Need help with blurry distant mountain/rock textures (highres textures are only loaded below aircraft)

[ceno 0]

I made this example video...

 

 

...some highres textures are only loaded directly below the aircraft and this drives me crazy.

Distant Mountains or rocks are looking plain ugly.

 

According to response in the LM Forum this is normal behavior.

 

My hardware is GTX970 / i5-4690k 8GB Ram, i have all the common Orbx Addons.

Video is made with maxed out settings, but it dont matters, with lower settings the texture loading is very annoying as well.

 

Please tell me there is something that can be done against this immersion breaking problem.

 

[WarpD 824]

Wait... you're told by the company that writes the code that this is normal and you ask people who don't even have access to the code to help 'fix' it?

 

Seriously though...

 

Look, you really don't have a computer powerful enough to run the entire world in HD. It hasn't been invented yet. There is definitely going to be a level of detail radius limitation. Until we have supercomputers or better.

 

To display the level of detail radius you're demanding is like expecting the same level of detail in the movie Avatar. Well, that was created by s server farm over a long, long period of time. One frame at a time.

 

I watch your video and I think it looks fine. Perfect, no... but considering the scope of the rendering, really it's impressive.

[DylanM 1,069]

From what I can see, that really doesn't look too bad. But here are a few things you can try:

 

- Enable Hyperthreading (and remove any affinity mask entries in your cfg). At the expense of 1-2 fps, you may notice an improvement in terrain rendering.

- It looks like you're running unlimited frames. Set a higher TextureMaxLoad (e.g. 30) under [Display] in the cfg. This works very well in combination with a low Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction (e.g. 0.01).

[Howellerman 104]

That video looks great, and is pretty much how terrain should resolve itself as it gets closer to the aircraft.

 

Smoothness is impressive as well. Not sure what you were expecting?

[CaptCWGAllen 49]

This is what mine does. About 1:30 in this video the out of focus to in focus thing happens. Drives me mad as it is an immersion killer. I also fly X Plane and it stays in focus in great detail all the time. So if this is normal then I am disappointed.

 

Cheers Peter.

[WarpD 824]

Let's be honest... comparing a sim that uses a 'fog' boundary on the outer edge of range to increase frame rates against a sim that does not obscure the distance with a haze... is apples and oranges.

 

It's time to stop saying 'sim z does this'.

[Appliance 51]

ceno I suggest locking your frames @ 24 rather than unlimited.  Then test in the same area, aircraft and compare.  P3D has more time to render each frame and you will possibly notice a difference. 

 

The GTX 970 is an excellent card and superb overclocker.  It is relatively easy to get 1500/8000 core clock/memory at stock voltages.  If you try this with no appreciable difference then one can draw the conclusion your hardware is not the limiting factor.  

 

As suggested above perhaps some software tweaking may partially mitigate deficencies in the P3D core itself.

[gboz 157]

 

 

Wait... you're told by the company that writes the code that this is normal and you ask people who don't even have access to the code to help 'fix' it?

Seriously though...

 

Seriously Ed, what are the chances of getting a reply from LM.  

 

He is just referring to some replies from other frustrated "Participants" over there.

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/forum-5/topic/blurry-distant-mountainrock-textures-with-video/

 

gb.

[DylanM 1,069]

They don't respond to every single thread (the one gboz linked to was started by the same OP on the 11th of Jan, and then posted on this site today). LM responded today in another thread on another topic, so I call BS on that argument.

[gboz 157]

They don't respond to every single thread (the one gboz linked to was started by the same OP on the 11th of Jan, and then posted on this site today). LM responded today in another thread on another topic, so I call BS on that argument.

 

Why should they not reply to every thread?

I assume most thread starters paid good money for the software and so deserve some form of direct technical support.

Since LM's forum is the only avenue for support, every thread should be at least acknowledged as noted or a solution offered or a redirection to a solution given or suggest it's a third party problem or just offer a bit of sympathy.

Ignoring customers is just insulting not to mention bad business.

 

gb.

[simmerhead 885]

The LM support forums are a mess. They need to hire a few qualified moderators and give proper support, and most of all kick out certain individuals over there that spread their hogwash and spam in almost every thread. 

[ceno 0]

FYI, got addicted to the flightsim genre only some weeks ago and i really like prepar3d.

however it would be great to allow some criticism and comparison to other sims.

 

 

 

Wait... you're told by the company that writes the code that this is normal and you ask people who don't even have access to the code to help 'fix' it?

Seriously though...

Look, you really don't have a computer powerful enough to run the entire world in HD. It hasn't been invented yet. There is definitely going to be a level of detail radius limitation. Until we have supercomputers or better.

To display the level of detail radius you're demanding is like expecting the same level of detail in the movie Avatar. Well, that was created by s server farm over a long, long period of time. One frame at a time.

I watch your video and I think it looks fine. Perfect, no... but considering the scope of the rendering, really it's impressive.

 

Whoa! Sorry for not adding that the response was not directly from the devs but from other Users, as DylanM stated.

