16 Bit vs. 32 Bit

[Guest hassata]

Does anyone know aht exactly I would loose out on from going from 32 bit to 16 bit @ 1024x768?Will there be a noticable loss of pic quality (especially considoring the great dusk/dawn effects of FS9)?It may be worth the performance gain.

[lmponte 0]

My advice is simple... Go to 16 bit...The difference is that you won't be able to see as many different colours as in 32 bit, but the difference isn't very noticeable...and yes, the sunsets look great in 16 bit too.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/30195.jpg___________________________________________________ Lu

[Guest hassata]

Thanks. I'm going to try and see whether the performance increase is significant.

[Wolfko 0]

The biggest difference I notice in FS2002 (i do not have FS2004 yet) is thet under 16 bit aircraft and scenery shadows are simply black, whereas under 32 bit shadows are displayed in a more realistic transparent shade of grey. I assume this is also valid for FS2004.Wolfgang

[Guest Max Cowgill]

I can't believe people are actually having this discussion in late 2003. This is a discussion for 1999 when people were arguing about the Voodoo3 and TNT2. If you actually gain a significant measure of performance by switching from 32-bit to 16-bit and you have a modern era video card (read Geforce 3 or greater), this tells me that something's wrong with MS's graphics engine or perhaps just their implementation of 32-bit color.-Max Cowgill

[Guest Bigshot]

There's a huge quality difference between 16bit and 32bit with very little framerate difference if any at all in FS2k4. It's an enormous visual quality difference. If you can't see the difference when you switch back and forth, you need a new graphics card. Simple as that.

[Guest tfriend]

I am using an Nvidia TI4200 and there is NO difference in quality between 16 and 32 bit. Shadows and very slight differences in cloud shading might barley be noticable. Other than that there is no visual difference in Flight Sim.

[lmponte 0]

No, I'm using a GF4 Ti4200 too and I do not notice any difference running in 16 bit mode. Even shadows are transparent like in 32 bit. And yes, I do get a performance increase when using 16 bit.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/30195.jpg___________________________________________________ Lu

[Guest hassata]

Tried it, not much effect on fps (P4 3.01 800 FSB 9800 128 1 gig 3200).Resized autogen and cloud textures also have little impact.I think I've hit the wall, and should just turn of the counter. Atleast until the new Prescott comes out.

[Guest Bigshot]

Hassata: These are my current settings. Note the autogen setting.Any more and I have trouble landing in the big cities. Otherwise, it's consistent with frames near the maxed mark most anywhere. Running a PIV2.53 512mbPC1066 and the 9700 Pro:Omega drivers 2.4.74Default clouds visibility 90mi; coverage maxed (80mi); density high Frames locked at 221600x1200x32 res; card setup: 4xAA & 16xAF performance; textures max; mipmaps max sound on high; (I have an audigy card)Terrain Mesh at 90 percentTerrain texture maxedTerrain & water maxedwater slider on low per defaultAll boxes checked except AA and all shadows on Special Effects maxedScenery very denseDynamic scenery very denseAutogen DenseFiltering Trilinear mipmap slider on 4hardware lights maxedGlobal maxedAll Aircraft Maxed with all boxes checkedbandwidth mult = 400fs9 terrain default =5fs9 extended textures =9AI Traffic = 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000I don't like waiting for anything.Found the sweet spot; she's nice and smooth everywhere; even landing in a major city. Now, we're not counting heavy thunderstorms!!

[Guest hassata]

Nice work. With a little effort everyone can find there sweet spot with this sim. I'm still tweaking myself, so thanks for the info.Now resist the urge to tinker at all costs.

[michal 44]

>There's a huge quality difference between 16bit and 32bitI agree. As far as ground or panels are concerned the difference may not be so huge (though panels are impacted too) but for any atmospherics (sky, clouds, etc) the difference is huge. It is so huge I can't stand looking at 16 bit anymore - the banding in the sky is simply unaccaptable with 16 bits. If someone claim they don't see the difference I wonder where their eyes are ....Michael J.http://www.reality-xp.com/community/nr/rsc/rxp-higher.jpg

[barryward12345 0]

>I can't believe people are actually having this discussion in>late 2003. This is a discussion for 1999 when people were>arguing about the Voodoo3 and TNT2. If you actually gain a>significant measure of performance by switching from 32-bit to>16-bit and you have a modern era video card (read Geforce 3 or>greater), this tells me that something's wrong with MS's>graphics engine or perhaps just their implementation of 32-bit>color.>>-Max CowgillWell, I am still using FS2002 -- but I recently built a AMD 2400 machine, 512 meg RAM , Geforcre4T4200 , WindowsXP machine specifically to update to FS2004. My trouble is that it has improved my experience with FS2002 so much (after using a P3/1000) that it is almost a new Sim for me. I am now thinking that I will purchase FS2004 in 2 years time when I upgrade my hardware again!! :) But anyway, in regard to 16 bit vs 32 bit -- I still find , even with this faster machine and more powerful vid crad, that 16 bit costs me too many FPS. Frankly I can't see much difference onscreen between 16 and 32 bits and prefer to use the FPS for other things like a higher percentage AI.Barry

[Guest Max Cowgill]

Barry, if you are really losing that much performance by utilizing 32-bit color, then there is either a) something wrong with your system in general :( something wrong with your video card in particular (hardware or drivers) c) something wrong with MS's programming. There's absolutely no reason for a relatively high-end video card built in 2002 to not be able to handle 32-bit color, no matter what the graphical load. I've seen other GF4 Ti 4200 users mention this, which leads me to believe this is the key. Perhaps it is the drivers, perhaps it is the video card's design, perhaps it is the software; the only way to find out for sure is to test the systems afflicted and try to isolate the problem. Collecting a database on system info for GF4 Ti 4200 users who are having this problem would be a good start. A list of hardware, operating system, drivers, sim settings, would be very helpful in tracking down the cause of this problem. If the problem occurs across a multitude of drivers we still cannot rule out drivers as the cause of the problem. It is very likely that if the problem is a result of the driver it may not have been noticed or addressed by Nvidia yet. Compiling the aforementioned list and presenting it to Nvidia & MS may help bring a solution to the problem.I suggest starting a thread about this topic in this forum, since it is MSFS that the problem is occurring in.hope this helps,Max Cowgill

[Guest PaulL01]

One word:Quality.One of the worse posible effects of lowering to 16bit color will be color banding, this will show up really bad in the sky at low light times of day (dusk/night/dawn) this will show up as well when viewing an very multi-colored scene or one in which many alpha or transparent textures are used in the scene.For this real reason DX9 has now advanced rendering to 40Bit, but to take advantage of this you would need a fully compliant DX9 card.