. 

 

Maybe I can also set a video to upload overnight that will show in higher quality what I mean, I have better videos showing the effect more strongly, but did not have a track to go along with them.

 

 

[IckyATLAS]

I understand better what you mean. To better have this effect take a summer map BOM, BOK or BOX with a city at similar distance with the same settings and compare.

Do you have the same effect with all maps? That can help too.

[RedKestrel]

10 minutes ago, IckyATLAS said:

I understand better what you mean. To better have this effect take a summer map BOM, BOK or BOX with a city at similar distance with the same settings and compare.

Do you have the same effect with all maps? That can help too.

I haven't played on BOM or BOS map much lately, but I have noticed it as well on the Kuban map. It definitely seems worse on the Bodenplatte winter map. I think perhaps it is an issue with the map textures not loading properly. I have seen other people reference it in other threads, with different setups, but I am not sure if it is really the same issue or a different one.

When I have time I will run some tests at fixed locations, alts, and on different maps and see if I can reproduce the same effect at different settings. Perhaps this weekend.

[hal_900]

I seem to have lost the 'bubble' since my 4.501 update issues began.

 

I used to see blurred pixellated landscapes and thought it was normal, they're more clear now but the bubble effect is gone and I have shimmering and flicker even on pause.

 

I'm still playing with my settings though. Might copy yours as I also have a 1660 super but I have a Ryzen 3600 CPU.

 

Is your 1660 super a Gigabyte OC edition one by any chance??

 

Edit: external camera makes things worse for me, in cockpit its much better. Im still not seeing a bubble though but maybe is map / season specific.

Edited October 24, 2020 by hal_900

[RedKestrel]

After some fiddling, I was able to minimize this issue by cranking up the distant landscape detail and keeping the landscape filter on Blurred. The graphics pre-sets don't really address the issue, as it is the drawing of the landscape beyond the detailed area of the 'render bubble'.

 

It is not as noticeable but still there - some patches of the map are more pixelated and jagged than others. But in-game, even on a big display, it's only really noticeable if you know it's there at X4 Landscape Detail. The X4 setting ramps up even the least detailed of the terrain tiles so that it doesn't jump out at you.

 

This does have a performance hit of course - not a reduction in FPS as far as I can tell, but an increased incidence of stutters.

 

 

[PreyStalker]

50 minutes ago, RedKestrel said:

After some fiddling, I was able to minimize this issue by cranking up the distant landscape detail and keeping the landscape filter on Blurred. The graphics pre-sets don't really address the issue, as it is the drawing of the landscape beyond the detailed area of the 'render bubble'.

 

It is not as noticeable but still there - some patches of the map are more pixelated and jagged than others. But in-game, even on a big display, it's only really noticeable if you know it's there at X4 Landscape Detail. The X4 setting ramps up even the least detailed of the terrain tiles so that it doesn't jump out at you.

 

This does have a performance hit of course - not a reduction in FPS as far as I can tell, but an increased incidence of stutters.

 

 

Hi, I was wondering what your VRAM useage is with that setting.

 

My poor old GTX 970 can't handle the X4 setting due to only having 4GB of VRAM and it stutters too. I want to upgrade soon, but I'm not sure if 6GB or 8GB is the way to go.

 

Thanks

 

 

[RedKestrel]

Just now, PreyStalker said:

Hi, I was wondering what your VRAM useage is with that setting.

 

My poor old GTX 970 can't handle the X4 setting due to only having 4GB of VRAM and it stutters too. I want to upgrade soon, but I'm not sure if 6GB or 8GB is the way to go.

 

Thanks

 

 

My 1660 Super has 6 GB of RAM. It is faster RAM and has high memory bandwidth, so its not so bad. Previously I have hovered around 4GB of RAM usage at 1440p, with the X4 setting. I lowered the setting initially to avoid stutters after some experimentation. With this issue it just makes the game look ugly especially on winter maps, so I just deal with the occasional stutter.

Go with 8GB if at all possible, IMO. Textures are only getting bigger in size and extra memory will give you room to grow, or use MSAA instead of FXAA, which will probably give you a better image.