FS9 Ground Texture Don't Look Like They Should

[Carob 2]

Hello.

 

I'm really hoping someone might be willing to work with me on a particular issue I'd like to get resolved.  For quite some time my ground textures just don't look the way the should.  I know my system is not the greatest by any means (specs below) but it certainly should be good enough (I've even been told this) to get things to look much better.

 

Basically, the ground textures do not fully render at distances where I they they should.  I pretty much have to almost be on top of an area to get it to fully render.  I have attached a screen shot here to show.  You can kind of see the bottom red like is pretty much the break where it starts.  You can see it much more clearly in the circled area.  (As you can also see I have it zoomed in just a little to show it a little better.)

 

 

Over the years I have made the kind of tweaks that everyone makes (fs9.cfg, etc) to try and resolve this but no go.  I'm hoping someone will be willing to look at things with me to try and figure this out.  However, I'm not sure what that person might like to see as a place to start.  Specific area(s) of the FS9.cfg file, Nvidia application settings (AA, texture filtering, etc.) so I won't post any of that just yet.

 

Anyway, any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you.

 

System Specs:

Core2 Duo 3 GHz

Windows 7 64-bit

8GB ram

GTX 750 video card (1GB GDDR5)

[PebbleBeach 119]

Neither do they render at distance in real life.

[sascha 314]

Only way to improve that is to tweak the config and use Nvidia Config tool to tweak graphics in general. I can send you the relevant sections of my tweaked fs9.cfg this evening when I'm home. You can hopefully get a much improved result.

[Carob 2]

Sascha, I would be willing to try.  Thanks.

 

If needed let me know what section we're talking about and I can let you know what I have now.

[Carob 2]

So, I have been working with a couple of people on this but unfortunately haven't gotten anywhere as you can tell from this picture...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47032348/Blurries.jpg

 

Here are the relevant (I assume) sections of the fs9.cfg file in hopes someone has any other ideas.

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750.0]
Mode=1280x1024x32
MipBias=8
RenderToTexture=0
TriLinear=1

 

[DISPLAY]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=32
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400

 

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=12.5
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=10.5
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

 

Any additional help would be greatly appreciated as I don't know what else to do.

[WingZ 547]

Here's some of mine, which works for me.

You'll note the comment to self 4th line from end about "not using both".

 

[GRAPHICS]

FORCEFULLSCREENVSYNC=1

FULL_SCREEN=1

PERFORMANCE_MODE=0

DEF_PERF_MODE=6

TEXT_SCROLL=1

AUTO_LOD=0

DETAIL_TEXTURE=1

WATER_EFFECTS=2

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1

EFFECTS_QUALITY=2

GROUND_SHADOWS=1

SMOOTH_VIEW=1

IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1

//TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024

COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

LANDING_LIGHTS=1

IMAGE_QUALITY=0

//TEXTURE_BLDG=1

//TEXTURE_GND=1

TEXTURE_WATER=1

AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2

SEE_SELF=1

TEXTURE_QUALITY=3

//LOD_TARGET_FPS=17

NUM_LIGHTS=8

LOD_TARGET_FPS=30

 

[DISPLAY]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=29

//TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=25600

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=25600

TextureMaxLoad=10

//TextureMaxLoad=30

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=1.1

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=1.2

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=1.3

 

[TERRAIN]

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000

//TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000

TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000

//TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8

//TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=30

TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5

TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1

//TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5

//TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.0

//use default or extended not both

//TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4

//TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.0

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.9

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

[Carob 2]

Not even a little bit of a difference that I can tell.

I don't get it.

[qballbandit 0]

Hello WingZ,

Just when you think you've read all the various tweaks and edits....I've never seen anyone mention to not use both "default" and "extended" terrain radius values.

I'm going to try for the heck of it myself.

What improvement do you see when commenting out the default line?

 

Neil

[WingZ 547]

I don't usually enter into these discussions, because there's often nothing more than a bit of superstition involved...

 

Suffice to say, after all these years I tell myself I have satisfied the conditions for achieving FS9.5* standard on this particular install. There are of course dozens and dozens of Things, all interacting in some way. 

 

So have a go, if something improves your simming experience, then that's Good. 

 

*A fictitious state of satisifed flight simming.

[Dave Morgan 68]

Hi.

 

I've always assumed that there's an upper limit to the number of tiles that can be drawn at a particular resolution. I suppose the unit for the relevant fs9.cfg variables (terrain_default_radius et c.) is tiles. So TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5 would give a circle of landclass 19 tiles across, with hi-res, medium-res and low-res radii a constant fraction of that.

 

That being the case, would it be possible to strip out the lower res images from the terrain textures? I mean if they were all 1024×1024 with no mips, would you get full res out to the edge of the circle in which landclass is drawn?

 

Or would drawing that much detail just slow the framerate right down?

 

Or is the reduction in resolution done on the fly by fs9 itself?

 

Or is it just not possible... ?

 

Regards,

D

[Carob 2]

Nobody with any other thoughts on why I'm getting what I'm getting?

[neumanix 113]

I think the 1.50 zoom is the problem.

These blurries (lower res mipmaps) are more noticeable if you zoom in that much.

On my 16:10 monitor I find a zoom of 0.60 works well.

[Carob 2]

That was only to show it more prominent.  Take a look at the 2nd link further in the thread.  If needed I can produce a more typical one but the problem is still there.

[rogwen 3]

After 12 years and more than adequate computer specs I am convinced there is no "solution" as such. You can fiddle around as much as you like but in any and every screenshot there are going to be ground textures in the middle distance that have not sharpened up.

 

However, as someone mentioned, in reality the ground that is not close is also not sharp so why the concern? 

 

With a 1.5 zoom what you are looking at is not at all like flying for real. There is a farm strip southwest of Ottawa that I know well, but can I find it easily in real life? Nope, and a 0.5 zoom in FS9 gives me the same result, with grass strips hiding in full view among the farms. Try it.

[Carob 2]

Because I have seen screen shots of many other people where this problem is not occurring so there must obviously be a way to fix it.  Because of that reason alone, it bugs the crap out of me.  (It also looks bad.)  Textures not fully rendering until I'm basically almost on top of them is a visual nightmare.

 

The example with the slight zoom was only to highlight the issue.  If you look at the other example, not zoomed, you will also see it.