Weird Scenery Vibrations

[flemon 0]

Hi

 

I've recently got the uk2000 gatwick scenery and think it is absolutely awesome but I am seeing weird stuff going on when I look at it from my aircraft. In the distance, the terminals, fences, buildings and ground textures are all vibrating and moving around creating a weird effect that looks unrealistic and odd. But if if zoom in quite close or pause it, it looks absolutely fine.

 

I think it might be to do with the aircraft I'm in. I tested out two aircraft at exactly the same spawning point (08R), a Beechcraft Bonanza and an F-22 Raptor. On both of these aircraft the textures are moving around a fixed point. This problem could be caused by the tiny vibrations of the aircraft when I'm on the ground but also in the air, when I'm in level flight with no real movement, the whole of Gatwick looks like its vibrating.

 

 

My specs are :

 

i7 CPU at 4.0GHz (Overclocked to approx. 4.3GHz)

Nvidia GTX 960 2gb

8GB RAM

 

If you could help that would be amazing because I'd love to get this fixed. I'm thinking about purchasing EZDok and if this problem is caused by minute vibrating, think about the chaos that will happen with EZDok camera effects.

 

Thanks

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

The vibrating effect you are seeing is commonly referred to as shimmering and is caused by the developers either not applying mip maps to their scenery or the user not using a high enough anti-aliasing setting for their GPU. If you don't experience this at other payware addons then your anti-aliasing setting is probably ok.

 

In the case of the UK2000 Gatwick, a lot of the shimmering is caused by the lack of mip mpas that the developer uses.

 

I bought Gatwick years ago and the first thing I did was open the texture folder and resave most of the textures with DXTBMP to include mip maps and that fixed it.

 

In fact, a few weeks ago I bought from UK2000 Heathrow v3, Leeds, Cardiff and East Midlands and had to mip map most of the textures in all of those sceneries to cut the shimmering down.

 

These days most developers like FSDT, Flightbeam, FlyTampa, etc., already mip map the textures to avoid the shimmering.

 

Years ago, around 2008, one of the worst offenders of this were sceneries produced by Aerosoft's internal developement team. I had many discussions with Aerosoft about this since I hated having to fix the sceneries myself, but at the time they insisted they liked the look better without mip maps since it appeared sharper.

 

To give you a quick and dirty rundown on mip maps and they way they work. A mip map is basically a smaller sized version of the original texture. If a texture is 1024x1024 and mip maps are added, then you will have multiple smaller versions of the same texture saved into one texture file, each one being slightly smaller than the last. When a scenery has a building with a texture assigned to it and the texture is a 1024x1024 sized sheet and no mip maps are added then the GPU essentially has to render that one sheet from far away to up close and this adds extra work for the GPU and causes the shimmering. When the same texture has mip maps, then the GPU will render the smaller, less detailed texture sheet when your far away from the object and then will load the larger and more detailed texture as you get closer, thus requiring less work from the GPU, no shimmering and better overall performance.

 

I learned long ago that whenever I buy an airport or addon airplane, to always check the texture folders and add the appropriate mip maps to textures that need them to increase performance and reduce the horrible shimmering effect.

 

Hope this helps.

[Poppet 703]

Very good post

[iamlmc 2]

The vibrating effect you are seeing is commonly referred to as shimmering and is caused by the developers either not applying mip maps to their scenery or the user not using a high enough anti-aliasing setting for their GPU. If you don't experience this at other payware addons then your anti-aliasing setting is probably ok.

 

In the case of the UK2000 Gatwick, a lot of the shimmering is caused by the lack of mip mpas that the developer uses.

 

I bought Gatwick years ago and the first thing I did was open the texture folder and resave most of the textures with DXTBMP to include mip maps and that fixed it.

 

In fact, a few weeks ago I bought from UK2000 Heathrow v3, Leeds, Cardiff and East Midlands and had to mip map most of the textures in all of those sceneries to cut the shimmering down.

 

These days most developers like FSDT, Flightbeam, FlyTampa, etc., already mip map the textures to avoid the shimmering.

 

Years ago, around 2008, one of the worst offenders of this were sceneries produced by Aerosoft's internal developement team. I had many discussions with Aerosoft about this since I hated having to fix the sceneries myself, but at the time they insisted they liked the look better without mip maps since it appeared sharper.

