In the discussion about shimmering, someone said that setting mipmap to 4 should be kept in all cases 'cause it tells FS not to override HW/driver settings or so.I'm now completely confused where to set the mipmap to, currently I have it at 8...Andreas

Hi,Set it to 4.Hope this helps,JimActiveSky Sales and Supporthttp://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_dev_team.jpg http://www.hifisim.com/images/asv_proud_supporter.jpg

Wilco.But does anyone know the technical background behind the various mipmap settings?Andreas

This question is closely related to the never-ending search for the Meaning of Life. Although we steadfastedly progress on our eternal quest, we are not equipped, nor meant, to find the answer.Be well!Jaap Verduijn.

The higher the mip-map setting the greater the detail or any textures that use mip-maps. Clouds, ground, water all use mip-maps. It depends on the size of the texture how many mips or layers of detail there are.As a rule, at mip-map level 4 eveything comes in to reasonable sharp focus and it's well good enough in game. At 3 or less it's all a blurr. In fact when you see say grond textures out of focus it's because the frame rate locks are forcing the imagane quaility lower to allow high fps.So the higher you lock your frame rates the more likely it is that you see blurred textures and more often. That's why most people who know what they are doing lock fps between 15-30. For the record I lock at 22.Now, if you go to higher mips of 5 or greater you will get sharper textures but there is a cost on system performance. You may find frame rates and pauses get much worst and that the improvements on the visuals is only slight. Also, the higher mips need more AA and AF to look good which depending on your card can affect frame rates in a negative way.Going to mips of 5 can have a very hard effect on reducing smoothness and frame rates. That said I do know that some people use mips at 8 and argue the case it makes things like AI traffic look very sharp in the distance.You'll find most experinced simmers who know what they are doing and who want a balance of visual performance and maximum frame rates use mips at 4.