Blurriies

[bobbyjoh 11]

Hi everyone,I know it has been posted several times with some solutions, but what about these blurry textures in FS2002. After I upgraded my video card from an nVidia 2/GTS to a new nVidia 4/4200Ti/64, I now have blurry textures at times. I use nVidia detonator driver version 30.82, but I have received them with all current detonator versions up to the latest.When FS2002 first loads, everything is fine during most of the flight. When I start the decent, I then start to see ground textures beginning to blur from the horizon back toward my plane, to the point that all ground textures blur.Has anyone found out why this happens and what the cure is? Appreciate any input on the subject.Bob Johnson

[John_Cillis 2,406]

This is different from most of the blurry issues reported, but I saw this when I initially ran FS2002 off of a Voodoo 3. The issue did not go away until I upgraded my RAM from 128 megs to 256 megs. It seemed that FS2002 wasn't able to move textures in and out of the swap file fast enough to cope.The other issue that may be in play are "orphan" driver sets, that may be soaking up resources on your rig. If you haven't used Det. Destroyer, it may be worth a try, followed by a reinstall of your drivers, and finally Direct X.-John

[Mac_Paint 35]

Try disabling mipmapping on the MSFS settings -> hardware page.PeteGADpmDG

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"Try disabling mipmapping on the MSFS settings -> hardware page."I do not recommend this. It not only will give a flickering and grainy look to the scenery textures, but it also is related to static texture sharpness, vs. the gradual blurring described in the thread. As oft noted, there are two distinct blurring issues--gradual and/or sustained blurring of the textures (dynamic), and the general (static) sharpness of the textures. Adjustments to LOD and anisotropic filtering are much better than disabling mipmapping altogether for the latter (static) issue.-John

[Carabou 0]

Hi Bob,I recently upgraded from GeForce 2 to GeForce 4 Ti4200 and that went a long way towards getting rid of my blurry problem. BUT, at first I still had some blurries after the Ti4200 was installed even though it was much better then before. I have now gotten rid of blurries (for slower aircraft 200mph and less) by changing the fs2002.cfg file. I'm using the values indicated below which I saw in a post on this forum from someone who signed his post "D.M". In any case this works for me and I'm very happy with the results. I might add that faster aircraft will still cause blurries but I'm happy with my setup and slower planes. If you want to try the fs2002.cfg changes and have any questions, let me know and I'll be glad to help.My system is a Dell PIII, 1 gig, GeForce 4 Ti4200 64 mb.In the "TERRAIN" section use these values in place of the default ones (results may vary depending on your system):TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=14.110000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=60.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=40.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4Howard

[bobbyjoh 11]

Thanks Howard,I will give these value a try, can't hurt. I am flying the PIC 767 so when I start desending I am doing about 280 knots and then all the way down to approach speed of 170 knots, which is where the blurry textures start. If you have any ideas apprecaite a post. I will post back here how these go.Again, thanks for the helpBob

[Guest cwright]

Bob, THis sounds like a classic case of dynamic blurred textures. Sadly, I don't know of a complete cure, but it can be improved by:1. Use the lowest frame rate limit you can - I use 16 FPS2. Reduce the terrain complexity setting In general, and assuming you have set a frame rate limit, then anything that would normally give a higher frame rate (e.g. reducing scenery complexity) will help this problem. Best regards, Chris

[Guest]

Most people will probably dispute this but this is what works for me.Nevermind the settings in FS2002.cfg file. Leave them at default. Simply increase the anisotropic filtering settings for Direct3D to the highest level your system can handle without compromising too much on FPS (4x - 8x). I am using a 9700 Pro with AF at 16x now and the quality is the best I have had so far. However, I used to have a GeForce 3 with AF set to 4x and there was a major difference between 4x and none at all.I too used to suffer from the blurries and tried every suggestion ever made. I have found that changing the settings in the FS2002.cfg file actually causes more trouble and provides no improvement in visual quality.Jay

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I agree with you Jay about your suggestions.... The GeF and Radeon tweaks help much more with overall texture sharpness than the FS2002.cfg tweaks.But I think from the suggestions I've seen, many have missed the meaning of the thread. The FS2002.cfg tweaks and Aniso/LOD tweaks all deal with overall texture sharpness--not blurring over time (a.k.a. "dynamic" blurring"). Blurring over time is more a result of something picking away at the system resources during flight. Lowering the fps lock is one way of fixing it, and lowering the display sliders is another way of fixing it. It is even aircraft dependent--load up a high poly, large texture aircraft, and even more dynamic blurring will result.The other day, I flew the Ariane 737-300 cross country. Say what you will about Ariane, but their aircraft is a very "blur" and fps friendly aircraft. I got lazy halfway through my flight, and moved up to 8x. That gave me an effective ground speed of almost 4000 kts. I had no dynamic blurring.Aside from the slider settings and aircraft complexity in FS, another culprit for dynamic blurring is "orphan" driver entries, low RAM, a new applet running in the background (anyone remember when we used to call them TSR's?). I had to dig into the registry to fix some of those issues on my system. Since a card change was involved here, I think it's possible that something like that could have happened. Anything stealing cpu cycles from FS is going to cause dynamic blurring.But going back to what you first said Jay, I don't dispute your findings at all, when dealing with overall texture sharpness. Those tweaks are the way to go!

