Any suggestions welcome - I have tried all the tweaks I could find to improve this situation, and even tried a reinstall...look:At first, all of the textures load just fine. Then, it's almost as if I fly out of the sharp textures, an the new ones don't load properly. If I go to the options/display/hardware menu, the new textures load sharply, but I fly away from them quickly. You can see that sharp texures don't even necessarily load directly below the plane!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/83581.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/83582.jpgSystem details are in my sig, have tried forceware 61.21, 61.40 and 61.71.Here's my FS9.cfg details:[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0 (unlimited)TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=384[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=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5 (I've also tried 40)TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=8.0(I've also tried 60)TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4 (I've also tried 6)[GRAPHICS]FULL_SCREEN=1PERFORMANCE_MODE=0DEF_PERF_MODE=6TEXT_SCROLL=1AUTO_LOD=0DETAIL_TEXTURE=1WATER_EFFECTS=2TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1EFFECTS_QUALITY=2GROUND_SHADOWS=1SMOOTH_VIEW=1IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1LANDING_LIGHTS=1IMAGE_QUALITY=0TEXTURE_BLDG=1TEXTURE_GND=1TEXTURE_WATER=1AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2SEE_SELF=1TEXTURE_QUALITY=3LOD_TARGET_FPS=14NUM_LIGHTS=6ANY suggestions a plus - I'm at a loss. Everything was great until about a few weeks ago...then BAM!Thanks!sg

I'm having the same problem. It happened all of a sudden. I'm wondering if it has something to do with USA Roads. I haven't tried uninstalling that yet, but time wise I'm thinking that this started about the time I installed it. I'm going to try uninstalling USA in the morning, I'll let you know if that helps.Hawk

I noticed this after installing the latest FSUIPC. May be just a cowinky dink though.See you in the fence...CYYZ

Hello Scott, this looks like the classic problem, first seen in FS2002, known as 'dynamic blurred textures'. I spent a lot of time looking into this at the time, because I suffered badly from it. It seemed that the mipmap update process had a low priority, so that, particularly if you flew at high speed, the mipmaps were not updated fast enough. Quite often this resulted in blurred textures immediately surrounding the aircraft. I don't think there was a complete cure for this but you could reduce the problem by choosing a fairly low frame rate lock and reducing the terrain mesh complexity. When FS2004 came out I was *very* pleased to find that the problem was effectively fixed. Even flying at 500 knots over mountainous terrain (the worst conditions for this problem) the textures close to the plane would be at full resolution most of the time.... .... until I started to create high resolution LWM/VTP scenery with AutoAsm! AutoAsm can import high resolution bitmaps created by TerraScene, with similar quality to USA Roads (a half degree square can have many hundreds of thousands of LWM and VTP points). After creating large scenery areas at full resolution, I found two problems. Particularly when switching views, there were delays lasting seconds. And guess what: dynamic blurred textures were back! Even when flying over the completely flat Florida, the textures were often blurred, making it unacceptable. For this reason I added a reduce feature to AutoAsm, so the user can reduce the LWM and VTP point density by a chosen factor. Even with a reduction of ten times the point density is far higher than the default, and the quality is excellent. With a reduction of 5 there are no delays - and no blurred textures. From the screenshots it looks like you're using USA Roads. Most likely this is the culprit. If you can temporarily disable it then you may well find the blurred textures have gone away. Because the problem seemed to be fixed in FS2004, I didn't look into it. But, as I said, there were several solutions developed for FS2002. Your settings show you're using unlimited frame rate lock. My first suggestion would be to apply a frame rate lock of, say, 15 to 20. This has a dramatic effect in FS2002, but I've no idea if it helps in FS2004. It probably will. In general, reducing other graphics and scenery settings may help, as it frees up extra horsepower for updating the textures. Reducing the terrain mesh complexity in FS2002 helped a lot. Any reductions in the slider settings will probably be most effective if you have already applied a frame rate lock. It's also worth increasing the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT setting - I would expect a higher setting would give a higher priority to the texture updating (as a matter of interest, when discussing the FS2002 problem several years ago, we decided that something like this setting might be an ideal solution - and we got it! Perhaps Microsoft does listen after all). However, I have not tried this and I have no idea how effective it is. USA Roads sounds like a very good add-on that many people will use. However, it may well cause the same blurred texture problems for a lot of users, so it would be good to arrive at a solution applicable for many people. I believe USA Roads has some options for lower density roads. That should help. I hope you find a good solution, because I know only too well how incredibly annoying those blurred textures can be! Best regards, Chris

