>Paul,>>Thanks for the info. Just to make sure we are talking about>the same thing. The problem I'm seeing I'm almost positive is>not of the "dynamic blurry" variety. Exactly, we are talking "Static".>The issue is that FS only>loads a very small number of full-res texture tiles directly>below the plane, one tile in front, one behind and one on each>side. As I fly forward - this high-res "shadow" moves with me.>Tiles remain this way even if pause the simulation and let it>take a break. In other words FS2004 does not want to show me>any more than only a handful full-res textured tiles directly>around the plane.>>Are you saying that by setting TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS to 3 or>4 I will force FS to show me MORE full-res textured tiles? Yes, semi-directly below you at a slight cost to system recources. >And that the>only reason I'm even noticing that so few tiles are in hi-res>is because my vid card allows me to jack up AA and aniso as>well as resolution (8x, 16 x and 1600x1200 respectively)?FS doesn't check your res/AA and AF as far as how it will draw the terrain textures, so in a sense yes, you notice it more so that some guy running FS at 800x600 etc.Try it out. :)

>Try it out.I did try it out. Unfortunately - it had no impact what so ever on how many full-res tiles FS would show. Just like before - FS only shows a very small number of hi-res tiles only around the airplane. This thing is very easily noticeable from 5-6K feet and above (though I have not tried, say, 30K, to see what it's like). It's less visible from 4K feet simply because full-res tiles fill a larger portion of the screen. But there is always a very limited number of tiles rendered in full-res; only directly around the airplane. The rest of the 'world' is rendered using lower res textures - no matter what settings I try to change (including TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4 )Thanks agian,Michael

Great post Michael, I am experiencing the exact same problems, and will be following this thread closely. For what it's worth, here are my settings:TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=300[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=3TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=7.00000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=7.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=3Regards, Steve

>>Try it out.>>I did try it out. Unfortunately - it had no impact what so>ever on how many full-res tiles FS would show. Just like>before - FS only shows a very small number of hi-res tiles>only around the airplane. This thing is very easily noticeable>from 5-6K feet and above (though I have not tried, say, 30K,>to see what it's like). It's less visible from 4K feet simply>because full-res tiles fill a larger portion of the screen.>But there is always a very limited number of tiles rendered in>full-res; only directly around the airplane. The rest of the>'world' is rendered using lower res textures - no matter what>settings I try to change (including TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4>)>>Thanks agian,>MichaelMichael,The highres limmit won't go away, you can adjust it only so much, the limit is there for a good reason, but it is based on what used to be cosidered a good match to what hardware was available and would be used, Screen res, memory bandwidth, frame buffer size etc.There are a few other settings that you should check before you truely max out the limmits.Make sure you are using "best image quality" in your NV driver tab. In the fs display menu settings make sure the mipmap setting is at least at 4 and not below, any higher however and you will start to induce flicker in scenery object textures as the mipmaps won't scale properly and pixels will "fight" for the same space on your screen, flickering on and off, and seeing as you have a 7800 you should be using transparency AA to help reduce any shimmering there.From higher hights it just gets more obvious, FSX's use of 1m textures should rid us of this dreadful sight.

Paul,I am doing all the things you are suggesting. (mipmap at 4, best image quality, AA and aniso turned on etc).I'm not sure if you had a chance to look at the screen shots I included a few posts up. They show fairly clearly what I'm referring to. I marked them up in Photoshop with a red line that shows the boarder between full-res textures and lower res (but no very distant) textures. It's more clear from the screen shots than any descriptions I may attempt. If you have not seen them - please do take a look (those shots can be found at http ://69.134.23.108:8080/1600x1200.jpg and http ://69.134.23.108:8080/1024x768.jpg (you will need to remvoe spaces between http and : in thse URLs; I added space so that images don't load inline - in case someone on dialup reads this)If you do look at the shots - please make sure you 'enlarge' them in your browser to see them at full resolution (1024x768 and 1600x1200 versions are available) Ideally - you'd see my screen while the sim is running. But that may be tricky ;-) What you will notice is an area with full-res textures and lower res textures further out (border marked with a red line). You can clearly see some tiles - that are pretty close to the plane - being drawn with lower resolution textures.What I'm talking about is not related to any quality settings adjustable though the video card drivers. Those settings affect the entire screen and while it's possible to turn them down low enough to make the entire screen one big blur, I have them cranked up sufficiently to see different tile resolutions (and obviously video card drivers don't know anything about tiles in FS2004). My

