MipMaps actually work right! [pictures]

[styckx 1,871]

And on user aircraft..  Some of these  aircraft have like six 2048/4096 textures just for the interior alone.. Mipping them out balances things out better.. Same for the outside... You don't need a 4096x4096 texture in a spot view 45ft feet away from your aircraft, that's ridiculous. 

 

I know I'm nerding out over it but I'm completely game for anything that makes this simulator more efficient..  If the plane I'm using now previously had nine 4096x4096 unmipped textures that can now use mipmaps correctly.. I'm alll over it

[HiFlyer 9,358]

I had no Idea that mipmaps were considered a problem in FSX. I converted all of the UT2 AI planes once, (shimmering was absolutely awful otherwise) and FSX took it just fine......

[styckx 1,871]

I had no Idea that mipmaps were considered a problem in FSX. I converted all of the UT2 AI planes once, (shimmering was absolutely awful otherwise) and FSX took it just fine......

 

Yep.. If I dropped the same textures I'm using for these Carenado aircraft in P3D into FSX and went to the same outside view as the first three  pictures in the first post it would look like I just took a screenshots of an aircraft modeled in 2006 with 1024 textures..  I've never opened a DDS file of someones aircraft to see it mip-mapped..  

 

Scenery on the other hand is a different story

[nudata 10]

I can't find the MIPMAP utility in the nVidia tools area. Can you post a link?

[styckx 1,871]

So I just learned something and am really disappointed and embarrassed..... If any of you give a hoot about your FSX or Prepar3D performance I would read this.. 

 

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=4096

 

^ We've all heard that repeated constantly about being "a must have tweak"... 

 

"You need to set TML of 4096 in FSX cfg to use HD planes". 

 

"It will display 1024 but you will still suffer the performance of 4096"

 

I've heard this a bajillion times... You have too.. For god sakes I've actually repeated this non-sense..  And it never clicked until now the dog and pony show this was the entire time..

 

This is only true if if the planes actually use mipmaps.. Which nearly none of them do. Can anyone actually name one? If an aircraft is using unmipped 4096 textures.. FSX (or Prepar3D) doesn't care what TML you are set at.. It j will just display the 4096 textures  because it has no other stupid choice.  So it makes sense when I kept saying "FSX blurs when you use mipmaps" because I never set 4096 in FSX's cfg because like most others I never saw a lick of difference when I did or didn't... So when I converted to mipmaps it was only showing the 1024x1024  or lower chain of that mip-map. at all times in FSX..

 

In P3D I set 2048/4096 from day one because I don't need to waste my time checking if it reset itself like FSX..  I only set it to 2048/4096 because I was trained to and P3D made it easy. And let's face it.. I had no idea what it actually did.. Either did a lot of you I bet.

 

Long story short... FSX used mip-maps right the entire time if you just set 4096 in the config but FSX aircraft developers cheated you out of performance because instead of using mip-maps like they should have from day one and telling you explicitly to set TML of 4096 they just skipped the mips, and used 4096 or 2048 unmipped textures instead assuming no one would ever read instructions to set TML of 4096..

 

Who here honestly ever saw a difference with aircraft in FSX between a tml of 4096 and 1024?????  Exactly.. Because it was all a farce..  The only honest people have been airport and scenery designers.. I'm beyond annoyed and embarrassed just finding this out....  So much performance, and overhead lost to stupid non-sense. Over 7 years of playing with and repainting textures in Photoshop and I got sucked into this now obvious old wives tale... Just embarrassing.. 

[Nyxx 6,993]

Who here honestly ever saw a difference with aircraft in FSX between a tml of 4096 and 1024????? Exactly.. Because it was all a farce..

Really!

Well just to name one example this guys work you have to set TML to 4096, he even does a low res version because if you have it set to anything less that 4096 it is really bad.

Anyway I could give a huge list but it would in your words get "embarrassing".

http://www.lockonfiles.com/files/file/1627-fsx-b-17g-memphis-belle/

 

Anyway never mind you gave it a good try. :biggrin:

 

 

The wing shadows though are straight as an arrow. The DX11 shadows might be picking up the little ridges in the control surfaces..

