A Huge FPS Increase

[pfflyers 7]

If you have a fairly powerful computer with a top-shelf vid card mipmapping should improve the appearance of your sim by 'smoothing' the graphics and reducing flickering. On my old and weak system I still find that some models look great with mips and some models display blurry textures. So it depends on your system specs I guess, if I had a better system I'd probably mip everything but vc and gauge textures (some folks even do those).

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Use the alphasearcher2, there was a link somewhere in this thread.

 

Ah I see, I have that utility now. The name suggested to me it was just alphchannel not mipmaps.

 

I now I run that utility, find the missing mips and use something like imagetool to add mips, I believe I have it now.

[1st fltsimguy 466]

Anyone please....so, I ran Alphasearcher2, it found a huge lengthy list of files missing mips, is there a way to batch add mips? Or, do I have to one one at a time use Imagetool to make the mips, it will take forever to do this one by one?

 

OH WAIT....I probably should use the Mip Manager available from Don Grovestine, right?

[mebull 27]

That is the way I am going about it. And, . . . instead of throwing caution to the wind and doing all my aircraft (for example) at once. I am doing my AI first. One aircraft at a time so I can go through the texture folders and convert any 32 bit textures to DXT3 as I go. So far I am also leaving any prop AI's prop textures unmipped until I'm sure whether that is correct or not.

 

Regards,

Mel

[WingZ 547]

I've spent a little time going through "problem airport sceneries" using the tools mentioned in this thread.

• First: alphasearcher to identify whether alpha is present
  
• Second: alphasearcher to identify whether mips are used
  
• Third: DXTfixer to add alpha
  
• Fourth: convimx to add mips
  

Some good results, some unexpected - at Aerosoft's Nice, for example, if you MIP the ground textures, they disappear (some of them, not all)!

 

It's good to be reminded especially of the alpha issue, but quite often there are other issues with sceneries too - duplicate textures spring to mind.

So it's not the Holy Grail we are working with here...

I do think it's best to work on individual sceneries which you already know have specific problems.

Try these tools, and as mentioned by many, back up what you are altering.

There's no point in fixing something that works, and you may introduce issues that were not there before.

Especially so, if you have 100GB or so to restore when you find those "new issues".

 

Comments in threads like this have a way of submerging very quickly, within 2 posts someone is going to ask what batch tool to use and is it safe to run.... so I'll make one big statement and hope it helps someone:

 

DO NOT RUN A BATCH TOOL

ON YOUR WHOLE FLIGHTSIM INSTALL, EVER

[Bill A 68]

Question, if I see shimmering on some textures but not all is that lack of mipmaps or an alpha issue? I ran the dxt fixer tool on my entire Fs9 location and it fixed some file. However I still get a bit of shimmering on distant objects and with some scenery I get a lot more. I have mipmaps set at 4 in flight sim and anisotropic texture filtering set o 16X in nvidia panel. I have also tried anisotropic texture filtering at 8X in nvidia control panel.

 

Shimming is driving me nuts. its not really really bad, but if there was a way to get rid of it completely Id be a happy camper

[kiwiflyer45 123]

I've spent a little time going through "problem airport sceneries" using the tools mentioned in this thread.

• First: alphasearcher to identify whether alpha is present
  
• Second: alphasearcher to identify whether mips are used
  
• Third: DXTfixer to add alpha
  
• Fourth: convimx to add mips
  

Some good results, some unexpected - at Aerosoft's Nice, for example, if you MIP the ground textures, they disappear (some of them, not all)!

 

It's good to be reminded especially of the alpha issue, but quite often there are other issues with sceneries too - duplicate textures spring to mind.

So it's not the Holy Grail we are working with here...

I do think it's best to work on individual sceneries which you already know have specific problems.

Try these tools, and as mentioned by many, back up what you are altering.

There's no point in fixing something that works, and you may introduce issues that were not there before.

Especially so, if you have 100GB or so to restore when you find those "new issues".

 

Comments in threads like this have a way of submerging very quickly, within 2 posts someone is going to ask what batch tool to use and is it safe to run.... so I'll make one big statement and hope it helps someone:

 

 

DO NOT RUN A BATCH TOOL

ON YOUR WHOLE FLIGHTSIM INSTALL, EVER

 

Good advice. On the issue of duplicate textures, there's a nice freeware utility called Find all Duplicate. It will run through all your texture files and will place duplicates in a backup folder inside the individual texture files so you can reinstate them very easily if you want to

[1st fltsimguy 466]

I've spent a little time going through "problem airport sceneries" using the tools mentioned in this thread.

• First: alphasearcher to identify whether alpha is present
  
• Second: alphasearcher to identify whether mips are used
  
• Third: DXTfixer to add alpha
  
• Fourth: convimx to add mips
  

Some good results, some unexpected - at Aerosoft's Nice, for example, if you MIP the ground textures, they disappear (some of them, not all)!

 

It's good to be reminded especially of the alpha issue, but quite often there are other issues with sceneries too - duplicate textures spring to mind.

