I just got a new computer, and have put fs9 on it, and am having the exact same issue that I had on my old setup, which leads me to believe nvidia is the culprit.My old computer started out with an ATI card, and everything worked fine. Later, I upgraded to a GTS 250, and while my framerates went through the roof, I had a new problem that any terrain in the distance, by the cut-off line for the visibility, was shimmering in and out of existance. I don't mean AF shimmering of the textures, but as in the actual 3d rendering of the terrain was popping in and out of existance out by the visibility cut-off line. If I hold the camera position absolutely still the popping stops, but as soon as my perspective changes, as if I move the plane or pan the view, it starts again. So the vibrating, shaking rendering only occurs with a change of perspective. But, even while the camera is still, I can still tell that there is a hard cut-off line, like a screen, that comes down wherever I have the sight distance set to in fs9.This new computer has a GT 330 card, and I am having the exact problem.I'm trying to use a combination of FSUIPC settings and ASG textures to kill the problem. So far, I can set up FSUIPC to have the haze from ground level to about 15000 feet up working perfectly- if I go higher than the visibility layer setting that FSUIPC is using, I see all the way to the popping mountains again. If I extend the visibility layer higher, I can limit the visibility but as a result I can see very little of the ground, and I feel like I'm flying through a fog, which shouldn't be the case at FL380.Other info: I'm running w7 64 bit. The older computer was vista 32 bit.1. Does anyone know of/have this problem with the popping terrain, and how to get rid of it? I'm not talking about hiding it with haze or textures, but stopping the terrain from rapidly rendering in and out of view. I think this problem would be fixed If I could get fs9 to depict the maximum vis range as a smooth transition rather than as an abrupt cutoff.2. Can anyone who is satisfied with their horizon at high altitudes please post their gfx card settings/fsuipc visibility settings/texture info or anything like that? I've seen several fs9 videos where the high-altitude visibility distance looks realistic and yet the horizon in the distance is a soft transition. If #1 can not be fixed, then I'd like to see what other people are doing. Keep in mind that I primarily fly at FL300-420, and I already have the low-altitude visibility worked out nicely.I'm really trying to get this problem which has been bugging me for a long time resolved.thanks so much for the help

I have this saved in my Tips folder, and haul it out on occasions like this.Maybe something in here will sort you out.Holger S posted this on the Fsgenesis forum: (http://portal.fsgenesis.net/index.php?n ... 51&start=0)"In order to maximize the detail/sharpness of ground textures it's a good idea to use terrain extended textures. Below is a summary of what these parameters mean and what values are possible. However, if you're using photoreal scenery (such as MegaScenery) you should turn off extended textures and reduce visibility to 30 miles or so. That is because without extended textures FS needs to load about 5000 texture tiles but with extended textures the number jumps to about 20,000! There's still a lot of debate what exactly those parameters mean and what units they have but here's what I compiled from various sources and, IMO (!), makes sense: TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 * that's easy: ON/OFF switch to load higher res textures beyond the initial "ring", which extends to about 40 miles TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000 * apparently, values can range from 0 to 9.99 and higher settings will be ignored * extends the use of the highest detailed mips (sharper textures) within the inner circle; lower settings means less than 40 miles and higher settings up to the 40-mile max. * changing this value doesn't seem to make much of a visible difference TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000 * same range of values as above * extends the use of higher maps for the outer circle(s). Supposedly, "1.5" reaches to ~70mi and "9.9" to about 100mi * careful!!! A setting higher than 3.9 can lead to "texture tearing" (blue slivers) in the mid- to far distance when high-res mesh is used. Some add-on mesh files - like some of mine - provide additional "buffer" mesh files, which prevent those blue slivers even at settings >3.9 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4 * range from 0 to 8 * is tied to TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS and defines the max. mip level to be used for the outer ring(s), that is the sharpness of the outer ring textures * I never noticed much difference between 0 and 4; no changes at all when >4 In summary, the TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS parameter appears to be the one with the biggest visual influence. Oh, and TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT apparently determines the speed or priority with which ground textures are sent for processing to the graphics card. " Hello,there is another important point to pay attention to:MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=This factor is automatically and always changed to 96560 whenever you do a change in FS2004 settings, whatever value you had before!Realistic value for landscape is 64000.By the way, following values are recommended by Germany's well know "Texture Pope" Jobia.(Holger will know him for sure)He published his intensive studies in his "texture bible" - sorry, about 500 pages all in German.(http://www.jobia.de/)His proposals are:MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=64000TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024MipBias=8[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=2by BC_Holger on Thu Dec 25, 2008 11:03 pm Hi guys,Joachim (Jobia) is correct in that the maximum values for TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS are 4.0, not 4.5 as I had posted. Similarly, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS does only reach to 4, not 8.Thus, the settings I use are:TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4 (as Joachim has shown in his document, this value makes no difference if the first two are set to the maximum 4)Different from Joachim's suggestion I set TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=90.000000andTERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20The former is the Mesh Complexity slider value and it has been shown that a value of 100 (percent) has a disproportionate impact on frame rates while any values above 70% or so make no visible difference in the sim.With TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL at the default 19 the highest resolution that terrain mesh can resolve is 76-m spacing (LOD9). Most of my projects - as well as lots of other add-on landscape files - use 38-m spacing (LOD10), which is why I tend to use TMVL=20. The maximum value of 21, on the other hand, can lead to visual problems with terrain shading (large blocks instead of accurate shapes).Cheers, Holger