I think the supercomputer argument does not apply to the visible distance of (some mountain/rock) high resolution ground textures.

 

Clouds for instance, they can be maxed out to slow fps down to a slide show.

Why is this not possible with ground textures?

32bit limitiation or intended hardcoding to improve performance may be the the reason, it could be a bug as well.

The question is: exists a workaround or special hardware requirements to solve it?

 

 

From what I can see, that really doesn't look too bad. But here are a few things you can try:

 

- Enable Hyperthreading (and remove any affinity mask entries in your cfg). At the expense of 1-2 fps, you may notice an improvement in terrain rendering.

- It looks like you're running unlimited frames. Set a higher TextureMaxLoad (e.g. 30) under [Display] in the cfg. This works very well in combination with a low Fiber_Frame_Time_Fraction (e.g. 0.01).

 

Thanks for the advice! Will try it later today.

 

 

That video looks great, and is pretty much how terrain should resolve itself as it gets closer to the aircraft.

 

Smoothness is impressive as well. Not sure what you were expecting?

 

Yes it is smooth, but high/low res transition in corresponding distance is rather horrible.

 

 

ceno I suggest locking your frames @ 24 rather than unlimited.  Then test in the same area, aircraft and compare.  P3D has more time to render each frame and you will possibly notice a difference. 

 

The GTX 970 is an excellent card and superb overclocker.  It is relatively easy to get 1500/8000 core clock/memory at stock voltages.  If you try this with no appreciable difference then one can draw the conclusion your hardware is not the limiting factor.  

 

As suggested above perhaps some software tweaking may partially mitigate deficencies in the P3D core itself.

 

Thanks, will try it later today.

 

 

They don't respond to every single thread (the one gboz linked to was started by the same OP on the 11th of Jan, and then posted on this site today). LM responded today in another thread on another topic, so I call BS on that argument.

 

But is there any official response to the Texture Loading problems?

Regarding communication, it is rather strange that LM dont give any information about the development progress, but hey..so be it.

Still it is interesting that this vertical cloud issue was fast fixed and a solution together with LM available.

[WarpD 824]

You have a serious lack of understanding how graphics rendering functions when you think a 3D object (cloud) and a 3D surface (terrain) are the same performance wise.

 

The 'horsepower' required to render a 3D object is above that of rendering the terrain. The more 3D objects you add (that move freely, per se) the higher the 'horsepower' requirement. As example.. a system can render a 3D sphere rotating in the center of the screen at 200fps without any performance issues whatsoever. Now, make it 500 3D spheres rotating on the screen at the same time... frame rates plummet. That's how clouds can bring your system to it's electronic 'knees'. They're moving 3D objects, and I haven't even mentioned the shadows the can cast as well.

 

A 3D surface (which is what terrain is) tends to be unmoving. After all, when the ground moves... we call that an earthquake, right? So... the 3D terrain itself is 'static' when compared to a dynamic, moving 3D object. However... it's not really static in that to support decent performance a rendering process that utilizes multiple levels of detail based on distance is used. Seriously, the computer hasn't been created that can offer 30fps in full-blown 3D HD. So... LOD (level of detail) is used to adjust the amount of detail actually rendered to lighten the rendering load for the terrain appearance. LOD can be simply how detailed the textures or, or it's how detailed the shape of the surfaces are, or a combination of both. FS uses a combination of both. Even XPlane does something (since you want to compare).. it uses an artificial 'fog' to reduce the visual distance so that at absolutely no point do you ever, ever get a truly CAVOK display in XPlane. The distance is always a blur in that sim. By design. In FS, there is an attempt at balance so that you have the ability to see to the horizon, especially at altitude. This comes at the cost of LOD performance requirements. On a clear day at altitude, one could see a great, great distance in the real world. Using HD textures, we're talking gigabytes of data for a view. Just one frame, no movement no dynamic anything. Just one snapshot, as it were. Interestingly enough, in the real world your eye functions in a manner that absolutely nothing else can. Nothing, not even a camera. You seem to expect a flat display panel to interact with your eye exactly the same way (everthing appears to be in high definition focus). In reality, the world is mostly out of focus for you... you just don't notice because the item(s) you are mentally focused on are in focus. This was one of the reasons why so many people became ill when they went and saw the movie 'Avatar' in 3D. The entire screen, all aspects of it, every single item was in crystal clear focus. So... in the sim... the 'focus' is based on LOD not the mental focus in your mind.

 

You still firmly believe it's 'broken'. It's not broken at all and in fact if it didn't work your system would be doing 1fps. Lockheed-Martin isn't going to fix something that isn't broken. Whether they choose to rework how the LOD code currently functions is another discussion point of which only they are privy to. But there's nothing broken.

[ceno 0]

This sounds interesting...thanks for your explanation.

So, what i complain about is LOD which is limited to the value 6.5?

[WarpD 824]

Correct. And for some reason the forum refuses to allow me to say only the one word. How stupid is that? LOL