Hi everyone,

this is a problem I've had for a while but never seemed to bother trying to fix because when I'm on final and on the ground the flickering stops. Basically, when I'm at a high altitude, the airport textures start flickering uncontrollably, happens a lot with UK2000 sceneries but not for example with FSDT sceneries. There's a pic below, imagine those dark smudges flickering really quickly all over the airport. Like i said, not a problem on final or on the ground. Just not that nice to look at when taking off.

 

 

I use 8xS and 2x SSGS to avoid shimmering. i7 2600K @ 4.6Ghz, 580GTX

I get the same with my FSX just at UK2000 airports though...

 

I'm using 8xSQ and in game anisotropic filtering on a GTX 680, I just assumed it was to do with the way the airport was designed like there's another runway hidden underneath it.

 

Jason

 

Just found this as I posted might explain the problem and I don't think it can be fixed as it seems more like a design limitation.

 

http://www.uk2000scenery.org/forum/index.php?topic=6922.0

 

Jason

I figured it was a design problem. Now that you mention it, how is the 680? Does it provide smoother graphics with inspector settings used?

Z plane flickering.

 

The Z plane is a black and white image that the computer creates so it knows what to draw last. With FSX, because the ground textures for the airport are at the same distance as the underlying ground you get the flickering as FSX cant decide what to draw last.

 

It's not an easy problem to resolve for developers. There are various techniques they can use to separate the ground polygons they create from the underlying terrain, some more successful than others and all have some sort of compromise.

 

One thing a developer can do is use an FS9 ground poly. These won't flash but again there are compromises (ie not being FSX native models they can be slower)

 

In your FSX graphics settings ensure that your resolution ends with x32 and not x16. I am led to believe that this figure is your z plane resolution (and not your colour settings).

Yup, does it on my UK2000 stuff too, although not all of it, mainly the big airports, the smaller ones in the VFR multi-airport sceneries don't appear to do it.

 

Al