What to choose ?

[flacs 0]

Hi: On configuration related with "screen" I have several options: Bilineal - None - Trilineal - Anisotropic. I dont know what would be the better one to choose.My card is a NVidia Geforce 9500 GT.0 512MB GDDR2.Thanks for any acvice on the matter.Jose.

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Hi: On configuration related with "screen" I have several options: Bilineal - None - Trilineal - Anisotropic. I dont know what would be the better one to choose.My card is a NVidia Geforce 9500 GT.0 512MB GDDR2.Thanks for any acvice on the matter.Jose.

The most common advice is: Select Trilinear in FSX and set 4-16X Anisotropic in the Nvidia properties.

[Chock 17,769]

It will help if you understand what each of the settings does, so that you can decide whether you want to employ them to improve how things look, so, here we go with a 'quick and dirty' explanation of what they all are...They are all techniques to improve the way textures look when viewed at different sizes and angles. Bilinear and Trilinear filtering are mathematical computations based on the colour of an individual pixel and its surrounding pixels; anisotropic filtering is too, but uses mip maps of a texture and calculates what it will do based on several of them (there's a bit more to it than that in reality, but this is close enough to understand what is happening). A mip-mapped image texture (in case you were not sure of what one was) is a texture which consists of a main texture image, plus several smaller versions of it too, going down in size proportionally, which helps it to look better as you view it further away, because there will be a texture the sim can use which does not have to be 'played around with' by your graphics processor in order to display properly. This is why FSX usually looks a bit better, because it uses more mip-mapped textures than previous versions of FS.The reason for all this calculating malarkey, is that your texture is at a fixed resolution, but it has to be viewed at different sizes as your viewpoint moves either further away or nearer in the sim, so you end up viewing the texture at different scales and the sim has to try and convert the texture's fixed resolution to your screen resolution on the fly.To help you understand that, here's a simple example: If you have a texture that is one inch square and at a resolution of ten DPI (dots per inch), there will be ten pixels across the texture and ten pixels down it, and 100 pixels in total in the texture (10x10). However, if you have to view it at twice the size, but still at that fixed 10 dpi resolution, then your computer has to 'make up' what colour it is going to put in all the new pixels it will have to create, because at twice the size it will now be viewed as though it was 20x20 (with 400 pixels in total). How your computer decides to make up what colour all those pixels will be, is what we are talking about with all the different methods you can choose in your graphics options.Of course your computer will probably either be using 72 or 96 DPI (depending on what sort of computer it is and what sort of gear you have), so the more pixels, the more calculations there are to be made. Here's how the various methods go about that...Bilinear filtering chooses a pixel colour, then compares it with the colour of the adjacent pixels and 'feathers in' the new pixels your computer has to create so that they are in between the colour of the first pixel it looked at, and all the other ones it compared it to, (a bit like smudging a pencil drawing to smooth it out). You may have come across this sort of thing referred to as 'dithering'. Trilinear filtering does a similar sort of thing, but as the name suggests, it takes more samples of the surrounding pixels, so is a bit more processor intensive. Anisotropic filtering goes a stage further, it basically does the same thing as both bilinear and trilinear filtering, but it does it not just on the current texture map, but also on the other ones in a mip-map, so it can get a better handle on what colour each pixel it has to create for images in between the sizes of the mip-maps should be. You should bear in mind that I have simplified the explanation a bit so that this post is not fifteen pages long, but essentially, bilinear will typically use less processing power than trilinear, and anisotropic will most likely use more than either of them. But, they have different advantages. Both bi and trilinear filtering can improve the look of things when viewed at various distances, and so can anisotropic, but anisotropic can also considerably improve how textures look when viewed at oblique angles, so although it uses more power, it is usually worth it, because your view tends to move around in a flight simulator and change angles, so you'll get a better appearance with a more sophisticated filtering method.Of course if you choose 'none' then you will get a faster frame rate in your sim, but at the expense of things perhaps not looking so great at various distances and angles. It's worth noting that FSX can save various settings profiles, so you do not just have to settle for one setting, but can instead use other presets depending on the sort of flying you are indulging in. You can find more detailed explanations online about what your graphics card is doing when it employs all these fancy techniques, and they will be closer to what is really happening than my slightly simplified explanation here, but my above explanation is close enough to help you make a choice.Al

