Change Prepar3D scenery draw distance using LOD radius and autogen controls, with practical settings to avoid blurry textures, stutters and pop-in.
To change scenery draw distance in Prepar3D, open the simulator’s display or world scenery settings and adjust Level of Detail Radius for terrain and ground textures, plus Autogen and Scenery Draw Distance for buildings, trees and 3D objects. Raise them for a wider visible area; lower them to improve performance.
Which Prepar3D setting controls draw distance?
Prepar3D separates terrain distance from the distance at which 3D objects are drawn, so one slider does not control everything.
| Setting | What it controls | What it does not control |
|---|---|---|
| Level of Detail Radius | The radius of detailed terrain mesh and ground textures around the aircraft. | Autogen density, scenery-package coverage or the source texture’s resolution. |
| Autogen and Scenery Draw Distance | How far away trees, buildings and supported scenery objects remain visible. | Objects whose distance limits are built into an add-on’s models. |
| Scenery Complexity | The amount and complexity of scenery objects displayed. | The terrain-detail radius. |
| Autogen Vegetation Density and Building Density | The number of autogen objects placed in the visible area. | The maximum distance at which that area is drawn. |
| Texture Resolution | The sharpness available from terrain textures. | The size of the terrain loading radius. |
The exact page and wording vary between Prepar3D generations. Look under the Options area containing World, Scenery or display settings; some older releases do not provide the same combined autogen and scenery-distance control.
How do I increase or reduce the distance?
Change one distance control at a time and test it from the same aircraft, location and weather conditions.
- Load a repeatable test flight. Use an area where the problem is obvious, then pause or fly the same short route after each adjustment.
- Open Prepar3D’s Options screen. Select the World or Scenery display page used by your version.
- Adjust Level of Detail Radius. Move it higher to retain detailed terrain farther from the aircraft, or lower it to reduce terrain loading.
- Adjust Autogen and Scenery Draw Distance. Increase it when trees or buildings disappear too close to the aircraft. Reduce it when dense areas produce stutters or poor frame rates.
- Apply the change and allow scenery to reload. A temporary burst of blurry tiles immediately after moving the slider is not a reliable test.
- Repeat in small steps. Once distance is acceptable, tune scenery complexity and autogen density separately rather than maximising every control.
A mistake we see constantly is raising both distance sliders and both density sliders together. That makes it impossible to identify whether terrain loading, object draw calls or object density caused the performance loss.
What scenery draw distance should I use?
There is no universal best value because the useful balance depends on the flight, scenery and hardware.
- Photoreal or orthophoto flying: prioritise Level of Detail Radius. A wider radius exposes more imagery, but it can also produce soft tiles when the simulator cannot load textures quickly enough. Our guide to diagnosing blurry Prepar3D ground textures covers that trade-off.
- Low-level VFR over cities: use enough autogen draw distance to prevent distracting pop-in, then control the load with building density, vegetation density and shadows.
- Airliner operations: a moderate autogen distance is often sufficient because distant individual buildings are difficult to see from cruise altitude. Preserve performance for detailed airports and weather.
- Systems showing stutters: reduce autogen and scenery distance first if the pauses happen over cities. Reduce Level of Detail Radius if ground textures fall behind or the pauses occur while new terrain tiles load.
Start from your version’s normal preset and move one notch at a time. Maximum is not automatically best: a wider radius covers a much larger area, so the resource cost can rise faster than the visual improvement suggests.
Why does increasing draw distance not fix pop-in?
A higher global setting cannot override every scenery package, model or visibility condition in Prepar3D.
- Model-specific LOD: an add-on developer can define when an object switches detail levels or disappears. The global slider may not extend that limit.
- Missing scenery coverage: Level of Detail Radius cannot create imagery or objects outside the installed package’s boundaries.
- Inactive scenery: scenery that is installed in the wrong location or not enabled will not appear at any draw distance. Check the correct installation and activation procedure for Prepar3D scenery.
- Texture-loading pressure: setting an excessive terrain radius can make distant ground visible but blurry because the loader cannot keep up.
- Weather visibility: haze and reduced visibility can conceal distant scenery without changing the distance at which it is loaded.
Performance costs and configuration-file edits
Higher terrain distance increases terrain, texture, storage, memory and VRAM demand, while longer autogen distance adds CPU draw calls and GPU work. Shadows cast by those extra objects can amplify the cost. Older 32-bit Prepar3D releases may also encounter address-space limits; later 64-bit releases avoid that particular ceiling but remain limited by available hardware.
If frame rate or smoothness deteriorates, reduce the setting responsible for the visible problem rather than cutting everything. Our Prepar3D performance-tuning checklist explains how scenery complexity, shadows, clouds and traffic interact with these distance controls.
We recommend using the interface instead of forcing unsupported values in Prepar3D.cfg. Some releases store the terrain value under an entry such as LOD_RADIUS, but values beyond the interface range may be clamped, ignored or cause heavy stuttering and persistent texture loading.
If a draw-distance setting keeps reverting, close Prepar3D before making changes and check that its configuration file is not read-only or being rewritten by a profile utility. Editing the file while the simulator is running can also result in the change being overwritten when Prepar3D closes.