Yet another AA thread

[Wynthorpe 51]

Ok now I just cant get my head around why i can seem to get rid of certain jaggies, If i look out over the wing on the NGX i get some jagies toward the end of the wings on the black lines painted aling them, and i can laso see some shimmering on taxiway lines and TDZ's. I have Nvidia inspector running with the latest nvidia drivers, its all setup as per Ryans thread (8xSQ, 4xSS, 16XAF) and these few items of jaggies really make things look ugly to me, anyone any ideas on how to change this? Thanks Simon

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Add some mip maps to the exterior textures and it should clear it up. Just load the original texture into DXTBmp (freeware) or any other graphic editing software and resave it at DXT5 with mip maps. The exterior textures didn't ship with mip maps but adding them is easy enough. My card is set up more or less the same as Ryans recommendations and I experience the same thing until I mipped the textures. Hope that helps. Sean Campbell

[Wynthorpe 51]

I'll give it a try, the shimmering on the ground only happens at certain airports so i can live with that.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

I'll give it a try, the shimmering on the ground only happens at certain airports so i can live with that.

Simon, There's no need to settle for shimmering airport textures either. You can essientially do the same thing with those. If you have ever bought an Aerosoft scenery you will notice it a lot because most of their airports ship with no mip mapped textures, but some developers like FSDT and FlyTampa do the mip mapping ahead of time so the users dont have to fiddle with it themselves. I can only tell you how much time I have spent in the past mipping addons sceneries, user a/c textures, and AI textures. Makes a big difference if your willing to spend the time. Good luck. Sean Campbell

[Wynthorpe 51]

You know its only at my Aerosoft Airports that i get the shimmering, Ive just flown into LGAV (Simply stunning at night taxiing past the IKEA and Factory outlet, the neons look spot on at night, i digress) and never had a problem, same with my FSDT and UK2000 addons, no shimmering. I'll have to spend some time this weekend mipping textures! Wonder what the wife will have to say about that :D Thanks Simon

[tangerine 148]

Add some mip maps to the exterior textures and it should clear it up. Just load the original texture into DXTBmp (freeware) or any other graphic editing software and resave it at DXT5 with mip maps. The exterior textures didn't ship with mip maps but adding them is easy enough. My card is set up more or less the same as Ryans recommendations and I experience the same thing until I mipped the textures. Hope that helps. Sean Campbell

what if those textures are in DXT1 format?...do you still have to save them as DXT5 with mipmaps? another question...only textures with DDS extension format? or every texture even those bmp's?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

You know its only at my Aerosoft Airports that i get the shimmering, Ive just flown into LGAV (Simply stunning at night taxiing past the IKEA and Factory outlet, the neons look spot on at night, i digress) and never had a problem, same with my FSDT and UK2000 addons, no shimmering. I'll have to spend some time this weekend mipping textures! Wonder what the wife will have to say about that :D Thanks Simon

LOL, funny that I guess it was at an Aerosoft airport That's one of the things Aerosoft is know for is shimmering texture due to lack of mipping. I agree though that UK2000, FlyTampa, and FSDT do a nice job with their texture work and it's usually turn key with very little user work required to make it look or work better. Usually one of the first things i do when I buy a new a/c or scenery after I install it is open the texture folder and look around to see what work will be needed. In most cases just some mipping will do the trick to clear up the shimmers. For mipping AI I used an imagetool batch program that allows me to drop all the texture folders in and do it at one time. Although you could also use that for scenery textures, it only works for .bmp's and the fact that for scenery it's better to preview the textures first and see which ones have alpha textures and which one dont, as well as seperate them by compression so you dont end up turning a DXT1 into a DXT5 or visa versa. Sean Campbell

what if those textures are in DXT1 format?...do you still have to save them as DXT5 with mipmaps? another question...only textures with DDS extension format? or every texture even those bmp's?

If they are DXT1 save them as DXT1 with mipmaps. Unless they are 32bit which you can save as DXT5,,3, or DXT1, keep the compressions the same. Doesn't matter if it's .dds or .bmp, the texture sheet inside is still the same and both .dds and .bmp can be mip mapped. Think of a .dds file as a .bmp with with a different wrapper :-)

[Wynthorpe 51]

LOL, funny that I guess it was at an Aerosoft airport That's one of the things Aerosoft is know for is shimmering texture due to lack of mipping. I agree though that UK2000, FlyTampa, and FSDT do a nice job with their texture work and it's usually turn key with very little user work required to make it look or work better. Usually one of the first things i do when I buy a new a/c or scenery after I install it is open the texture folder and look around to see what work will be needed. In most cases just some mipping will do the trick to clear up the shimmers. For mipping AI I used an imagetool batch program that allows me to drop all the texture folders in and do it at one time. Although you could also use that for scenery textures, it only works for .bmp's and the fact that for scenery it's better to preview the textures first and see which ones have alpha textures and which one dont, as well as seperate them by compression so you dont end up turning a DXT1 into a DXT5 or visa versa. Sean Campbell If they are DXT1 save them as DXT1 with mipmaps. Unless they are 32bit which you can save as DXT5,,3, or DXT1, keep the compressions the same. Doesn't matter if it's .dds or .bmp, the texture sheet inside is still the same and both .dds and .bmp can be mip mapped. Think of a .dds file as a .bmp with with a different wrapper :-)

