Cannot place or load grass in many places worldwide

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?

For what it’s worth: Same problem applies to geomes/rock polygons, just that the areas where those can be placed are a bit more limited even.

I couldn’t even see those when placed at Yap Island (that’s where grass works, see above), but everywhere else in the mainland I tried (particularly South Korea all the way to the coast and beyond that for a few hundred meters) works fine.

@Boris Do you know about this? It would certainly help a lot to know what actually lets grass and geomes “grow” in some regions/areas, but not in others.

Thank you!

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Hello,

We were able to reproduce the issue and have logged it.

This will require some work to fix, so unfortunately, it won’t be resolved for SU2, but rather in a later update (no ETA for now).

Also, please be aware that next time, you can edit your post using the Edit button.
This helps us keep everything organized and (much) easier to track and investigate the issues.
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Thank you.

Regards,
Boris

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