[X32Wright]

The placement of the 'high resolution' polygons are not determined by where they are 'positioned' in the map but rather how close they are to the 'virtual camera'. Although this cane be done too by the game developer meaning it can program the higher density polygons to be loaded near the bases but in general LOD (level of detail) loading is determined by view and camera distance. So this means if you are looking 'externally or 'from inside the cockpit' this distance to the trees determines HOW and WHEN the high resolution polygons are loaded. The issue is still the same because even with LOD too much detailed trees would still increase the overall polygon load specially with damage modeling on them.

Surely 2D polygon cutout trees as modeled and rendered can be made to orient to the camera hereby making it appear 3D, it is the number of them thats still an issue in a fli-sim. This 'polyface orientation based on camera view' technique is already being used int eh game though in the cloud generation.

FPS games tho cheats, they dont exactly show all the trees or all the polygons since there is a lot of CLIPPING and CULLING (back-face) happening there based on occlusion. This means objects that are obscured even temporarily by the camera are immediately removed or buffered so in these fps games they always look like there is more in the scene than actually is being 'rendered' in real-time. This is harder to do with fli-sim where your view extends 'forever' at at least as far as the camera near and far clipping planes are set to.