>Does anyone know the name of the creator of mipmaps? It will>make his or her gruesome murder much easier.If no one answers, you're not going to systematically work your way through the phonebook, are you Erick? LOL ;)

Misha, I also observe this as well. If you use imagetool for saving you get a big loss of quality on DXT textures, if using the newest version (older version was just as bad as imagetool) of DXTBmp you get very little. I'm one that prefers a quality looking texture and used to use only 32 bit, but after doing some comparisons found the quality loss with DXTBmp to be very acceptable. I have found thru the numerous repaints and textures for scenery I have done that on both my rigs, one with ATI and the other NVidia, that mips look better on scenery textures and blurry on aircraft. I took the mips out of groud textures once, it resulted in a horrible swimming, ground covered with ants look! LOLRegards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviation[link:www.cgrmthelos.com]Cougar Mountain Helicopters

Hey Scott, where did you pick up that latest set of drivers for our rig? I think I tried them but they kicked my system's butt-performance way down. Do you have to uninstall the previous driver before loading this one? Sorry for the off topic.On MipMaps though, I have tried to use imagetool to remove the mips from Carenado's 210, but the blurries are still there. Anyone successfully converted the bmps to DXT3 without the mips and not get the blurries?

Scott,Straight from nVidia. I had waffled on them for a while - couldn't decide if they were better than the 53.03s or not - I may get more stutters with the the 56.64s but the average FPS is a bit higher. I found that after tweaking at them a bit, setting direct3d mode to performance, I can get equal performance as 53.03, minimal stutters (same as 53.03) and I find the image sharper than 53.03 with FS9 mip slider up at 6 or 7...Also, I have found that overclocking my ti4600 leads to stutters. Counter-intuitive to me, but FS just doesn't like it. Keep the clock at the default, and I get way fewer stutters. Just an FYI.Best,sg

i have seen the swarming ants effect but this was when i played around with the water and took out the alpha anyways the water is another topic i keep mine turned to the lowest soon as i turn it up my frames go in half so i can live with the shine i like my fps at 60 :)shane

Michael,Where can you get the newest version of DXTbmp? I want to make sure that's the one I'm using. I found that converting 32bit to DXT3 cuases no such color degradation in DXTbmp. Only when opening a DXT3 texture and editing it. BTW, I found that on my setup the anisotropic filtering settings make the most difference with regards to the swarming ants effect. So I'm still against mips in all forms, ground scenery or aircraft. They are particularly lethal to users of older NVidia cards like the one I used to have until recnetly. Misha

http://fly.to/mwgfx/ I use mipmapped DXT3 textures. They look way better and perform way better than 32bit textures or DXT3without mipmaps. Flightsim is designed to use DXT3 with mipmaps. All flightsims are designed to use DXT3 textures with mipmaps for both quality and performance. Those 32bit textures without mips look aweful and kill performance. DXT3 textures without mipmaps look aweful. Non-mipmapped textures don't alais and cause stuttering. Before I started tinkering with the textures, I was ready to throw FS9 out. The airplanes looked aweful. Then I started really reading and educating myself on the shortcomings of Nvidia cards and their drivers and understood why the library was filling up with the wrong kind of textures and substandard textures at that. I have a quality video card. An ATI9700Pro card with quality drivers that run the proper textures properly. Unlike Nvidia, I seldom ever see a blurred texture anywhere. I never download and install an aircraft anymore without first converting the textures back to standard flightsim textures. DXT3 with mipmaps. They absolutely beautiful and performance is awesome.I'm not gonna turn this into an ATI vs Nvidia debate. I'm just gonna say, Run the right textures with the right equipment and 95 percent of your problems will disappear.________________________________________________________________"Mips are the multiple sub-images contained in an Extended Bitmap. For any given size of texture the file will also include a chain of images each half the size of the previous one. A 512x512 image will also contain a 256x256 version, a 128x128 version and so on right down to 1x1 (or 4x4 for DXT as this works with 4x4 pixel blocks)All extended image formats are saved with Mips. This may be switched off during the current session from the Prefs menu but will revert back to On the next time you start DXTBmp. It is recommended that you only switch this off when you have a particular need. All the Flightsims are designed to run best with mipped images for most textures."

That's odd. I have an ATI 9600XT and non mipped textures are still better than mipped ones, as they were with my old GeForce3. I have no problems with antialiasing or anisotropic filtering at all. How do they look awful on your system?Misha

Try turning your graphics up! 4xAA & 16xAF at 1600x1200 for example. Look closely at your aircraft. Is anything moving? Does it have a beautiful high glossy shine? No, not with non-mipmapped textures, it doesn't. Looks like a million fleas crawling around on the skin and there's hardly any shine to it. Any text on the aircraft is dancing around like crazy. Now, add mipmaps to those same textures. Go back and look again. Then try and tell me you can't see a substantial difference in quality running the standard mipmapped textures. Just to be clear, I'm not talking about edge alaising. That works fine on either textures with or without mips. I'm talking about what you see on the texture itself.

"Those 32bit textures withoutmips look aweful and kill performance. DXT3 textures withoutmipmaps look aweful." TO YOU!While I respect your opinion and agree to a degree, it all boils down to preference. Not everyone is using the same rig as you, so visuals are going to be different. I like the mips on my gaming rig using my G4, but on my design rig with a Radeon, I don't (go figure). I have several repaints I have done of the AS365 Dauphin and they always come out blurry with mips, that is the only way I have found (and others I have talked to about this repaint problem) to keep it from being blurry is to remove the mips, and I also like how crisp the textures look. I do leave them on my AI for the reasons stated by MS and don't have any issues with blurry AI.To each his own.Regards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviation[link:www.cgrmthelos.com]Cougar Mountain Helicopters

That doesn't sound right. I had that problem only with reduced AF settings. Turn them up and everything is peachy.Misha

"Yep I agree, never use Mip Maps on aircraft textures..they can look awful :)"One area where I differ with that view is w/32 bit (888-8) textures. A 32 bit w/no mipmaps will look awful when COF tries to antialias the texture. If you add mips, AA looks a million times better.Oddly enough, if I take an aircraft texture w/o mips and add mips using the latest version of DXTBMP, I'm not getting the blurry texture issue noted by others. However, some aircraft packages w/mips did seem to suffer from the problem. The latest package I added mips to was Gary's POSky NWA 742 repaint. End result is it's one of the best looking aircraft I have in my library, which is fitting since my longest real flight on record was a NWA 742 flight between Narita and SFO back in 1992... I digress...To make matters more interesting, DXT3 textures w/o mips seem to antialias fine... Everything I've said is mentioned with COF's default AA in mind. FS2002 AA'd everything, with and without mips. What I've cited is also likely graphics card/driver related. -John

I haven't noticed a substantial difference in quality either way, but I'll tell you this...For high detail textures (large bit-maps) this is what most people seem to get in terms of FS:Mip-maps = bad for stutters, good for frame-rates. No mip-maps = good for stutters, bad for frame-rates. Seldom could one single aircraft have enough large scale bitmaps for this to be appearant. But AEU test teams have demonstrated, fairly consistently, that this is true with high-impact bitmaps concentrated into large scale areas. (...airports for example.)

thanks chris for your imput and everyone else i think we have a good discussion going on this i love your aeu i have it installed i un mip mapped it for my own preferences and it looks great to me i just dont get that stutter now when i am landing at the airport :)my own prefernce i prefer to have a fluid flight from the cockpit then a stutter every minute or so :)shane

I get slight shimmering when not using mips. That's because of my textre LOD settings. With mips, I get perfect textures, no blurries. Never got stuttering either way with my 9700 Pro.