Blurry textures P3D V3

[TheBoom 31]

No, It's just a difference in troubleshooting philosophies. I recommend (as apparently so does Jim Young who helps people out here on a constant basis) that the first step to solving these types of problems is to turn all the settings down to the minimums and eliminating any influences from 3rd party add ons. If this doesn't work, then something is probably gummed up with either the P3d installation, the video driver or the hardware.

 

Others here apparently believe that the first step is to add tweaks and tinker with affinity masks. This either might even add to the problem or may work just by chance. If that works for you, then great. My experience with P3d version 2 and version 3 is the "blurries" are quite specific to the system in question and not a generic problem.

Tweaks should never be a first step and I never advocated for that. I agree that users who do that aren't really helping themselves.

 

Yes the blurries are system specific but with 3.2 they affect quite a number of systems as opposed to before.

 

That being said you can't just sum up everything up to settings, video drivers, installation and hardware. The most important part of it all is the software.

 

When all else fails and then you decide to use a tweak and it works, at least alleviates the problem, then you can't simply say they're all bad.

 

P3D v3.2 works a lot better than it's previous versions.  With the older versions, I needed all the help I could get, and now I don't.  Sure, I have since upgraded my rig but that happened at a time when I was using P3D v3.  I'm not sure why you would say that tweaks were always unnecessary.  A lot of good came about with some of their usage.

 

If anyone was to suffer from blurry textures, it would have been me, and actually a few weeks ago, I did but realized it WAS due to an unnecessary tweak, one that so many tout as required.  I won't get into specifics as it would fire up the community again, but long story short, I ditched it and anything else that was modified in the cfg and my sim runs fine.

 

The one good thing to come out of all of this is that we become a little smarter with every failure.

Not really. Just cause it works better for you or your system it does not mean the same for everyone.

 

In fact I had a much better experience with 2.5. And I only had to use a single tweak, which was FFTF just to remove stutters.

 

 

 

I think the problem here is that people like to assume that P3D should work the same way it does for them, with everyone else or any system. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

 

You don't use tweaks and that works fine for you, but there's no guarantee it will be the same for everyone else.

 

A simple example. Say you have to run background tasks all the time, even while simming. Using no AM will inevitably yield thread collisions and impact performance and smoothness.

 

Now identify the threads and move P3D off the cores with an AM, you get an instantaneous result.

 

If you still insist not using an AM in such a situation, I don't know what else to say.

[Jimm 437]

Tweaks should never be a first step and I never advocated for that. I agree that users who do that aren't really helping themselves.

 

Yes the blurries are system specific but with 3.2 they affect quite a number of systems as opposed to before.

 

That being said you can't just sum up everything up to settings, video drivers, installation and hardware. The most important part of it all is the software.

 

When all else fails and then you decide to use a tweak and it works, at least alleviates the problem, then you can't simply say they're all bad.

 

 

Not really. Just cause it works better for you or your system it does not mean the same for everyone.

 

In fact I had a much better experience with 2.5. And I only had to use a single tweak, which was FFTF just to remove stutters.

 

 

 

I think the problem here is that people like to assume that P3D should work the same way it does for them, with everyone else or any system. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

 

You don't use tweaks and that works fine for you, but there's no guarantee it will be the same for everyone else.

 

A simple example. Say you have to run background tasks all the time, even while simming. Using no AM will inevitably yield thread collisions and impact performance and smoothness.

 

Now identify the threads and move P3D off the cores with an AM, you get an instantaneous result.

 

If you still insist not using an AM in such a situation, I don't know what else to say.

Nope, I don't use AM and have no need for it.  Of course, I am NOT saying that everyone else should ditch it.  Your assumption in your example may still not be what happens.  I have brought this up before that everyone's system is different, and I do hope you at least understand that.  I also never stated that everyone should follow my lead or example that I gave pertaining to my given situation.  If clarification was needed to what I said, then a simple question to that effect would have sufficed.

 

I used my situation as am example, based on the fact that I sit within a small group of people who use a laptop for flight simulation.  I have endured the ridicule and I could care less if people find it odd, wrong, impractical or otherwise.  My laptop was designed to handle running flight simulator software and with further education online about how to set up the sim, everything works the way it should, or at least, it works to my satisfaction.

[TheBoom 31]

Nope, I don't use AM and have no need for it.  Of course, I am NOT saying that everyone else should ditch it.  Your assumption in your example may still not be what happens.  I have brought this up before that everyone's system is different, and I do hope you at least understand that.  I also never stated that everyone should follow my lead or example that I gave pertaining to my given situation.  If clarification was needed to what I said, then a simple question to that effect would have sufficed.

 

I used my situation as am example, based on the fact that I sit within a small group of people who use a laptop for flight simulation.  I have endured the ridicule and I could care less if people find it odd, wrong, impractical or otherwise.  My laptop was designed to handle running flight simulator software and with further education online about how to set up the sim, everything works the way it should, or at least, it works to my satisfaction.

 

Never asserted that you said that. The last paragraph was a general statement, but nevertheless that's what Jim and the others have been advocating. That everyone should ditch all forms of "tweaks".

 

Please do explain what you mean by "your assumption in your example may still not be what happens" though. I'm curious.

[SteveW 1,792]

These discussions never end. The AM is not a "Tweak", it is a system dependent setting!

