Terrain Mesh Complexity

[Guest JonP01]

>I didn't kow that the mesh slider affected landclass, are you>sure about that?>>JoelMaybe I have my terminology about askew. The difference between 100% slider and 0% slider is the variety of different textures drawn. There is a much wider variety of different texture tiles shown at 100%, or even 10% as opposed to 0%. This is with flights I have done over Australia. It's not like I will suddenly see a city or a rural area where before I never saw one. Just that those same city or rural textures are more varied and pleasing to the eye, because it looks much more interesting, realistic and less monotonous.I've actually been checking the terrain mesh resolution over Australia in the last couple of days and I sincerely cannot see any difference between 10% and 100%. Maybe it is something specific to my installation.

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

I have finally seen the stutters that everyone is talking about!I'm running a PIV 3GHZ 9800 Pro with 512Mb DDR and up until now have been able to run at 1600x1200x32 with most sliders maxed (extreme autogen, extreme scenery detail, massive texture, etc.). I have seen solid 24 fps in the Vancouver BC area and between 18 and 24 smooth in the Seattle - Tacoma area. Well last night I downloaded the LOD9 mesh for the Vancouver area as well as a new landclass file for that region. Wow, visually it is stunning. The mountains around Vancouver, small hills near my local airport, the shoreline cliffs all look fabulous. But as soon as I get near the ground for landing, even a precautionary landing in a field, I get massive stutters (0.1 - 2+ seconds). The stutters seem linked to a lot of harddrive activity. I can't go back to the old mesh, don't make me go back, please!!!Is LOD9 mesh that intensive, I use TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20. What would cause the hard drive activity? Would 1 Gb of DDR RAM help? What settings in my system are most likely to reduce the strain? It seems like the system can happily and smoothly go along an then, stop, stop, stop, stop, arghhh.Help!!!

[Justin Toposim 16]

Where did you install the landclass to?Whatever the installation instructions say, try it insceneryBASEsceneryand see if your stutters don't go away.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Hi Justin,I installed both the landclass .bgl file and the mesh .bgl files to the Addon Sceneryscenery directory.Do I want to move both the landclass and the mesh .bgl files to the sceneryBASEscenery directory?What is the difference between the two places that would cause difficulty to fs9? :-roll Do I need to remove any of the original fs9 landclass files?What are the critical fs9.cfg variables and how should I set them for an LOD9 addon mesh?:D Thanks a ton for your help,

[Justin Toposim 16]

HI Michael,The critical thing with the landclass is to NOT have a texture subfolder accompanying the scenery subfolder where the landclass BGL(s) are located.Unless you fancy having an easy and convenient method of switching back and forth between the default landclass and addon landclass, there really isn't any reason to put them anywhere but sceneryBASEscenery with the default landclass.I doubt it is the terrain mesh causing the problem. More likely that you have a texture subfolder where you shouldn't.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Do I want to put the new mesh in the sceneryBASEscenery folder as well?I'm not at home so I can't check, but I think I only placed the .bgl files for the landclass and the new mesh in the Addon Sceneryscenery folder. I didn't copy a texture subfolder. If this is the case, do you have any other things I can try to get rid of the stutters?Thanks,

[Justin Toposim 16]

Hi Michael,No, the best place for any mesh you have is sceneryworldscenery.Well, there is a texture subfolder in addon scenery, so my best guess is that's the problem.Landclass behaves a bit differently than other types of scenery, and it's very particular about where it wants to be for efficient processing.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Thank you very much for your patience and for your clear answer.:D

[Justin Toposim 16]

You're welcome very much!-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Hi Justin,I tried your fix last night and it worked perfectly, thanks.I just have a few more questions:Should I be able to tell the difference between the "Terrain Mesh Complexity" slider set to 85 and 100. What do you have yours set at?I have the other variable set as follows:TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=0.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=0.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456What does the "Scenery Complexity" slider do? Thanks for your help,

[Justin Toposim 16]

HI Michael,Glad it worked so well for you.You won't see much difference, only on the outer edges of the terrain radius.I would probably adjust toTERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=5.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.000000This should allieviate any floating autogen problems you may have.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Hi Justin,What do these variables do? What does a setting of zero default to?What is the lowest I could set "Terrain Mesh Complexity" and see the full LOD9 resolution at 20 miles radius?Thanks again,

[Justin Toposim 16]

HI Michael,This is an excerpt from a correspondence with one of the MS development team:TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 - This turns on/off the extended texture ringTERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=0.000000 - This is the default radius in textures forall rings; should be 2.5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=0.000000 - This is the radius used for the innerring when the extended texture ring is turned on; should be 4.0I think increasing these values would extend the clarity of the terrain textures further out.On your second question, I'd say about 50. I believe 100 would be around 40 nm. Just a rough guestimate. There are many variables at play here.-------Justinhttp://www.fsgenesis.netHigh Quality Scenery for FS200x

[Guest FlyboyMichael]

Thanks again. :)