Thanks for the replies, gang.You know, USA roads was on the top of my list, and switching to "major roads only" does seem to help the problem. I don't think that it's the root cause though, as the problem started after a week or so of normal operation, as I recall. About that time was when I got the latest FSUIPC - but reverting to 3.22 doesn't resolve the issue, so I don't think its that one. Last was the upgrade to FSG's USA landclass 1.07a...haven't tried uninstalling that one, but maybe next on the list.My texture bandwidth is at a sweet spot for me - much higher and I get stutters.The interesting thing for me is that the blurriest textures sometimes occur even directly under the aircraft and resolve in a patchy fashion such that maybe distant textures are sharp while nearest are not - flies in the face of that whole texture radius idea.Anyhow, back to fiddle.Best,sg

Very interesting. I was suspecting that USA roads would cause blurries but I haven't seen any reports of it until now. It does indeed seem like textures loading in FS is very inefficent, and it also gets a very low priority.I easily experienced blurries in FS2002 if framerates dropped below 10-12 FPS because there just wasn't enough resources left to load textures.In FS2004, the situation is much improved, but with some sceneries like Megascenery blurries can still appear. It's possible the same could happen with USA Roads since it also puts a much greater load on the FS scenery engine.1. If you fly a slower plane (e.g. C152 or Cub), do textures remain sharp?2. What is your framerate on average?Some things to try:-Set Target Framerate to Unlimited: FS2002 seemed to load textures "between" frames so lowering framerate resulted in faster loading textures. FS2004 works the oposoite way so setting Unlimited framerate can result in sharper textures instead.-Change these lines in FS9.cfg:TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.900000This will load detail textures farther into the distance and can cause them to remain sharp longer.Also set Mipmap detail under the Hardware tab in FS to no more than 5-6 (I have mine @ 4). Setting it to more than this has no benefit as long as you use Anisotropic filtering. It causes a greater load on the scenery engine and videocard however, which can cause blurries.Setting TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT to 400 is also supposed to help though I can't say I've noticed any difference.

Hi all.In addition to the advice from JimmiG and Chris:I note you have clouds in the pic. Clouds are notorious for slowing the sim's ability to draw textures. Reducing AA to 2x can often make a huge difference in increasing the ability of the sim to handle cloud rendering... so much so, that I now put my Cloud Coverage Density to 100%. It doesn't seem to make much difference how many clouds are rendered. This is true for all types of video cards that have AA.All that aside, the increased number of roads ( VTP lines ) will have this effect on the sim as Chris and JimmiG noted. At this point, it becomes a hardware and PC 'tuning' issue. Faster CPUs, with better video cards, more memory, and with background processes and running programs severely controlled will help.Dick