Hi, no help I'm afraid but I see what I think you are describing. Check out my earlier posts regarding "moving horizons", there should be a link to a YouTube video in there?I gave up and after installing fs9 on my dads pc (completely different set upto mine and different copy of fs9) and seeing the EXACT same behaviour, reckon it's a feature of the sim which everyone has but doesn't notice due to settings "masking" the problem or not flying in mountaineous regions at the right time of day (dusk and dawn)May I ask, is it mainly in mountaineous regions you see this behaviour? Does it look similar to my YouTube video? I'd also be keen to find a magic fix but beleive it just to be the way fs9 renders distant horizons :-(

Hi, no help I'm afraid but I see what I think you are describing. Check out my earlier posts regarding "moving horizons", there should be a link to a YouTube video in there?I gave up and after installing fs9 on my dads pc (completely different set upto mine and different copy of fs9) and seeing the EXACT same behaviour, reckon it's a feature of the sim which everyone has but doesn't notice due to settings "masking" the problem or not flying in mountaineous regions at the right time of day (dusk and dawn)May I ask, is it mainly in mountaineous regions you see this behaviour? Does it look similar to my YouTube video? I'd also be keen to find a magic fix but beleive it just to be the way fs9 renders distant horizons :-(

I came across some of your posts and videos when google searching for the solution to this problem. That is exactly the problem that I have. It happens everywhere, even over the ocean, but it is especially noticeable over the mountains, as whole summits flicker in and out.I would love to fix this, but if it can't be fixed, then I'd like to hear exactly what others use to mask it.thanks

bumpthanks

This will fix your problem.http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=112645

Unfortunately, if you're describing what I think you're describing, there's nothing you can do about it. It's just the way FS loads and displays terrain mesh.For performance reasons, the higher the LOD, the shorter the display radius, and vice versa. 306m terrain (LOD7), for instance, has a longer display radius than, say, 153m (LOD8) terrain mesh. And so on.Imagine concentric circles with your aircraft at the center. The lower resolution terrain will display out towards the horizon and the higher resolution terrain will display closer to your aircraft. As your aircraft moves through the FS world it is constantly loading and unloading the terrain and this process is what you describe as the "popping in" stuff.I don't know precisely what the distances are, but lets just say that 153m terrain will display out to about 100 km, so we have a 100km circle of 153m terrain surrounding your aircraft. If you have 76m terrain installed, that might display out to, say 70 km. So you have two circles of terrain, one of 76m for 70 km surrounding your aircraft and beyond that out to about 100 km would be the 153m terrain. If you have 38m terrain installed, it might display out to about 40 km. So you now have three circles of terrain. 38m out to about 40 km, beyond that 76m terrain out to about 70 km, and 153m beyond that out to 100 km.Etc. etc. So the higher the resolution, the shorter the display. As I say, this is just the way the terrain engine operates. It's hard-coded and there's nothing you can do to increase it. And it's really a good thing from a performance standpoint because if you had very high resolution installed and it displayed all the way out to the horizon the number of polygons the video would have to depict would quickly grow exponentially and the whole simulator would be brought to its knees very quickly.That said, you can tweak the fs9.cfg a little bit as noted above to work within those hard-coded limitations, but overall you can't increase the display radius of terrain mesh LODs.It's just one of those trade-offs between detail and performance.jt/fsg

That was a brilliant explanation, Justin! Thank you very much (also for your great FSGenesis meshes).With the help of professionals we can learn something valuable every day. :(

thanks