Flat World, anyway to improve?

I have 2010 Global Terrain and never really thought of any negatives until I tried X-plane. Running FSX after X-plane I right away picked up a problem: the flatness of the world which is really upsetting.

Nevermind the curved runways and airport plateaus seen in X-plane (understood it is impossible in FSX), but flat is everything else. See this - the sea and the land share the same "elevation height" - something really annoying especially after you bite the piece of the "x-plane apple".

Seems like the global mesh improves terrain where it is hilly/mountainous only, it doesn't do anything to this Boston area for example.

FSX does have a round earth model. See Appendix II: The World Coordinate System in section Terrain and Scenery of the FSX SDK

 

In Flight Simulator, the earth is defined as an “oblate spheroid,” an ellipse rotated about its minor axis. In terms of shape, it's much like a sphere that is a little bit fat around the equator. In Flight Simulator, the earth has the following dimensions:

• Equatorial diameter=12756.27 km

• Equatorial circumference=40075.0 km

• Polar diameter=12734.62 km

• Polar circumference=40007.0 km

Is anyone familiar with FSGenisis products? I see they have regional pack, so if let's say I try the East cost USA, would that improve the "flat world" picture we have otherwise?

Is anyone familiar with FSGenisis products? I see they have regional pack, so if let's say I try the East cost USA, would that improve the "flat world" picture we have otherwise?

 

First I would look to your settings. While the sim will always use the highest mesh available, it will only do so if you have the settings in the FSX and scenery .cfg to take advantage.

 

Here, it looks like something is preventing the 2010 Global mesh from doing its job.

 

Shouldn't have to tell you this but provide system specs, FSX.cfg and in this case what addon sceneries are installed - the issue need not be confined to addon scenery that seemingly affects the area you're flying in, as there are many documented cases of scenery addons half a world away causing problems like this.

I maxed my mesh/terrain complexity level which didn't help.

My specs are EVGA GTX 970, 4790K CPU.

I have no regional, city or photoreal sceneries, only airport sceneries (FSDT/Aerosoft etc...) plus FTX Global. I try to keep it "clean".

 

 

I'm not in front of my computer now but I am curious as to what settings can be edited in

FSX.cfg to help the mesh generate properly. I've read Kosta's tweaking thread and don't remember much talk about terrain.

I have 2 FSX installations on separate drives, one is in the "virgin" state so as soon as I get home I will load the Boston airport and see how it appears there... I believe it will be same thing. Is your Boston (or NY JFK/LGA...) airport sit on a flat plateau? I can't claim the areas are totally flat, I see some nice elevations (terrain) over the Staten Island area which is hilly, but still... I assume in order to elevate the coast lines it takes a detailed terrain like 30 or 7m or whatever it is, I'm not too-well familiar with it.

I don't have the product you mention, but I just went to Boston at default, and in slew mode the airport was 21.8 feet (subtract 3 or 4 feet for the aircraft height) and elsewhere (in the limited area I checked near the airport, including the water), I saw elevations ranging from about 1.8 to something a little over 45 ft. This is default scenery. I have mesh resolution set to 5m and mesh complexity set to 100. Texture resolution is at 30 cm, and all the other sliders are full right (maxed). So it's not a flat FSX -- there's something either in your product or in your settings that needs to change.

You don't have your mesh installed correctly.

I have 2010 Global Terrain and never really thought of any negatives until I tried X-plane. Running FSX after X-plane I right away picked up a problem: the flatness of the world which is really upsetting.

Nevermind the curved runways and airport plateaus seen in X-plane (understood it is impossible in FSX), but flat is everything else. See this - the sea and the land share the same "elevation height" - something really annoying especially after you bite the piece of the "x-plane apple".

.

 

Ok, so stick with X Plane then. I mean, no offense, but if you prefer one sim over the other, then pick that one and enjoy..no need to compare and ask "why can't ____ be like _____?"

From the air, 21 feet is not much difference. It's like comparing the height of sheet of paper compared to the ground under it while standing up.

 

You're being too picky. Put that plane down on old Meigs and you'll see the difference between the land and water more plainly. Try Kansai Int RJBB on a man made island only 12 feet above sea level. One of the few man made objects easily viewable from orbit without aid.

 

The mesh sliders determine how bumpy the terrain is.

 

Another thing to consider is not ALL runways are rendered to the same quality. More attention is given to popular runways than remote or unused/closed ones. Developers only have so much time and so many years they can spend on a project without getting some payback.

 

Obviously the limitations of an eight year old FSX vs the money you are spending are not up to your standards.

 

-Pv-

I found the cause of the problem: it's the airport scenery, default is elevated and addon is not (flush with sea).

FSGlobal 2010 is said to be 19m for USA, don't think there is any think better than that.

Ok Pv, we'll enjoy what we have.

You got quite a bit closer on this shot. Nice.

 

19m is the resolution? No wonder the OOMs

 

-Pv-

I'm over with my VAS problems, the happy outcome is recorder in this thread:

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?288111-I-think-I-solved-my-OOM-issues&highlight=alexzar14

 

FTX Vector had a lot to do with it but it is optimizable. DX10 too helped to improve the VAS. So far the lowest VAS I have is around 400MB.

Terrain... this is a new hint, I never thought of it. Sure I'd like to improve my VAS further (so I feel confident and don't look at the VAS counter every 5 seconds on approach), but removing terrain... don't know.

 

The developer (PILOT) isn't very specific on the resolution, generally it is told the 2010 Gobal is 19m, some areas are 9 (Hawaii etc), so I could assume some other areas that are not too hilly (like the East coast of US) are 38m or even 76m (why bother...) So that part is unclear. From here we can make two conclusions:

 

1. Default FSX is 76m which isn't too bad - you had to pay $$ to have 76m in FS9.

To fly an airliner, we could probably live with 76m if that helps the VAS.

80% of time I fly airliners.

 

2. If the EaCo-USA and Europe in PILOT's terrain is not 19m as advertised in general, than it is just another reason to consider giving up the Pilot's terrain. But we don't know specific details of Pilot's terrain.

Some regions like south France and Italy are good in higher m. resolutions, but than 76m is good enough... dilemmas...