More RAM - blurred textures all but gone

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Quick post:I upgraded my RAM from 256 to 384 megs last week. I had to observe things for several FS sessions to know for sure, but the upgrade, in combination with increasing my AGP ap to 128 megs, has all but eliminated texture blurring in FS2002. When it does happen, the textures clear up in 1-5 seconds, vs. the 20-30 seconds it took when I was running under 256 megs. Since these results are under 98SE, they are probably of little help, but I still have to suspect that free RAM, along with cpu hp, is a must for keeping textures clear. What I do wonder, is whether RAM config is as important as RAM quantity. I now have one bank of 256 megs, and another of 128. Makes me wonder if the larger bank makes for more efficient performance.I'm not posting a cure all or a suggested snake oil--these were my observations, but no one should rush to Frys to pick up more RAM. But do try to experiment with maximizing what you have...-John

[Guest ba747heavy]

Thats great! Maybe I ought to get more RAM...hmnmmm :)

[1mikel151 71]

Hey John, nice observation. What kind of RAM are you using? I have 1 gig of genaric Micron 2100 DDR (Athlon 1.4 with a G4 4600) and I get the blurries with a heavy hit in site, such as detailed mesh or an add on airport, but clears up quick. One thing I have that annoys me is the speed at which I go affects this. I would love to fly a high speed military jet at low altitudes and have the terrain stay as clear as it does when I am flying VFR is the Piper Cub, oh well, maybe with my new system! LOLRegards, Michaelhttp://mysite.verizon.net/res052cd/mybannercva1.jpgCalVirAir International VAwww.calvirair.comCougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviationwww.cgrmtnhelos.com

[DMullert 215]

Hey John!I may be missing some points here, but I do not think RAM has any impact on blurries. Your video card and the processor are the main drivers on whether you get blurries or not. In addition, remember that FS2002 gives the blurries anyways, regarding how much power you have under the hood. This is an issue that has been re-hashed 100 million times in the forums and it has been determined that it is a fault that was never really addressed my the folks at MS.My 2 cents.Dennis D. Mullert

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Michael...I bought rather cheap PNY RAM. Since I may well replace my cpu when FS2004 is released, I didn't want to spend a great deal. I mentioned 98SE, as it is much easier for a tinkerer like me to control how, and how much, RAM is used in 98SE. My goal was to eliminate swap file usage altogether on the complicated aircraft, and have a surplus of free RAM when running 2k2. The surplus I've thrown into the vcache, so most of my texures, once loaded once, are being pulles straight from the vcache vs. from the hard drive. The RAM has also reduced the load time of FS2002--more room to load, so to speak.Part of the cpu load is from file access, even with DMA enabled. By reducing file access, more cpu cycles can go towards managing FS's other chores. In the absence of a faster cpu, I think one has to approach MSFS by looking for ways to "give back" cycles to the cpu. I'm about outta ways to do that, but for what it's worth, I was buzzing my F16 at 1000KIAS, about 200 ft. AGL... As long as I didn't switch views, my texures stayed very sharp. Under the older RAM config, I would have eventually outrun them.BTW, never do this in a virtual F16 if you have a headache.

[gosta 0]

Hi Michael,I observed the same thing, when I upgraded from 512MB to 1024MB of RAM, although it was only evident in high density situations, like approaching Heathrow in the RFP747, with both the LCY2003 and Gary Summons' EGLL scenery installed. The 3D objectsare there, fully textured, when in range, Heathrow's buildings just pop up all at once, also fully textured and the ground 'unblurs' in no time. In less dense situations, however, there isn't much of a difference.Cheers,Gosta.http://hifi.avsim.net/activesky/images/wxrebeta.jpg

[John_Cillis 2,406]

That's fine Dennis...I'm only posting what I observed.I sense that basically, you're coming into my thread and telling me it's my imagination. That it isn't--RAM is a player when there isn't enough of it. If the system is forced to divert cycles for disk I/O, then you in effect have a slower cpu. If you have a surplus of RAM before or after an upgrade, then you're right on--you should see no difference. I didn't, especially on the complex aircraft, and my HD light flickered non-stop. Now, it doesn't. So maximizing RAM, whether one purchases more or minimizes its use, will help.

