I use a reduced LOD (0.6) and default dynamic LOD reduction. What I see online is quite bad: at some distance there's a white brick. Then at closer distance it becomes a bus. Or a car.



I just opened an MPR from 1-2 weeks ago, and there's just plenty of such models. Red bus turns into white brick. White-blue-yellow police car turns crimson! Look what the famous dragster looks like. It's tall and visible from far away in this wedge-like shape.



I've cropped the images, so they may seem small. Also, when it's a static image may not seem that a problem. But when it's online race, your eyes catch the moving objects and pay most attention to them, and when things change both shape and color in plain sight, it's very irritating.

Also, this may happen even when the distance to the object changes very little -- notice a bus that drives left to right to the viewer.







Notice objects (headlight and windshield) appear, and also the inconsistency between LODs of the cars nearby:


Windshield appearing:



The original models by Eric have both textures and colors in low-LOD models mapped correctly, e.g. windshield is replaced with a texture with darker part there, so nothing appears/disappears in your sight, and when LOD is in normal range (0.6 and higher), you can barely notice models change LOD. Not so with mods.

I urge the mod delevopers to pay attention to this, and Scawen to make low-LOD models easier to see for the modders.

My guess is usually these are mods with only two levels of detail.

Or another fault is to create a mod with 3 levels of detail, but use the wrong colours for the middle LOD, wrongly assuming that it is only for shadows.

In fact LOD2 is not only for shadow and LOD3 is not only for collision. They are also graphical levels of detail, which is why they are called levels of detail!

Here is some more information about it, that I updated yesterday:
https://en.lfsmanual.net/wiki/LFS_Editor_Guides#Level_of_detail_.28LOD.29_and_Shadow_.2F_Physics_.2F_Collision_meshes

In case of my Karobus, I believe it's the LOD3 having just the M1 mapping on it. In LOD1 and LOD2 the bottom part and the side stripes are M2/C2 colours. I'm not sure there's enough triangles left to simulate that in LOD3.

Quote from Flame CZE :

In case of my Karobus, I believe it's the LOD3 having just the M1 mapping on it. In LOD1 and LOD2 the bottom part and the side stripes are M2/C2 colours. I'm not sure there's enough triangles left to simulate that in LOD3.

your mod using "body" not M1.
with M1 mapping it should look like that (better than default white 'blob'). there is no need for more triangles, just people need make proper mappings.

(sorry for that, used only as example)

I think what Draggo is saying (but I haven't looked in the mod) is that in this case you could use the mapping of the central big stripe, for all the side triangles. I guess that should do the best job, which should actually look quite reasonable in the case when people aren't using different colours. And it would even put black squares over the windows.

Of course it would be 'wrong' when people have used different C2 colours in their colour config.

In reality the LOD distances have been set for car-sized objects and I haven't given thought to adjusting them for bus-sized objects. It could be that it would be a good idea to use LOD2 up to a greater distance before switching to LOD3.

EDIT: Or maybe the C2 side mapping would be a better choice for the LOD2 side triangles than the C1 side mapping?

I forgot to mention that it is quite a good idea for mod creators to switch to a low User LOD setting when testing their mod, to see how the LOD popping looks, in that exaggerated state.

I see now. I've changed it in my version to use the actual M1/C1 cutouts with the skin texture, I think that should look fine.

Thanks for the tips!

Yeah I'm sure that helps. Often the colour change is more noticeable than the shape change.

Quote from Flame CZE :

I see now. I've changed it in my version to use the actual M1/C1 cutouts with the skin texture, I think that should look fine.

Thanks for the tips!

This transition looks a lot better!