New York City XP - texture resolution

[Tom Wright 438]

Hi guys,

 

This morning I purchased New York city and New York airports for XP, and I've noticed that the terrain textures are really blurry. I have my texture resolution set to high, as anything higher turns my sim into a slideshow. I'll post a screenshot when I get home of what it looks like but does anyone else find the ground textures really blurry and low resolution when set to high?

[MarioDonick 752]

 

 

I have my texture resolution set to high, as anything higher turns my sim into a slideshow.

 

It depends on the scenery. Most scenery needs at least "very high" to look good. You should post a screenshot of your rendering settings screen, so we can see what can be optimized.

[Tom Wright 438]

It depends on the scenery. Most scenery needs at least "very high" to look good. You should post a screenshot of your rendering settings screen, so we can see what can be optimized.

 

Here are some screenshots, the first of my settings and the second an example of what I can see in the sim:

 

 

 

As you can see, the base imagery is really really low definition and looks horrible!  While I appreciate that 'high' is not the highest texture resolution setting there, what I can see I would definitely not consider high by any stretch of the imagination, leading me to wonder if something is wrong?!

[MarioDonick 752]

Hi Tom,

for the texture quality, there won't be another way than increasing it to "very high". Now we just need to find a way to keep your FPS high enough. Minimum should be 20, because below 19 the sim will slow-down which does not just look bad, but increases flight time (compared to real time) and can lead to strange misbehavior in the systems of some complex aircraft.

Some questions:

1. On your screenshot, you have 28 FPS. How many FPS do you have when you only change textures to "very high", but leave other settings untouched?

2. Does your GTX 560 have 1 GB or 2 GB VRAM? If you only have 1 GB VRAM, such detailed scenery like New York on "very high" will exceed your available VRAM, slowing down everything.

3. How much RAM do you have and do you use the standard mesh or the HD mesh? If you use the HD mesh, but have less than 16 GB, you shouldn't use "extended DSF scenery", because it doubles the amount of memory required for the mesh. It also increases general load on CPU and GPU.


Some general remarks:

1. Try reducing world detail distance to "medium" (or use 3jFPS control to automatically control drawing distance)

2. Increase the number of roads one notch -- this way more roads (and in turn more buildings) are drawn above the ground photo, so it looks more lively.


If nothing helps:

1. Reduce aircraft shadows to "overlay". You won't have cockpit shadows then, but FPS can increase very much.

2. Disable antialiasing. I know, it's ugly, but also helps.

3. If even 1 or 2 don't help: Disable HDR. I know, it's one of X-Plane's biggest assets, and some airports and aircraft are barely usable without HDR during night, but if you mainly fly in daytime or in twilight, you can try how it looks for you. (I wish I could use HDR, but my PC is so old and not upgradeable that I have to do without HDR. But I have textures to "very high").

[Tom Wright 438]

Hi Mario,

 

Thanks for your advice. Increasing to Very High reduces fps to about 20-22, with frequent dips into the teens. It also increases the total size of textures to be loaded to almost 2GB. Unfortunately my card has only 1GB VRAM, so this isn't really an option. It also doesn't have that much more clarity at Very high either from what I can tell. I have 16GB RAM, and use just the default mesh. I got a bit of a fps boost when switching the extended DSF off.

 

I did a bit more of a fly around last night and found that actually the base image of Manhattan as well as the area more East of the island - the area in the screenshot was further West toward Newark - is actually much sharper, so I'm wondering whether actually this is a lower resolution Base image or even default?

[MarioDonick 752]

 

 

the area in the screenshot was further West toward Newark - is actually much sharper, so I'm wondering whether actually this is a lower resolution Base image or even default?

 

Probably the designers have decided to include a sharper image for the more interesting parts of the scenery (Manhattan)... it will look better if you increase the number of roads a bit, because then more buildings are drawn...