 

To give you a quick and dirty rundown on mip maps and they way they work. A mip map is basically a smaller sized version of the original texture. If a texture is 1024x1024 and mip maps are added, then you will have multiple smaller versions of the same texture saved into one texture file, each one being slightly smaller than the last. When a scenery has a building with a texture assigned to it and the texture is a 1024x1024 sized sheet and no mip maps are added then the GPU essentially has to render that one sheet from far away to up close and this adds extra work for the GPU and causes the shimmering. When the same texture has mip maps, then the GPU will render the smaller, less detailed texture sheet when your far away from the object and then will load the larger and more detailed texture as you get closer, thus requiring less work from the GPU, no shimmering and better overall performance.

 

I learned long ago that whenever I buy an airport or addon airplane, to always check the texture folders and add the appropriate mip maps to textures that need them to increase performance and reduce the horrible shimmering effect.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Good post indeed! Is there any good tutorial pointing the know hows and the tools to DIY?

 

Regards,

Luís

[flemon 0]

Hi,

 

Thanks so much for the replies. Now I understand. It's a bit annoying because I was going to base Gatwick as my hub because I live in the UK but now I might consider a different airport unless I can texture the scenery.

 

I'm getting Photoshop soon so would I be able to mipmap using photoshop? I mean, the shimmering is acceptable sometimes but whrn you're on finals, with vatsim in the background blaring away and many eyes watching you from the holding points, it's very easy to get distracted by the scenery and mess up the landing!

 

I'll probably purchase a FlyTampa scenery (maybe Copenhagen or Vienna) to see if it's not my anti-aliasing. Maybe I could get the Aerosoft Heathrow or are aerosoft still not mipmapping textures like you said.

 

Again, thanks for your help!

[Poppet 703]

Good post indeed! Is there any good tutorial pointing the know hows and the tools to DIY?

 

Regards,

Luís

 

Have a peep through this 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/471107-guide-to-mipmapping-and-optimising-textures/

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Hi,

 

Thanks so much for the replies. Now I understand. It's a bit annoying because I was going to base Gatwick as my hub because I live in the UK but now I might consider a different airport unless I can texture the scenery.

 

I'm getting Photoshop soon so would I be able to mipmap using photoshop? I mean, the shimmering is acceptable sometimes but whrn you're on finals, with vatsim in the background blaring away and many eyes watching you from the holding points, it's very easy to get distracted by the scenery and mess up the landing!

 

I'll probably purchase a FlyTampa scenery (maybe Copenhagen or Vienna) to see if it's not my anti-aliasing. Maybe I could get the Aerosoft Heathrow or are aerosoft still not mipmapping textures like you said.

 

Again, thanks for your help!

To clarify, UK2000 does use some mip mapping, but not always enough. In some cases the textures might only have 3 levels of mip maps when it could have 8 levels.

 

It's super easy to do and doesn't require Photoshop. A quick and easy way to do it is as follows.

 

1. First the tools. Either use image tool that comes with the FSX SDK or maybe it comes also with the P3D SDK, I don't have P3D so I can't say.

 

If you can't locate imagetool then google DXTBmp and download a copy of it. I often just use DXTBmp and have had any issues with it.

 

I googled it for you. http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

 

2. Locate the Gatwick texture folder and back up the entire texture folder in case you mess up. Move a copy to your desktop or somewhere safe.

 

3. After you've done that, open DXTBmp and open the texture folder side by side.

 

4. You simply drag the first texture file over and drop in into the DXTBmp screen and the texture will load. On the right side of the screen of DXTBmp you'll see a small check box that says something like include mip maps when saving, make sure the box is checked.

 

5. Go to the top of the DXTBmp screen and locate the file and save button and press it. You will see a box pop up that has the file name and save as type DXT3 or what ever. For now leave that alone and just press save and yes to overwrite.

 

6. That's it for that texture. You can simply drag and drop the next texture into the folder and repeat until your done.

 

Then close it all out and test. You'll probably be amazed at the difference in looks and maybe performance.

 

The process is similar using imagetool as well.

 

If you go to save any textures and the file type is 32bit then you may want to save it as either DXT1, 2, or 3 depending on whether it has an alpha channel or not, but that's a whole other discussion, but generally speaking it's better performance wise to use DXT format textures since they use less VAS and perform better.

 

For not just resave the textures as the same file type that come up and let it add the mip maps.

 

This can also be done for AI textures as well but in a batch format to save time, but batching scenery textures is not a good idea as a developer will often use DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 all in one scenery and if you batch them all to the same type you can end up with issues.

 

Hope this helps.

