FS2004 Night Texture Quality Problems

[aitrafficgroup 0]

Hi everyone,Having some problems recently with panel, cloud etc textures at night which I did not have on my previous XPS M1710 laptop...i now have a M1730 and everything is fine with the exception of panel and cloud textures being the most noticeably poor when flying at night. My specs:Vista Home Premium SP2 64bit, Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, FS9.1, 2 Nvidia 9800M GT SLI 512mb each, 179.24 driversAny help much appreciated :)Henry

[vololiberista 204]

Hi everyone,Having some problems recently with panel, cloud etc textures at night which I did not have on my previous XPS M1710 laptop...i now have a M1730 and everything is fine with the exception of panel and cloud textures being the most noticeably poor when flying at night. My specs:Vista Home Premium SP2 64bit, Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz, 4GB RAM, FS9.1, 2 Nvidia 9800M GT SLI 512mb each, 179.24 driversAny help much appreciated :)Henry

The instruments seem perfectly legible to me!Vololiberista

[aitrafficgroup 0]

Yeah its the bitmaps that are the problem especially the ground ones, it almost looks like theyre in 16 bit

[aitrafficgroup 0]

Any further thoughts anyone?

[TechguyMaxC 516]

Are you running 32-bit color depth in the O.S. and in the sim? People often choose a 16-bit color depth by accident when choosing their resolution in MSFS.

[Maugust 0]

im havign the very same issue right now... :(ive even noticed it with the files on the internet

[Guest FlyingBits]

im havign the very same issue right now... :(ive even noticed it with the files on the internet

And what color bit depth are you using, what hardware etc.???

[aitrafficgroup 0]

I've checked my config files and its all in the 32-bit mode...could it be from smaller bitmaps in the panels and textures then being upsized to my 1920x1440 full screen res?

[Maugust 0]

And what color bit depth are you using, what hardware etc.???

32bit true color. i have a MSI x58 motherboard with the i7 chip. i just reinstalled xp, had the same issue. i tried an old pci card same problem. so it not my 8800gts 512. rightnow im trying an new harddrive seeing if thats the issue. after this im thinking that it has to be something with the motherboard. like i said i notice no only in game but on the net as well. its just really weird. it really came out of the blue. one day fine, the next not.

[vololiberista 204]

Do you have a flat screen? Try turning up the brightness a little!!!!Check your gamma settingsVololiberista

[Guest FlyingBits]

Any further thoughts anyone?

Is this a new problem? Are you saying it was better before and something has changed or is it that you fired up FS and now notice this is how night textures look?There are many panels on the market that are not true 8 bit and these use "dithering to try to improve but color banding like what you are seeing is the result.Its cheaper to make a 6 bit per color panel with a quick response time than an 8 bit one and the marketplace has been flooded with them.What are the specs of your display?Usually if the amount of colors it will display is not listed you can figure it is a 6 bit, in some rare cases 6 bit has been advertized as doing 16m* but * says dithering and that means it is a 6 bit.If it says it will display 16million colors if its a 8 bit, not that it completly eliminates it, but it is much much better.6 bit LCD will display roughly 260 thousand colors compared to 8 bit at 16.7 million colors.