I've recently installed a whole bunch of the MSEv2 Photoscenery (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Lousiana).  I'm new to using photoscenery and I'm trying to get it tweaked to display best on my system.  It seems I might be having a problem with blurry textures, however at this point, I'm still trying to determine what is "normal" and what isn't.

 

If I'm flying around the Western Panhandle of Florida at 10,000 feet and 350 knots everything seems pretty good.  On the other hand, if I start a flight at Pensacola Florida, load into my flight on the runway, and takeoff....as I climb through 3000 feet at around 250 knots and look out the canopy...all of the Pensacola City photoscenery is really blurry.  All of the scenery in every direction is blurry.  As I level off at 5000 feet and 350 knots....its all still blurry.  If I turn, and fly over the same area circling the city area and looking down...I can see the scenery "sharpen up" as I watch.  The screen will "jerk" slightly and I will see chunks of the city "pop" into a better level of sharpness.  Its hard to describe but its almost like there are multiple levels of sharpness.  From "completely blurry" it'll "pop" into "sharper" as I watch...and then if I keep circling...it might pop into "sharpest".  Maybe its my imagination but thats how it seems to me.

 

If I continue flying out of the city in a straight line, the scenery seems to do a little better.  Some of it sharpens, but other times.....it doesn't sharpen until I'm already flying past it which defeats the purpose of the photoscenery.

 

At higher altitude, 10,000 feet, it seems to do a little better.  Although I'm not sure if its actually sharpening better or its just that it looks better from a higher altitude and the sharpness is really the same.

 

I've read the FAQ's and guides available on the MSE site.  My LOD_Detail setting is 8.5.  That setting has been working pretty good for me before the photoscenery for a while...and I've never received an out of memory error.  My Fiber_Time is set to the default .33.

 

I've tried messing with the Fiber_Time and bumped it to .99 to see what would happen.  My results were inconclusive because my FPS had dropped so much.  Even sitting still on the runway the FPS was in the teens.  Flying it was in the teens or low twenties.

 

So I dropped the Fiber_Time to .46....and that seemed to help a little.  It might be my imagination but it seemed that textures sharpened a little bit better, a little bit faster...but it still wasn't ideal.

 

I tried dropping the LOD_Detail down to 8 from 8.5...and I couldn't tell much difference.  It might have actually made it worse.

 

So, from those of you out there using photoscenery, what do you do?  I'm trying to learn what settings I need to try or tweak to improve the textures?  Or maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree and its simply not possible to get the textures to sharpen up at 3000-5000 feet.  Once again, please understand that I'm new to photoscenery and I'm trying to learn.

1. Try slowing down your aircraft.  Your PC may not be able to keep up with all the textures to sharpen at that speed.  If they are still blurry at, say 150 knots, then it may be your settings and not the speed.

 

2.  If not already done, place your photreal on your SSD's, or copy one state to an SSD and compare the results to see if there is an improvement as to the non SSD state.

 

Just a couple of ideas...

Blurries are caused by your fsx/display driver setting being set too high.  Your CPU/GPU just can't work fast enough to render the scenery properly. LOD 8.5?  I think the most important setting is texture_max_load.  The default is 1024 but for photoscenery I use the HD setting of 4096 (or 2048 will work too).  LOD should remain at the default - 4.5.  You can play with this but you could suffer a lot of CTD's and OOM's if you have this set too high with other settings set high and you are flying the PMDG737 in commercial weather like REX or AS2012 or OPUS.  The frames limiter is important too and you can try this out while you are flying by adjusting the frame rate limiter.  I had mine set at 30.  Got some blurriness.  Moved it to 25.  Things go clearer.  Moved it to 20 and the MSE photoscenery was crystal clear.  However, this did not remain like this in all situations and I have since moved the frame limiter to my favorite setting of 40.  At FL240, my scenery is crystal clear.  Getting closer to the ground and near a commercial airport like KORD, and things start to get blurry as the fps start dropping from a solid 40 fps to the teens and twenties. But eventually the textures get rendered and the scenery gets clearer and clearer as I begin my landing.

