Hi there- long-time flightjunkie, 1st time poster here-I thought i was goin nuts here- This is my version of the same problem, which unfortunately, bothers the ^#%@$ outta me. I have tried all suggestions made above, to no avail. -Tim

Try this guys.. Turn off the Terrain Detail slider, if that corrects your problem then it is the detail1.BMP file that has been changed.I had a similar problem, it was like there was a huge spotlight on the bottom of the plane that lit up all the surrounding textures, leaving the ones out in the distance dark.If that corrects the issue just replace your detail1.bmp file with the one from your MSFS disks and you can turn the texture detail slider back on.This problem seems to have been created from using Mega Scenery titles from what I have been told.. I didn't really notice it until I started flying back in the default areas, as it stands out much more..Good Luck!

So how come my entry is: TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1307992 ?I've NEVER seen this in single figures on my system.

Hi Dougal, I just perused your post over at the Simflight forums. Could you post your video card settings here (jpgs of each page of your video card tweaker would be helpful... especially for the D3D settings)? Also, complete info on driver version and tweaker you use.Thanks,Greg

>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.But it srtarts right below you, the right side shows that hi rez is being maintained at a much higher mip level than the the left at standard settings, the object of those pics is what starts right below you. Has nothing to do with what is ten miles out, you keep looking at that, but if you notice that is a whole 256x256 texture in the foreground, on the left it looks as though it ends all too soon on the right is much more tollorable and IS an improvement.But as mentioned if you don't make the other changes first there is no point, yet it also still IS a dissapointment...As to other poster below, that does look as though something else has gone bad, perhaps as stated a changed detail texture or if the worng tool settings were used to generate mipmaps to 3rd party terrain textures you can get bad results like that.

Paul,I just want to make sure you know I appreciate all of your help. I don't mean to make it sound like I'm arguing with you or anything. I just think that the nature of my 'problem' is different from what many other people have been experiencing with FS2002 and FS2004. I may saying this based on - by now - quite extensive reading of other forums, problem descriptions, solutions and before and after screen shots. So please - don't think I'm regretful. I do thank you for your help. It's just that I think my problem was different from the majority of complaints about bluries in FS2002 and FS2004.>But it srtarts right below you Perhaps it is so. Sorry - I just can't make out any differences between left and right side BELOW the red line. The shots are just too scaled down for me to be able to notice anything. The only differences I can clearly make out start ABOVE the red line. Any comments below refer only to the portion above the red line.>you notice that is a whole 256x256 texture in the foreground,>on the left it looks as though it ends all too soon on the right>is much more tollorable and IS an improvement. Sure - that is an improvement. But when I started the thread - my screen already looked like the right hand side (or very close to it). The drop in quality above red line is what prompted me to start this thread as I was hoping for some way to push that red line out a little closer to the 40 mile radius. I was not at as much concerned with reducing drop in quality behind the red line as was with eliminating that drop all together.That it is possible to improve quality of textures above the red line (as left and right side clearly show) is a nice thing. But even with all settings maxed out - quality drop from below to above red line is very visible to me - and apparently a few other people as well ;-) I'm not arguing that right side does not look better than the left side and I'm certainly not disputing the point of the shots. All I'm saying is that quality does drop - even on the right hand side. No matter what the settings. And it occurs at the red line mark - WAY before the 40 mile radius. Whether it drops a little bit or a whole lot can apparently be controlled by certain settings. But my gripe is not how much quality drops; my problem is that I was hoping for 40 miles of a given quality and instead I'm getting only a few miles.BTW - I have a feeling that what Tim is showing with his screen shot is the same problem I'm experiencing and the same problem red line screen shot is showing. He just found a good angle to make it very obvious as well as good ground texture where the 'flashlight' effect is very clearly visible. I'm starting to be more and more convinced that how much - if at all - people notice the 'flashlight' is a very personal thing. Here is an example: towards the bottom of the page Donn (nick: surlybonds ) talks about how great his textures look . Yet on his screen shot (even as tiny as it is) I can clearly make out the 'flashlight' with full-res textures below and directly around his plane and lower quality textures outside that small ring : http://www.simforums.com/forums/forum_post...?TID=14610&PN=1Thanks,Michael

Michael,No offense or anything aproaching it at all...What you are seeing is what I have been seeing, it is static burries, not fs9 running out of resources but just the plain old limmit of the poor FS9 engine and there is only so much you can do.I have thousands of dollars invested in just purchased image data and then 2x that in processing that is the best of the best just to see it lost with the poor display of the mips as you have described, and this is going back to FS2k2....I have long given up and will no longer be trying to make scenery for FS to the extant I did before.I do look forward to FSX as I suggest you do, and just forget about FS9, as far as the flashlight effect, sure that shows the edges very clearly but as it is a different light intensity and brightness there is something else going on there....but what ever...Nice thread though...real dear to my heart. :)

I'd just like to say thanks to original poster and ALL for this thread. It helped me enormously. Like Michael said, haven't been able to 'fix' the issue on my PC, but with this, and several other forum posts, it's much better.So thanks again.

I just joined this forum and have been looking for answers to this problem myself. Has anyone tried the bit about removing the mipmaps from the texture files? I am in the process of doing this with some add-on desert textures but the going is slow as I can only open one file at a time. Be interested in anyone's thoughts on this issue.Specs:Abit AV8 MBOpteron 148 OC'd to 2.9 Ghz 264/33/66, 11x (stable)2Gb Ocz PC4000 (also OC'd)X850XT (OC'd 570/6002 WD Raptors Raid 0Audigy 2Enermax 600W PS

Hi there,haven't tried this myself but I suspect that the change in data format would lead to crashes.Before you do a large number of textures try a few and then see what happens. Also, imagetool.exe (part of the FS2004 Terrain SDK) does allow for batch processing of common bitmap formats. Use the help function to get a list of commands.Cheers, Holger

Hi thanks for the reply. I'm curious what you mean by 'change in data format'. I'm using DXTBmp and as far as I know am saving the files back to DXT1. When I open these files in PSP, it indicates 7 levels of mipmapping. I wonder if saving fewer levels (if this is even an option) would create an exceptable compromise. I have downloaded the SDK but haven't looked at it much yet. Hopefully, I will have my 'test batch' completed in a few days and can post the results. Chris