Hi,After installing some paint schemes downloaded from Avsim, I had an unpleasant surprise seeing that they were appearing blurred. It particularly occurred with Bill Lyon's add-ons. After investigation, I have noticed in these textures files the presence of several mipmaps levels. It seems that their presence is the root of this disappointment and I would like to know if someone can explain me how to fix this.Thanks in advance for responding...Kind regards...Vincent

Yes indeed the mipmaps are the reason for blurry textures...It's easy to adjust the textures and remove the mipmaps.However respect the author wishes and sent them an email with the question if they could help you out...You be surprised about our great community to help with this matter ;-)What I do with my own created textures I load them in imagetool then choose the option remove mipmaps...I close all but leave the one with *_0.bmp open and choose the option "save as" (the same name but with the tga extension, this will preserve the alpha channel)...Open the tga file and save it as *.bmpHave fun :-)Andr

I have often wondered why Mipmaps are still included these days.I never have any mips in any paints I do, and if any I download have mips in I take them out using DXTBmp.Just wondered if there is anyone out there that actually finds mips usefullDan.

Hi guys,I followed your recommendations and everything has perfectly worked as you can see by yourself :The first shot depicts the situation before applying the modification.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/89136.jpgThe second one shows clearly the improvement.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/89137.jpgYour help has been very precious. Thank you very much. Kind regards...Vincent

Same here Dan no mipmaps for me in a paint, curious indeed about the opinions of fellow painters out there :-) Andr

Glad to see you up and running have fun :-)Andr

Hi Andr

Mips do impact frame rates. They make them worse (more data). I paint for Eaglesoft and I have several repaints on the Captain Sim 727 CD release. No mips on any of them. The textures are sharper and the frame rates are better.Ed Knapp

Hi Vincent thank you for the compliments about the shrike and hope you will have a lot of fun with the 500S as we did with the developement...It's one with a very special paint lol ;-)Regarding mipmaps I agree with Ed, just don't see the benefit at this point to leave them in a texture :(Most of the times it will only give you very blurry texures :(Vincent see also our Commanders (520/560/680/500/500S) and Dash 7 and Howard 500 at www.flightsimonline.com lol a lot of paints there from my brush ;-)Andr

Hi Ed,Thank you for these explanations. Introducing yourself was not needed because you are well-known in the simmers community for your outstanding paint schemes. I have just downloaded your navy paint scheme for the aeroworx's beech 200.Kind regards...Vincent Mellinger

For my computer and settings, I usually do not get the blurry textures with MIPS. I have had to remove them on only two aircraft, and the rest have had the MIPS perform as they are supposed to. The reason the MIPS are used is for lower resolution textures to be used when the A/C is further away (essentially the same idea as LOD models). Bill Lyons (I'm presuming to speak for him although I don't know if this is the actual reason) uses his aircraft as AI when he releases his packages, and there are often more than one of his A/C on screen at a time. If each one of those aircraft used the high resoltion texture (if the MIPS were removed) the FR would fall while the graphics card tried to draw all that information multiple times. By using the lower resolution textures on other aircraft, the texture bandwidth is reduced and the FR increase. That is (presumably) why he says he will use MIPS to improve framerates.Having MIPS in a texture does not increase the framerate (as has been suggested) it merely increases the texture loading time. Once the texture is in your video card memory, it ignores the extraneous information.So, I also will buck the general sentiment here and use MIPS in my textures, except in those aircraft that cause me problems with blurry textures - which in my case has been the SA-365 Dauphin and the EC-130 - both are helicopters by Antti Pannkonen.If anyone has difficulties with them, it is very easy to remove them with DXTbmp (not sure why anyone goes through the trouble of doing it with Imagetool, short of not having to download DXTbmp.)Brian

Imagetool is a habbit form FS2002 and before needed ;-)As for now more and more using DXTBmp as the final step in my texturing process... Still I think when leaving mipmaps out :( you avoid the blurriness of textures...I know the reason why you could use them, but too many users and setups have blurry textures with mipmaps ;-) that's why I'don't use them anymore...Andr