Phoenix with autogen.

 

Nice shots manny, love that Phoenix one.

 

 

You might want to delete the Shaders10 folder once in a while too as that might have gotten corrupted in some way.

 

Thanks for suggestion Jim, will give that a go too.

 

 

I even had some feeling of depth.

 

Yeah, it seems to work really well, even down as low as 400 ft.

Sadly, still have issues with the HiRes tiles loading - if I hit Pause I can wait and watch the tiles resolution improve as they paint across the frame.  They'll load, but in a very small radius ... plenty of VAS so no limitation there.

 

Tried all kinds of combinations of the usual suspects, LOD, Texture, Buffer Pools On/Off, Affinity, Fiber Frame, Swap Wait Timeout, Max Async Batching Job, Deleting the Sharder10 folder, default FSX C172, only 2 scenery libraries (other than base set) enabled, etc. -- I even tested the performance of the SSD drive that contains the HiRes textures (no issues).  Even tried DX9 mode without any success.

 

Since the LOD_RADIUS setting and FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION settings made absolutely no difference in Boston Area, I'm wondering if these values are used when the AffinityMask is set for multi-core operation?

 

What I've noticed is that the Boston .BGL files are typically around 100 KB avg, vs. other MSE Mass .BGL files are around 65KB avg.  I'm wondering if I've FSX just can't handle at 2560 x 1600 (doesn't appear to be a GPU limitation or is it?).  Although the file size of the .BGL isn't that much different than a "normal" photo-scenery file size, perhaps it's  related to the how much MORE texture data has to be loaded within a smaller area ... meaning that Mass entire state is 4.52GB (MSE) but Boston area alone is 14.6GB.  That's A LOT of texture data for a very small area even when considering the LOD (meaning the actual texture data at a given best LOD is probably about 66% of that 14.6GB).

 

Has me puzzled ... last time I ran into this problem it was due to the number of scenery libraries enabled, reducing those cleared up the problem.  But this time around that optimization doesn't seem to help.

 

Any and all suggestions/hints/corrections welcome, I've hit a wall.

 

Thanks, Rob.

I've heard that LOD_RADIUS > 9.0 is ignored by FS, so I'd be inclined to limit that to 7.5 or 8.0. I'm assuming your TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD is 4096.

 

2560x1600 is a monster frame buffer, but if you have the video memory and bus bandwidth for it, I don't see why FSX would discriminate. Have you used an on-screen display (OSD) for your video card to show how much video memory is being consumed? Maybe you're up against the ceiling and texture thrashing.

 

That said, I don't know if there's anything wrong with your system, per se. My load times are MUCH higher with Ultra Res. That Boston is 4x the resolution of MSE is not insignificant (and BOTH are loaded into memory concurrently, btw) In fact, MSE will show through when the sim wants to display lower-res imagery if your scenery layers are setup as such. When I load up Boston, only the immediate area is tiled with the UltraRes and the rest is MSE and you can slowly watch the MSE tiles (which are huge) be swapped out with UltraRes tiles (which are also huge) as you fly over them (which is a little disconcerting because the colorization is completely different between the two as you get outside the urban areas). Have you tried disabling MSE Mass altogether to see if that helps with texture load?

 

What are your TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and TextureMaxLoad (not to be confused with TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD) settings at?

I've heard that LOD_RADIUS > 9.0 is ignored by FS, so I'd be inclined to limit that to 7.5 or 8.0. I'm assuming your TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD is 4096.

 

I've tried LOD_RADIUS 4.0 to 12.0 ... the visual results were identical. I tried TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD 1024, 2048, and 4096 ... again the results were identical. The visual draw distance of HiRes textures was virtually unchanged

Have you used an on-screen display (OSD) for your video card to show how much video memory is being consumed?

 

Yes, about 1.8GB (the 680 is 4GB and the Titan is 6GB).

When I load up Boston, only the immediate area is tiled with the UltraRes and the rest is MSE and you can slowly watch the MSE tiles (which are huge) be swapped out with UltraRes tiles (which are also huge) as you fly over them (which is a little disconcerting because the colorization is completely different between the two as you get outside the urban areas).

