Ben mentioned the new DSF (Distribution Scenery Format) loader in the developer blog. It seems that the development of 10.40 was quite a winding road, and the release date remains unknown.

Regarding this DSF Loader, the main improvement is increasing the speed of loading terrain data to reduce stutters during flight. Technically speaking, it uses worker threads to load 2 DSFs simultaneously in the background.

This version also adds an option for “extended DSF region”. When turned ON, it can load 4 DSFs simultaneously, which will improve the visual range of distant scenery.

Here is a screenshot with extended DSF region mode OFF. You can see the distant scenery is blurry:

Here is a screenshot with extended DSF region mode ON. The distant visibility has improved significantly:

Ben didn’t reveal much information this time, so let’s just patiently wait for the arrival of 10.40.

By the way, version 10.36 was released a while ago, but since it mainly addressed issues with NVidia graphics card drivers and didn’t include any new features, I won’t go into details about it.