You certainly know your stuff Sean :D Is it just lazyness on Aerosoft's part or do the not add mips for a reason? The shimmering really spoils some excellent scenery design (IMO not on par with what FT have produced with Athens) especially on the taxi lines in the distance.Simon

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

You certainly know your stuff Sean :D Is it just lazyness on Aerosoft's part or do the not add mips for a reason? The shimmering really spoils some excellent scenery design (IMO not on par with what FT have produced with Athens) especially on the taxi lines in the distance.Simon

I don't think it lazyness on Aerosoft's part, they just have a different design philosophy on what looks good and what doesn't. I've been thru the whole mip mapping deal with their boss Mathijis (not sure if I spelled it right), and according to him and Aerosoft, their stance is that mip mapping makes the textures look dull and out of focus, while sharp shimmering textures look more realistic to them.In theory, the texture mipped or not mipped is still the same. All mip maps do is redraw the same texture in a smaller size when you are far away and a larger size as you get closer. If you open a texture with mips and preview the mip maps you will find the same texture in 10 smaller versions stepped down in size (10 if it has 10 mip maps). What happens is that if your looking at a hanger for example at a distance the smaller of the mip map textures will display, then as you get closer the next size texture will display, until you get the closer and then the larger texture will come in. Essentially, it takes some load off the GPU by not having to try to draw one texture from a distance and when there are mip maps to choose from the smallest one will be used and take some load off the GPU when you're far away.So not only will adding mip take out the shimmers, but often times you will get a small performance increase. That's why I mip all my UT2 and WOAI textures. There's a lot of little things a user can do to improve performance that the regular user never even knows about. Sean Cammpbell

[Wynthorpe 51]

OK thats a great explanation thanks, will me adding mips take away from the detail at all then? what resolution are the textures on the NGX? they arent 4096 are they?

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

OK thats a great explanation thanks, will me adding mips take away from the detail at all then? what resolution are the textures on the NGX? they arent 4096 are they?

No the mips wont take away the detail, the texture sheet stays the same.Most of the exterior textures are 4096 DXT5 and the 4 biggest VC textures were 2048 X 2048 with the exception of the main panel which was 4096 X 1024. The 4 biggest VC textures were all DXT1, with the main panel 4096X1024 having no alpha channel and the other 3 having alpha channels. I resized all of them to half their size.I posted some screen shots in the screen shot forum called PMDG NGX with Core2Duo FPS and you can see how the resized textures in the VC and exterior look.Sean Campbell

[Mark_A 31]

I have the same problems as the original poster, upgraded to a gtx 560 with the recommend inspector settings, chaging drivers did not help.My problems are with orbx airports, has anyone chaged the mip maps on these?My gtx 275 had no problems with them, drivers 197.

[Guest Turboblower]

I put this in my fsx cfg, and stopped shimmering full stop.No power lines, fences and guages shimmering anymore. Place under your [Display] section.[Display]MipBias=6

[Wynthorpe 51]

Sean, Thanks very much for the help, that has made things a lot nicer! Please accept my grattitude :) Simon

[Wynthorpe 51]

I don't think it lazyness on Aerosoft's part, they just have a different design philosophy on what looks good and what doesn't. I've been thru the whole mip mapping deal with their boss Mathijis (not sure if I spelled it right), and according to him and Aerosoft, their stance is that mip mapping makes the textures look dull and out of focus, while sharp shimmering textures look more realistic to them. In theory, the texture mipped or not mipped is still the same. All mip maps do is redraw the same texture in a smaller size when you are far away and a larger size as you get closer. If you open a texture with mips and preview the mip maps you will find the same texture in 10 smaller versions stepped down in size (10 if it has 10 mip maps). What happens is that if your looking at a hanger for example at a distance the smaller of the mip map textures will display, then as you get closer the next size texture will display, until you get the closer and then the larger texture will come in. Essentially, it takes some load off the GPU by not having to try to draw one texture from a distance and when there are mip maps to choose from the smallest one will be used and take some load off the GPU when you're far away. So not only will adding mip take out the shimmers, but often times you will get a small performance increase. That's why I mip all my UT2 and WOAI textures. There's a lot of little things a user can do to improve performance that the regular user never even knows about. Sean Cammpbell

You mentioned that you used a batch file to mip all the textures for a scenery, Would you mind sharing this as i have quite a few Aerosoft sceneries id like to do and ive just looked at my scenery for Venice and dont fancy doing it individually