 

Talking about tweaks I find it hard to think of any worth doing, nothing need be changed in the Prepar3D.cfg.

 

 

Having said that, when using shadows the number of cascades can be reduced for more fps:

 

[GRAPHICS]

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_LOW=3

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=4

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_HIGH=5

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_ULTRA=6

[Richard Sennett 2,499]

These discussions never end. The AM is not a "Tweak", it is a system dependent setting!

 

Talking about tweaks I find it hard to think of any worth doing, nothing need be changed in the Prepar3D.cfg.

 

 

Having said that, when using shadows the number of cascades can be reduced for more fps:

 

[GRAPHICS]

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_LOW=3

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=4

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_HIGH=5

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_ULTRA=6

 

Wealth of information you are young Jedi  :wink:

[SteveW 1,792]

Thanks, I pressed your like button Rich! "Young" seemed reasonably accurate, not sure about the rest. lol

[TheBoom 31]

 

 

The AM is not a "Tweak", it is a system dependent setting!

 

Some believe it is a tweak as well and that it's not necessary

 

 

[GRAPHICS]
SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_LOW=3
SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=4
SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_HIGH=5
SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_ULTRA=6

.

 

Well there you go another example. This one reduces VAS usage as well. I think the point has been proven. I rest my case.

 

Regards,

[cowpatz 243]

 

[GRAPHICS]

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_LOW=3

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=4

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_HIGH=5

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_ULTRA=6

 

 

Steve would you mind describing (in words that a six year old could understand) what this does exactly and what I can expect to see as an outcome?

[SteveW 1,792]

Slight improvement to fps and not much change to shadows. Each entry corresponds to the levels of shadows set on the display setting.

[cowpatz 243]

Many thanks

[Riche 5]

These discussions never end. The AM is not a "Tweak", it is a system dependent setting!

 

Talking about tweaks I find it hard to think of any worth doing, nothing need be changed in the Prepar3D.cfg.

 

 

Having said that, when using shadows the number of cascades can be reduced for more fps:

 

[GRAPHICS]

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_LOW=3

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_MID=4

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_HIGH=5

SHADOW_NUM_CASCADES_ULTRA=6

I'm using simstarter NG for starting p3d mostly for different scenery selections , but have used it for the AM & FFTF now, but when changing the shadow num cascade values manually in cfg when using simstarter it puts the values back to 4 5 7 12, anyone know how to get around this?

Cheers

Riche

[jabloomf1230 2,445]

These discussions never end. The AM is not a "Tweak", it is a system dependent setting!

 

One person's tweak is another's system dependent setting. At one point in time, video game configuration files (cfg and ini) were embedded in a separate binary file and thus purposely hidden from the user. But then hackers discovered that by adding a properly named text file version of the embedded material, a debugging mode could be entered. A tweak was defined as manually altering a line in a configuration file and then testing what happened. Apps like FSX didn't bother bother to "hide" the cfg file and in fact such tweaking was promoted and encouraged by ACES.

 

So by my definition, tweaking is changing any cfg file setting, where the setting cannot be accessed directly from the app's UI.

[odourboy 1,289]

Did this issue ever get resolution? I just installed P3D V3.2 (new install but I was running 3.0 and 3.1 without issue). I'm seeing something much like the OP and others describe. Blurry textures that never resolve. It's like the LOD setting is really low (even though I'm at max and varying it had no effect). Things are sharp to a certain distance, then abruptly very blurry. Waiting for the textures to load is a non-starter - never happens even when paused.

 

Curiously, I played with the filter settings of all things and more distant scenery started to load.

[TheBoom 31]

Did this issue ever get resolution? I just installed P3D V3.2 (new install but I was running 3.0 and 3.1 without issue). I'm seeing something much like the OP and others describe. Blurry textures that never resolve. It's like the LOD setting is really low (even though I'm at max and varying it had no effect). Things are sharp to a certain distance, then abruptly very blurry. Waiting for the textures to load is a non-starter - never happens even when paused.

 

Curiously, I played with the filter settings of all things and more distant scenery started to load.

 

What seems to have worked for many of us (presumably in order of priority):

 

1) Remove AM or use one that uses all cores, if that still doesn't work reapply AM externally with task manager/process lasso.

 

2) Increase FFTF

 

3) Reset NVI profile to defaults

 

4) Increase TextureMaxLoad

 

What are your hardware and settings though? It could be a case of insufficient processing power too.

[odourboy 1,289]

Thanks for the reply.. My system is reasonably powered: OC I3570K (4.3 GHz, 4 core, nonHT), GTX980 etc. NVidia driver 359.06.

 

I've been looking at this issue carefully, and I'm not convinced it has anything to do with texture rendering allocation or processing related issues. I've been tweaking the heck out of FSX for years, so I've had some experience with tinkering with settings. Typically, blurries will 'catch up' if you pause. But I think something odd is going on here. It looks like LOD Radius is 'stuck' internally at 4.5. Regardless of aircraft, with the sim paused, moving LOD Radius beyond 'High' (4.5 internally) does not move the 'line' of detailed texture rendering any further out.

 

Using exactly the same settings both in-sim and NI (all default prepar3d.cfg settings) with V3.1 and textures were clearly rendered as far as I could see (so to speak). Now there's a relatively small radius around my aircraft that renders clearly. Outside that, and it's degraded.