HiIve been experimenting here the last couple of nights(Ive got an old system that really shouldn't be running fs9)Just a couple of thing Ive noticed/triedIf you switch through the views via VC-tower-spot view and your a fair distance from the tower ya get major terrain lag (its better to go back wards via shft s)Next Ive noticed your LOD_TARGET_FPS=14 once you drop below this the sim starts down grading visuals(my assumption on what I'm seeing in the sim),If your running unlimited you need to manual edit this to 10 (the lowest possible setting the sim will allow)then tweak the system to stay above 10fpsI also think this is the major cause of stuttering/visual problems in locked mode as its set by default to approx 20% of the set fps ie locked @ 25 fps the LOD_TARGET_FPS is set to 17 once the sim drops below 17 it starts to drop the detail level and it looks like the terrain is the first thing it drops once it go's above 17 it then reloads the textures causing a pausethe following is the terrain setting I'm using TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=80.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=5.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=5.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456this APPEARS:) to give me the best visuals/performanceIve also went mad on the TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT going up all the way to 20000 :) just to see what would happened after about 1000 not much difference,Ive also added the TextureAGP=0 in the [device] section and this also seams to have a little impact on texture popping/loadingThe next thing to get a play with was Autogen,as I wanted power poles street lights and road signs but running autogen at normal setting killed my system,so I spent a few hrs editing the autogen default.xml file to only load these,if you want to try the file here is a link to ithttp://home.iprimus.com.au/nissanz/default.zip Just unzip it to a temp folder then BACKUP your orig default.xml file in the FS9/autogen folder,then move the new file there.Then set your autogen to normal and there shouldn't be to big a fps hit:)Sorry for rambling on :) but hey MAYBE somthing Ive covered will help, if not at least other's will say hey thats not right and I'll learn somthing new:)RegardsMaV

The only other thing that had me concerned was that it wasn't just textures that weren't loading - mesh was also not loading or loading irregularly. I'd see large flat areas ahead or two the side of me with monolithic rock formations holding up the airports. I only have FSG's 38m mesh installed currently- not a single scenery addon except USA roads, and FSG's 38m mesh and USA-LC 1.07a.I tried the Cub suggestion - still saw the problem though maybe not as severe, still obvious - unlimited fps avg in the low 40's with a few puffy clouds. I have been running 0x AA and 2xAF all along at 1280x960x32Up until some undefined event about three weeks ago, the system was running perfectly with sharply textured ground to the horizon, full USA roads, full 100% UT- and GA-traffic AI, and full AS2k4 weather!I did manage to improve things somewhat - I increased the texture bandwidth to 512, reduced my BIOS agp aperature from 256 to 128. The important thing was running regclean, I think. After running that things seem much better. Although it still takes much longer than it had for the sharpest textures to load, I now have full usa roads and weather, and no mesh loading problems so far! Really hard to know what the problem is...Thanks for all the input.sg

I'm interested in your view about the TextureAGP=0 seting...wouldn't it make more sense to set it to =1 so that the textures fed through the AGP bus instead? Under which section do you add this line?-Mikkel

It goes in your display.nvidia.xxx or display.ati.xxx section, and it doesn't control what you think it does. It enables or disables caching of AGP textures, I believe...As with most tweaks, can't hurt to try...

Scott, I had the same problem. I upgraded the BIOS and installed the Intel Application Accelerator and it went away. Not too sure which one did it, but if your BIOS is current and you're running Intel try the accelerator. Good luck. Been there done that, and it's FRUSTRATING, I know, hehe. billg

Hi, "I did manage to improve things somewhat - I increased the texture bandwidth to 512, reduced my BIOS agp aperature from 256 to 128."http://www.rojakpot.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?Lang=0&bogno=32Information on bios settinghttp://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=9ThanksChris Willis[link:fsw.simflight.com/FSWMenuFsSim.html]Clouds And Addons For MsFs

Great links Chris - thanks a ton! Another case of less is more, maybe? I should try 64mb and see if that helps me even more...Strange though, I've had the AGP aperture set to 256 for a long time. Odd that the problem chose to rear it's ugly head so suddenly.Thanks for the help!sg

nice post Chris. Way to much confusion over agp aperture. I had an ATI tech tell me that with a Radeon 9800 pro 128mb that it didn't really matter. Maybe he was right, what I set just got wasted. LOL, I was a history and polly sci major in university and decided that, although I loved the debates, I wanted to get into something that was more "black and white," read x's and o's, as in the bits are on or off. Very scientific. Found out very soon though that computers are a black science, very black, very much intuitive, worse so than history and polly sci, hehe. Oh well....billg