Swiss Alps shockingly bad

[Majickthyse]

Overall this game is pretty much a masterpiece (when it is working well).

But the Swiss Alps have been let down badly by a low resolution mesh. The Matterhorn looks more like the Splatterhorn. The Eiger, Monch, Jungfrau, Wetterhorn and Breithorn are almost unrecognisable.

To be fair, with previous sims it has usually been necessary to buy a payware DLC to get a decent mesh for the Alps. But now in 2020 I would expect a flagship product, released with such fanfare as this , to make some effort to make an iconic part of the world look decent instead of going cheap on it.

Clearly it is possible, because the Yosemite and Cascades meshes look pretty decent. Switzerland is not the only low quality area. North Wales also has a poor quality mesh.

So, please Asobo/Microsoft, sort out the poor quality meshes, or failing that, someone else please give us payware products to improve them.

[theonefrancis]

I'm afraid that's all on Bing maps, some satellite pictures are horrible tbh. This doesn't change even at the highest settings or pre-downloading the meshes, so I guess we cannot do much. Maybe mods will improve them.

[Rhym3z]

The same goes for the grand canyon. It looks awful

[Majickthyse]

Początkowo opublikowane przez theonefrancis:

I'm afraid that's all on Bing maps, some satellite pictures are horrible tbh. This doesn't change even at the highest settings or pre-downloading the meshes, so I guess we cannot do much. Maybe mods will improve them.

Well I agree that Bing maps provide the textures. But do they also provide the elevation data? I'm not sure about that...

[zbieraj]

The same with Norwegian fjords. So many weird artefacts...

[theonefrancis]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Majickthyse:

Początkowo opublikowane przez theonefrancis:

I'm afraid that's all on Bing maps, some satellite pictures are horrible tbh. This doesn't change even at the highest settings or pre-downloading the meshes, so I guess we cannot do much. Maybe mods will improve them.

Well I agree that Bing maps provide the textures. But do they also provide the elevation data? I'm not sure about that...

If think it doesn't, I have seen some sceneries with rivers put hundreds of feet above ground because the mesh was wrong.

[toosas]

North Wales? Snowdon looks quite decent compared to the butchered UK coastline - most of the cliffs around the uk have been pushed down to sea level!! That's my only gripe with the game, but it is a country-wide issue. Talking about the alps - Neustift region just past Innsbruck looks fairly recognisable, but the mesh does look low poly, no doubts about that!

[Mars Cariocecus]

Bing maps is not very good, below a small comparison of the the same region in Switzerland in different maps apps, Swisstopo the official Swiss Confederation satellite imagery accessible to everyone, Google Maps and the last one is Bing Maps.



https://imgur.com/a/JIbnkfX

[luftfisch]

After I have flown over the impressive detailed city of Zurich, I am also disappointed about the alps. The Eiger north wall seems to be made of no more than 10 polygons and the building that their AI popped on the Jungfraujoch is just a joke.

[Majickthyse]

Początkowo opublikowane przez toosas:

North Wales? Snowdon looks quite decent compared to the butchered UK coastline - most of the cliffs around the uk have been pushed down to sea level!! That's my only gripe with the game, but it is a country-wide issue. Talking about the alps - Neustift region just past Innsbruck looks fairly recognisable, but the mesh does look low poly, no doubts about that!

My problem with North Wales is the castles, specifically Harlech and Criccieth. They have made the effort to put a castle where Harlech Castle is, but because the elevation data is too poor it's not sitting on a hill overlooking the town as in real life and you'd have to be looking for it carefully (as I was :) ) to even spot it was there.

I don't remember if they modelled Criccieth, but the hill it sits on is pretty much not there.

I agree Snowdon looks ok, and the ground textures are the best colour I've seen yet for North Wales.

Small beer compared to the Alps fiasco, I agree :)

[Majickthyse]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Mars Cariocecus:

Bing maps is not very good, below a small comparison of the the same region in Switzerland in different maps apps, Swisstopo the official Swiss Confederation satellite imagery accessible to everyone, Google Maps and the last one is Bing Maps.



https://imgur.com/a/JIbnkfX

I have to say I actually prefer the Bing image out of those comparisons :)

But my gripe isn't about the textures, it's about the elevation mesh resolution. This would be a pretty easy thing to get right if they had bought decent elevation data.

[Savage]

Try the manual cache download - it allows you to download regions manually to the cache, in addition to selecting the type of quality from low, medium to high. I've found a considerable difference in quality doing this. You'll find it in options.

[Alabeo]

Perhaps they are poor but remember that we're talking about entire planet. Not everything is going to be 100% accurate. It depends on map data and Bing as much as Google Maps have areas that are bad.

[...]

Day 3 of release and the whole world not fixed yet ? come on :) lol

[...]

You do know MSFS X came out in 2006 and they are still " fixing mesh issues " payware to fix the graphics , and here MSFS is on day 3 and everyone is all " omg omg " house is on fire.

It's going to take time

[Majickthyse]

Thanks for all the supportive comments for Asobo/Microsoft. It's touching to see. But this isn't a case of ongoing tweaks and fixes.

In the case of mesh resolution the devs made a conscious decision up front to use a low quality mesh in these areas rather than a decent quality mesh. They went cheap on us and they could easily fix that by loading a different mesh.

You can go belly up and beg for treats if you want but I'm still going to make them aware of areas where this flagship product has deficiencies, especially because in other areas the product shines. Otherwise how will they know what to fix??