Originally Posted by zapatista

i suspect, and hope i am wrong here, that oleg in the last months completely switched his tree modeling from his own creations he made previously in the last few years (seen in your post of old screenshots), to now using the new generic "speedtrees" (which some game manufacturers purchase as a 3e party element from a separate company, you can google it to find more info, there is webpages with all the tree models they make)

most likely oleg's only reason for this is that the scenery vegetation and trees he initially made (which look much better !) were to much of a cpu and gpu hog. when in the last 6 months oleg started integrating all the various sub components to put his modualr game design together, he might have found he couldnt get the frames per sec he hoped for. it would have been one of the most simple things to replace the trees/shrubs, while keeping all the other elements he made for the game which also drain cpu/gpu (dynamic campaign engine, weather modeling, flight physics for aircraft, etc..)

if that is the compromise needed to get the finished sim out the door this year, so be it imo. hopefully later oleg can replace the speedtrees with his own creation once they have the luxury of time to make further refinements for game efficiency later

all this is pure speculation on my part