Has anyone ever used this guys scenery?

[neumanix 113]

Glad to read that my little utility is doing what it's supposed to. I'll upload a new version (2.1) to the library in a minute so you can download that tomorrow probably.

It has some improvements and is likely to be the last and final version.

 

Cheers!

[rogwen 3]

I never look at forums unless it is to see if someone has already found an answer to a problem I have come across; someone mentioned to me that there was some discussion so I have dropped in. I do put my email address in with all sceneries and invite questions, though I sometimes wonder why after I find that 285 folks knew there was a missing texture but didn't tell me.

My understanding of DXT1 and DXT3 textures was that a DXT1 texture would only have an alpha channel if that option was selected, and that DXT3 textures would have an alpha channel by default; it is impossible to make a DXT3 texture without an alpha channel. Earlier this year I discovered (one person emailed me) that there may be a word missing there, and what is required is an "active" alpha channel. I have myself run the utility on my textures, though as I had not seen the stutters it was hard to tell if there was an improvement. Maybe a good video card or a lot of memory coped so well I didn't see them? I do not profess to be an expert on "why". There is one interesting question though; why only on some sceneries, as mentioned above?

The second point about draw calls I can answer fully; I never noticed it as a problem and I am lazy. When anyone makes a new buiding there is more time and effort spent on preparing textures than there is on the form of the building, unless it is a very complicated building. So when I make textures for a building I make only what is new and what is necessary. The walls are almost certainly new from photos. If the roof of the hangar is dark grey then I use a matching texture I already have. If the small lean-to behind it is slate blue just like Carp then I use the Carp texture instead of spending time in Photoshop getting rid of those parked cars. So, probably four textures instead of one; two for new walls so they don't become too minute for me to apply to the building model, an existing one for roof, and another existing for the lean-to. I admit I could copy textures over and reduce the number to maybe two, but I am never gonna do it.

Making sceneries is at first interesting when flying somewhere, taking pics, talking to other pilots, and flying back. This is followed by a long period that is frustrating, fiddly, tedious, challenging, and time consuming. Ask Sidney Schwartz or Greg Putz. There is satisfaction when it is complete, but that satisfaction only marginally shows a profit against the negatives involved in making it. I am maximising that profit.

[neumanix 113]

My understanding of DXT1 and DXT3 textures was that a DXT1 texture would only have an alpha channel if that option was selected, and that DXT3 textures would have an alpha channel by default; it is impossible to make a DXT3 texture without an alpha channel.

This is correct. If your texture has an all white alpha channel, the logical thing is to save it as an dxt1 without alpha.

If on the other hand the texture needs a "show/don't show" kind of alpha, like trees and fences usually do, the alpha only contains fully black and fully white pixels, then dxt1 with alpha (colorkey) is the right choice.

 

Dxt3 always have alpha information as you correctly stated, but it can have one bit not set correctly which makes the alpha data unavailable. This happens if you save a texture with an all white alpha as dxt3 in imagetool. This is a mistake to begin with, as I just said that a texture with an all white alpha should be saved as dxt1(without alpha) to begin with.

 

You should only choose dxt3 whenever your alpha contains shades of gray, i.e. varying transparency.

And if you want the best looking gradients, like with light splashes and such, 32bit is the way to go.

 

It only takes one single texture with bad alpha bit in a scenery to cause stutters. This is very noticable when using TrackIR and looking around a lot. It will always stutter when looking in the direction where the faulty texture is.

 

I made the DxtFixer tool to quickly fix these problems, but the best solution would of course be to re-do the textures in dxt1(without alpha) format.

 

Hope this clears things up.

[N60JBravo 27]

neumanix, on 17 Jul 2013 - 12:00 PM, said:

If on the other hand the texture needs a "show/don't show" kind of alpha, like trees and fences usually do, the alpha only contains fully black and fully white pixels, then dxt1 with alpha (colorkey) is the right choice.

Note that you lose 25% of the color palette with DXT1 w/Alpha as compared to DXT1 w/o Alpha or DXT3.

 

IMO DXT3 is better if there is anything other than a full white Alpha, which should be DXT1 w/o Alpha.

 

Yes the texture file size will be larger and this could hurt performance.

 

As long as you save the source file, one could try both and see if there is a noticeable difference between DXT1 w/Alpha and DXT3.

 

As always, it's quality vs. performance.

 

regards,

Joe

[neumanix 113]

You are correct, there is a small quality trade off.
But you know the old tree problem when some tree textures caused a white border around the trees. The solution there was to convert them to dxt1 with alpha.
On the other hand, a dxt3 with an alpha identical to a dxt1 alpha, i.e. only fully black and fully white pixels, should give the same result I guess.
Gotta try that and find out...

[ematheson 19]

Thanks for the response, Roger. It's good to see a developer who responds so civily to public response of all sorts. Your sceneries are beautiful and I am always ready to give them another try. As stated before, I am reinstalling FS9, so I'm going to give Valdez (and a few others) another shot to see if maybe I had a slowdown from elsewhere on my system impacting the scenery in that region.

In my defense to those who cannot believe us, this is a conversation Roger Wensley and I have already had via email.

[Maribell 5]

Can't believe you guys. Roger Wensley complains of people not providing feedback direct to him, you will see this in his "read me's". He has on numerous occasions directly helped me, so instead of rambling on about his scenery, email him, tell him your problems, he can't fix what he doesn't know.

Echofox

Some developers don't reply to the emails, I've emailed so many and none has replied except for one, Holger Sandman and that was a miracle i had issues with some BGL Files he replies with links to the patches and wala. I will admit i never did think of emailing Roger Wensley directly so i never did. My knowledge when it comes to creating scenery is (I have no knowledge) but i have found ways to fix a lot of my problems and i'll be honest my simulator runs great.

