Transparent terrain

[tsukki]

I know this issue has been discussed several times before but the threads are older than 2020 so excuse me for bringing this up again since, I think, it hasn’t been fixed. Especially for approach at St. Barts, there is no way I know there is a terrain just before runway 10 unless I look at the chart. This messes up with my brain. And another thing is more a question than a complain: how do I find the waypoints mentioned in the chart (SUGARLOAF, COCO, FREGATE) in game? I’m not familiar with the area so I might get lost here.

[Sturmovik]

I don’t think it’s the same issue, St. Barth is known to have terrain in front of rwy 10’s threshold. The aircraft need to make a sudden dive in order to touch down in the landing markings.

[schyllberg]

Here’s the reason behind it:

Why can airports / planes be seen through terrain?

Here is the answer that Philippe (Infinite Flight Co founder) gave in a recent AMA which can be found here. " There’s been an issue in Infinite Flight since the release of Global, namely that airports and airplanes are visible through terrain? What’s the technical challenge in fixing an issue like this and might Project Metal offer some help here? It was actually there before global too IIRC. It has to do with the virtually infinite view distance we offer in IF (more than any other sim, even M…

[tsukki]

So can I assume Project Metal will fix this issue?

[Jan]

@tsukki

So can I assume Project Metal will fix this issue

Did you read the post linked above?

[tsukki]

I did, I just made that assumption based on this.

It is a side effect of the choices we made to make that possible. It is fixable, we just haven’t gotten around to it. The focus is indeed on Project Metal for anything Graphics Related.

[Jan]

You skipped the most important part:

@AdamCallow

The focus is indeed on Project Metal for anything Graphics Related. It should help in the sense that we will have more options to fix it."

[adit]

@Sturmovik

I don’t think it’s the same issue

I agree. My answer was not well thought through (deleted).

Maybe something like the following is closer to a proper distinction:

The “invisible hill” issue arises primarily from depth sorting and precision challenges. Limited depth buffer precision and floating-point arithmetic can lead to small depth differences between objects being inaccurately represented, causing closer objects, like a hill, to become invisible while further objects, like an airport, are incorrectly drawn on top. This issue is exacerbated by the painter’s algorithm, which sorts and draws polygons based on average distance, sometimes failing to handle tightly packed or overlapping objects accurately.

On the other hand, the Milford Sound issue stems from terrain resolution problems. Low-resolution terrain data and mesh quality can lead to unrealistic or exaggerated peaks and valleys, as sparse data points and interpolation create artificial features. While floating-point precision also plays a role, the primary cause is the inadequate resolution of the terrain elements, resulting in a distorted representation of the landscape.

And of course, Jan’s point about graphics related improvement options, is the sensible re-emphasis to Schyllberg’s answer to the op’s question.