Blurry Ground Textures

[Guest Knikolaes]

Greetings, all.I have searched the forum and have found many similar issues, but no solution that has worked yet.My particular issue is when I fly faster aircraft, ground textures tend to be blurry as I pass them. This is espcially evident on photoreal scenery such as Megascenery, Real Germany and Switzerland Professional.I have inquired about this before and have been to try various tricks. I have tried the following:--> Video Card antialiasing set to 4x. AA is turned off in FS as it is better to let the video card control these things.--> Anisotropic Filtering is set to 16x in the video card as well.--> The default bandwidth for the video card in the FS9.cfg file is 40. I added a 0 to that making it 400. Now it is cranked all the way up to 900. (TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=900). According to various articles I have read, this is the setting that tells the FS how fast to "push" texture loading onto the video card. Adjusting this up has completely eliminated "popping" textures. However the blurriness and long loading times for clarity and sharpness still remain.I am running a simple low-end system, but FS graphics are not that intense. With 4GB of DDE 400 memory, P4 3.0GHz processor with HT enabled and an nVidea 9800 GT 256MB graphics card this long texture loading should not be an issue. I see beta tester screenshots al the time with better clarity and sharpness in their textures and their systems are similar to mine on the low end.The textures eventually load if I pause and stare at the same spot for a moment. So I know it's not the textures. Must be a setting somewhere . . . .Oh . . and all sliders are maxed in FS, and to save load on the system I have removed the "default" file from the autogen folder in FS, as well as turned OFF reflections in the aircraft tab of the display settings. Resolution is 1024x768x32 in the display settings, global texture size is massive and lighting is set to 8.There has got to be a setting I am missing somewhere. Anyone have any clues?

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"I see beta tester screenshots al the time with better clarity and sharpness in their textures and their systems are similar to mine on the low end."I can tell you that even I can post a crystal clear shot--even with a P3/800. But, such a shot doesn't really factor into the issue you have. Most of the "blurry texture" threads discuss static blurring. They discuss how to improve texture clarity overall. Some suggest config tweaks, some suggest video card tweaks, and all advice is good--there's no harm in trying (I tend to prefer my static textures a bit blurrier than the razor sharp views some crave--it looks closer to the real world I fly over). What you see with the texture bandwidth multiplier is the way it is supposed to work. It's purpose is to improve issues with texture popping, not to push textures into the video card faster.You are suffering from "dynamic blurries", and they are hard to avoid over the type of scenery you mention unless you try some simming habits to neutralize the worst of its effects. If you think of photoreal scenery compared to generic scenery, photoreal scenery may be trying to load hundreds, sometimes thousands, of textures into your card at any given point in time. Generic scenery uses a small set of textures to recreate the land classes--which is why being over generic MSFS farmland sometimes causes a pattern effect if you look closely. With generic scenery, MSFS may only be trying to access a few dozen textures, at most even though it's applying them over the same area as a photoreal region might cover.What can you do?For some reason, turning off Autogen helps me--it lowers the texture load slightly. Try a less complex aircraft (in terms of texture size). Dee Waldron and company have a low poly flyable Beech 200 on this site--I find that its texture load is so slight it makes my P3/800 seem like a cray when it comes to scenery display. I have my sightseeing aircraft, and my more complex aircraft, and choose the former when I want my scenery to be crystal clear.What else?--keep your view "steady". Avoid view switches or at least don't try too many at once. For photoreal scenery, lower your vis to 30 miles or less if you can to reduce the texture loads. If you can tolerate 20 miles, you've really reduced the texture load.I'll stop hogging thread bandwidth and let others chime in. I should add that what helps me most is lowering my screen res--which some won't do. But I still get a spectacular view--take a peek under "Johnci" in the screenshots forum. Those flights and snapshots approximate the average clarity of what I see. Not perfect, but for a P3/800 it gives me confidence that you can get better.-John

[Guest JIMJAM]

There answer is- There is none. Its different for every rig,every setup,card ect ect.Mine changes according to the plane I fly,the scenery complexity and weather and Im running one of the faster custom computers out there.One thing to try is download Rivatuner. I also have a Nvidia card and this program allows alot of tweeks and changes. One in particular Ive tried is to lower the mip map bias which rivatuner allows. Ive made countless changes to the config file but none really made much of a noticable difference. The only changes which did involved changes to the mip maps textures. Good luck....