I've always had this issue one way or another. I've convinced myself it has nothing whatsoever to do with my graphics card, as I've been through a few, and even if I turn EVERYthing way down, it has very little effect. I've come to the conclusion (as it seems many folks have) that it's just an inherent flaw in the system compared to games made with more recent/better graphics engines. You don't run into issues anything like this with games like Doom or HL2 or what have you. Yes, very different games, very different resource requirements.I too have hopes for FSX, but at this point, I've kind of just learned to live with it. Would it be nicer if I could fly towards a mountain and have the detail just slowly emerge like in real life? Sure. But can I live with the "fly close enough and 'pop' its supersharp" thing? Sure. So I'm working on getting my Instrument flying up to snuff - running flights without AP, getting my radar contact skills polished, running emergencies better, learning how to fly different aircraft correctly, etc etc... None of these things require either hot framerates or perfect textures - they are just made nicer by them.Anyway, I shall continue to tweak, even with what I said above, but I seriously doubt there's a *true* magic bullet for the inherent and I think universal flaws in the engine.

Mine are set to 0 and I don't experience the problem described.[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=0.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=0.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1307992My machine, however, is not so good as others:HP 1 gb RAM, geforce 128 mb card. But geez all the sliders are to the left and still runs a decent 25 fps

Michael,Don't give up, No need to reload FS.Your pics are exactly what I am trying to help you with and exactly what I worked on here some years back (still applies to FS9) with Many days/hours of pics settings changes, more pics, benchmarking, debate, some help from a freind at Nvidia, a custom pack of multi colored mipmaped textures and some control over driver settings (rivatuner) and the help of many right here at Avsim.You need to make sure you are using the Level=4 5,6 settings and that are saved correctly.I will post the old info below in a seperate reply it is not updated but still "good" (look midway thru)and I hope the Avsim mods here will put it in a safe place if they wish (It "got lost" last time). :)

This is very old material but for those who have not seen it I thought it good to repost as I am the original author of the pics and text.(Pics are hosted on my own site, for now (avsim is welcomed to them)As posted back in the day (still works with FS9):As there have been numerous post regarding tweaks that "fix the blurries" and "will transform you PC into a XP3000 etc..." of course all of these post have been made with the best intentions and everyone should be thankful for the many efforts made to increase our enjoyment of FS2k2. Fs2002.cfg TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024 ;=max size bmp for AC and objects 1024, 512, 256, 128 as adjusted in display/aircraft texture detail/size slider; TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=1.000000 ;this is simply the Mesh Terrain detail slider, for quicker frame rates and fast re-loading of textures(dynamic blurrie reduction) reduce, however if you don't like the "floating" trees or terrain that "pops up" then adjust the detail up. TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=7; bmp size =6=64 7=128 8=256 this is the terrain bmps, medium (7) will only allow the bmp to display up to half of its 256x256 size etc.. TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1 1=on 0=off these textures are visible beyond about a 40 mile radius (check box for extended textures) The following are not adjustable from anywhere in the FS2k2/4 program and have to be manually inserted in the Fs2k2/4.cfg for max improvement my personal recommendations are to simply double the numbers as there is just not much at all to be seen beyond that. (Tested under max visibility at all FL)Note: Please take into consideration that increasing the sharpness and detail results in decreasing performance so you will have to decide what is right for your particular setup. TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000(default) starts at 0 and stops at about a 35-45 miles radius. 9.999999=max number that has any effect. All changes will have very little if any effect on where the radius ends (40) and slight effect of extending the displaying of the highest detailed mips (256-128-64) from the center of the users location (aircraft) out towards the horizon. (Changes from min to max vary by just a few miles)I recommend 8.000000 for max detail(no slider available)TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=2.500000(default) starts from about 35 miles radius and "extend to about: 1.500000=70 miles/ and max out to about 9.999999=100? miles radius (even though there is a max of 150 miles of visibility available to the sim) I recommend almost maxing this one if you like to fly in "clear" air to 9.900000 (no slider available) Higher numbers do Zilch TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1; increase this value as needed 1-6 directly effects the full res mips directly below your AC as seen from outside view *see more details somewhere below.For there to be any real visible benefits to the above settings it helps to have medium to high Anisotropic values enabled in the Direct3d settings of your video card as well as a LOD value of -0.0 or less. These settings can be enabled through most any of the free Nvidia Video card driver tweaking programs such as GTU, NVmax, and RivaTuner. For 3DFX cards there is a script that will allow for Anisotropic filtering however you will have to do your own search on that.Here are some pics to just add a little imagery to the discussion. Taken above the Mt. McKinley area using default mesh and textures. The first image is from FL150 (15000ft) with 150 miles visibility and Extended Terrain features turned off: The red arrows show very obviously where the textures at a roughly 40 mile radius end. http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/nonextnd.jpgThis next image is from the exact same location with Terrain Extended features enabled and maxed out using the terrain_extended_radius=9.900000 settings as shown here below from the terrain section of the FS2002.cfg{TERRAIN}TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=1.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.500000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1Yellow arrows outline where the non-extended terrain textures ended from the previous shot.Green arrows indicate where new extended textures begin and Red arrows again indicate where they end approximately some 100+ odd miles out. http://www.frontiernet.net/~pleatzaw/images/extndmax.jpgYes, indeed Level=1 through even 6, actually do make a difference especially depending on what else you do or don

