Can't get rid of the %!(&*#-$ blurries!

[Guest]

I've tried everything. I've combed the message boards here, at FlightSim.com, SimFlight and FS Gateway. I've tried what seems like a hundred different combinations of FS settings, video drivers and driver settings, videocard tweaking with RivaTuner, FS config tweaking, textures config tweaking, etc, etc. No matter what I do, when I fly away from an airport at startup, the terrain goes from beautifully sharp and vivid to funstoppingly diffuse and blurry. Yet I've discovered numerous posts from simmers announcing that they've found a configuration that eliminates or minimizes occurances of blurring.I know it sounds picky, but I can't enjoy this otherwise fantastic sim with the terrain textures so blurry. Is there any obscure little trick I may have missed? Has anyone had an experience similar to mine then discovered a divine solution accompanied by the Hallelujah Chorus? If so, please let me know.Thanks,A Frustrated CanadaGoose"Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars."

[Guest]

This is a very system-dependent issue. I don't think anybody can/will answer you if you don't give your full specs.

[Guest]

You need to state your system hardware. Maybe there's a hardware problem; but most all of the time, the blurries are the result of the computer not having enough power to run everything that's turned on in the sim. Two things to look at right away. Turn the Terrain Mesh down. Turn water reflections off and go with detail only. Also, try turning the ATC down. Default is 33%, I believe. Keep turning things down till the blurs go away.

[Guest]

How silly of me. Forgot the system specs:WinXP Home Ed.Athlon 1600XP @1400MhzAsus A7A266 Mobo512Mb DDR RAMVisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti4600Soundblaster Audigy GamerI'll keep trying. Thanks for the suggestions, guys."Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars."

[Guest ba747heavy]

I have a very similar system and I and I am curious to see what I should do

[Guest]

Post a screen shot so we can see what your problem is. Remember, long distance will not be crisp, you will see some blurriness.

[Guest PaulL01]

Your System specs are very close to what I was using with the exception of my GF3TI200 when this was snaped:http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/46_fps.jpgThe blurries as you are describing (going from good to bad) are refered to as "dynamic" and not a result of your video card driver and FS2k2.cfg tweaking but more closely related to your overall system performance.Thats where a good benchmarking program like 3dmark2001se or the like comes in, run the bench, leanout your system, limit programs at start-up to free up resources, adjust bios settings like memory timings etc for the best performance for >your< particular board. It will take doing your homework and you can expect decent improvements, but....Fs2k2 still brings 3ghz+ systems to thier knees and you are only half way there so expect to turn some things down like Terrain mesh detail, ground shadows and detail textures as well as limit the visibility etc untill you find a balance that >you< are happy with.

[Guest]

CanadaGoose,After reading the tons of posts in the forums about this problem, I realize I have my system tweaked about as good as it will go. It's very similar to yours specwise, and my visuals are about the same. I am not going to frustrate myself anymore with constant tweaking or installing the latest NVIDIA drivers. I enjoy it enough, but FS2k2 will probably be my last flightsim. The Microsoft flightsims just require more resources than a state-of-the-art computer has to make them perform properly. Right out of the box, it came with blurries and stutters, so it's not caused by all the addons. When FS2006 comes out, the computers available then should run FS2002 without blurries or stutters.Best of luck,Bob

[LAdamson 240]

Do I see a bunch of "blurries" to disrupt the morning calm?No--------------this is just about how it's always been on this 1 year old CPU.L.AdamsonAthlon1900XPGeforce3Ti500512DDRram

[Guest]

The blurry effect is as you know as old as the game itself, there are some things that will reduce the effect but mainly it is the CPU that cant catch up to the aircraft's speed when rendering scenery!The first things to look for is AGP aperture size (I use 128) and system memory resources. After that, I would be looking at which drivers I was using (including DirectX).... the latest are not necessarily the best..... and you may wish to review these!With your system specs you shouldnt have too much problem however....Here's a few things to try:These are my Terrain Setting:[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=1.760000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=60.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=40.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4You can cut paste these into your FS2002.cfg and try them.Also, turn A1 traffic down to about 5% and reduce sound quality to 'low'...... next look at your LOD settings (I use NVmax - change to -0.3) Also check your V-Sync settings (I render 4 frames ahead)You might also want to check your screen resolution settings... I find 1280x1024 (32bit color) works best for me!Other than that, the only other thing to change is perhaps target frame-rates... I usually leave mine set to unlimited, but others seem to think that setting it to eg 25FPS gives more CPU headroom... IMHO I have not experienced this!One last thing to do is some housekeeping and maybe check that you do not have some nasty little programs running in the background (spyware etc) that could be stealing CPU time!Let me know if you see any improvements?