 

The SSD does not improve rendering of fsx sceneries.  It only improves the loading times for fsx in comparison to a mechanical HDD.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Thanks Jim & Clutch Cargo.

 

Yes, I should have mentioned, all of my scenery is on an SSD.

 

With regards to the LOD at 8.5.  I was referring to LOD_Radius.  Thats directly from the MSE "Help" section:

 

1. In your FSX.cfg file, change LOD_RADIUS from 4.5 to at least 7.0 or 8.0. (make a backup of your fsx.cfg file before adjusting of course in case you want to revert later). This will result in slightly longer initial load times, but the scenery will render much sharper further into the distance... It makes a big difference. The radius number you use will depend on your PC and video card specs somewhat, but try not to exceed 9.0 at the very maximum. 7.5 seems a good option for those with GTX560+ or GTX660+ cards.

 

As far as stability of my machine goes, I've never had a problem with OOM or CTD at LOD_Radius 8.5.  I don't fly any of those big, complicated airliners like PMDG stuff yet though...just small GA & Military aircraft.  I do use REXE+OD for textures and either OpusFSX or ActiveSky 2012 for weather though (Which one I use depends on what I'm doing...if I'm using historical weather I use AS2012....if I'm using live weather I use Opus).  Load times are about a minute or two...so those are certainly a bit longer.

 

My texture_max_load, like yours, is also set to 4096.  Maybe I should try backing that off to 2048 and see if that makes a difference.

 

My FSX Frames Limiter is set to 30.  I read your post last night and had an opportunity to try setting it to 40.  Unfortunately that didn't help though.  I'll try 25 and 20 tonight if I can.  I'm testing this much lower that you are though.....5000 feet instead of FL024.  I realize that, overall, they won't look as good at that altitude but at this point I'm just trying to get them to all be "sharp" when they load instead of "gradually sharpen" as I fly past.

 

Getting closer to the ground and near a commercial airport like KORD, and things start to get blurry as the fps start dropping from a solid 40 fps to the teens and twenties. But eventually the textures get rendered and the scenery gets clearer and clearer as I begin my landing.

 

Yup...thats exactly what is happening...except I'm taking off instead of landing, and its Pensacola, FL instead of KORD (I live near KORD so I'll wave when you virtually fly by ).  Just after takeoff, at 5000 feet....the textures look like they are "trying" to sharpen and if, instead of flying out of the area, if I fly around the city for a while they will eventually sharpen.  Sometimes you can actually watch a "chunk" sharpen.  Looking out the window at the city texture....you might see half of it blurry and the other half one "stage" sharper.  Every time the textures advance to the next stage of sharpness...I'll get one brief "stutter" on the screen while the textures sharpen to the next level.

 

 

 

 

 

Generic thoughts on photo based scenery. First, I run an LOD of 6.5 around my work and for my system that hits a sweet spot. On your system that might be pushed higher, but... (there's always a but) you are also running dual monitors and that's a lot of pixels that you are asking to be rendered. The sharpening that you mention is the different LODs being drawn. This term of LOD is different from the LOD radius being used above. The one above is the drawing distance, where as the latter use is for the finer detail around the user's airplane. Finding your sweet spot will take some fine tuning of the FSX.cfg setting.

 

Run your system with a single monitor and a LOD of 8.5 might work well. Asking your system to do the rendering on two screens may be a little much, at LOD 8.5.

run mine at 6.2 LOD and fps is at 18 its low but the blurries are mostly gone.  The rural areas its crystal clear. 

Thanks for the LOD info meshman & gizmo, and thanks for shining a little light on the way it works meshman.  That helps.

 

I'm actually using just the one monitor.  Sometimes I might pull up Skyvector on the second monitor, or maybe just drag the electronic kneeboard in FSX over there...thats about it though.  I don't have the sim stretched across the two monitors or anything.  That particular monitor is old, kinda dark, and kind of beat up...but it works good for just text stuff.

 

I also sent a message to MSE support and got a really nice and really helpful message back with some suggestions to try...most of which involve doing just the sort of things you guys mentioned.