 

That's exactly the problem I'm seeing/describing. Perhaps I wasn't clear, the tiles are loading, just not resolving to HiRes textures beyond a very small distance radius around the aircraft.

What are your TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT and TextureMaxLoad

 

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT= I tried values between 40 - 120 (I normally run 80)

TextureMaxLoad= I tried values between 9 - 30 (I normally run 30)

That Boston is 4x the resolution of MSE is not insignificant (and BOTH are loaded into memory concurrently, btw)

 

I disagree, for 50cm scenery, I believe that requires a LOD16 with is about 0.8MB per sq/km - MSE say they cover 6,000 sq/mi so about 15,500 sq/km. LOD_RADIUS is not distance based -- BUT to cover entire Boston city area that's 15,500 sq/km x 0.8 MB or about 12,400 MB / 1024 = 12.1 GB. This is why the LOD_RADIUS setting is not having much impact, just too much to "load", so visually the best it can draw is a small cone around the aircraft at HiRes that's probably about 1-2 miles (keeping in mind it has to load textures for the rest of the frame/scene).

 

As I "now" understand it, the LOD_RADIUS is about maximum texture data (nothing to do with distance). When FSX exceeds a certain amount of texture data it will simply not load more ... it's literally "full" -- so the viewport cone (Phil Taylor alluded to) will shrink as more texture data is added.

 

Now this has nothing to do with black/blue squares ... that just texture data that didn't make it to the GPU in time to draw the frame.

 

Up until now, I always thought LOD_RADIUS was about distance, when in fact it's not. I hear over and over people saying a higher LOD_RADIUS will make distant objects more "clear" (less blurry). But that's really just a side affect, it's not really about distance at all, it's about how much texture data can be "loaded" to present the max texture resolution (LOD16) -- the visual impact just represents what that max is ... it could be a 2 mile cone or a 10 mile cone - just depends on how much texture data there is.

 

Maybe some folks already know this, but it's a "new understanding" for me of what LOD_RADIUS really is ... and it seems to fit into the results I'm getting from MSE HiRes Boston. This understanding also fits into why different screen resolutions will work differently with the same LOD_RADIUS value ... it's all about LOD or LOAD. Also why the value is in the [TERRAIN] section of the FSX.CFG.

 

I'm guessing some of this of course, but I'm just piecing together what I've read, what I've seen, what I've tested, and tossed in some of my own software engineering background.

 

Would love to hear comments on this?

 

Cheers, Rob.

Up until now, I always thought LOD_RADIUS was about distance, when in fact it's not. I hear over and over people saying a higher LOD_RADIUS will make distant objects more "clear" (less blurry). But that's really just a side affect, it's not really about distance at all, it's about how much texture data can be "loaded" to present the max texture resolution (LOD16) -- the visual impact just represents what that max is ... it could be a 2 mile cone or a 10 mile cone - just depends on how much texture data there is.

 

 

The problem with all these switches is that until you really know what the limiting reagent is, you can futz with them and they appear to do nothing (like skinning your knee and putting a bandage on your elbow) It's entirely possible there is a hard and fast cap on how much texture data can be allocated at any one time, independent of your hardware. I mean, your video card should easily dominate here and not break a sweat trying...but 4GB was considered MAX for system RAM back in 2006 - nobody was even talking about video RAM capabilities of this magnitude. Who knows what FSX might do internally when it queries for the available texture space and gets back a number like 4GB or 6GB? Maybe it overflows a variable and drops into "terrible mode" instead.

 

For giggles, you might even think about dropping a different video card in just to see if it changes anything. I've got a "paltry" 1GB ATI and while I could not qualify my load times as "fast", they seem like they're maybe less egregious than what you're experiencing. For me, it takes some time for the distant tiles to fully resolve, but once they do, the sim seems to keep up as I fly....but I can definitely see spotty patches of what I would call "late texture rezzing activity". The params in the cfg also have a most definite effect for me.

 

What about buffer pools...BP=0? (although I think that's mostly for vertex/geometry data, not texture) but it's worth checking perhaps.