[Guest]

Thanks everyone. I'm doing a fresh install & will try your suggestions more carefully. I probably came close to the "sweet spot" for my system before but, in my frustration, gave up and posted my little tantrum. I really want FS2002 to run properly and I don't want to have to give up all the eye-candy to get it going. A little here and there, some more system tweaking and optimizing, and I'm sure I'll get it.Remember when you bought games on 5.25" floppy disks, installed them, ran them and that was it? I even remember installing my first flight sim - from a cassette, no less - on my Timex Sinclair. "Boy the way Glen Miller played..." "Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars."

[Guest cwright]

Canada, This problem (known as dynamic blurred textures) is as old as the hills - or at least, as old as Combat Flight Simulator 2! It occurs because FS2002, at least on some systems, updates the terrain texture resolutions painfully slowly. As a result, and depending on your air speed and the terrain detail, you can easily 'outfly' the texture updates, resulting in ugly blurred textures. It's not because your CPU is running out of steam. Many similar systems don't suffer from this problem. The problem is with the software itself. I have a theory as to why similar systems can behave in totally different ways, but it's probably academic as there's no chance Microsoft will do anything about it this late in the game. The good news is that the new CFS3 is completely free of dynamic blurred textures - unfortunately it suffers badly from the static variety. Microsoft just announced that there will be a patch for CFS3, so maybe even that will be improved. For now, dynamic blurries can't be cured, except maybe by a new computer, but the best improvement can be obtained by using the lowest frame rate lock you're happy with - I use 16 FPS. Also turning down the terrain density helps. If you use a relatively low frame rate lock then turning down almost anything else will help a bit. Best regards, Chris

[Guest]

In the immortal words of Gene Wilder: "All right. I think I've got it now."I reinstalled and played around with the settings until I came up with what you see below. I'm running at 1024x768x32 with 4xS AA, mipmap LOD at -0.5, AF level 8 optimized and no texture sharpening (redundant, I believe, at that AF level). I'm getting 20-30 fps on average, depending on scenery complexity, etc.As I add AI aircraft, I am careful to include only relatively low-polygon aircraft or default repaints. Project AI is a GREAT resource for traffic, though I'm still unsure of what other programs - if any - I should use in conjuction with Traffic Tools.With these settings, terrain stays sharp most of the time. However, if I'm in a fast plane or I slew across a great distance, it can blur. It seems to take between 10 and 30 seconds to update the textures. A bit long - I may try lower maximum frame rates (currently at unlimited) to see if I can improve on that. Thanks for the suggestion, cwright!.Actually, thanks to all of you for your suggestions. I was about to give up on FS2002 for the tenth time. I've been looking forward to flying it without some nagging glitch or deficiency ruining my fun.BTW - Please let me know if there's any change you think I should try based on my config settings.[GRAPHICS]FULL_SCREEN=1PERFORMANCE_MODE=0DEF_PERF_MODE=4TEXT_SCROLL=1AUTO_LOD=0DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=3TEXTURE_QUALITY=2EFFECTS_QUALITY=2CLOUD_SPRITE_PERCENTAGE=0.650000GROUND_SHADOWS=1SMOOTH_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=21NUM_LIGHTS=8[sOUND]SOUND=1SOUND_FADER1=0.250000SOUND_FADER2=0.190000SOUND_FADER3=0.370000SOUND_FADER4=0.190000SOUND_FADER5=0.500000SOUND_FADER6=1.000000SOUND_QUALITY=2[DISPLAY]Device=NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600Mode=1024x768x32UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0TriLinear=1TnL=1[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=14.110000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3[sCENERY]IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=5DYNAMIC_SCENERY=0DYN_SCN_DENSITY=0DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1"Fly me to the moon; let me play among the stars."