[JLuis 409]

Very good post!  :smile: Thanks to increase my knowledge...

[iamlmc 2]

Have a peep through this 

http://www.avsim.com/topic/471107-guide-to-mipmapping-and-optimising-textures/

 

 

To clarify, UK2000 does use some mip mapping, but not always enough. In some cases the textures might only have 3 levels of mip maps when it could have 8 levels.

 

It's super easy to do and doesn't require Photoshop. A quick and easy way to do it is as follows.

 

1. First the tools. Either use image tool that comes with the FSX SDK or maybe it comes also with the P3D SDK, I don't have P3D so I can't say.

 

If you can't locate imagetool then google DXTBmp and download a copy of it. I often just use DXTBmp and have had any issues with it.

 

I googled it for you. http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

 

2. Locate the Gatwick texture folder and back up the entire texture folder in case you mess up. Move a copy to your desktop or somewhere safe.

 

3. After you've done that, open DXTBmp and open the texture folder side by side.

 

4. You simply drag the first texture file over and drop in into the DXTBmp screen and the texture will load. On the right side of the screen of DXTBmp you'll see a small check box that says something like include mip maps when saving, make sure the box is checked.

 

5. Go to the top of the DXTBmp screen and locate the file and save button and press it. You will see a box pop up that has the file name and save as type DXT3 or what ever. For now leave that alone and just press save and yes to overwrite.

 

6. That's it for that texture. You can simply drag and drop the next texture into the folder and repeat until your done.

 

Then close it all out and test. You'll probably be amazed at the difference in looks and maybe performance.

 

The process is similar using imagetool as well.

 

If you go to save any textures and the file type is 32bit then you may want to save it as either DXT1, 2, or 3 depending on whether it has an alpha channel or not, but that's a whole other discussion, but generally speaking it's better performance wise to use DXT format textures since they use less VAS and perform better.

 

For not just resave the textures as the same file type that come up and let it add the mip maps.

 

This can also be done for AI textures as well but in a batch format to save time, but batching scenery textures is not a good idea as a developer will often use DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 all in one scenery and if you batch them all to the same type you can end up with issues.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thank you both! Exactly what I was asking for.

 

Regards,

Luís

[flemon 0]

Ok, so I've got DXtBmp like you said and followed all your instructions but UK2000 gatwick is still shimmeringbthe same as before. Certain textures I put into DXTBmp said they were 32 bit when they were saving whereas others were DXT1 or DXT3. I don't know whether this is the problem.

 

My graphics card is fine I think because it's GTX 960 and I can easily get good internal shadows in the cockpit with 60fps. I haven't delved into the settings the graohic card but maybe this is the reason why. If you're u eant I could post a screenshot of it and you could fogure out what's wrong.

 

You guys have been really helpful so far, so thank you again

 

King regards

Fraser

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Ok, so I've got DXtBmp like you said and followed all your instructions but UK2000 gatwick is still shimmeringbthe same as before. Certain textures I put into DXTBmp said they were 32 bit when they were saving whereas others were DXT1 or DXT3. I don't know whether this is the problem.

Are you sure you had the box on the right side of DXTBmp where it says include mip maps when saving checked?

 

On the 32bit textures, Gary the fellow who makes that scenery recommends saving the 32bit textures as DTX3. If you want to save some VAS and increase performance a bit, resave the 32bit ones as DXT3.

 

 

My graphics card is fine I think because it's GTX 960 and I can easily get good internal shadows in the cockpit with 60fps. I haven't delved into the settings the graohic card but maybe this is the reason why.

Thats probably part of the problem. You need to have the card set up properly and the graphics in P3D set properly as well. In FSX most people use the nHancer tool to set the AA and AF functions of the card but that can be different in P3D as some don't. I belive Rob and some others have some set up intructions for P3D, so you may want to search here for that.

 

If you're u eant I could post a screenshot of it and you could fogure out what's wrong.

A few typos in that sentence and not sure what you meant.

[flemon 0]

Thanks for the quick reply.

 

Sorry for the typos, I was in a rush to do something else!

 

I had the box ticked for the whole hour it took me but if you say I should do the 32 bit as DXT3, I'll get round to do that.

 

In the typo sentence I meant to say if you want I could post a screenshot of the settings page on my graphics card. Could you give me a heads-up as to what is usually needed for p3d graphics card stuff. I've looked on the p3d graphics settings and most of the stuff is complete nonsense to my non-technical self! Also, is there a link to this graphics setup?

 

Thanks

Fraser