Blurred Ground Textures (yet another post on this subject!) ...

[martinlest2 58]

I used to be more than satisfied with the visuals I was getting in FS9 but these days they are becoming rather depressing. Admittedly, with Ultimate Terrain, REX, Ground Environment Pro and so on installed I may be asking a lot to get nice sharp ground textures, but others seem to - why don't I these days:? My PC is pretty high-end and I never have less than 2GBs of free physical RAM left at any time - so why do ground textures load so slowly, sometimes not at all? If it were a hardware problem I would expect all textures, including payware a/c to have similar difficulties, but airport buildings and aircraft liveries (like the PMDG 747) are always crisp and clear.The screenshot below shows things at their worst: the textures immediately around the a/c do come into focus within 5 seconds or so, but the general picture is a series of broken lines everywhere where roads, rivers and so forth have not loaded...I have spent so many hours, over so many years if I am honest, trying different tweaks to my fs9.cfg file - from AVSIM, FS Genesis, Flightsim.com forums and others. "All the usual tweaks" to the display & graphics settings (fs9.cfg), including these (which when I first applied them seemed to work really well):http://forum.avsim.n...s9/page__st__50Now, whatever values I put into the cfg file (TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD; TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS= etc. etc.), I notice little or no difference in the sim at all. I wonder if anyone has any more ideas? I have run out! My current fs9.cfg (relevant sections of it anyway) are posted below. Thanks in advance.MartinBTW. I have tried deleting the fs9.cfg file and letting FS9 rebuild it, but I think that because of various graphic card/multi-monitor entries there, that always causes a CTD when I start FS9, so that's not really an option - in case anyone suggests it! :-)-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=30TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=25600//TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=1.0RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.3RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.25RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.4TextureMaxLoad=10[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=95.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=3.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4[sCENERY]IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=5DYNAMIC_SCENERY=1DYN_SCN_DENSITY=5DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1SUNGLARE=1LENSFLARE=1[GRAPHICS]FULL_SCREEN=0PERFORMANCE_MODE=0DEF_PERF_MODE=7TEXT_SCROLL=1AUTO_LOD=0DETAIL_TEXTURE=2WATER_EFFECTS=1TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1EFFECTS_QUALITY=2GROUND_SHADOWS=0SMOOTH_VIEW=1IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1//TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=262144COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1LANDING_LIGHTS=1IMAGE_QUALITY=0TEXTURE_BLDG=1TEXTURE_GND=1TEXTURE_WATER=1AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2SEE_SELF=1TEXTURE_QUALITY=3LOD_TARGET_FPS=21NUM_LIGHTS=8

Edited January 9, 2012 by martinlest2

[martinlest2 58]

No recommendations anyone?

[RicardoNY1 2]

Aside the usual cfg. file tweaks.........the only thing that causes texture loading problems for my FS2004/XP installation in the way you describe it is fragmentation. Also, and I don't know if this had any positive effect or not, but I "Short stroked" the hard disk by partitioning it in an attempt to increase hard disk performance in the sense of keeping files nice and tidy.

[ZK_LGD 0]

Errr ... correct me if I'm wrong, but try upping TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD= to your VRAM x 1024.Your current figure is the example GaryGB set for a 256 Mb card. I note your card is a 1Gb, so:1280x1024=1310720May make a difference.Regards,Dorian

[barneycanoe 0]

Now, whatever values I put into the cfg file (TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD; TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS= etc. etc.), I notice little or no difference in the sim at all. I wonder if anyone has any more ideas? I have run out! My current fs9.cfg (relevant sections of it anyway) are posted below. Thanks in advance.

Funny, last night I did some testing with my fs9 (See post about performance issues) and no matter what I put in the TEXTURE places, nothing seemed to change visually. I took screenshots to make sure.Defragging is a good idea, thought.

[martinlest2 58]

Yes, I have juggled figures in the fs9.cfg file till I am blue in the face - the first time I changed to GaryGB's recommendations I was sure I saw a huge improvement. No longer though, things are OK up to about 10,000' but at cruise altitude above 30,000' textures load slowly and then sometimes not at all.The TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD value is 262144 in my cfg file - the 1024 is disabled with // (I leave it that way as an easy way to revert to the original if necessary). Not sure now how I calculated that - clearly wrongly. I will try 1310720 ....Degragging is not useful for me however as I run both FS9 and Windows 7 from (two different) solid state drives.Thanks,Martin

Edited January 18, 2012 by martinlest2

[martinlest2 58]

Early days yet, but actually setting the TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD value to 1310720 seems to have improved things (to my surprise). Textures load further away than before; now just the textures in mid-distance are rather unfocussed - but with my eyes these days that's how I see it when I fly real-world too, so maybe I shouldn't worry so much!Martin

[martinlest2 58]

Not sure it's making much difference to be honest ..M

[BillW 210]

How about your video drivers. I was having problems and went to 275.33 and solved some issues. Using Nvidia Inspector? They have a pretty good setting that you can tweak.

[martinlest2 58]

Yes, I am using nVidia Inspector and have the settings tweaked as per NickN's Simforums post. I could try different drivers - I haven't updated them for a while, but the drivers I am currently using used to give sharp ground textures..M.

[garydpoole 183]

Hello MartinI feel your pain regarding blurries - I tried so many tweaks to try and rid myself of them, but never did totally. I've now moved over to FSX and blurries are now, fortunately, a thing of the past.However, looking at your fs9.cfg, the one modification that improved things for me was to reduce the upper frame to 22. The theory being that this released system resources to load scenery textures instead of attempting to maintain a higher frame rate.Good luck with your quest...RegardsGary

[BillW 210]

Martin, make sure the second item from the top under texture filtering is set at 16x. I believe it is the aristotropic setting.

[martinlest2 58]

Gary, I could try this - but I have a CPU/Resources 'widget' on my desktop which shows that there are on average 2-3 GBs of physical RAM unused at any given time - I shouldn't really need to be freeing up system resources when so much free memory is already available..Thanks Bill, yes - it is already set to 16xMartin

[martinlest2 58]

Well, I had a problem with my Windows 7 installation and ended up doing a full repair ("upgrade") installation from the DVD. That fixed my O/S problems - but it has also made my scenery much sharper - areas in middle distance snap into focus within a few seconds, whereas before even terrain close up was blurred above about FL180.Not perfect, but you can see that this scenery looks more than acceptable now:So it wasn't anything to do with my FS9 settings, but Windows (unless there is some huge coincidence somewhere),Martin

[CaptKornDog 286]

Martin,Any chance you can post your "newest" fs9.cfg file, or at least the pertinent display sections?Thanks.

Edited March 4, 2012 by CaptKornDog