VFR Scenery blurring /frame rate lock interesting find...

[Guest Johnp40]

EveningSince upgrading to fs2004, I have installed my UK VFR scenery, and was finding the scenery became much more blurry than was the case in fs2002.Tonight I took a flight from Heathrow to Exeter in the amazing "fanda" DASH, climbing to 20,000 feet the scenery was pretty blurry.I then lowered the frame lock to 10fps thinking this would help with the blurring.It did the opposite, the blurring became WORSE.I turned the frame lock to unlimited and the change was amazingWithing seconds the scenery snapped back into focus and stayed there for the rest of the flight.I panned left, right and down the scenery was completely clear, any areas that were slightly blurry cleared almost instantly.Its as if the higher the frame rate, the more attention the MS engine pays to updating the LOD.Any other VFR scenery user with blurring problems, give this a try.all the bestJohnp4 3 gig@ 3.3geforce 4 44001 gig ram

[Guest cwright]

John, that's interesting. It was well established that dynamic blurred textures in FS2002 could be much reduced by using a low frame rate lock. It seems FS2004 works differently! On both my old and new computers I have found that in general the dynablurs are not a significant issue in FS2004, so that's a huge improvement for which Microsoft deserves thanks. But I did notice the UK VFR did suffer from the blurs, though not so badly as FS2002. As in general the blurs are not a problem (and I rarely use the VFR) I now use an unlimited frame rate lock. In fact the lock seems to have no useful function on my system. With or without it, the sim runs beautifully smoothly with effectively no dynamic blurred textures. Best regards, Chris

[Guest Mike94]

John,the same thing happens with the Megascenery South California. They even recommend to set the FPS-lock to 'unlimited' to achieve the best results in FS2004 with this scenery.I found out, that when i set the FPS to unlimited, the scenery indeed gets sharper, but on the other side i get more stutters in flight.I changed back to FPS locked at 20-25, the scenery looks slightly more blurry now in the distance, but i dont get the stutters anymore. I prefer it like this.I read somewhere in the forum of Visual Flight, the author of the VFR photografic scenery, that they recommend a unlimited FPS-lock as well to achieve the best results. But as i said, when i do this, the price are more stutters.Cheers,Michael

[Magic Man 2]

Visual Flight do indeed recommend setting unlimited FPS.

[Guest Mike94]

yes, i think setting the FPS-lock to unlimited, gives the program the highest priority to render the scenery, at the cost of lower performance of the airplane and systems. This is how i understand the mechanism. I always see more stutters when i set the FPS-lock to 'unlimited'.Locking it at 20-25 gives me the smoothest performance. And the photographic sceneries like Megascenery still look good enough, only slightly more blurry in the distance. But i can live with that.-Michael

[Guest Johnp40]

When flying outwith the VFR scenery area I keep the FPS capped at 30and get smooth flying.Using the VFR scenery with no autogen to display I get virtually no stutters when in flight with the setting at unlimited.But taxiing around heathrow, OUCH!)Tried the lock at 40fps and the scenery seems as sharp, with less judders and jumps in graphically intensive areasI,ve noticed that with the frame rate hitting 40fps+ VC scrolling and especially tight turns when taxing are a real pleasure ... so smoooth.cheersJohn

[Guest wathomas777]

One thing I noticed.With the FPS lock to unlimited, the system can get higher rates (sometimes 60+ during high altitute) and the scenery does have a pretty sharp picutre.However, when switching views (like looking left or right), I would often get incomplete texture loads (with patches of "grey" where the texture wouldn't load. I would often have to reswitch the view again to force a load.This would really take me out of the sim.By lowering my FPS down to 24FPS (motion picture quality) I may have blurrines is some instances, but I never have an incomplete texture load when looking around. Also it seems to cache it better so that switching between views is much faster.

[Guest Johnp40]

WillRegarding gray patches.I have a setting of TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 instead of the default 60 in the cfg fileThis may help regarding the grey areas, depending on the memory and bandwith of your GPU.I have not observed this problem with my computer.Did a flight earlier from Manchester to Carlisle the scenery around the lake district is jaw droppingall the bestJohn

[SQUAWKIDENT 3]

Yes running with UNLIMITED framerates has made 100% improvement on my system as recommended many months ago by John Farrell who runs the Visual Flight Forums:http://www.visualflight.co.uk/forums/default.aspI now get between 50-95fps in spot view (35-50fps 2D view in C172SP)with UK VFR scenery and UK2000 airports. This only slows down when within eyesight of a major airport or with AI on 100% (I have tons of AI traffic). Weather is normally set to 20mls visibility with little or no cloud (as in the real-world unless you fly around Greenland alot!) This helps to keep the frame-rates consistent.I suffer hardly any major blurred scenery except on occasion with FS2004 autogen scenery which is now set to low as I don't like finding houses or trees 50 feet off the runway (why does MS do this? totally unrealistic!)Worth checking out the above Visual Flight forum for hints and tips regarding ALL scenery optimization (not just their own excellent scenery)RegardsAdamPS: For those who are interested system specs are:Win XP Pro, DELL 2.54GHz P4, 1024MB RAM, Ti4800SE Nvidia Graphics, 24/96 Audiophile Sound.