Sorry I disagree it's just really bad AA, Nothing Straight as an arrow there.

[styckx 1,871]

Really!

Well just to name one example this guys work you have to set TML to 4096, he even does a low res version because if you have it set to anything less that 4096 it is really bad.

Anyway I could give a huge list but it would in your words get "embarrassing".

http://www.lockonfiles.com/files/file/1627-fsx-b-17g-memphis-belle/

 

Anyway never mind you gave it a good try. :biggrin:

 

 

Sorry I disagree it's just really bad AA, Nothing Straight as an arrow there.

 

And I can make huge list of those who don't..    

 

Does that look like a wing to you? Again.. THE FUSELAGE jaggies might be picking up the ridges on the control surfaces. 

 

 

Ugh.. Matter of fact.. Look ma, no jaggies at a different angle in the sun..

 

[Nyxx 6,993]

Bill I bet you can make a big list but it was you saying we never see it. So no need to get shirty, you made the statement.

 

 

Again.. THE FUSELAGE jaggies might be picking up the ridges on the control surfaces.

Nope it bad AA

 

Yes the jaggies are a lot better in those 2 SS unlike the one you stated as "straight as an arrow." We could only work on the example you posted.

Ugh.. Matter of fact.. Look ma, no jaggies at a different angle in the sun..

Really! very mature, and we could see these before?

[Artem Crum 5]

Bill, and how about the cloud textures?

Having mipmapped textures for planes is not a big deal when we talk about performance, but mipmapped clouds should make a big difference in heavy weather.

 

Hope this question is not so stupid...  :ph34r:

[styckx 1,871]

It's not stupid..    Cloud textures are mipmapped as far as I can tell ie: REX etc. As long as you use DXT5 Optimization..  There is no fool proof way to know though since REX uses Extended BMP for DXT5 optimized files and DXTBMP doesn't tell you if it contains mips or not.. The only way I could tell was re-saving the textures REX generated with and without mips and comparing file sizes.. (Mipped textures will always be larger than the same one un-mipped) I'm just more than ever trying to optimize my install. So plane mips are important to me even if it's a small difference.  I'm over the FSX philosophy of brute forcing performance.. 

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

 

 

There is no fool proof way to know though since REX uses Extended BMP for DXT5 optimized files and DXTBMP doesn't tell you if it contains mips or not.

 

Just drag and drop any texture you want into imagetool and it will tell you if it has mipmaps and how many.

[styckx 1,871]

Good to know.. Thank you very much. I avoid working with extended BMP at all costs so I've honestly never used imagetool. Before I got into FSX my previous texture work was strictly with DDS files..  When I crossed paths with Extended BMP and DXTBMP I was blown away how just terrible the tools were to work with the format.  

 

Live and learn as they say eh?  

[Dave_YVR 972]

 I have been adding missing mips to FSX scenery and AI textures for years with great success. Was only years and years ago on FS9 or FS2002 that I found that didn't work so well.

[Artem Crum 5]

Just did the test with imagetool and default P3D2 clouds (cumulus1.bmp) - it says texture is in DXT5 format, 256x256 pixels, with 7 mip levels. Good to know.

 

Thanks for clarification, guys.

[Jim Robinson 122]

Good to know.. Thank you very much. I avoid working with extended BMP at all costs so I've honestly never used imagetool. Before I got into FSX my previous texture work was strictly with DDS files..  When I crossed paths with Extended BMP and DXTBMP I was blown away how just terrible the tools were to work with the format.  

 

Live and learn as they say eh?  

 

Imagetool is perfectly capable of saving .dds in DXT1, DXT5, or 32 bit, just make sure you're using the FSX version of Imagetool and not the FS9 version. It's batch processing capabilities make it worth throwing all the others out, also can convert a .psd directly so when you're processing 100+ GP textures every 20 minutes or so there's nothing that compares IMHO.