It seems that with the exception of a few stragglers (...Tree? Wonder which option he'll vote for ;) ) the results are in.

Thought I'd give my take on the outcome, with the proviso that it is just my opinion. I can foresee disagreement in the interpretation of all this - maybe we just moved the problem one step back, from disagreeing about the terrain to disagreeing about the meaning of the vote about the terrain :) Really, the only interpretation that is important is what the devs make of it.

I'll be upfront and state that I voted "Very Unhappy", but I'll try to give a balanced reading of how I see the result. Some of you may disagree on whether I succeed or not. ;)

It's a mix of good and bad. Roughly two thirds of people are happy against one third unhappy. The devs should take some comfort from that. It means that maybe it isn't so critical to get this fixed asap - the majority of people can continue to enjoy the game while waiting for terrain improvements. (This wasn't clear before the poll. From the noise generated it was easy to believe the split was closer to 50:50.)

Having said that, the vast majority (94%) believe that further improvement is necessary.

On the bad side, to have over a third (38%) of your customers dissatisfied with something as important as the terrain IS serious, and to have 1 in 8 (13%) of the people responding say that the terrain actually puts them off playing the game is disastrous (despite being one of the afflicted I was really surprised the number was as high as that).

So, not sure overall exactly what this proves - maybe that we are severely split - though we didn't need a poll to realise that. A majority are happy with things as they stand. A small, but significant, number are so unhappy they don't want to play the game.

Over to the devs......

low.jpg vs high.jpg

I voted generally happy. The one terrain thing I notice every time I fly that could do with work is the way that the shoreline render essentially draws over the top of the water render. The effect this has is to slightly shrink the area the water covers (specifically inland rivers & lakes) as the edges are drawn over by the shoreline render. As this is a distance affected render, as the river or lake becomes more distant the shoreline render dissapears. The overall and undesirable affect is that rivers and lakes appear to get wider and wider the further into the distance they get, resulting in a kind of patchwork land archipelago effect. It would almost be better if the shoreline was only rendered at distance, and dissapeared close up but that would kind of defeat the point of it.

The very existence of this poll carries more significance than the actual results.

Of course...everybody knows that 1 poll starter is worth 1000 regular people, therefore everytime somebody wants to gripe.....start a poll.

And if most people vote a certain way bongo, doesn't it make the poll and vote valid?

Yes it does but the poster I quoted seems dissatisfied that the poll doesn't agree with his view and is suggesting the existence of the poll is more a validation of the negative aspect despite the majority positive result.

i would say if 1 in 3 people who paid money for your product were unhappy then i would say its a fail.

especially if you wanted to sell them your next product.

i think one needs to pay closer attention to the option description rather then the headline i.e. there is a clear majority who's not really generally happy but rather thinking it needs some improvement (my case). sorry but that's because of the way the options were stated; it's hard to say i'm unhappy, the terrain cannot be described as 'poor' but it does need some improvement. and i am not generally happy, nor do i think anyone mentioning its shortcomings.
so as i see it the results are not that mixed, rather there is one main clear conclusion: terrain is not so bad but it does need some improvement

Very unhappy, No bank on rivers at Oleg stated long ago that it will... Old technology for terrain design .. The whole Sim is a disappointment to me at the moment..