MSFS24 2024 LOD system is horrible, how to get models to stay sharp for a reasonable distance using MCX lod creator

[astaticmusic]

On my side, I put the exact same commands to create the LOD but when in the sim, I get a melted object because MCX start with LOD 615 instead of 100. Loading back the XML shows the issue :

View attachment 99258

This is the XML content. It would be nice if we could reedit manualy the LOD in the XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ModelInfo guid="{cc7128c3-24b8-4c8e-81b3-80b90ba5714e}" version="1.1">
<LODS>
<LOD minSize="57" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD0.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="56" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD1.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="56" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD2.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="54" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD3.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="45" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD4.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="35" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD5.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="12" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD6.gltf"/>
</LODS>
</ModelInfo>

try changing the starting LOD to 100 and follow that guide again, see if that makes a difference.

 

[pinkjr]

Thanks.

Sketchup. and thats the problem - if i were using blender or another one, i would probably be doing the lods in those programs. But in this case I am simply trying to use a model (shouldnt matter where it was created) and run the lod creator on it to generate lods that would suffice, but no matter what combinations of grid sizes and etc... the lods always come out crumpled looking after the first "switch". I am just asking if anyone else uses it successfully, or has ever used it successfully or if i am just wasting days trying different methods that - in the end- wont work either way.

Thanks Gary. you are correct. sketchup is the program. guess i should finish my blender training.

Let me assure you, 99% of what you want to do can be handled by Sketchup, Im still using Make 2017. I also use Blender, but only when I need animation as in jetways, or need to add a lot of Advanced lights.

Creating LODs with MCX couldn't be easier. There are lots of parameters you can select to make smooth transitions from one LOD to the next.

So, don't discard Sketchup just because you haven't figured out how to LOD with it. In any case there's nothing wrong with learning Blender......but it takes 1/10 of the time to model in SKU than it does in Blender.

Just my 2MP. ;-)

 

[pinkjr]

On my side, I put the exact same commands to create the LOD but when in the sim, I get a melted object because MCX start with LOD 615 instead of 100. Loading back the XML shows the issue :

View attachment 99258

This is the XML content. It would be nice if we could reedit manualy the LOD in the XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ModelInfo guid="{cc7128c3-24b8-4c8e-81b3-80b90ba5714e}" version="1.1">
<LODS>
<LOD minSize="57" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD0.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="56" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD1.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="56" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD2.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="54" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD3.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="45" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD4.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="35" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD5.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="12" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD6.gltf"/>
</LODS>
</ModelInfo>

Starting with Grid Size of 1 is too aggressive. Try a value of .05 and see what you get. I always aim for each LOD to have 50% of the previous LODs triangle count.

Also, for a model like this....use Quadratic Based Approximation instead of Vertex Clustering, with the default value of 50........see what you get. Then continue to apply until your last LOD has something like 1500 triangles.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ModelInfo guid="{cc7128c3-24b8-4c8e-81b3-80b90ba5714e}" version="1.1">
<LODS>
<LOD minSize="6" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD0.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="5" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD1.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="4" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD2.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="3" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD3.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="2" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD4.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="1" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD5.gltf"/>
<LOD minSize="0" ModelFile="Tracteur soufleuse-jaune_LOD6.gltf"/>
</LODS>
</ModelInfo>

The sim will decide the right minSize.

 

[gouaill]

try changing the starting LOD to 100 and follow that guide again, see if that makes a difference.

This is what I did : started with 100 in MCX but when loading it back the XML to check the result, I get another result than 100.

 

[gouaill]

A few trials later, these are the steps taken:

1- Created the LODs in MCX as proposed :

2- Loaded back the XML to see the result. This is the weird step because it should stay 100, 80, etc.

3- Rewrite the XML as proposed by Dick (if my interpretation was right):

4- Check the result in FS2024 : better than before when I was not rewriting the XML, but still desapearing to soon (last image is just after the tractor is removed). The red tractor is made with an iden square, as a target reference.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

Microsoft make tons of the assets used by 2024. Many of them use a big invisible plane to force the LODs to 'linger' longer before disappearing. This forces the bounding sphere to be huge, which is used to compute the visibility for each LOD. It's a cheat that was also used in 2020. Still used, even though Asobo somehow doesn't like it. So feel free to use it, and consider yourself as good as Microsoft.

I see your number of triangles for the last LOD is still 16904... it should be about 400. So you aren't reducing the mesh of the tractor nearly enough. And you don't need that many LODs. You could aim for a triangle count reduction of around 0.3 of the previous number of triangles... 55520->16656->5000->1500->450 5 LODs in that case. You could lower it one more LOD, but if you use the invisible plane trick, you wouldn't need that. A discussion with the Asobo guys resulted in the reduction of 25% being the goal between LODs. You could try that, but you might lose too much detail too early.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

This is Microsoft's Harvester. A similar number of triangles as your tractor example. I'm guessing they used Simplygon to make the LODs? The percent reduction from the previous LODs: 60%, 20%, 16%, and 12%. Works pretty good. Notice that each LOD used a huge invisible plane to insure visibility as they liked it. I get they used the reduction of 60% to retain most of the detail from the base LOD. Makes sense. How did they come up with that number? I'm thinking it was perhaps trial and error with the help of Simplygon. They also reduced textures with the decimation of the mesh. Probably trial and error as well. No sense having normals and COMP from visually far away. Or interior mesh or textures.

 

[rhumbaflappy]

My_Harvester is using the LOD0 from the default Microsoft_Vehicles_Harvester. I used MCX's LOD Creator's vertex clustering to make LODs from that. I used 0.0125, 0.25, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 as the grid. Because of the large invisible plane, I could have just used LOD0->LOD3. and it would have looked OK in the sim. Notice how far away the LOD1 kicks in. At that distance, you can't really tell the difference between using 50% reduction and the about 25% reduction I used in MCX. My drawcalls are not great because I didn't try to reduce the number of textures, or delete mesh for things like the interior mesh or wipers etc. Note the GPU Bitmap Size. Microsoft went to smaller textures and less textures to reduce the GPU load for smaller LODs.

But I would be happy with the results from MCX's LOD creator, to have that in a package.

 

[pinkjr]

For custom taxiway lights, the invisible box still works grrrrrrrreat.