Here's the reason I ask. Not to compare FSDT to Imaginsim or Tropical Sim, but I have noticed with some of their sceneries as you move closer or farther from an airport you can actually see individual objects appear or disappear, rather than groups of objects.
Distance culling based on a single object, like a tree for example, it's really a bad idea, and it's probably a relic of FS2002 (and earlier) design methods, which centered around the concept of having many small objects.
This was already a wrong method to use in FS2004, but it's even worse in FSX, because those sims are more reliant on the video card to draw in "batch" of objects grouped by material so, the correct way of doing it, is to group objects and use LOD levels. Having so many small objects, each one with its own ref point and loading range, results in too many draw calls and no chance for the graphic engine to do batching. This is especially true in FSX.
An explanation here, by one of the ACES graphic guys:
http://blogs.technet.com/torgo3000/archive/2007/06/01/performance-art.aspxFrom this explanation, it should be apparent why splitting the scenery in many small objects is a bad idea.
You said yourself the keyword "Not to compare". If we were going to do something at such low complexity level, we'll probably draw the whole airport in a single call, and it would be faster... And, if *they* would try to to KFLL, at *our* complexity level, with those methods, it will probably run at 2 fps...
Sorry, but there's nothing to do more than this to the scenery, and if there was, we already did it by now.
