Thanks. VAS is a good reason worth checking out how to mipmap, although I've never had any VAS or OOM problems.

There is a batch file you can download on the UT2 forum which automates the process.

Actually mip mapping doesn't reduce the size of the texture, but adds multiple sizes of the texture starting from very small to large, large being the size of original texture sheet.

 

Adding mips does two things.

 

1. It improves performance by give the GPU a smaller sized texture to render when the plane or object is far away. For example if the object your looking at is 2 miles away from your POV and the object only has a texture sheet of say 1024x1024 but no mips the GPU is going to try to render the full size image even the the object at 2 miles away is very small. At that distance you won't be able to see the detail of the whole texture sheet. If the said object has mip maps then the GPU will render the 64x64 sized sheet of that object and as you get closer the GPU will start rendering larger and larger texture sheets until your close enough for it to render the original 1024x1024. By giving the GPU multiple sizes of the same texture sheet it reduces the work load of the GPU and generally provides better performance.

 

2. The second reason to add mip maps besides improving performance as stated above, is to improve looks of either the AI or scenery object. For those of you who have been simming for a long time will probably remember back in the mid 2000's when some companies like Aerosoft would release sceneries and people would always complain about how the scenery would shimmer and sometimes have jagged lines. The reason behind this si that they would not mip map the textures and you would have to try to run ridiculous high AA setting to try to mitigate the shimmering. But the down fall was that running such high levels of AA would often decrease your performance so much that the airport would probably be almost unusable due to the thE FPS loss. Some people, including myself would then end up having to spend hours mip mapping the textures to get rid of the shimmering and improve performance.

 

Most good scenery developers mip map their sceneries by default now because they understand the benefits. If you open the texture folders of any FSDT, Flightbeam or FlyTampa airports you will be able to tell by the file sizes that the textures already include mips.

 

The same goes for AI. If you don't have mips for the AI textures the aircraft will tend to shimmer and you will most likely get worse performance when there are a lot of AI in the scene.

 

Why most AI packs don't come with mipped textures is beyond me, the only reason I can think of is because of the increased file size of the download or they don't want to take the time to mip map the textures themselves.

 

So a good rule of thumb that I have followed for 7 years now is to always mip map any AI that I add to FSX and always check scenery that you install to make sure the textures are mipped. Doing so you will improve the looks of your sceneries and AI and allow you to run lower levels of AI without having jagged lines and shimmering of which both the lower levels of AA and mip mapped textures will improve performance.

 

Unfortunately a lot of users new to the hobby don't know this and some that do won't do these things because they are not difficult, but can be time consuming and would rather try to find other magic tweaks to improve performance or just live will what they have.

 

As usual, make sure to back up textures before working with them in case you make mistakes or something goes wrong, especially when doing batch mip mapping.

To Microsoft

 

 

I have followed this VAS talk for years. And really we need someone to break the VAS seal!

 

This game has soo much invested into it, so many sceneries and updates.  

I really don't believe that an update into the core of the game can't be done. I mean you can update a house to be an all new building. 

 

I will say that Microsoft owe this to the community. if you really think about it, the scope of things. Microsoft has the power to break the VAS seal I believe, and they should do it. You have a very good game just know, and the weak point is the VAS.

 

We are all used to companies just giving up there products and create something new, or manufactured weaknesses, but FSX it so big and such a culture and such a huge relationship with Microsoft..This is a very intense relationship thousands have with Microsoft.

Its an institution.

 

Wikipedia writes:

 

 

Microsoft Flight Simulator (often abbreviated as MSFS or FS) is a series of flight simulator programs, marketed asvideo games, for the Microsoft Windows operating system. It is one of the longest-running, best-known and most comprehensive home flight simulator programs on the market. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. At 25 years^[1]it is the longest-running software product line for Microsoft, predating Windows by three years. Microsoft Flight Simulator may be the longest-running PC game series of all time.^[2][3] In January 2009, it was reported by PCWorld that Microsoft closed down the ACES Game Studio, which was the department responsible for creating and maintaining the flight simulator series.

Bruce Artwick began the development of the Flight Simulator in 1977. His company, subLOGIC, initially distributed it for various personal computers.^[3] In 1981, Artwick was approached by Microsoft's Alan M. Boyd who was interested in creating a "definitive game" that would graphically demonstrate the difference between older 8-bit computers, such as the Apple II, and the new 16-bit computers, such as the IBM PC, still in development. In 1982, Artwick's company licensed a version of Flight Simulator for the IBM PC to Microsoft, which marketed it as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00.

 

Its like having a Jaguar with a 50 km/t speed sealing just now.

Microsoft show your force and technical strength!

Please Microsoft come on, break the seal! 

 

 

I will say that Microsoft owe this to the community.

 

Microsoft owes nothing to the "community"(what ever that means). Apart from the fact Microsoft has no interest in FSX and no longer sells it - sold its rights to DoveTail, 

 

It was the community who overloaded FSX with add-ons that broke it.

