I am asking this, because i spent the whole day yesterday downloading the Vickers Vc-10, Hawker Siddeley HS.121 Trident, de Havilland Comet 4 and BAC 1-11 from dmflightsim.co.uk, and as I installed in Flight Sim and started searching through my list, i found that all the textures were blurry.Now, I know this may sound picky and rude, but I don't like aircraft with mip-maps, all my 3rd party aircraft are pure textures; no mip-maps.I don't know what kind of texture qualities you like (I am guessing you prefer best quality too :(), but as I said; I don't like this quality.What is it that authors do that they appear blurry? I mean, is it because:a) the textures are not really good quality when made, so they are blurred to even out mistakes (like a poorl drawn picture, and using the blur tool to smoothen it out),:( the authors are saving space by reducing image quality to blurry textures,c) the users are "delibrately" saving it like this? (*)(*) Now I know I sound arrogant here, but as I said at the top, i spent the WHOLE day of yesterday downloading the aircraft from DMFlightSim. And the only images of the aircraft they show on the page are tiny 100x200 images of the textures. Now this I ususally find suspicious, as I only download items which allows me to see a good, clean picture of the aircraft and know that textures are good and not blurry. But not being able to see if the textures were bad or not, I downloaded all the packages from his website, in hope that they were good. And to see them all bad realyl frustrated me. :(Any help please?And is it possible to fix this texture problem?Thanks! :)

It's been conclusively demonstrated that MipMaps save FPS on the user aircraft. Less conclusively demonstrated on AI aircraft.However, the big problem is the wide range of systems we use and the vast differences in the way our systems handle MipMaps. Even on some different models in my experience.I've found all of the DM aircraft repaints to be crips and clear with MipMaps - no blurries at all. But I've got some favorite POSKY aircraft to not work well with MipMaps.And I'm absolutely certain the problem lies with my system - not the repaint.However, I do not use 32-bit textures on my computer - because I like AI or flying on-line that takes too much of my available graphics capability - despite they lovely appearance.It's a matter of personal choice.Second item - when I have many repaints which need to be converted from MipMaps to non-MipMaps - I use ImageTool from Microsoft as a batch job - it might not produce quite a good a final image as DXTBmp but the time savings are worth the tradeoff.

>I've found all of the DM aircraft repaints to be crips and>clear with MipMaps - no blurries at all.Wait... you mean like the BAC 1-11? All with clear textures??That's funny. Because if you do mean that, then why are mine blurry? Could this be some video card settings and how different graphic files are displayed?Because like Microsoft, they released the 9.1 update for FS9, which as well as covering for bridge updates, there were also certain problems with things like rain effects on certain video cards.So, where can I find this textures fixture-upper?Thanks for your reply! :)

Good points, Reggie. It might also be worth pointing out that many users themselves are limiting image quality by lowering the mipmap setting on the graphics options. All they need to do is to set that to the highest value to get very clear textures.Best regards.Luis

hmm, it seems to me that setting the mip mapping setting in the options to the highest value would pretty much offset any possible performance gain you'd get by using the textures with mip maps, while at the same time introducing some of the visual anomalies often associated with having mip mapping set higher than 4 or 5 (flickering in the distance). You're probably better off removing the mip maps from the textures, and setting the mipmapping in the options to 4 - where it's usually recommended...

Count to 10.Count again... :-)There's nothing wrong with mip-maps.What you see in FS will depend on your PC, graphics card & the settings you choose.For my own PC & setup, mip-maps are essential. I have to spend ages adding the stupid things to other models!In very general terms, Nvidia graphics cards don't like mips, ATI cards do like them.I have ATI & without mips it looks like anti-aliasing is turned off, all jagged lines & not nice.Anyway, whatever your preference there is a texture converter included inside each aircraft's folder.Just double click the file 'Texture Converter.bat' (in Window Explorer), select the option you need and it will convert the textures for you.32-bit mips is the complete texture, any other format will remove some of the information.Converting to DXT compresses & irreversibly corrupts the image. You can never get back to the original image quality from a DXT.So that's why I release in 32-bit with mips. It gives everyone the chance to have the texture format they prefer.There is information about it on my website.http://www.dmflightsim.co.uk/faq.htmhttp://www.dmflightsim.co.uk/notes_on_fs_a...s.htm#CONVERTERAlso a screenshots section with bigger pictures so you can see what I see in FS.http://www.dmflightsim.co.uk/screenshot_gallery.phpIf only PCs all worked the same!Anyway, congratulations on your choice for some FS fun.DM

Good reply David -- and thanks for your fabulous a/c.I have an NVidia video card - and it doesn't like MIPS at all. But that is OK, because I have learnt to recognise simply from their size in bytes those a/c textures that are either 32 bit or have MIPS and change them to DXT3 , no MIPS. And to the origional poster - sometimes we all get frustrated by little things in life and in Fsim, my pet hate is authors who package ZIP files within ZIP files!! :) But - that is my problem and you need to change the tone or your posting just a little.Barry

Thanks for the explanation. I have a nVidia 6800GT 256 and have recently been introduced to the importance of mips be FS-GS. I get quite an improvement in smoothness by converting to mips, so not all nVidia cards have problems with them.Cheers,Noel