[flacs 0]

It will help if you understand what each of the settings does, so that you can decide whether you want to employ them to improve how things look, so, here we go with a 'quick and dirty' explanation of what they all are...They are all techniques to improve the way textures look when viewed at different sizes and angles. Bilinear and Trilinear filtering are mathematical computations based on the colour of an individual pixel and its surrounding pixels; anisotropic filtering is too, but uses mip maps of a texture and calculates what it will do based on several of them (there's a bit more to it than that in reality, but this is close enough to understand what is happening). A mip-mapped image texture (in case you were not sure of what one was) is a texture which consists of a main texture image, plus several smaller versions of it too, going down in size proportionally, which helps it to look better as you view it further away, because there will be a texture the sim can use which does not have to be 'played around with' by your graphics processor in order to display properly. This is why FSX usually looks a bit better, because it uses more mip-mapped textures than previous versions of FS.The reason for all this calculating malarkey, is that your texture is at a fixed resolution, but it has to be viewed at different sizes as your viewpoint moves either further away or nearer in the sim, so you end up viewing the texture at different scales and the sim has to try and convert the texture's fixed resolution to your screen resolution on the fly.To help you understand that, here's a simple example: If you have a texture that is one inch square and at a resolution of ten DPI (dots per inch), there will be ten pixels across the texture and ten pixels down it, and 100 pixels in total in the texture (10x10). However, if you have to view it at twice the size, but still at that fixed 10 dpi resolution, then your computer has to 'make up' what colour it is going to put in all the new pixels it will have to create, because at twice the size it will now be viewed as though it was 20x20 (with 400 pixels in total). How your computer decides to make up what colour all those pixels will be, is what we are talking about with all the different methods you can choose in your graphics options.Of course your computer will probably either be using 72 or 96 DPI (depending on what sort of computer it is and what sort of gear you have), so the more pixels, the more calculations there are to be made. Here's how the various methods go about that...Bilinear filtering chooses a pixel colour, then compares it with the colour of the adjacent pixels and 'feathers in' the new pixels your computer has to create so that they are in between the colour of the first pixel it looked at, and all the other ones it compared it to, (a bit like smudging a pencil drawing to smooth it out). You may have come across this sort of thing referred to as 'dithering'. Trilinear filtering does a similar sort of thing, but as the name suggests, it takes more samples of the surrounding pixels, so is a bit more processor intensive. Anisotropic filtering goes a stage further, it basically does the same thing as both bilinear and trilinear filtering, but it does it not just on the current texture map, but also on the other ones in a mip-map, so it can get a better handle on what colour each pixel it has to create for images in between the sizes of the mip-maps should be. You should bear in mind that I have simplified the explanation a bit so that this post is not fifteen pages long, but essentially, bilinear will typically use less processing power than trilinear, and anisotropic will most likely use more than either of them. But, they have different advantages. Both bi and trilinear filtering can improve the look of things when viewed at various distances, and so can anisotropic, but anisotropic can also considerably improve how textures look when viewed at oblique angles, so although it uses more power, it is usually worth it, because your view tends to move around in a flight simulator and change angles, so you'll get a better appearance with a more sophisticated filtering method.Of course if you choose 'none' then you will get a faster frame rate in your sim, but at the expense of things perhaps not looking so great at various distances and angles. It's worth noting that FSX can save various settings profiles, so you do not just have to settle for one setting, but can instead use other presets depending on the sort of flying you are indulging in. You can find more detailed explanations online about what your graphics card is doing when it employs all these fancy techniques, and they will be closer to what is really happening than my slightly simplified explanation here, but my above explanation is close enough to help you make a choice.Al

Thanks a lot for explanation and guide on the matter. Jose.