Here's a thought - you might try it.
MAX_DEM_AREA might be tied with TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=, and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=. The formula for finding areas of circles, of course, is piR^2... so with the numbers you have posted there, you're requesting the sim to load textures out to an area of 3117 units - but you're limiting your max DEM resolution to 200 units. Perhaps, if you bump up your max DEM area to, say, 3200, that would cover all the sharp textures you're requesting.
With default values, DEM_MAX_AREA is set to 100 - which allows only a radius of about 5 units to be at max sharpness beneath the aircraft.... and to tell the truth, no matter how I've messed with TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=, and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=, I've never seen a difference in where the blurriness begins. I have seen it's severity reduced by playing with TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=, but never entirely removed. I'm seeing it utterly moved using an increased MAX_DEM_AREA=... but it does seem to massively increase system work loads. With MAX_DEM_AREA=1000, I'm seeing a loss of maybe 10 FPS in general. Increasing that level to 8000 more than halved my FPS - but it also meant that there wasn't a blurry anywhere in sight...

Mileage might vary - but I'm fairly confident that I'm not making this up. I've got a saved flight in Hawaii where I routinely get 110 or so FPS on average with a MAX_DEM_AREA of 100. With a MAX_DEM_AREA of 1000, that number dips to 90, but the slopes of Oahu aren't as blurry. With a MAX_DEM_AREA of 8000 (the max value I've tested as it is sufficient for even the highest radius values I've seen published), my FPS at that location is down in the high 70s and the mountains are even more clear than before - but not magically much more clear. There may be an upper limit to how far that radius can be extended? I'm going to speculate that the upper level may be 2000 or so - but that number isn't particularly beautiful. Perhaps an upper limit of 1024 is more probable - it's a power of two that seems to pop up a lot in FS9. That corresponds to a max radius of 18. I'm going to set and forget my sim with a max radius of 16 - four radii (1 default of 4 and 3 extended radii also of 4) for a max_dem_area of 805.

This sounds interesting, but I'm not quite following what the various settings should be.  Could you please post yours for each of those parameters?  Thanks!

Ron

Sorry, I wish I could edit my first post in the thread - it was pretty much copied and pasted from a response I authored in another thread, so there are some deficencies in the opening post....

This is what it should say:

 

 Originally Posted by 2legit2quit

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.5
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=5

Here's a thought - you might try it.
MAX_DEM_AREA might be tied with TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=, and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=. The formula for finding areas of circles, of course, is piR^2... so with the numbers you have posted there, you're requesting the sim to load textures out to an area of 3117 units - but you're limiting your area of max DEM resolution to 200 units. Perhaps, if you bump up your max DEM area to, say, 3200, that would cover all the sharp textures you're requesting.
With default values, DEM_MAX_AREA is set to 100 - which allows only a radius of about 5 units to be at max sharpness beneath the aircraft.... and to tell the truth, no matter how I've messed with TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=, and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=, I've never seen a difference in where the blurriness begins. I have seen its severity reduced by playing with TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=, but never entirely removed. I'm seeing it definitely moved using an increased MAX_DEM_AREA=... but it does seem to massively increase system work loads. With MAX_DEM_AREA=1000, I'm seeing a loss of maybe 10 FPS in general. Increasing that level to 8000 took a huge bite out my frame rates, but it also meant that there wasn't a blurry anywhere in sight...

Mileage might vary - but I'm fairly confident that I'm not making this up. I've got a saved flight in Hawaii where I routinely get 110 or so FPS on average with a MAX_DEM_AREA of 100. With a MAX_DEM_AREA of 1000, that number dips to 90, but the slopes of Oahu aren't as blurry. With a MAX_DEM_AREA of 8000 (the max value I've tested as it is sufficient for even the highest radius values I've seen published), my FPS at that location is down in the high 70s and the mountains are even more clear than before - but not magically much more clear. There may be an upper limit to how far that radius can be extended? I'm going to speculate that the upper level may be 2000 or so - but that number isn't particularly beautiful. Perhaps an upper limit of 1024 is more probable - it's a power of two that seems to pop up a lot in FS9. That corresponds to a max radius of 18. I'm going to set and forget my sim with a max radius of 16 - four radii (1 default of 4 and 3 extended radii also of 4) for a max_dem_area of 805.

Right - this is what is in my cfg file...

 

[DISPLAY]
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.9
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.1
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.2
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.3
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.9
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.1
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.2
RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.3
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=80
[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=70.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=805
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3

 

Hi.

 

I'm not sure about the maximum DEM area. That controls the distance at which the mesh is drawn accurately, DEM standing for digital elevation model. It shouldn't affect crispness of textures, only the distance at which mountains spring into shape. The resolution of the mesh inside that area is set by TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL where a value of 21 will give 19 m resolution, 20 gives 37 m et c. It seems to be accepted that different resoultions of mesh have little effect on framerate but that loading many more elevation points is likely to slow things down. However, if you can get the loading distance out beyond your visibility setting then you may be able to mask the irritating sudden erruption of hills and valleys as you fly over terrain.

 

The other variables you mention will affect crispness and, to an extent, the rapidity with which different resolution textures are loaded, but in FS9 at least, there is a limit to how far from the player's ground zero each of the different texture resolutions and levels of detail will be drawn. The time taken to load is influenced mostly by what other items have to be drawn, such as vector scenery and autogen. The texture tiles come from one set of files and if you specify greater detail generally for your terrain then loading will be slowed by the simulator's need to go looking for other items in other files (streams, roads, railways et c.), and to load each of them when found.

 

(edit) I'll add that there's also a rather basic routine built into FS9 that gives preferential treatment to the terrain in front of your field of view and not necessarily to the ground towards which you are travelling. If you swap views frequently or pan a lot the routine can get pretty confused and take very much longer to determine which textures should be loaded next. That won't necessarily affect framerate but does have a noticeable effect on loading-time.

 

Cheers,

D

As I stated within the other thread, what Dave writes is the very same what I believed to have learned since Joachim Buhre (Jobia) wrote his excellent terrain and landclass documentation. I have tested a variety of values with TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA in mountainuous areas and found that it influences the terrain mesh indeed. I would be surprised if there was a connection with texture crispness.

 

Regards,

Harald

This is the best graphics improvement tweak I've every tried, and I've been doing this for a long time. Between this tweak and the Leclercq textures, the sim looks orders of magnitude better than it ever has. Thank You!  :im Not Worthy:

If you do <ctrl> S you get a global view and certainly changing TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA increases the size if the dreaded cross!

My settings are:-

 

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=800.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=6
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.0000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.9
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

 

Oh, and I get up to 60fps crosscountry. 25fps at Heathrow