 

J

 

PS. To test the "max texture allocation" theory, have you tried turning off ALL photoscenery except for UltraRes? Does that change the perceivable radius of the high-res cone at all?

 

 

It's entirely possible there is a hard and fast cap on how much texture data can be allocated at any one time, independent of your hardware.

 

No -- the cap is OOM.  See my other thread here: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/423417-lod-radius15-but-its-not-about-distance/

Ya, I dunno what to tell you then. Your setup doesn't sound terribly different from mine (apart from the fact you have a far superior video card), but your visual experience seems to be much worse. That editing the texturing params in FSX.cfg has no visible effect for you (for better or for worse) is even more strange. I think you tumbled into a singularity This is usually the point where I throw up my hands, roll back to the beginning with a fresh install and just incrementally layer and tweak things until the wheels start falling off the wagon (but a very very painful process if you have as much crap as I do installed).

One other (tangential and semi-unrelated) thought, the UltraRes textures don't seem to be mip-mapped. I haven't actually looked at them though in a viewer. I'm basing this on purely empirical observation. With MSE 2.0, you see a very obvious de-rez effect with distance (like the one that user in your post demonstrated with the multi-colored texture experiment - clever, btw). With UltraRes - it's like an all or nothing proposition for me. Either I see the uber-resolution that UltraRes gives me, or I'm seeing the MSE 2.0 equivalent texture underneath. The MSE tiles have a bluish-green (and almost foggy) tint to them, whereas the UltraRes is very sharp but brown (different time of year when the source imagery was acquired)...but I can see my foliage resolve from that foggy "blue-green" to the sharp "dead and brown" as the sim swaps out low-res for high-res.

 

I thought that was interesting as I've not seen that effect before with layered scenery. It was always one or the other for me - never both. Do you see that also?

 

It's like the sim is looking for the next mip level down, and not finding it in the UltraRes scenery level, starts hunting down the layers until it finds something suitable (in this case, MSE 2).

Hey...I'm one of those low and very slow flyers, but for 10 bucks I figured I would try the ultra res scenery. It might just be me and my computer but I just don't see it, ultra res that is....to me everything looks flat. I don't use any tweeks or mods and have everything maxed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last pic I just found odd. That was one of the islands just sound of Logan.

It might just be me and my computer but I just don't see it, ultra res that is....to me everything looks flat.

 

This is photoscenery containing only ultra high-resolution textures. There are no additional 3D objects to be seen - it should look flat. You can see the difference in texture quality in this post:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/423249-megasceneryearth-cities-ultrares-meh/#entry2822447

 

(open each in a different browser tab and click between them to see the "pop")

I guess I was expecting too much. I was comparing it with MegaScenery X Southern California. Being that it is advertised as Ultra Res for the low flyers, I thought it would look better than Southern Cal. 

One other (tangential and semi-unrelated) thought, the UltraRes textures don't seem to be mip-mapped...

...With UltraRes - it's an all or nothing proposition for me. Either I see the uber-resolution that UltraRes gives me, or I'm seeing the MSE 2.0 equivalent texture underneath.

 

Just wondering if anyone else has observed this.

 

 

I thought it would look better than Southern Cal. 

 

You should not get Orbx or Fly Tampa.  I think you will enjoy Mega Scenery V2 lot more

 

 

Just wondering if anyone else has observed this.

 

Hmmm ... some tiles seem MIPPED some don't ... interesting.

You should not get Orbx or Fly Tampa.  I think you will enjoy Mega Scenery V2 lot more

 

Hi Manny ..... Just curious why you say this....I own 3 of the Orbx small airports scenery in the NW of the country and they are gorgeous, well that's my opinion. I tried Boston because of the price and that it's within an few hours flight of where I live in Philly. And then they come out with Philly! Which you would think would be a really good thing and normally I would grab that up. But I did not find the Boston scenery to be impressive at all. I was using the MSE version 1 of New Jersey until I had a hard drive crash and lost it. And no matter how many times you write to MSE, because it now says the link has expired to the files that I purchased, they just don't answer you. Anyways, Jersey looked ok because it's all open space. I think it might be just the urban areas that just don't look right to me.