Hi,I have just converted some Posky 777 textures from 32-bit to DXT3 format because are more crisp and smooth, so I can avoid texture flickering, expecially where thin lines are designed, and jagged textures with some spot view.Well, after conversion I had a some bad result as shown in the screenshots below:I cannot understand if it is a conversion problem or anything. Sometimes I launch FS2004 and don't have any problem, sometimes I have a problem with the wings, sometimes with the right side fuselage, sometimes when I move in spot mode from left to the side and the blurry textures comes up... Any help please?Thanks bye.RRP.S.: and let me add another comment. I did not have this kind problem when had those textures in 32-bit format, so I think it is not a graphic problem related to my video card or so.

Did you leave mipmaps on? Try switching them off, before conversion - in DXTBmp you can do that by leaving the tick box: 'Include when saving', empty in the side MipMaps box.

Did you leave mipmaps on? Try switching them off, before conversion - in DXTBmp you can do that by leaving the tick box: 'Include when saving', empty in the side MipMaps box.

Hi, in effect I left it ON, but I don't know if it is better to leave it ON or OFF, because I don't know the feature meaning.Anyway, strange thing is that it happens only with some textures: e.g. right side front, right side mid, left wing... Almost never for the left side fuselage.Choosing MIPMAPS off I will have a quality decrease in the texture?Bye.RR Edit: Negative, if I leave the MIPMAPS OFF I had same problems as for 32-bit (flickering and jagged textures, thin lines on the wings presented as dashed lines when moving in spot mode), while adding MIPMAPS I fix that problem but another one comes up (the problem shown above). So for me it is essential to add MIPMAPS otherwise I cannot solve the problem.

I don't no what is going on with your texture's,but I always have mip maps turned OFF whenever I convert from 32bit to DXT3.Try converting your textures again from 32bit to dxt3,but discard the textures you have already tried and make sure they are a new set from the zip file your aircraft came with.(or re-download the model )and again convert them from 32bit to dxt3 but make sure mipmaps ARE turned off.I used to get those sort of blurry problems that your screenshots show from time to time and I am sure its mipmap related.What program are you using for the conversion process.cheers Andy

I don't no what is going on with your texture's,but I always have mip maps turned OFF whenever I convert from 32bit to DXT3.Try converting your textures again from 32bit to dxt3,but discard the textures you have already tried and make sure they are a new set from the zip file your aircraft came with.(or re-download the model )and again convert them from 32bit to dxt3 but make sure mipmaps ARE turned off.I used to get those sort of blurry problems that your screenshots show from time to time and I am sure its mipmap related.What program are you using for the conversion process.cheers Andy

I used DXTbmp, then CONVIMX, then IMAGETOOL. Anyway, the problem is quite simple. If I turned ON mipmap when converting I get smooth and crisp textures, if I turned OFF mipmap (either leaving 32-bit or DXT3 textures) I get jagged textures, dashed lines where they are not zooming in and flickering problems. Adding mipmap to the textures I have no jagged textures, no flickering problems, no dashed lines...

Choosing MIPMAPS off I will have a quality decrease in the texture?

Not really. The mipmaps can cause the textures to be blurred. The blurriness can differ depending on the distance and angle they are viewed from. The further away you are from the texture, the more blurry it gets. I generally do not use MipMaps on the flyable aircraft textures and get rid of them.The MipMap is a set of lower resolution versions of the texture, all saved together inside a single texture file. Each smaller version is about 1/4th the size of the previous texture. In FS9 (and other sims) as a 3D object moves farther away, the level of detail visible in it's textures decreases. With mipmaps the computer can just switch to a smaller resolution texture, depending on the object's distance. That way there's no waste in processing power.The side effect of mipmap textures is that sometimes they are not rendered at full resolution when they are closer. This is when you see the blurry textures (sometimes more so than others), as the computer/sim has chosen a lower resolution version from the saved mipmaps. FS9 can be pretty bad at this.In some cases mipmaps can be useful for improving performance, like on AI aircraft. These aircraft are often far away and there may be a number of them - rendering full resolution textures on these would hurt performance on some systems. If you have a lot of AI traffic and all their textures are without MipMaps then it can cause considerable performance issues.However for the flyable aircraft I haven't noticed any drop in performance at all. Sometimes I get rid of mipmaps on scenery objects as well, but with scenery its a different type of situation.

............Edit: Negative, if I leave the MIPMAPS OFF I had same problems as for 32-bit (flickering and jagged textures, thin lines on the wings presented as dashed lines when moving in spot mode), while adding MIPMAPS I fix that problem but another one comes up (the problem shown above). So for me it is essential to add MIPMAPS otherwise I cannot solve the problem.

Sounds like you're having some problems with the initial textures in 32bit. I haven't had the problems you're describing with 32bit textures (flickering, etc...), so I'm not sure what could be causing this. I generally like using 32bit textures but the problem is that they take up a lot more space.When processing them play around with the other tick box in the MipMaps section 'Use 16 bit Dither'. Try it with on and off. Maybe that will help.Maybe its a display setting in FS9, you've switched on, that's causing these issues. Do you have 'anti-aliasing' switched on? If so turn it off and see if that helps.

I used DXTbmp, then CONVIMX, then IMAGETOOL. Anyway, the problem is quite simple. If I turned ON mipmap when converting I get smooth and crisp textures, if I turned OFF mipmap (either leaving 32-bit or DXT3 textures) I get jagged textures, dashed lines where they are not zooming in and flickering problems. Adding mipmap to the textures I have no jagged textures, no flickering problems, no dashed lines...

