"Shimmering" of ground lights and water

[tamba765 54]

     I didn't see a post about this, so excuse me if I missed it. I have P3Dv4 and many PMDG, ORBX, and FlyTampa packages. At night, when flying, all the ground lights not in the immediate vicinity of the aircraft seem

to shimmer. I really don't know how else to describe it, except maybe a very rapid flicker. I also get a similar effect during the day flying over open water. The surface immediately surrounding the aircraft

looks OK, but the rest of the surface away from the aircraft, looks distorted with a similar effect. I've experimented with various P3Dv4 settings, but nothing I've tried seems to help.  My system has some nice hardware,

although my Nvidia 970 GTX video card is probably getting a little challenged with all the addon scenery I've been purchasing lately. Is anyone else seeing this, and if so, have you found a way to reduce or eliminate this

problem? Thanks.

Pete Locascio

[sidfadc 1,340]

If you are referring to the street lights then sadly there isn't much to do to cure this.  If you use SSAA x 4 or higher it will be less pronounced but of course you can't use SSAA at night with Dynamic lights enabled unless you have a NASA powered graphics card.

Coming from FSX myself I have found the night lighting in P3D absolutely horrible and it definitely needs a rewrite.  It hurts my eyes to fly at night, to be honest if I want to fly at night I use XPlane.

[simbol 5,773]

20 minutes ago, tamba765 said:

     I didn't see a post about this, so excuse me if I missed it. I have P3Dv4 and many PMDG, ORBX, and FlyTampa packages. At night, when flying, all the ground lights not in the immediate vicinity of the aircraft seem

to shimmer. I really don't know how else to describe it, except maybe a very rapid flicker. I also get a similar effect during the day flying over open water. The surface immediately surrounding the aircraft

looks OK, but the rest of the surface away from the aircraft, looks distorted with a similar effect. I've experimented with various P3Dv4 settings, but nothing I've tried seems to help.  My system has some nice hardware,

although my Nvidia 970 GTX video card is probably getting a little challenged with all the addon scenery I've been purchasing lately. Is anyone else seeing this, and if so, have you found a way to reduce or eliminate this

problem? Thanks.

Pete Locascio

Can you post a Video of what you describe? Also your current display settings? This would help us to understand your issue better and perhaps been able to give you some good suggestions.

Regards 

Simbol 

[Flic1 969]

For the ground lights, turning on FXAA will help this quite a bit and I do not fly at night without it.  You can use the in-sim FXAA or Nvidia Inspector...

 

 

[tamba765 54]

I could post a video, but it seems a few people here are having the same problems and they know what I mean. I have FXAA on, and use 4xMSAA. My texture resolution is 4096x4096 and am using a 46" 4K Dell monitor. Texture Filtering is set to Anisotropic 4x. VSync and Triple Buffering are both on. I took a picture of the settings, but I don't see any way to attach them.

[Mace 1,901]

1 minute ago, tamba765 said:

I could post a video, but it seems a few people here are having the same problems and they know what I mean. 

No, I know what you mean.  

Are there any current add-ons that help with the shimmer and coloration?

[B777ER 2,483]

2 hours ago, Mace said:

No, I know what you mean.  

Are there any current add-ons that help with the shimmer and coloration?

Black Marble is much better than Orbx night lighting but you pay a lot of money and it was not good performance wise on my computer. Still ticked at the amount of money I wasted in that purchase.

[Slayer 190]

Turning off HDR will "fix" it but not really an acceptable solution. I love Orbx but there is something not quite right with their textures that cause shimmering.

[mwa05 108]

One thing I have found is ticking every “Recieve” option under Shadows / Casting and Recieving drastically reduces shimmering (on my PC).

I also use Envdir/Evntex/Evnshade and with FXAA on in Nvidia settings (not P3D), and those 3 elements (cast/receive, Env products and FXAA on in Nvidia) have virtually eliminated night time shimmering of lights using Orbx FTX Global/Vector.

It is still occasionally shimmery (is that even a word?) at certain angles, but largely it is gone.

I use 8MSAA in Sim with 16x. And lights very small in the Orbx lights configurator.

Finding that combination was months of faffing about.

 

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

The night lighting just kills it for me at the moment. I've tried just about every "fix" there is and whilst some certainly improve things nothing stops it.

It needs a massive overhaul but sadly there doesn't appear to be anything on the horizon in relation to dealing with this problem! :(

[simbol 5,773]

Folks,

I still think having the video would be beneficial, not only to fully understand and appreciate the problem but also to clarify what "is the OP experiencing", many users reading this topic could thing they are having the same issue when it fact it could be something totally different.

This was the case previous with another person posting about missing and vanishing Dynamic Flood Lighting and thanks to the he posted video when I asked I was able to help to find the root cause which on his case it was related to the level of the AI traffic he was using under P3D 4.2.

All the best,

Simbol

[Cruachan 705]

5 hours ago, simbol said:

Folks,

I still think having the video would be beneficial, not only to fully understand and appreciate the problem but also to clarify what "is the OP experiencing", many users reading this topic could thing they are having the same issue when it fact it could be something totally different.

This was the case previous with another person posting about missing and vanishing Dynamic Flood Lighting and thanks to the he posted video when I asked I was able to help to find the root cause which on his case it was related to the level of the AI traffic he was using under P3D 4.2.

All the best,

Simbol

Hi Simbol,

Normally I would agree with you and, of course, the example you give certainly illustrates the value of seeing a video to help provide clarification in certain circumstances.

However, in this case, I have to side with those who are seeing the shimmering, myself included. If it’s there and you fly at night then you will be aware of it. I had assumed we were all affected to a greater or lesser degree.

That aside, I would describe the ‘shimmering’ as similar to what may, given certain conditions, cause lights to flicker when viewed from a distance. My understanding is that this latter is an atmospheric effect driven by temperature and pressure changes bending light as it passes through moving air containing varying levels of moisture. So, in a sense, we might be persuaded into believing that what we are seeing in the sim is a reasonable approximation of what may be witnessed in the real world.

I discovered that the shimmering can be reduced to acceptable levels by employing 4xSGSSAA (NI) coupled with 4xMSAA (P3D). I used this combo of settings to optimise anti-aliasing and the reduction of shimmering turned out to be a welcome side-effect. FXAA=OFF and AF=16x.

Regards,

Mike

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

Shimmering

 

Here's a clip of the shimmering I get and the settings I was using in sim at that time.

 

As I've already said I've tried just about everything you can Google and can't get rid of it!

[simbol 5,773]

Thanks for the video, I understand the problem better now.

I will try to replicate on my system and see if I can find some solution or mitigation techniques.

Simbol 

[Matthew James de Bohun 55]

5 hours ago, simbol said:

Thanks for the video, I understand the problem better now.

I will try to replicate on my system and see if I can find some solution or mitigation techniques.

Simbol 

Thanks and good luck. I'll be very happy if you can find something.

Just as an addition it's not just the lighting. You can notice it on distant buildings as well although as there is not such a contrast it doesn't stand out as much.