[Guest Knikolaes]

I may have found the issue . . . . I got to looking through my FS9 CFG file and saw somethign strange. the "=" sign was missing from one of the signs in . . uhm . . .I'll just paste it:TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.5It was: TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS9.5The only lines I ever edited in FS9 myself were pan rate, bandwidth and vertex level. Going to go test this out in Switzerland with my C-130 and se if it helps. If memory serves me right that radius setting is crucial to display. Not sure if it was me or one of my add-on setup programs that deleted the "=" sign, but I shall soon find out if it works.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Interesting find--that setting is usually used to aid with static blurries (9.5 isn't the default value, btw). It's possible the trashed line was causing MSFS to work too hard especially given the photoreal scenery--I'll be anxious to hear your results.-John

[Guest Knikolaes]

It isn't? AHA! Okay then . . might I ask what the default line is? Because putting that "=" sign back in there made the problem worse, not better. I even paused over the terrain and waited for 45 seconds and the textures never cleared up. They are clear when I load into FS and takeoff, bu as I get further into new area during flight they gradually grow into something that looks like FS 98 or 2000 at best.Here is a link to a screenshot I uploaded to my server of the issue.http://guildofdarkhaven.org/flying/images/...ure%20issue.bmpSo far those that responded seem to know what I am talkign about. Just did the pic for those that do not. :-)FYI -- I can confirm with the above post about aircraft textures -- I am suffering this issue the worst based on speed alone, not aircraft texture size. When I use default slow AC such as the Cessna 172 where I fly very slow it is still there, though not as bad. With the default 737, however, it is indeed just as bad. I have also tried other aircraft as well of various types with the same results.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Change that line and the one above it to 0--that's right, zero. Change the levels below the line to 1. See if that improves the issue. If not, you can restore the 9.5. Also, It's been a while since I reset my fs9.cfg and the number for levels always resets to a rather crazy figure, but you can get the defaults back by renaming fs9.cfg to fs9.old and letting it rebuild. You can then paste the defaults from the new .cfg into the .old, delete the new.cfg, and rename the .old back. If I could remember the exact default numbers, you wouldn't have to go through so much trouble but I'm a bit tired today, and my memory foggy....

[Guest Knikolaes]

Many thanks. I forgot about FS rebuilding. Going to try that :-)FYI currently I have the following after making the abive change:[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT.0]Mode=1024x768x32MipBias=8TriLinear=1[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=90[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=60.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=0TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=0.0 //9.5TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1Will keep you posted as to what I find.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Try these entries for starters:TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 (this is a must)TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=1.0TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=2.5 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1There's one member who has good results with:TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 (this is a must)TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=40.0TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=60.0 TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4But in a system that is needing more texture bandwidth for photoreal scenery, I'd try the first set of numbers first...-John

[Guest Knikolaes]