Keep in mind if you leave MipMaps on you will have blurry textures. They are the cause of this particular issue.

Not really. The mipmaps can cause the textures to be blurred. The blurriness can differ depending on the distance and angle they are viewed from. The further away you are from the texture, the more blurry it gets. I generally do not use MipMaps on the flyable aircraft textures and get rid of them.The MipMap is a set of lower resolution versions of the texture, all saved together inside a single texture file. Each smaller version is about 1/4th the size of the previous texture. In FS9 (and other sims) as a 3D object moves farther away, the level of detail visible in it's textures decreases. With mipmaps the computer can just switch to a smaller resolution texture, depending on the object's distance. That way there's no waste in processing power.The side effect of mipmap textures is that sometimes they are not rendered at full resolution when they are closer. This is when you see the blurry textures (sometimes more so than others), as the computer/sim has chosen a lower resolution version from the saved mipmaps. FS9 can be pretty bad at this.In some cases mipmaps can be useful for improving performance, like on AI aircraft. These aircraft are often far away and there may be a number of them - rendering full resolution textures on these would hurt performance on some systems. If you have a lot of AI traffic and all their textures are without MipMaps then it can cause considerable performance issues.However for the flyable aircraft I haven't noticed any drop in performance at all. Sometimes I get rid of mipmaps on scenery objects as well, but with scenery its a different type of situation.Sounds like you're having some problems with the initial textures in 32bit. I haven't had the problems you're describing with 32bit textures (flickering, etc...), so I'm not sure what could be causing this. I generally like using 32bit textures but the problem is that they take up a lot more space.When processing them play around with the other tick box in the MipMaps section 'Use 16 bit Dither'. Try it with on and off. Maybe that will help.Maybe its a display setting in FS9, you've switched on, that's causing these issues. Do you have 'anti-aliasing' switched on? If so turn it off and see if that helps.Keep in mind if you leave MipMaps on you will have blurry textures. They are the cause of this particular issue.

Hi, look at these shots. They describe well the problem I have. ATI cards have big problems in graphics rendering, lots of airmen which have ATI cards have same problems like mine. I obviously turned ON AA on my control panel. I have this problem not only with POSKY birds, but with all aircraft textures.Look at the jagged textures, look at the distorsions in the textures, look at the dashed lines... Those problems increase when zooming out and give me lots of flickering when the aircraft is airborne and turn left/right or pitch up/down. This is a common weird problem for ATI cards and FS2004/FSX.http://img574.imageshack.us/f/cpa777nomipmap.jpg/http://img577.imageshack.us/f/cpa777nomipmap2.jpg/http://img253.imageshack.us/f/cpa777nomipmap3.jpg

Hi, I've recently discovered that this problem can happen if the textures do not have an alpha channel. The DXT3 format requires there to be an alpha channel, so if it's missing then it can cause display problems. There's a useful tool over on the Alpha India forums that can check for missing alphas: http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=8581.msg92102#msg92102The way to add back the alpha channel is simply to open the texture in DXTbmp and re-save it, overwriting the original file.Hope this helps,Matthew

Hi, thanks for your help, but unfortunately I cannot see the post you wrote cause I am not a registered user. Could you inform me about which software please? Thanks a lot. Bye.RRp.s.: anyway, did you discover that adding alpha channel could fix the problem?

Note that it is not possible to create a DXT3 texture without an alpha channel, the reported issue is that there is a flag setting in the bmp file format header data which indicates if alpha data is present or not. The assertion is that if the flag is set to "no alpha" that is causing a problem for FS9. I'm kind of a skeptic on this, but it doesn't hurt to change it. I think what people are doing is re-saving the file using DXTbmp as IIRC this particular utility always sets the flag to "has alpha" when the texture is stored as DXT3. Alternatively you can just use a hex editor on byte 32 of the bmp file which is where the flag is stored. I forget the value that needs to be there (think it's 04 but don't quote me on that). If you want to go this route I can look up what the correct value is. Using DXTbmp is probably easier, and you can also play around with the filter you use to save the mipmaps to boot.scott s..

Note that it is not possible to create a DXT3 texture without an alpha channel, the reported issue is that there is a flag setting in the bmp file format header data which indicates if alpha data is present or not. The assertion is that if the flag is set to "no alpha" that is causing a problem for FS9. I'm kind of a skeptic on this, but it doesn't hurt to change it. I think what people are doing is re-saving the file using DXTbmp as IIRC this particular utility always sets the flag to "has alpha" when the texture is stored as DXT3. Alternatively you can just use a hex editor on byte 32 of the bmp file which is where the flag is stored. I forget the value that needs to be there (think it's 04 but don't quote me on that). If you want to go this route I can look up what the correct value is. Using DXTbmp is probably easier, and you can also play around with the filter you use to save the mipmaps to boot.scott s..

Hi, your reply is correct. I have just converted using Convimx into DXT3 one texture of the POSKY 777 livery, then opened with Imagetool and saw that it already has the Alpha channel. No needs to add alpha channel when converting, so this is not the matter IMHO.Thanks, bye.

Is your Global Texture slider set to MASSIVE? (all the way right).Hope this helps,

Hello,

Is your Global Texture slider set to MASSIVE?

Methink this will not help for this case.myself suffer same phenomena (distorded straights lines under some angle views) with some aircrafts repaints and have Global Texture set to MASSIVELike this one posted above:http://img253.imageshack.us/i/cpa777nomipmap3.jpg/Suffered this with Nvidia card and now also with ATI card.Regards.Gus.