 

So I'll try dropping that LOD_Radius down to 6.5 or even lower if I have to.

 

Thanks!

Keep in mind that area changes as the square of radius, so as you bump that radius up, your rapidly increase the demand on the terrain system (both drawing mesh and texturing it).

 

scott s.

.

Riddle me this batman....

 

This is just plain weird.  So last night I decide to experiment with some of the tips I received here in this thread and from MSE support.  So I drop my LOD_Radius down from 8.5 to 6.5 and I fly the exact same flight that I've been testing this with.  Its several legs over Florida...about 200 miles total.  Some legs going 250 KIAS, others going 360 KIAS, some legs at 3000 feet, some at 5000 feet, some at 10,000 feet.  And its the exact same flight every time, with the exact same weather (Using a built-in FSX "Fair Weather" theme and not any sort of live weather).

 

When I was testing with an LOD_Radius of 8.5, my FPS usually hovered right around 30 and my textures sharpened or blurred as I described elsewhere in this thread.

 

But when I dropped that LOD_Radius to 6.5...after takeoff and through about the first 2/3 of the flight my FPS was about the same.  The textures DID seem to be sharpening up a little bit better.  It still wasn't quite right as I'd guess that 50% of the time the textures were sharp by the time I flew over them.  25% of the time they were blurry until I was over them or just past them and then they sharpened up.  And 25% of the time they never sharpened up as I flew past them.  However, in the last 1/3 of the flight something strange happened...my FPS just started plummeting.  It first stuck down in the mid twenties, then the high teens, then by the time I finally landed it was averaging in the low teens.

 

What the heck happened?  I've flown that same flight dozens of times with everything exactly the same but a higher LOD_Radius of 8.5.

 

So what in the world would cause my FPS to drop with a LOWER LOD_Radius?  And even stranger...what would cause the FPS to be fine through the majority of the flight...and then suddenly just start dropping off like that for the final half hour of the flight?  Its not like I was flying over different terrain or textures, or using different clouds or water or weather.  Everything was the same.

 

I didn't have time to try that flight more than one time to see if the weird FPS plummet was repeatable.  Do you think maybe it was some strange memory-leak-like freak thing?  Or can you think of a reason that behavior would be linked to reducing my LOD_Radius to 6.5.  Weird.

 

 

That's sounds like to me 1Wolf to be possible a memory leak.  With your tests do you have any additional 3rd party add-ons running?  If so try your same route without them and watch the FPS to see if there is any difference.  I take it you are testing with some sort of military aircraft?  Your speeds are quite fast.  I would throw in there a test at say 150 knots as well.

 

I purchased MSE Florida2 to do some comparisons agaist the version 1.  Some interesting findings (some good - some not so good), but are different issues than what you are experiencing.

 

1Wolf, since you have Florida as well could you do some fly-bys over Key West and tell me what you are seeing below?  Also, are you missing any chunks of the state about mid-section?  Need to re-check my disks.

 

Thx

 

Clutch

However, in the last 1/3 of the flight something strange happened...my FPS just started plummeting. It first stuck down in the mid twenties, then the high teens, then by the time I finally landed it was averaging in the low teens.

That's exactly what I said was happening in my Post #3 above. I assume it's because you are getting closer to the ground and nearer to the airport (which requires more rendering). I think too, when flying a complicated aircraft like the PMDG737NGX, there's a lot of actions taking place as the aircraft nears its destination. For one thing the FMC is doing a lot of internal configurations to get you down to the glideslope on time. I suspect though, in the world of computers, this is minuscule but there certainly are a lot more actions taking place during ascent and descent than at cruise level. There is also more interaction with AI as you descend and takeoff and I suspect this is part of the FSX programming. Although I have been told I am wrong by developers, I find it strange that AI suddenly appear in front of your aircraft just as you are beginning the final landing phases of your flight or an aircraft suddenly appears on the runway just before landing. This happens mostly if I'm not using ATC.