 

As for rogers scenery i have encounter a lot of stutters in certain areas when panning around my plane and see that my pc struggles loading the textures on to the objects so i posted this thread a member mentioned missing alpha channels so i ran the utility and certainly enough all of the roger wensley Sceneries are running smooth as glass with unnoticeable quality loss. As shown on the screens above the quality still looks the same

 

Roger your work is superb and the time that you took into making these scenery was well worth it sure i may have encounter stutters but i managed to fix them whether it was the right thing to do or not in running the DXT3 utility im happy with the quality and performance i have now by doing so :lol:

[neumanix 113]

@N60JBravo

 

I just realized that dxt3 can have colorkey alpha as well. My TreesSU.bmp was in dxt1 with colorkey alpha and I converted it back to dxt3, which I know won't improve quality as those 25% were lost in the first dxt1 conversion. But it hit me that I haven't come across a dxt3 with colorkey alpha before... it usually just says "alpha" in imagetool.

Anyway, dxt3 with colorkey alpha works just fine so the conclusion I guess would be... You're right! Why ever use dxt1 with alpha at all if you loose 25% quality.

It would be the filsesize then, but honestly I don't think that matters at all.

I learned something, thank you!

[Roger Ramjet 71]

If you're reading this Roger I want to say a BIG thanks for all the excellent freeware you have put out. I'm not complaining about CYTZ, I'm just a little puzzled why it stutters, where every other one of your sceneries doesn't. I don't run the AI provided, instead running the WOAI Porter package and I fixed missing alphas so it's just one of those things. I'm sure it runs fine on most people's rigs. Keep up the great work and again, it's greatly appreciated.

 

Cheers

[neumanix 113]

I just downloaded Rogers latest, Yorkshire Gliding Club, and found another problem that oh so many developers suffer from. No Mipmaps!

So I guess you'll be reading this Roger, here's some more advice:

 

Everything that will be seen from varying distances, SHALL HAVE MIPMAPS. No excuses here. Otherwise you get the crawling ants (shimmering).

That means everything apart from the aircraft you are flying, they don't need mipmaps, at least not the interior textures.

 

Another tip is to stick to only dxt and 32bit textures. No reason to use 8-bit, thats oooold school.

[mmann 72]

 

 

You're right! Why ever use dxt1 with alpha at all if you loose 25% quality.

 

Not 25% quality but 25% of the color palette, which depending on how your textures are created may have minimal to no effect. The other big mistake I see is FSX developers who use DXT3 instead of DXT5 which is superior in many situations; of course FS9 developers don't have to worry about that. B)

 

Thanks, Roger, for the very timely post!

[rogwen 3]

There is a reason for no mipmaps, and it was a conscious decision. A scenery that has mipmaps and is close to another scenery that does not have mipmaps can cause a CTD (crash to desktop) and I discovered this when making a BC scenery close to another airfield by someone else that I had downloaded. At that time (2005?) there was a lot of scenery made in 2001 or 2002 etc that did not have mipmaps and the choice was to not have mipmaps in my scenery or not use someone else's scenery that did not have mipmaps. In hindsight there was a 3rd choice, which was to convert the other scenery's textures to mipmaps, but this didn't occur to me as I was very new to buildings and textures. I went on to discover that the mix can also cause blurred ground textures; Sid's Hay River scenery would create havoc until he made and I tried unmipped textures, and we still don't know what caused the clash, maybe the plane textures?

So that's why I decided in 2005 not to have mipmaps. If I decided now I would have mipmaps, but having chosen then which road to take, and given that it all worked for me and solved a problem, I went on. I cannot now imagine making mipmaps for a thousand (or more?) textures; I don't mind if someone else takes that on. When I started making scenery it was because I was learning to fly at Rockcliffe in 2004 and I noticed some grass fields that I knew were not in FS9, and I learnt enough to make them for me to use. As scenery making continued I went on in the same way, making what worked for me. Posting was a by-product, not an aim.

Holger has always been helpful to me, and without him I could not have made the "freeze" scenery for Canada. Arno is from the same box.

[rogwen 3]

One last small response, and then I doubt I will be back to the forums for another 6 months or so, as usual.

There are also other ways in the FS9 display settings to deal with distant shimmer that you haven't mentioned (anti-aliasing I think from memory) but I have no particular opinion on it either way. I do disagree with you about using "raw" 32 bit textures as I have seen problems, and although all my textures are made 32 bit I then dxt3 them. I have not seen any problems with 8 bit textures and if they can do the job I need and are conveniently to hand then I use them.

Thanks for the thanks from those of you who sent them, and now I have to solve a problem between Windows and SBuilder so I can get on with the Athabasca Tar Sands. Sometimes I hate Microsoft. Or Bill.

[Sidney Schwartz 11]

Good discussion. I'd be interested in knowing if any of you have been having stuttering or other problems with my scenery. For years now I've been using DXT1 with alpha channel and mips almost exclusively. The only reason I'll use DXT3 is if I need a semi-transparent texture. 

 

Oh yeah....I always respond if someone emails me with a question or problem. I must be lucky because I've had very few of these considering the number of sceneries and scenery objects I've uploaded.  :smile:

[Scorp 15]

 

 

On the other hand, a dxt3 with an alpha identical to a dxt1 alpha, i.e. only fully black and fully white pixels, should give the same result I guess.
Gotta try that and find out...

 

I found out with Simflyers KPHX fence textures. With the fence textures DXT3 I could see through the fence and everything behind it, all the way to the ground. When i converted it to DXT1 w/alpha (colorkey) it worked like it was supposed to.

The way I've been doing this is:

if it needs 100% transparency then it's DXT1 colorkey, if it needs shaded transparency ( like tinted glass ) or reflection then it's DXT3.