Version: 1.3.23.0
Frequency: Consistently
Severity: Blocker
Bug description:
It’s an issue that came up when I wanted to upgrade a small island - Ulithi (TT02) in this instance. It’s one of these typical lush green islands in Micronesia. For reference a photo I took a few years ago:
This is what it looks like in MSFS2024:
No grass:
Same island in MSFS2020:
Now the huge problem is that in Ulithi and many, many other places around the world (mostly remote islands, including some marked as “star airports”) there is not only no grass but there is ZERO possibility to place the same there. Grass simply doesn’t load:
Material type “Grass07” at Ulithi:
Material type “Grass07” at Yap airport:
Initially I thought that everything that falls outside a defined EcoRegion described in the SDK (https://ecoregions.appspot.com/) cannot load grass. But even on the small islands south of Ulithi that are within an EcoRegion, there’s growing nothing.
In addition the tile debugger doesn’t show much of a difference between areas than can and that cannot grow grass.
The problem is somewhat similar to what has been described here, however it doesn’t seem to be only roads that exclude grass placement but whole areas of the globe, which is becoming a big issue.
So the big question is: What controls grass placement and how can we “convince” MSFS2024 to load grass in these regions?