 

Your analogy with Jaguar is totaly false - to you serious expect Jaguar to update a 10 old car for you?

 

It was the community who overloaded FSX with add-ons that broke it.

 

Gerry, nothing is broken here. Every developer has the right to make his product as attractive as possible for good reasons. Otherwise nobody would buy/donate it. It´s up to us to make the decision if it fits to the sim or not. And from the very begining it has always been a matter of hardware. If you make the right decision, nothing is "broken".

We, the user, we must find out what´s best to run. That´s all.

 

I am very grateful there are some really good add-on developers (I do appreciate that very much) and be honest , the sim is becoming better and better. Don´t you think so?!?

I could easily think that Microsoft didn't see VAS as an issue way back when so they didn't delve that much into that part of the code.  Or, it was a decision they made for DX9 that they fixed for DX10.  Like I said, when P3D 2.5 comes out I'll be reinstalling it to see how it does...and I suspect it will do well.  Honestly, for us DX9 users, I feel like we're in the same boat as the FS9 folks find themselves in.  We're lagging behind others (for our own reasons) and getting caught by a problem that we can eventually move away from by moving to a newer platform (DX10 or P3D).  At some point-of-diminishing-returns, most of us will move.  In any case, the only folks interested in this are Dovetail and the community.  If we find a workaround (apart from restarting) then, good.  But Dovetail might find some pretty big inefficiency in the memory management if they bother to look.  And, if they do improve the efficiency significantly, boxed FSX will probably become a thing of the past.

Every developer has the right to make his product as attractive as possible for good reasons.

 

Read my lips:

 

It was the community who overloaded FSX with add-ons that broke it.

The only solution that would solve the VAS issue would be to make a 64-bit version of FSX. The 4 GB limit for virtual address space is an absolute barrier for any 32-bit program, and there is no magic fix that can somehow make that limit go away. It would be like trying to put 6 gallons of water in a 4 gallon pail. The laws of physics prevent it.

 

The problem is that modern FSX users have available a huge range of add-ons which are very resource- intensive. High-resolution terrain mesh, high resolution textures and photo realistic scenery, complex vector data, extremely complex add-on aircraft, huge AI packages, ultra-realistic weather injection and cloud-graphics software - all of these eat away at available VAS.

 

Sure, MS could probably save a few hundred MB of memory by re-visiting and recoding some parts of FSX to operate more efficiently - but that is still not going to help when users add all of the ultra-realistic 3rd party software that they have come to expect and demand.

 

64 bit is the ONLY solution guaranteed to prevent VAS exhaustion. That is why X-Plane went 64-bit a couple of years ago, and why P3D will be doing the same in the (hopefully) near future.

Read my lips:

 

Microsoft built flight simulator to allow developers to use it. They messed up so much they forgot to add the highmemfix line! So for years people were getting missing textures all due to Microsoft basic mistakes.

Microsoft built flight simulator to allow developers to use it.

 

Microsoft built FSX within its limitations as released. Developers got a a free ride within those limitations and Microsoft owes them nothing.

 

 

64 bit is the ONLY solution guaranteed to prevent VAS exhaustion. That is why X-Plane went 64-bit a couple of years ago, and why P3D will be doing the same in the (hopefully) near future.

 

Yes, but with a much needed caviat.  No software should hold onto stuff that is no longer needed.  That'll create bloat and other problems.  What I'm seeing is that, if you start at a detailed area, FSX loads the scenery and never releases it no matter how far or how long you fly away from it.  So, looking at VAS, you can already tell whether or not you're going to get a crash when you take off if you know the VAS requirements for the destination.  That's a tough pill for me to swallow but that's what it's looking like.  If you create a 64-bit version of that kind of behavior you may get a monstrous amount of memory being used that uses up the virtual address space of the machine while still having plenty of VAS available....starts huge memory swaps...the machine starts thrashing and performance goes down the drain. 

 

 

Proof is in the puddin', lol!

 

Lol Jim ;-)

But on a serious note, I don't have the issue...

I can of course trigger one with unrealistic expectations and overload FSX with stuff it was never developed for.

Interesting discussion... thank you

 

It it possible to "update" and change FSX to 64 bit? Would this challenge the programs?

 

 

 

Quote
It was the community who overloaded FSX with add-ons that broke it.

 

mgh is that fair when you see what FSX is and became, and what a creative, innovative game FSX is and became. I find it has some om the best spirit of a gaming community. Its a beautiful creation on many levels

It it possible to "update" and change FSX to 64 bit? Would this challenge the programs?

Short of re-writing FSX it isn't possible and there no sign of anyone doing that.

 

 

mgh is that fair when you see what FSX is and became, and what a creative, innovative game FSX is and became. I find it has some om the best spirit of a gaming community. Its a beautiful creation on many levels

Regardless of that, it's still the community who overloaded FSX with add-ons that broke it - isn't it?

The whole post by Cmpbellsjc about mipmapping should be pinned in the appropriate forum section.

Very well written and something everyone here should be aware of.