 

Best regards,

Jim

That's sounds like to me 1Wolf to be possible a memory leak.  With your tests do you have any additional 3rd party add-ons running?  If so try your same route without them and watch the FPS to see if there is any difference.  I take it you are testing with some sort of military aircraft?  Your speeds are quite fast.  I would throw in there a test at say 150 knots as well.

 

Thats what I was starting to think as well.  Its really strange.  I do have one uncommon FSX add-on running and thats Combat Pilot.  I previously wouldn't have thought that Combat Pilot could affect FSX as its more of a "wrapper" or "launcher".  But Combat Pilot does modify FSX slightly so its probably possible.  So maybe I'll try the same flight outside of Combat Pilot, just in regular FSX and see if I get the same result.  The odd thing is it seems to have "something" to do with me setting the LOD_Radius from 8.5 down to 6.5.  The problem didn't occur at 8.5...it only happened at 6.5.  You're correct about the military aircraft...its a T-45C Goshawk jet trainer.

 

 

1Wolf, since you have Florida as well could you do some fly-bys over Key West and tell me what you are seeing below?  Also, are you missing any chunks of the state about mid-section?  Need to re-check my disks.

 

Sure thing.  I should have some time this weekend to check it out.  You happen to have any specific areas or routes you want me to check or at any specific altitudes?

 

That's exactly what I said was happening in my Post #3 above. I assume it's because you are getting closer to the ground and nearer to the airport (which requires more rendering). I think too, when flying a complicated aircraft like the PMDG737NGX, there's a lot of actions taking place as the aircraft nears its destination. For one thing the FMC is doing a lot of internal configurations to get you down to the glideslope on time. I suspect though, in the world of computers, this is minuscule but there certainly are a lot more actions taking place during ascent and descent than at cruise level. There is also more interaction with AI as you descend and takeoff and I suspect this is part of the FSX programming. Although I have been told I am wrong by developers, I find it strange that AI suddenly appear in front of your aircraft just as you are beginning the final landing phases of your flight or an aircraft suddenly appears on the runway just before landing. This happens mostly if I'm not using ATC.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Actually, my flight is much simpler than that.  Its a military jet flying VFR along the Southern coast of the Florida panhandle making the exact same flight I'd made dozens of times, at the same altitudes, at the same speeds.  I'm not descending to landing or anything like that...for that entire half of the flight I'm at 3000 feet.  This started occurring long before I got anywhere near the destination.  I'm not really any closer to the ground or any nearer to the destination when it occurs.  On the 2nd leg of the flight....at roughly the same altitude...suddenly the FPS slowly starts falling off.  On the final leg of the flight...it continues to slowly fall off getting worse and worse.  At that point...I'm still a ways from the destination.

 

The real kicker though is I've flown that SAME flight, at the same altitudes, at the same speeds, in the same aircraft...dozens of times.  At an LOD_Radius of 8.5 my FPS was pretty constantly near 30.  But I didn't run into the situation described above until I dropped that LOD_Radius to 6.5.

 

Just plain bizarre.  This weekend I'll have to try the same flight again, under the same conditions and see if I get the same FPS fall off.  If I do...then I'll try it again outside of Combat Pilot, and also try it again with the LOD_Radius set back up to 8.5.

Nothing fancy as far as the flight goes.  I say just  start around the military base down there and head to the tip of Key West....  don't need to go fast as I am not looking for blurrries.  Tell me what you see as far as ground color, ground sharpness, masking... things like that.    I'll mess it with it too this weekend - take a few screenies. 

 

Also, check from a top-down view if you see the whole state of Florida to see if any parts are missing.  I am missing a huge swath from coast to coast south of Orlando, about mid state.  I installed with the disks.  Did you d/l yours or were they disks too.