Okay well here are th results:Tried adding the lines in both variations above. No change at all in performance. Tried using the tweaks area to add useagptexture to 0 and panelastexture to 0 and that didnt help.It's official. My computer system must really suck and not be able to handle the graphics. I should have held out for the 512 graphics card instead of just a little 256.Next Spring when I get my next financial aid disbursement I am building an entirely new system so that I can actually fly in FS. LOL.Either way many thanks for the help, all. Just for curiosity reasons I will post my system specs here and note to folks that if you want to run photo scenery you need FAR better than what I have:OS - XP SP2Mobo - ABIT IC-7G w/800MHz FSB and HTProcessor - P4 3.0GHz 800FSB w/HT EnabledGraphics - PNY nVidea GeForce 6800 GTSound - Onboard Realtec 97 AudioHD - 400GB SATA partitioned w/100GB to FSPS - 500WMemory - 4GB Corsair DDR 400 (PC3200) UnbufferedI built this system meself so hopefully I will be able to build a much better syetem next time and turn this POS into a web server or something.Thank you all for the help, though. It was much appreciated though the end result was that I have a bad system.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I just refuse to believe that your system, which soars above mine in specs, can't have the display issue you've seen resolved.There's a service that's mentioned often in the forums--it's called FS-GS. It stirs a lot of controversy, but as someone who has been involved in tech support for two decades, I can tell you there's value in what they offer. For what I believe is currently $100, they will drill into your system and optimize it for MSFS. Even if you are the most technical person in the world, sometimes there just isn't enough time for drilling into your system to that degree. That's what FS-GS does. I don't use their service nor would I need to--I'm peeved at myself for not thinking of the idea first, but that's another story :)I have the time and experience to drill into my system (or had it--I haven't had to tweak it in years). If you lack one or the other, I just want you to know FS-GS is out there, and $100 is a bargain if you spent as much as you have on your system and want to resolve this issue. The one screenshot you showed, regardless of the level of scenery complexity, is simply out of the norm for your system or even mine for that matter. It can be fixed, and you don't need to throw a better system at it to fix it. -John

[Guest JIMJAM]

What I was trying to tell ya is there is no magic config or setting thats going to make it perfect. My computer was custom built with the sole intent on blazing speeds and I routinely get up in the top 5% on the various benchmark programs. However throw Active sky, Ultimate terrain,BEV,Flight enviroments,hop in my PMDG 747 and my computer grunts and groans and Im happy to maintain 15-20 fps near a busy airport. I can tell you if you simply throw a bunch of money at it and expect to run fs9 at the highest settings along with the usual add ons, you are going to be dissapointed.ps- My best freind owns a pc store that builds custom computers. He has ALOT of customers that he build rigs for simply to run sims and computer games. We have yet to put together a rig that has been the holy grail.Fs2004 still gets the blurries and chugs when alot is going on. As a matter of fact, the more exotic and custom the components are, the sim can actually run and look worse, sometimes not at all, than some of your store bought ready to plug up computers.

[Guest Knikolaes]

Thank you, John. I appreciate that, though at this moment in time I have no money to splurge.I actually do have the time to dive into my syetem as I lost my job and all I do now is FT college and stay at home at night and "fly" and job hunt in the afternoons.I may try deleting my FS9 CFG and resetting verything to default and seeng if maybe something somewhere is off. As I stated before I also have my anistropic filtering and antialiasing set from the graphics card, not FS, and it semed to perform better that way before I reinstalled windows.I checked to assure the latest drivers as well, and am running 4x AA and 16x ASF off the video driver.

[Guest Knikolaes]

Jim,I think what the frustrating part is that I just bought a new Hard Drive and reinstalled FS and windows, etc, and it was a downgrade. my sim actually ran great before, and now it has these blurries that were NOT there before.I do, however, recall that my memory before had I think an 8X buffer and this memory is unbuffored. Wondering what that would play in this role here.

[Guest JIMJAM]

Im not sure. I know that Im starting to enjoy the sim more and spending less time chasing that elusive perfect setup. I have the luxury of not having to spend much if at all to run the latest greatest and it seems Im going backwards. Or maybe Im just getting jaded and forget how bad it was! My other buddy still runs 2002 on a antique of a computer that has never been defragged in 7 years. It pains me to even look at the screen but he is as happy as can be.Problem with me is it seems my performance and graphics "morph". One day Im running wide open and another Im getting stutters. One day the terrain is clear, another Im gettings spackles,waves,texture blahs ect. One thing though. If you are have been changing and fooling around with your fs9.config, it might be worthwhile to delte it and let fs9 rebuild it. I did and was surprised that all these "miracle" cures you are always reading about actually were screwing it up.