Hi All,well, here we are again with this question, I agree with David and the others about specific machine set-up's etc,I have found that the MS GMAX Tool is well worth getting hold of, I have in fact converted Every Single Texture in FS9 that is an add-on to mips if it isn't already mipped. (aircraft and scenery alike)there is a slight size difference, but with you're machine set up correctly there is no noticeable impact as such.just to clear a couple of other frequent things up as well. make sure you're setting for anti-aliasing in FS9 is turned OFF, as you're newer and fancier graphics card will do a much better job of this than a three year old program will do thats written for DX8.1.also, check this out, I have repeatedly heard many people say that the mips tend to make their other aircraft look horrible, and in some cases scenery too, well, I have asked these same people if they like the default MS DC3, and believe it or not they all said yes, it looks fantastic, when I informed them that Every Single Texture in FS9 is mipped they flipped their lids! take a look at the scenery's even, yep, there all mipped too.you're graphics cards will have anti aliasing and mipps turned on, so, in spot view, whats the first and nearest thing that you're graphics card will be constantly trying to mip ?, yep, you're aircraft, so, if you turn OFF mips, or disable them, or even re-convert the textures to non mipps, then you are in effect making you're own blurries, and you're graphics card work much harder than it actually needs to, this will induce blurries and generally make everything look terrible which will also impact very heavily on our worst enemy, frame rates.obviously, these settings are machine specific to a certain degree, but hey, thats life.I hope this helps in some small way to clear some of these issues up.PS, do you like the fantastic Aerosoft EDDF, Mega Frankfurt Main ? yep, you guessed it, it's ALL Mipped.

A better question is:Why do some developers think it's okay to REMOVE MIP MAPS as it cost fps and will cause more stutters.It also confuses the customers and users.Close up the mips look sharp and in the distance it makes little or no difference.The only reason why some developers remove mips is to make their work look more visually stunning when at a medium distance away.Personally, I would never try and make clouds or ground textures without mips as it would be a nonsense.I'm working on a payware Airbus A320 project now which is going to compete with the best aircraft out there but guess what.As fps are improtant to us it will have mips.

"Why do some developers think it's okay to REMOVE MIP MAPS as it cost fps and will cause more stutters"Excellent point Peter.Contageious. I appreciate that you were searching out some knowledge about mip maps etc, but some private research on the subject might have answered several of your questions. Mips are vital to those of us who are trying to optimise performance in FS.

I dont know what IM doing, in game my AA is turned off, in the ati control panel my aa is 4 and af is 16. my screen resolution is 1600x1200. my video card with the latest ati drivers is the x850xt. But mips sometimes give me blurry textures. I dont know why? Some AI that I convert to mips works fine, others are just a blur. Is it the way people put mips or is it something system specific? I am really confused.

I'd venture that a good half of the people in this thread don't actually understand what mip-maps are or why they're there.There is a very very good reason for their existence in the world of 3D graphics:If you look at objects in real life, they lose detail and resolution as they get more distant. This is what mipmapping simulates - you have the main texture map that you'd view up close, which is all sharp and clear. As the object gets more distant from the camera, the video card and game engine automatically load in progressively lower resolution versions the texture. This has three effects:1. It makes the object look more realistic, you wouldn't be able to make out every little detail on something that's far away in real life would you?2. It reduces texture load on the video card. This is super important - if every texture in a game had only one resolution level, the highest, you'd blow right past today's 256MB and 512MB RAM limits on cards.3. Mipmaps reduce shimmering. If you try to display a 1024X1024 texture for instance on a polygon surface that is only 20 or 30 pixels across on screen, you're gonna get all sorts of artifacting as the monitor tries to pack more detail into that area than it actually has available in pixel space. Turn up the mipmap slider in FS to max and look at how ugly the sim looks - shimmers all over the place. This is an issue that occurs in ANY 3D game, not just FS.The problem with mipmaps is that sometimes you can see a "hard" line between the different levels of them in a game. In old 3D games like Quake II or the original Half-Life this used to be readily apparant as a line you could see on the floor as you walked around a level. This was simply the point where the engine was switching to the next lowest resolution as the texture got further away from the player.The solution to this problem is a feature we all have on today's modern video cards, but that I'm guessing a lot of people don't actually understand - anisotropic filtering, or "AF" as it's commonly called.Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filteringWhat AF does at high levels is seamlessly blend the different resolutions of mipmaps into a smooth gradient with no detectable hard boundaries between them. This is very important to the illusion of realism in a 3D scene. If you had a single mip level for the whole scene it would look terrible.As for people saying "Nvidia doesn't handle mips" or whatever, this is absolutely false. Every 3D card that has ever existed, from the original Voodoo Graphics to today's 7900GTX uses mipmapping.

I am still confused... :SSomeone just before was going on about adjusting video card levels to adjust texture mip-mapping.But I am stuck here, is mip-mapping good, or bad?because i thought mip-mapping causes the blurryness, and yet, you are all saying that mip-maps are in every texture in any 3d game... And how do I fix this problem with problem with say, another 3rd party aircraft i download?And should I have the anti-aliasing on/off?I just don't get the fact about how mip-maps are in everything, and different textures sizes on smaller surfaces to compress images, and adjusting video card readings...this is all so confusing.... :(can just one person help clarify this, because i woke up this moerning with 11 different replies, and they are all confusing me.... :( :(

contaegious,Mipmaps are not a matter of "good or bad". They're a vital part of rendering 3D graphics on a computer - I'm speaking in general terms here. Many aircraft developers (ourselves included) do not use mipmaps on the main aircraft textures because of issues certain video cards can have that make the textures appear fuzzy even close up. There's hardly any performance issue from doing this to one object in the 3D scene, but if you did it to every texture in the sim, your machine would slow to a crawl from trying to load that much texture data into RAM. It would also look terrible.I'll try to find a better link that explains it with pictures etc...