terrain textures sometimes take too long to update

[ulisses 1]

Hi,Any tip to update the hi-res textures around the aircraft faster ?Sometimes in an approach half of the terrain textures are low-res and half hi-res, I'd like to get textures loading earlier.Any suggestion ?thanks,Ulisses

[ulisses 1]

bbuuuummmppppppp !

[Cruachan 705]

Hi,Without knowing more about your system capabilities it is difficult to comment.However, you might try the following:1. Reduce your target frame rate (e.g. if it is currently set at ,say, 25fps try reducing to 20fps)2. Try experimenting by dragging your display sliders back a bit. 3. In the 'TERRAIN' section of the FS2002.cfg try changing the following entry:TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 <------change to "0"This will stop the sim loading textures in the far distance and reduce loading times from the hard disk. My personal preference is to leave it set to "1" but I can understand others saying that it is usually unnecessary to load these textures if you have reduced your visibility range and the resultant haze obscures them. However, if you fly in clear weather you may not like the rather bland appearance of these textures as represented in the distance. 4. In addition to the above, reduce your visibility to 20 miles through the Weather option in Fs2002. Max. visibility should be set to 60 miles in the Scenery section of Options/Display.In summary all you are trying to do is relieve your CPU of some workload so that more processing time is available to concentrate on updating the textures around your aircraft.Hope this is of some help.Mike :-wave

[ulisses 1]

Thanks !My system:Athlon XP2000+768mb RAM DDR266GF4ti4200 128mbSamsung 7200rpm 80gb HDI leave the target frame rate at unlimited, I have extend textures on, my max. visibility is 60.I'll try your suggestions, anyway my sim is smoother when running frames at unlimited...Thanks again,Ulisses

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Ulisses,>my sim is smoother when running frames at unlimited...Believe me you are not doing yourself any favours. To get the best out of FS, and with your spec you should be able to achieve just that, you do need to restrict the target frame rate to allow the CPU to deliver as many of the other visual goodies as possible. Its all a question of balance. To guarantee fluid motion in most situations it should not be necessary to increase your target frame rate above 25fps.Here is my system spec and my current entries in the 'TERRAIN' section of FS2002.cfg:My System Spec:Gigabyte GA-8IRXP MoBoIntel Pentium 4 2.2A512MB Crucial PC2100 DDR Ram3D Blaster4 Ti4400 (Creative's 30.82 driver variants tweaked with RivaTuner LOD -0.1 and Anisotropy forced level 8)Sony Multiscan G200 17" MonitorSB Audigy Player (Drivers version 5.12.01.0253 Signed)Deskstar 120GXP UDMA100 HDs x 2 (60 and 40 Gig)CH Products USB Yoke, Pedals and FighterstickPlantronics Headset and Mike comboPlexWriter 40/12/40APioneer DVD-106SWindows XP Home Edition (SP1)DirectX 8.1TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=3.470000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000 <--my previous setting was 5.50000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3and here are the entries from the 'GRAPHICS' section:FULL_SCREEN=0PERFORMANCE_MODE=0DEF_PERF_MODE=3TEXT_SCROLL=1AUTO_LOD=1DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=2TEXTURE_QUALITY=3EFFECTS_QUALITY=2CLOUD_SPRITE_PERCENTAGE=0.600000GROUND_SHADOWS=0SMOOTH_VIEW=1IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1LANDING_LIGHTS=1IMAGE_QUALITY=0TEXTURE_BLDG=1TEXTURE_GND=1TEXTURE_WATER=1AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2SEE_SELF=1PROPELLER_VISIBLE=1LOW_RES_RENDERING=0LOD_TARGET_FPS=17NUM_LIGHTS=8Oh, and I prefer to run at 1280x960x32 and FSAA is OFF.Hope all this is of some help.Mike

[ulisses 1]

Hi Mike,If I set my target framerate to 25, I can see minor stutters in a turn for example. I hear some people saying about 20 fps as enough to a fluid simulation...but I have to disagree, at least in my system.Even with 30 or 40 fps sometimes it is not so good as unlimited, what I know is until FS2002 it was always running as "unlimited", I see the target framerate helpful in old systems but why not using the full power of the processor to calculate as many frames as it can.I agree with you about Anti-Alias set to off, it can double framerate, but sometimes anti-alias help to avoid terrain blur.Thanks a lot for sharing your config settings, I'll try that. Do you see any difference in Num of Lights set to 8 ???Thanks again,Ulisses

[Cruachan 705]

Hi Ulisses,>why not using the full power of the processor to calculate as many frames as it can.......for the simple reason that the FS engine/cpu is being bogged down trying to keep up with YOUR unrealistic requirements at the expense of more rapid updating of things like textures. In effect you are making the CPU the bottleneck as your GPU will be forever waiting for texture data to display on screen. I suggest you perhaps look at trying a different setting in the BIOS for your AGP aperture. It might help smooth things out a bit. I have 512MB ram and have it set at 128MB.>anti-alias help to avoid terrain blur.......if you have a GeForce card the two things that really sharpen up the images are the mip map LOD bias adjustment (mine= -0.1) and the degree of anisotropy in the texture filtering settings (mine= force level 8). My GeForce4 Ti4400 produces a great image with very little blurring of textures out to middle distance and beyond. Further out the blurring appears quite natural, as one would expect in reality. Even on more humble GeForce cards like the GeForce 256 DDR forcing level 2 for the degree of anisotropy does produce very useful results. I know, I have a very happy neighbour;) >Do you see any difference in Num of Lights set to 8 ???.......sorry, I really don't know as I have never tried changing the setting. I don't believe changing to a lower figure would have much impact on your frame rates if you have a half decent modern card.Mike

[ulisses 1]

Your last setup line showed here has NumLights=8....so the question.Thanks for all the help and explanations !Good week,Ulisses

[Guest cwright]

Mike's suggestions are spot-on. I've found reducing the frame rate lock to be particularly significant - I use 16 FPS. I'd also add an extra one:5. Reduce the terrain complexity. This is also very significant when flying in mountainous terrain - but if you reduce it too much distant mountains will look like pyramids. This problem has been discussed many times - it's known as dynamic blurred textures (dynamic because it changes with time - if you pause after a few tens of seconds the textures will magically return to their normal sharpness). Not everyone suffers from dynamic blurred textures, but for those who do it's a real curse. Unfortunately it's due to the design of FS2002 and it can't be cured - except maybe by buying a new PC. The good news is that CFS3 is completely free of dynamic blurred textures. The bad news? CFS3 suffers badly from static blurred textures. The mip map resolutions fall very quickly at a small distance, making the CFS3 world look very blurred. Blurred textures seem to be a trademark of recent Microsoft sims: CFS2 and FS2002 suffer from dynamic blurred textures while CFS3 suffers from the static variety. Best regards, Chris