[Guest cwright]

> the textures clear up in 1-5 seconds, vs. the 20-30 seconds it took when I was running under 256 megs.... John, that's an interesting observation, as it confirms the problem was dynamic blurred textures. I have 256 Mb, Win 98SE - and annoying dyna-blurs! However, it's also just a slow 800 Mhz, so I'm thinking of a motherboard upgrade. Hopefully with at least 512 Mb the dyna-blurs will be no more than a bad memory! But, then, it will depend on how badly FS2004 suffers from the dyna-blurs. Judging from some screen shots, they're still there.... Best regards, Chris

[Guest A321]

wELL i GOT THE uk vfr Scenery, and I could not take the bluries, Since I have upgraded to 1024Mb Ram mine have clean up to. Ok i can go low flying the Lago Tornado over it, at high speed, but the ram made a big difference. Also Ram will help especialy with AGP, as the AGP Texture's ram fill up, which in my case is all 128Mb on my Geeforce 4 TI 4400, The rest will overflow to your system ram hence AGP apature size setting in your bios, Now the faster your ram talks to the bus the less bluries you will get. Yes Ms algorythim is pretty bad for determing Scenery, thats why we have the extend scenery option, turn this off and the scenery placement and bluries will drop even more, but IMHO it looks pants if you have got no clouds.Jason

[Noel 4,486]

>Michael...>>I bought rather cheap PNY RAM. Since I may well replace my>cpu when FS2004 is released, I didn't want to spend a great>deal. I mentioned 98SE, as it is much easier for a tinkerer>like me to control how, and how much, RAM is used in 98SE. My>goal was to eliminate swap file usage altogether on the>complicated aircraft, and have a surplus of free RAM when>running 2k2.Well, I did an experiment regarding eliminating swap file use. Actually I was eliminating hard drive use for a swap file. There is a very strange thing that happens with my machine and I bet it's similar for everyone elses. Try running system monitor in the background and note swap file use. I use Win2K Pro with 1GB of DDR ram, and what is so weird is that if you run Task Manager and look and swap file use you can see the game wants to split paging between the disk and ram, despite the fact I have tons of unused physical ram. For example, with a full featured aircraft loaded at a busy terminal, it will typically show about 275MB of physical ram used, and 275mb of swap file, leaving loads of free ram. So I decided to experiment with a virtual swap drive using the nifty product called RamDiskNT, which allows you to create a virtual swap drive in physical ram instead of a disk drive. When I ran FS2002 under this config the same thing happened--roughly 50 50 use of ram and swap file, but no HDD was involved. The net result? Not much! FS2002 behaved the same as far as I could tell. Which is to say, blurries not much problem until the texture density gets so high (ie with complex aircrsft, mesh scenery, etc) that there is some minimal delay in textures loading. But it truly is very mild.I'm hoping 256mb of video ram will help with this, but perhaps loading textures is a CPU thing mostly.Cheers,Noel

[B777ER 2,484]

I too believe RAM plays a big part in FS and that's why (call me nuts but I am doing it anyway) when I get my new Dell XPS machine for FS2004, I am getting 2GB of RAM installed in it..going for all the ponies on this boys!!

[Guest]

When I first installed and ran FS2002, it was into the hard drive like a kid in the cookie jar. It would hang while it waited to load info from the HD and was so unbearable, I thought I might have to return FS.With all that reading of the hard drive, I figured that the virtual memory was working overtime, so I went out and bought another 256MB PC133 RAM. I've been flying happily ever since.Now all I can do is hope that the 512MB of PC1066 RDRAM in my newer machine will be enough to handle FS2004. FS loves it's RAM!!Kyle CFAOA

[Guest]

John, you are correct.I did too observ the same situation with my PIII 800 when I upgraded from 256MB to 384Mb, the blurries cleared up.I am running 512MB now - Which I may upgrade after this thread because I do get blurries from time to time.

[Noel 4,486]

Read my post above. I don't think you will gain anything going beyond 512, certainly not beyond 1024.Noel

[Guest product]

I have 1mb or RDRam, with a P4 3.06 processor. YOu still get blurries that quickly clear up, I see it as a simple fact that CPU energy is directed toward rendering close-up scenery first and then hits the stuff furhter out. Hardly bothers me and is actually sort of realistic.Try turning your visibility down to 20 miles with FSUIPC (and less at low altitudes)- you'll see GREAT improvement in framerates and blurry issues, and be flying in more realistic visibility conditions to boot.Best,Joel