Hiya all just want to start a disscussion here not sure if it is the right thread a month ago or so I received a email from a person regarding one of my paints I had mip mapped the textures, why I don

I think you just set a new world record for a run on sentence! :)I do not use MIP maps on any of my projects for that very reason.

yea its 3am here hope it looks a bit better now lolshane

Having very little knowledge of mip maps and graphics, where do i check to see what scenery uses them, are they embedded into the texture files or labelled as such?thanx Paul.

they are embeded in the texutre by a grahpic conversion program. to see them you need dxtbmp and i use this to remove them i load the texture up in it uncheck include mipmaps under the preferences menu and just save as the same graphic format. its easy for someone that is used to it but i think its more up to the designers and artists out there to do it for you so you dont have to yourself maybe even in the read me a quote sayin mip map freeshane

mipmaps are of the devil haha, it's late here too. Yeah, I don't use mipmaps either and nearly always remove them from downloaded files.

It all comes down to the graphics card and driver settings, so you can't say what is really best. Mine sure looks best with mip maps (probably due to high anisotropic filtering, but I didn't bother to find out).

I am of the opinion that mip-maps are good for framerates when working with large amounts of detail. On the other hand, they do introduce a few additional stutters. The reason for this is that the over-all file size is now much larger. They simply take longer to load. The reason they are better for frame rates is that they render less and less detail as distance increases. :)

Hm ... I'm using an ATI9000 and I've always had the impression that mip maps were improving performance. The reason is this: when there are mip maps, the graphics engine loads the smaller sized mips first, and gradually adds the larger resolution ones. For example, with an aircraft with large, non-mip mapped textures, the sim is blocked for as long as the texture initially loads - I haven't experienced this with mips. -Daniel

so i wonder is this a persons individual computer settings or what creates the sutter if its not loading the entire texture? do i need to manually add a setting that will get rid of the sutter or is it just my computer telling me no i hate these, or is it a individual progam thingy cause i have other programs that use them that dont stutter :)shane

Mip-maps have no place in a flight simulator. It isn't a bleeding racing game.Does anyone know the name of the creator of mipmaps? It will make his or her gruesome murder much easier.

Yep I agree, never use Mip Maps on aircraft textures..they can look awful :)

I use mipmapped textures and add them if they are not included. One reason is this from the aircraft container SDK.---------"Flight Simulator texture files are "mipmapped". A mipmapped texture consists of a sequence of images, each of which is a progressively lower resolution, prefiltered representation of the same image. Mipmapping is a computationally low-cost way of improving the quality of rendered textures. Each prefiltered image, or level, in the mipmap is a power of two smaller than the previous level. A high-resolution level is used for objects that are close to the viewer. Lower-resolution levels are used as the object moves farther away.To edit a mipmapped texture, you'll need to use Image Tool, an image editing application included with the Flight Simulator Terrain SDK. Be sure to save a copy of the original file before attempting to modify it. A texture can also be edited using a simple graphics application such as Microsoft Paint, though it will be saved as a standard .bmp file instead of a mipmapped .bmp. Flight Simulator will automatically generate the mipmaps for the texture, although these mipmaps will not be of as high a quality as mipmaps created using Image Tool."---------------The last paragraph indicates to me that if the mipmaps are not included already, the sim will generate them on the fly and I would think that would somewhat impact performance.Kurt M

I would think that if mips are embedded in the texture, the sim loads the entire texture first (causing the stutter) and then depending on processor load and object distance picks which mip level to actually use. Personally, I hate mips and 32bit textures and anything else that increases texture size. I went through removing all mips and converting 32bit textures to mipless DXT3 on all aircraft I fly (which took a very long time). I am not looking forward to doing this for my AI. So here again, the plea to all painters not to use mips and to save everything in DXT3. The sim does run smoother that way irrespective of your graphics card. This being said, it appears to me that editing a DXT3 texture and removing mips may cause slight degradation of texture quality when using DXTbmp. Namely, the white textures get a slight greenish tinge. Has anyone else observed this?Misha

The latest nVidia drivers (56.64) have an advanced option under direct3d to "force lowest mip level" - I'm interested to see if anyone has tried that and if so, what effect it has on the quality of the image in FS9? It would be nice if the drivers had a similar option for force highest mip level, for comparison...Best,sg