Blurries discussion....again. :)

[Gridley 257]

I just was chatting with my colleague Bob about this stuff, and thought I'd open the floor for a little discussion about blurries (again) with hope that someone who knows some more about the guts of computers might have some insight. While there are some very specific cases that are known to cause this blurring effect, such as applying non-standard textures to GMax objects, I think there's a general phenomenon that users' experience as well.Reading the wealth of information out there, it seems there are two popular solutions to the blurries problem, and the two are seemingly opposite in approach. I think some discussion about these two methods might help reconcile the causes somewhat.Please correct me if I'm wrong here:Blurries occur when, for some reason, FS can only display lower-resolution mipped textures on terrain and objects. In my mind the two causes of this must be either insufficient resources or a hardware bottleneck.First, the resources that must be important are GDI resources (if someone wants to jump in and define GDI resources for me that would help). Thus, memory or video card quality are not necessarily important - just FREE GDI resources. This is important because a very powerful computer can have little free GDI either because the scenery is complex (meaning specifically a lot of VTP vertices - lines or polygons, or many large textures) or because of a lot of overhead on the user's PC (such as background apps that are also demanding GDI resources). The solution to the first problem is to free resources. This can be accomplished by slowing the sim down (eg. fixing the frame rate to a low or minimally acceptable amount), turning off things like AI, or quitting background apps. This would describe one of the popular solutions...The second cause would be a hardware issue. Some bottleneck in the user's system.The solution to the second problem is simply to overcome the bottleneck. This can be done for some by tweaking things like PCI latency, increasing the bandwidth allocated to the video/textures (there's a setting in FS9.cfg for this), or preventing the sim from switching to mipped textures (that's why they're blurry) by unlimiting the FPS. This is the second popular solution.So, is the real solution is to figure out why each individual has the blurries? Maybe the problem has two seemingly opposite solutions because the root of the problem is fundamentally different.Any thoughts?Best,sg

[Shaka 2]

I'm not sure about the technical side, but certainly the hardware must be part of the problem, since different users will report different results when it comes to "blurries". I have a little insight into the software part though.To start with, there is a difference between how textures are perceived when they are on scenery vs. aircraft. You will see many recommendations on the forum telling people to not use mipmaps in order to maintain sharp-looking textures. This only applies to aircraft, since the absence of mipmaps in textures in scenery can produce a moire effect, which is very distracting (and unappealing).I think your post was directed more towards scenery though. As for scenery objects, it turns out that part of the 3D model tells Flight Sim which mipmap to use at certain distances. It seems that when we build objects in GMAX and compile them, that sometimes this figures wrong, and the result is that we see a lower resolution mipmap than we should. There are ways to correct this, and I believe that there is more discussion about this in the Scenery Design forums, as well as over at Arno's website. Of course, this doesn't apply to ground textures.- Martin

[Gridley 257]

>This>only applies to aircraft, since the absence of mipmaps in>textures in scenery can produce a moire effect, which is very>distracting (and unappealing).The mip level setting in FS is different than mip mapping textures. Mip mapping stores a preset, 50% scaled version of each texture in each bmp file, thus by dropping a single level in mip maps, 1/4 of the memory is used by that texture(roughly) at the cost of half the resolution. What exactly does the mip level setting do?

[Guest sfgiants]

Great discussion.I just want to know which system the MS Team used when they tested FS9 two (2) years ago?Tim

[Guest wildfire563]

Why don't you ask them?Thomas

[Guest ponyboy]

Good question... I'll ask it at the convention.I had my first "blurry" texture occurance that I can remember right after swapping out my old MB for a new one. I was reading in the forums of Mark Dark Moment's blurry issues and wham!... the exact same thing happen to me for the first time. I had the same symtoms but his issue seemed to be link to an Active Camera connection. For me I was getting blurries even with default aircraft and scenery. What really caught me off guard was even when I went inot "select Aircraft" mode the aircraft I was selecting was blurred!?!What seems to have worked for me is when I swapped my MB I also brought down my RAm from 1.5Gig to 1 gig. I took out one 512 stick thinking I would get faster MHz (ya know... all that DDR stuff). I since put back the stick and have not seen a blurry since. Maybe for me is is how much RAM my system needs. I know I will be upgrading to faster DDR400 RAM and 2Gig to boot.Just my personal experience of late.

[Guest wildfire563]

You might also ask on the blog noted in another thread.From your description, you started out with blurries right away. Removed the stick and they went away. Put the same stick back and they did not come back?Could it just have had something to do with the seating was just off enough to cause the computer to think it was there, but somehow made it unavailable?Thanks,Thomas

[Guest]

In general testers do not have the latest greatest systems but maybe one or two testers have very nice setups while the rest use bare minimum specs or middle of the road systems.

[Guest sfgiants]

You would think that PC's today (2005) would make FS9 perform above and beyond its capabilities.Tim

[Gridley 257]

I've got a dell p4 3.6 with a gf6800 pci express, and I am not complaining - I have a hard time bringing FS to its knees on this machine. But it can be done! Loads of AI (Combined, several hundred megs of traffic bgls) will do it.

[Guest sfgiants]

I myself just got a new machine since my alienware is up on warranty. I'll be selling it on ebay next week.My new PC is handling FS9 nice but blurries with MegaScenery. Honestly, I shouldn't be complaining I just want the textures to clear up faster when landing with my 737.Tim

[altstiff 71]

Doing a name defrag using O&O Defragger (with the MS tweaks of naming those folders starting with "A") did wonders for me and the MS blurries.Check out this thread>>>http://www.pcaviator.com/megascenery/forum...p?showtopic=892XP Home SP2Asus P4P800-SE Intel 3.0GHZDDR 400 D/C 4x512MBLeadtek 6800GT 256MB (77.72)SB AudigyCH Products Yoke/Pedals USBSee you in the fence...CYYZ

[RobertRent 17]

Al,That is an interesting thread, thanks.Do you, or anyone else, know if the same technique works for VFR Photographic Scenery and, if so, what files/folders need to be modiified?Thanks,Robert