Visual Quality of the Base Scenery

[Andrew Godden 934]

Not happy with the quality of the base imagery you are seeing in MSFS!

What you are seeing could be influencing your perspective and how you are looking at MSFS.....and it is all in the "Options" settings.

I recently completed the Breckenridge to Mariposa Yosemite Bush Trip. Part of the route travels up the Owens Valley, an arid valley in eastern California. So, visually, from a flying perspective, the Owens Valley is fairly nondescript with not much to see. I found myself questioning the quality of the scenery even though I have my various graphics settings on "HIGH" or "ULTRA". I have been using these Bush Trip adventures to explore both the features of MSFS and also the graphics settings. However, it wasn't until later in the trip that I went back to look at the "Data" settings in "Options", "General".

Separate to the "Graphics" settings, there are two settings under "Data" which also have a large impact on the quality of the base scenery. "Bing Data World Graphics" and "Photogrammetry". The former relates to high quality aerial imagery and the latter relates to photo-realistic 3D buildings. I can't recall having adjusted these settings previously, but the "Bing Data World Graphics" was set to "OFF". After having set this to "ON", I went back and flew a section of the Owens Valley again and was amazed at the difference in quality.

Now, this comes at a price as both of these features are part of the live streaming features of MSFS and can involve large amounts of data usage (potentially gigabytes). This may be an issue if you are not on an unlimited data plan but it will also depend on the amount of flying you do. For those in this situation, the "Data Consumption" section under "Data" will help monitor this usage based on your flying routine.

Either way, this is another new area/feature of MSFS which can be easily overlooked and yet can "open the eyes" and significantly influence the flight simmers experience and perspective of MSFS.

Cheers
Andrew

[needles 1,010]

Thanks for that Andrew, I will look at those settings later.

[phil white 274]

Thanks I will also look at those settings 

[needles 1,010]

I tried the settings you mentioned above Andrew and this is what I found on Tiree, Scotland.

Tiree_1 is with both settings OFF.

Tiree_2 is both settings ON.

The difference is glaringly obvious hey.

Thanks for the tip.