[bobbyjoh 11]

John,I think you have a good point, I am on a flight right now on my main "puter", PIC/POSKY767 KPHL to KDEN, about 1 hour into the flight I got the blurries, I did load the terrain "fix" into the FS2002.cfg. My textures were sharp as hell for the first part of the flight and then out of no where at FL350, I looked out the cockpit and saw the dreaded blur of ground textures. When I went to spot view there also was no airplane textures either. I sat there for about one minute and then they popped back on, however the ground turned blue. I "monkeyed" around with the display settings going from VERY DENSE to DENSE and the ground textures came back clear as a bell right now.I have a feeling that this is like others have said on this thread and on another that something is stealing cpu cycles. I am running Radar Contact v3, FSRealtime, Active Sky v1.8beta along with my FS2002 set with a locked frame rate of 15, I am getting 13-14 at altitude right now.What do you guys think of this software: http://www.oo-software.com/english/product...cpro/index.html?I am almost convinced that this blurry problem is a resource issue. The strange thing, it use to NEVER happen on my system.What are you guys thoughts?Bob

[Guest]

Same thing began happening to me a few weeks ago... I use Rivatuner to tweak my settings on a Ti4600 and my graphics where beautiful... then one day on a flight down to miami, all hell broke loose. I know have constant blurries, to the point it almost seems like my video cards FSAA and Anistropic filter quit working...Not sure if that can happen or if it's related to the CPU deal, but sure is hard to swallow when you head beautiful graphics for such a long time.The real sad thing, is I've tried everything... I run adaware to get rid of that crap, end-it-all, adjust sliders every which way, turn FPS down... but no matter what I do, it stays the same... almost like someone sprayed something on my monitor ;-)I don't even like loading the game up anymore... I go and play Shoot-em-up games now instead. ;-)saaddd.... boy, do you think I'll have better luck with FS2004 LOL

[John_Cillis 2,406]

That tool is based on a premise similar to that of Cacheman, another cache management tool aimed primarily at Win 95 & Win 98 users. Cacheman has helped with low memory systems--I use it to limit my vcache in 98SE (although it isn't required, the entries can be manually entered).The tool you mention I find a bit suspect. On my WAN, the far majority of our workstations have Windows 2000. We have perhaps 30, 40 98SE systems running older legacy software and hardware. I've never had to apply any cache "tweaks" to get maximum performance from the W2000 workstations. And in our weekly WAN meetings, we gossip about a lot of issues, but cache tweaking on the 2000 systems and the 20 or so XP systems has not been one of them.I'd still lay odds that something is eating CPU cycles, especially since the only real change in your system seems to be the graphics card itself.

[bobbyjoh 11]

Hi John,This tool was designed for Windows XP, since it has a memory resouce capability plus cache management, I thought I would give it a try. As you can see from the many post, something is going on with LOTS of folks system. Notice the guy that posted right after my last post, sounds just like me.For sometime I NEVER had a problem and the wham the blurries started, I don't think it could be the card. My old card was a GForce2/GTS/64.What AGP aperature size do you run. Can this make a difference I have had mine set to both 64 and 128mb. What do you thinkCheersBob

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I had wondered about the AGP app--I was going to ask. I've always run with 64 megs, which is my MB default. You can disable AGP, and see if that changes the issue. You have two ways--you can disable it in DirectX, or lower your AGP app. to 16Megs or less.I have to say I run a fairly stripped version of FS2002. No add-ons, other than FSUIPC and a few aircraft add-ons. The only utilities I use are the two I wrote--Autoland and LCA. The only reason I suspected your card, is you mentioned this came on after the new card was installed. Whenever that happens, there's always the hardware, and always the drivers.There is one other issue I am curious about. I'd like to see the entries in your scenery.cfg. I've sent you a private message with my email address. If you can forward a copy, I'll look it over for any suspect entries, and I'll return an edited copy to you--won't take more than a few minutes of my time. -John

[bobbyjoh 11]

John,I did not get your email, send it to bobbyjoh@attbi.comThanks for taking a look.Bob