Paul,As I said before - it's real hard for me to tell the subtle differences between left and right images. However, you may have answered my original question - because change from highest res textures to lower res textures is markedly visible - even in these 800x600 shots. Your shots appear to be from FS2002 - not 2004. But I'm assuming display engine did not change between these 2 versions?I'm in-lining one of your shots marked up with a rather thick red line that shows more or less what I've been talking about all along. I'm assuming your plane is traveling toward the top of this shot.http://69.134.23.108:8080/paul_800x600.jpgTextures below the red line appear to be drawn in their full detailed glory. Textures above the red line - even the ones DIRECTLY above the red line look to be drawn with lower resolution. As best as I can tell - the distance from bottom of the screen to the red line is SIGNIFFICANTLY lower than 40 or even 35 miles. Given size of the stadium and city blocks - this distance looks to be quite a bit shorter than 10 miles. Yet quality of textures drops abruptly.Assuming I'm correct with my distance estimates - this is the drop in texture resolution I've been talking all this time. Not subtle differences between making distant textures a little bit less or a little bit more blurry - but the sudden drop in texture quality WELL within the 40 mile radius supposedly afforded by setting TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.000000 I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to go through the exercise of un-installing and re-installing FS2004. Because it looks like what I'm seeing is perfectly normal and a simple case of most ppl not carrying about or not noticing the difference in texture quality marked by the red line.Thanks again,Michael

oops

Yeah, Sorry, but that was the limmit here at Avsim at the time, they are shown at what was saved for posting here.As I mentioned, there is a limit and it is sad.Many things have also changed and seem to go thru cycles, some drivers are better at mip control than others, make sure you turn off any neg bias clamp in the drivers as well as any trilinear optimization.I invested mass amounts (for this poor fellow) into image data that could be used for photoreal scenery, and then to have fs not display full res textures was just too much. I never fully recovered, NURSE! Nurse! I need my shot!!!Anyway, good eyes! Hope the MSteam does better with the new versions.

Paul - sorry, I got it a little "message editing" frenzy. so I'm not sure if you noticed the message I'd REALLY like you to see. Pls let me know what you think:[...]you may have answered my original question - because change from highest res textures to lower res textures is markedly visible - even in these 800x600 shots. Your shots appear to be from FS2002 - not 2004. But I'm assuming display engine did not change between these 2 versions?I'm in-lining one of your shots marked up with a rather thick red line that shows more or less what I've been talking about all along. I'm assuming your plane is traveling toward the top of this shot.http://69.134.23.108:8080/paul_800x600.jpgTextures below the red line appear to be drawn in their full detailed glory. Textures above the red line - even the ones DIRECTLY above the red line look to be drawn with lower resolution. As best as I can tell - the distance from bottom of the screen to the red line is SIGNIFFICANTLY lower than 40 or even 35 miles. Given size of the stadium and city blocks - this distance looks to be quite a bit shorter than 10 miles. Yet quality of textures drops abruptly.Assuming I'm correct with my distance estimates - this is the drop in texture resolution I've been talking all this time. Not subtle differences between making distant textures a little bit less or a little bit more blurry - but the sudden drop in texture quality WELL within the 40 mile radius supposedly afforded by setting TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.000000 I'm not sure if it's necessary for me to go through the exercise of un-installing and re-installing FS2004. Because it looks like what I'm seeing is perfectly normal and a simple case of most ppl not carrying about or not noticing the difference in texture quality marked by the red line.Thanks again,Michael

....and if you notice just above the red line that the right side allows you to see that you are getting higher res versions of the mips as compared to the left, these changes are occuring form the higher settings of the Levels=xLeft side was levels=1If I remember right he hardware for those old pics was a GF3 running on a XP1900 with a negative LOD of -0.3 for both or all pics.The G-engines are effectively the same but DX versions and driver revisions have altered some things as far as mipmap distance drawing etc.So don't bother re-installing OK?

Heh - I guess I won't reinstall ;-)Thanks for your help and sorry for the confusion. Yes, I can see the difference between left and right above the red line.But it's really the above and below red line - nowhere near the 40 miles radius... What am I saying... Nowhere near 10 mile radius - that I was talking about all along.We have these wonderful settings in fs9.CFG that are supposed to tweak things up to 40 miles out yet they don't do jack where it's most obviously noticeable - just a few miles out...Thanks again,Michael