Pop-up objects are a byproduct of the compromise between performance and visual quality for game programmers.
From what I understand objects are generally very cpu intensive for keeping track of where they are in the virtual space and because flight sims offer such a vast, visible area at times, drawing objects out to the end of visibility could encompass tens of kilometers. Fly over a city and you can see how things get out of hand, yet we don't want to limit view distance over countryside where a few buildings here and there may be well within available processing power.
Back in the day the only feasible way around this was to have less objects and as many objects "baked" into ground textures as you could get away with. The vertex and pixel shaders in newer video cards helps out and allows more or better quality objects but CloD really pushes the limit to make a believable cityscape so we are still butting our heads up against the limits of technology from what I see in the videos and screenshots.
With that said I also get the impression that Oleg and team have added quite a bit of personal control over video options including viewing distance for objects so it is also likely we will also have the "fade-in" objects at that perimeter as well like some other games have incorporated. I have no idea what the hit on resources is for that but I'm also hoping Oleg has tuned the LOD's to strike a good balance between performance and visual quality.
Bottom line is most of us will have to make some compromises even on newer systems. For me a minimum framerate over 40fps is the least I can handle so I may consider dropping the resolution below my native 1920x1080 and making up for the jaggies with AA since I will likely have more spare video card headroom than CPU (i5-750 overclocked to 3.8ghz which ain't too bad) then tweak the other video settings accordingly, but we'll have to wait and see.
I suspect CloD will run half-decently on even lower spec systems with enough concessions on effects and video quality, especially over the channel. Mark my words it will be flying at 1000m over cities that will kill you.
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