So it's not the Holy Grail we are working with here...

I do think it's best to work on individual sceneries which you already know have specific problems.

Try these tools, and as mentioned by many, back up what you are altering.

There's no point in fixing something that works, and you may introduce issues that were not there before.

Especially so, if you have 100GB or so to restore when you find those "new issues".

 

Comments in threads like this have a way of submerging very quickly, within 2 posts someone is going to ask what batch tool to use and is it safe to run.... so I'll make one big statement and hope it helps someone:

 

DO NOT RUN A BATCH TOOL

ON YOUR WHOLE FLIGHTSIM INSTALL, EVER

 

Well said.

 

Thanks for including your steps. I just tried convimx which I tried for other reasons years ago, found out how to batch convert and add mips. Just excellent. Seems to be working very well.

 

I am going to do one folder at a time even though I have a complete backup of my entire fsx and all its addons.

 

Also I am saving the "fixed and converted, newly mipped file into a sub-folder in each of those that show the might benefit from a fix. Then I actually have the originals and the new files handy and can replace either or very quickly. I have tons of HDD space so for me its not an issue to keep both temporarily.

[WingZ 547]

Question, if I see shimmering on some textures but not all is that lack of mipmaps or an alpha issue?

It's likely to be a mipmaps issue.

I am being careful now to try and identify the actual texture file causing the shimmer, and then add mips.

Convimx is useful in that it previews files for you.

As mentioned above, some, especially ground texture files, do not like having mips.

 

On the subject of duplicate textures, I had a (much smaller) install previously where I took everything that had been identified as duplicated, and dumped it into a folder called Library Objects.

This had a priority below just about everything else, and I fancy gave quite good performance.

I don't know that I'd be that brave today, though.

[flying_bob 38]

I have posted this the other side on fsx also but it seem here are a lot of knowledgable people that might be able to help and old man.

 

-------------

Ok so I fixed all the alphas of the BMPs it found with this new utility. (DXTfixer). Now this do fix the alpha channel.

 

Please help an old man here. Another question seemingly related if I read other posts.

 

What is the story with missing mipmaps.

 

I have read further here and found the alphasearcher. This utility now confrm that I dont have any aplha issues anymore (both DXTfixer and alpha earcher returs zero errors), but Alphasearcher is listing a HUGE number of missing mipmap files.

 

What is the effect of these missing mipmap section from the bmp file. 98% of these files are AI traffic. Would you recon I correct this manually. I dont know what the impact is of a missing mipmap. Sorry I have no idea what a mipmap is and even how to correct that manually. (I see some people mention the mipmap mamager left artifacts etc, so I am weary to try that app.)

 

anyone that is willing to tell me how to manually add the mipmaps if that is such an issue.

 

Regards

Bob

[rainerk 1]

I have used dxtfixerx.exe to eliminate DXT3 textures without alpha channel and it worked nicely. Be aware that some prop textures may look funny after the conversion, so you better make a backup nefore.

 

Several times another tool "alphasearcher2" to fix mipmap problems has been mentioned, but I can't find this tool. Can somebody point me in the right direction?

[flying_bob 38]

you must register to download

http://www.alpha-india.net/forums/index.php?topic=9633.msg92195

[rainerk 1]

_{flying_bob, thanks very much.}

_{I just did and found the file.}

_{Thanks again.}

[nam1394 10]

Ian, thank you very much. Also, neumanix, thank you for making it much easier.

 

 

 

I'll have to fly several more flights but I may have seen a minor improvement (but too hard to currently tell; some sceneries/aircraft stutter pretty good still unfortunately.).

 

Check your "TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=" setting. I used to set it 30 and I had sttuters everywhere, then I changed it to 10 and 99% of the stutters are gone. You might wanna lock FPS at 35.

[Luis Hernandez 570]

So, after 7 pages and ±200 posts, this is what I've understood:

 

- DXT1 textures are for performance. They can be without alpha channels.

- 32-bit textures are not needed, unless very smooth color transitions are desired (e.g. props). An alpha channel is required (correct me if I'm wrong).

- DXT3 textures are the best comprimise between quality and performance, most textures should be in this format (correct me please). An alpha channel is required: if there is not one, stutters.

 

To mip or not to mip:

- Scenery: yes.

- AI: yes.

- Effects: I'm not sure, but I mipped them just in case.

- Panels and gauges: not sure, didn't touch them.

- User aircraft: YMMV. I mipped mine, but my GPU is an Intel HD3000. I didn't like the results, so I removed the mips from the external textures. Mipped virtual cabin textures may help with performance. Better GPUs may get better results.

 

How to?

- My method: identify alpha-less textures with AlphaSearcher, fix them with ConvImX, identify unmipped textures with AlphaSearcher and add mips to these textures with Mipmap Manager. As obvious, backup before converting any textures.

- Other methods mentioned: Identify and correct alpha-less textures with DXT3Fixer, then fix mips using your favorite method (ConvImX, Imagetool, etc.)

- Finally, defrag!

 

Can anybody confirm me that I'm in the right track, please?