TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS lockups?

[Guest todd92371]

Hello, Whenever I set the TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS OR TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS above any value of greater than 2.0 it freezes the sim. Has anyone ever had problems with this. I would like to try higher values to get rid of blurries but can't because of lockups!Thanks,Todd

[John_Cillis 2,406]

You don't mention your system specs, but I have learned that any tweaks to those numbers will make MSFS eat up more RAM--on average about ten to 25 percent. It may be eating up just enough in your case to be hitting on a marginal RAM chip. I've had RAM chips pass all the tests except for the good 'ol MSFS "stress" test.Also be advised that tweaks to those numbers have very subtle effects vs. blurries, and do nothing for blurries caused by frequent view switches, moving quickly through terrain, etc... Those blurries (dynamic blurries) can only be helped by equipment coupled with reasonable slider settings for the type of equipment you have and the type of flight you are simulating. Last, go to airliners.net and take a look at some of the real world aircraft "window" views. If your sim mimics those with the fs9.cfg untweaked, then you are mimicing "real life". If it's blurrier than that, there may be another issue that's either eating your system's ability or not giving it enough.-John

[Guest firehawk44]

Must be a system or video card problem. Here are my settings and I get 30-50 FPS 90% of the time:TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=40.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=60.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456I made these values based on various recommendations made around the fightsim community. They work for me.My system specs are: Intel P4 3.6GHz w/1 gig of DDR2 RAM and a Radeon X800XT PCIe video card with 256 MG's. I have the latest ATI drivers installed. Hope this helps.Ciao,Jim

[Guest]

When you go up to high altitudes, like 30,000 ft, do you see an obvious texture masking that looks different from the closer textures? I am trying to get a number that helps with this annoying and ugly problem

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"When you go up to high altitudes, like 30,000 ft, do you see an obvious texture masking that looks different from the closer textures? I am trying to get a number that helps with this annoying and ugly problem"Do you have any add-on ground textures? Some masking is certain since the MSFS engine draws generic, untextured scenery beyond a certain range. The generic scenery tries to closely match the textured terrain, but any add-on textures can make the issue worse since often they don't match this distant scenery. I wrote a small add-on, called "soft horizons", which may help. The goal shouldn't be to get textures sharper in the distance, but to get them to gradually blue the further away from the viewpoint you go, as is the case with real life. Some tweaks make the opposite happen and really can make the texture masking look worse.-John

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Jim, I am interested in your values, as they are no where near mine and I am plaqued by low fps rates and stutters (AMD XP 2.8, 1G Ram, X800XT). Justin, at FS Genesis (whose mesh and landclass I use) recommends 5 and 8 respectively for TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS. I don't understand how these values function but clearly we have radically different ones. Mine are near the 9 and 4.5 than many folks report and recommend. Further, I have TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS set to 1. On first install the value was 1307992. But recommendations here were always in the single digits. I thought the inital value was a glitch, as everything I read said this parameter controlled the number of extended levels to write and lower was less taxing. Now I wonder? what is UP with these values? what do they do? Thanks anyone.Jeff

[Guest CargoMun]

Mine are as this;TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4..With pretty good results I might add. I have alot of addon mesh as well as different ground textures from default, and I dont get the blocky "end of the world" like border in the horizon where it greys out.I guess its mostly system specific, depending on how much RAM is on the PC and GFX card as well as AA/AF settings in the graphics department.I run the sim with AA off in the game, only set to 6 in the ATI control panel.MIP setting in FS, mostly I use 4 since 5 gives me shimmers.Hope this helps..

[Guest firehawk44]

"Jim, I am interested in your values, as they are no where near mine and I am plaqued by low fps rates and stutters (AMD XP 2.8, 1G Ram, X800XT)."I'm sorry Jeff that I can't help you. I've done a lot of tweaking over the years and these values are the best for me and my system. I got most of these values by reading the FS2004 Optimization Guide in the Hardware Form by OneTinSoldier and other flight simmers. This guide also explains what each line in the FS9.cfg means so I think this is where you need to go for additional help. Justin is a very knowledgeable individual in regards to terrain so his advice may be the best. In the meantime, I have few issues with my settings and will stick with them.Ciao,Jim

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Thanks Jim. I wasn't so much concerned about the best value as i was interested in the fact that most values I see posted here (such as CargoMun and my own) are in the single digits and yours are a dozen times higher. Best example is the last one: mine is 1 and CargoMun's is 4 but yours is 1.2 million! What a range! what does tbhis number do? The tweak guides, such as OneTineSoldier's, say it controls the number of extended rings, so does that mean more is better? I had assumed that higher numbers were more taxing on the system but maybe I'm wrong. Does this make sense? When I get to the system this weekend I'll try yous out to see what happenes. I'm curious: Does anyone know the scale of this parameter?

[hmar 0]

Hi,Your numbers have indeed effects (on my system). I use the DX overwrite DLL which solved the tree shimmering on an ATI 9800 but your numbers are solving also the light moir

[Guest firehawk44]

I did a search on AVSIM using "TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456" as the search term to see if I could find the post I saw that might have made me change this value. It appears this is the original/default value set before you tweak. It certainly makes my sim seem fluid and smooth while flying. I remember seeing a post several months ago stating this value will do "amazing things" while running FS9 and several simmers coming back and stating the results were truly amazing. FPS were increased considerably. I can't find the post though and it may have been on another forum other than AVSIM's. Sorry I can't offer a better explanation.Jim

[Guest CowlFlapsOpen]

Thanks again Jim. Well I'm in the market for amazing things, so 1.2 million here I come! I'll give it a try. as I said, when i first intalled my new graphics card I had a number on the order of 1.3 million. But all the tweak references were to single digits so i assumed I have messed something up. Maybe you found the source of my troubles. we didn't help the original poster much though, did we?

[Guest firehawk44]

I have to guess that Todd has fixed his system and maybe through our discussion. A lot of simmers do not respond like you have when they have resolved a problem or issue. I appreciate our discussion as I have learned a lot concerning these FS9.cfg values too.Jim

[Guest]

I think it was John who told me about thisTEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=16776704No clue how anyone could find that, but it seems to work great for my system. Speeds up loading and stuttering is at a minimum

[Guest enine]

I just looked at my settings and all three were at zero. (???)Perhaps one reason why my new 6800 ultra was a big disappointment?