 

P.S. - Jim is quite correct about FSP taking a big hit as you approach and land with all the extra objects to render.  It's just there is no autogen with MSE2 and very little comparative rendering of this type with this installed.  Of course that depends on where you are landing.  I usually can tell right off if there is a leak as my locked 30fps gets down to like 11FPS over time.  It can be very subjective,

It might be worth trying the recommended MSE graphics tweaks too. See below:

 

Getting the BEST out of MegaSceneryEarth Visuals
------------------------------------------------
To ensure you are seeing the best photoreal texture quality with your new MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 package, it may be necessary to make some adjustments to your FSX display settings, as well as to your video card settings to ensure these elements are not the cause of "degradation" of the MSE 2.0 textures.

use this information below as a GUIDE ONLY. We do not claim it will work for all video cards, or for all users. But if you are not seeing the same level of detail and clarity in MSE 2.0 states that you see with our screenshots, then you will likely need to tinker with your settings to achieve best results.

It might be worth trying out several adjustments primarily to potentially make the scenery render in full resolution. We found this REALLY helped produce the best views...

1. In your FSX.cfg file, change LOD_RADIUS from 4.5 to at least 7.0 or 8.0. (make a backup of your fsx.cfg file before adjusting of course in case you want to revert later). This will result in slightly longer initial load times, but the scenery will render much sharper further into the distance... It makes a big difference. The radius number you use will depend on your PC and video card specs somewhat, but try not to exceed 9.0 at the very maximum. 7.5 seems a good option for those with GTX560+ or GTX660+ cards.

2. If you have an Nvidia card, go into the nVidia control panel and set your Anisotropic Filtering to 8x. We found at 16x or above that this setting tends to smooth off the textures a little more, whereas 8x retains the full clarity. Might differ for your card but just tinker and see what works best.

3. Naturally, the higher your FSX screen resolution is, the better. Ideally you would run at 1920x1080x32 or higher if you card supports it. If not, choose the highest resolution available. Because MegaSceneryEarth doesn't use resource-consuming autogen, your video card should have no problems being set to its highest resolution level and running MSE scenery smoothly in any of the MSE states/regions.

4. The best zoom factor to use in the cockpit view is 0.40. Any higher tends to cause slight blurring of the textures.. The higher the zoom, the worse the blurring gets. 0.40 is the best compromise.

And lastly, here are our nvidia graphics cards settings, for your reference only. We dont guarantee these will give you the best results, but feel listing them might give you an option to see MegaSceneryEarth 2.0 sceneries how they are made to be best seen.

Ambient Occlusion: Performance
Anisotropic Filtering: 8x
Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On
Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting
Antialiasing - Setting: 16x CSAA
Antialiasing - Transparency: Off
CUDA - GPUs: All
Maximum pre-rendered frames: 3
Multi-display/mixed-GPU acceleration: Compatibility performance mode
Power management mode: Adaptive
Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
Texture filtering - Quality: Quality
Texture filtering - Trilinear optimization: Off
Threaded optimization: Auto
Triple buffering: Off
Vertical sync: Use the 3D application setting

 

Give that a try!

I have had my LOD_Radius up to 9.5 and saw no really big deal. The pictures I have posted of my flights over Illinois were at the 4.5 LOD_Radius and with the Texture_Max_Load set at 4096. I don't think our computer systems are ready for 7.5 and above for any length of time. It does not hurt to try though. Other than autogen, the largest framerate killer is commercial weather with pumped settings up to 2046 or 4096 HD clouds. I realize we should have weather turned off when flying over the excellent MSE V2 scenery (so we can see our house :lol: ) but I don't think many do that, including me. Even Word Not Allowed in his Software and Hardware guide recommends nothing higher than 6.5 - "This setting should NOT be set over 6.5. This is a known source of OOM errors, and even 6.5 can cause it, if you are not careful."  He's one of the original recommenders of a LOD_Radius above 7.5 and has now changed that recommendation.  If you look up in the CTD forum that I monitor quite a bit, you'll see a lot of people who had their LOD_Radius setting set above the FSX max (4.5) and they are trying to find out why FSX crashed suddenly.  So I think everyone should be aware that if they do get a crash with this setting set above max, this is the first place they should look when it happens.  I like PCAviator's recommendation regarding the zoom for external views or wing views though (can't do it in the cockpit).  That makes the scenery really crisp and clear most of the time.

 

I appreciate PCAviator's recommendations for the MSE V2 product and I will certainly give them a try.

 

Best regards,

Jim