Does anyone else think the FSX aircraft textures look really horribly blurry up close? I can't figure out what's causing it. I've examined the texture files themselves, and they look fine. It doesn't seem to be a MipMaps issue, as it's not blurry in the same way as MipMapped texture s in FS9 were and the usual fixes for that don't work here - in fact, removing the MipMaps from a texture in FSX makes the part of the aircraft covered by that texture invisible! I can't think this is just "the way it is." There has to be some kind of solution. And yes, I have all aircraft-related display settings turned to max.

I agree they look awful, particularly the Baron. I found that the only thing I had that would open the textures was DXTBmp, Imagetool wouldn't work. I never could tell whether they originally had mips or not (in Imagetool you can see them, how do you know in DXTBmp whether a texture has mips or not?). I tried saving them as DXT3 with the "include when saving" box unchecked. The textures appeared in the sim, but the mapping was all messed up (the fuselage textures appeared on the bottoms of the wings among other things). How that happens is beyond me, although it doesn't take much.Next experiment was to simply open the .dds texture in DXTBmp and click "Save" (I believe it defaulted to Extended Bitmap, DXT5). That made the textures completely dissappear in the sim, so I gave up. I hate it. Spent 4 years learning this crapola and now nothing I've learned applies anymore. That goes for gauges, panels, scenery, etc. as well.All this fancy new stuff, a "fresnel ramp", a "bump map"; god only knows what they do, what to do with them, or how to make one, and in the end, a good set of textures by Corey Ford from Posky or Ben Jones from iDFG could make anything I've seen so far in FSX look like kindergarten fingerpainting.I'd ask if anyone could tell me what's going on with these textures, and how to do repaints, but frankly I don't give a rip. Too old and grumpy I guess. :)Sorry folks, hasn't been a good day...Jim

What kind of video card do you guys have?

>What kind of video card do you guys have?GeForce 6800.

Most 3D apps have good tut's with 'em look in the help files that come with your app of choice and I am sure you will find what a ramp is used for, what a bump map is and how to use it as well, what a normal map is etc. All of the above have been used for years in the 3D world. It's just that FS has untill now has not used most of the visual "tricks of the trade" that many other "games" have used for several years. And just to make things more interesting Direct X 10 should allow things like animated displacement mapping and other goodies to be done in real time provided of course the rendering engine has the code in it to do things like displacement mapping and animate Displacement mapping in real time as well. So yup there will be things for you to learn but at least we don't have to create the code that does it all in real time. Dan Martin Team Flight Ontario

*Forlorn bump*

My textures on my default aircraft are really blurry as well. However 3rd party add on aircraft look fine so the problem is not a crisis but kind of curious what is causing it. I have an ATI Radeon 9800XT 256 video card so its not card specific it seems.

Try setting "Global texture resolution" in the "Graphics" menu to the max.Korber

Actually you may have better luck by turning that slider down rather than up. The problem is likely that the video card is out of memory so lower resolution aircraft textures are being used. FSX uses a lot of video memory if you turn lots of stuff up.Also make sure Anisotropic filtering is on.

I cranked the "Global texture resolution" slider and it fixed my blurry aircraft textures without much of a hit in performance. The results might be video card specific. I have an ATI Radeon 9800XT with 256mb of RAM. The 256mb of video ram on the card might help here.

"Global texture resolution" slider sets the max texture resolution for all sim objects. Aircraft textures are 1024x1024. Because a/c are viewed in external and VC views very close in comparison to every other object you see in the sim (like buildings), setting this slider to anything lower than max will make a/c textures look blurry. 512x512 or 256x256 is acceptable for scenery but not for a/c external or vc views. If the aircraft texture has no mips then it is always displayed in the max resolution, thats why some imported add-on a/c look sharp with the slider in the middle. Having this slider in a middle setting (usually by default after installation) makes a/c look blurry and most people try to fix this by adjusting the a/c detail settings to max but a/c still look blurry. It would be better if we could have separete max texture resolution sliders for a/c and scenery. This slider to max produces no noticeable fps hit to my mid range pc (P4 2.53, ATI 9800pro 128mb, 1.5G ram).Korber

Korber -I spend a fair amount of time reading these forums and have tried numerous suggestions most of which didn't seem to do much. This post is an exception. Moving this slider to max has dramatically improved the look of sim in general and the aircraft---including and especially the default a/c! Thank you!!Scott

Korber, thanks for that explanation on Global texture resolution. Always wondered what that actually did. That makes sense, I'll give it a try.BTW, someone was asking about the graphics card - Well, admittedly mine's junk, a Nvidia MX4000, 128 MB. It was actually an "upgrade" from the geForce 3, 64 MB I installed when I built the machine in about 2002 (I think the geForce3 was actually a better card if it would have had more memory). Athlon XP 1900+, 512 MB, RAID 0. It was a real animal when I first built it (remember the low-drag, round IDE cables? Annodized aluminum gamer's PC case? CPU heatsink & fan adequate for a Mazda? Yeah baby!!!).I stumbled across FS2002 when I was looking for something to throw at it that'd work it a little (been an FS addict ever since, incidentally). It handled everything FS2002 could muster without breaking a sweat, struggled a bit with FS9 (especially the payware add-ons), but I'm afraid it's gonna be woefully inadequate for FSX.The plan is to blow this year's income tax refund on a completely new, razzu, state of the art, spare no expense, fire breathin', FSX crunchin' monster that'll hopefully hold me for another few years. Of course that'll be around April of next year, so I'll probably need to replace that MX4000 in the interim. What would everyone recommend? Kinda partial to Nvidia, but maybe I'm living in the past? Don't mind spending a few bucks, but at the same time I'm not really interested in the latest & greatest, just adequate will do for now.Thanks,Jim

>The textures appeared in the sim, but>the mapping was all messed up (the fuselage textures appeared>on the bottoms of the wings among other things). How that>happens is beyond me, although it doesn't take much.Jim, a point to keep in mind when trying to convert .DDS textures to any other format: DDS textures are 'inverted...' To use them in any other format you'll need to 'flip vertically' before saving... ;)That's why "...the fuselage textures appeared on the bottoms of the wings..."

>I'd ask if anyone could tell me what's going on with these textures, and how>to do repaints, but frankly I don't give a rip.(He said, secretly hoping someone in the know would come along and explain... That attitude lasted about 30 seconds, didn't it ;) )Thanks Bill, that makes complete sense, I'll give it a try. Cool, should be able to add some color to the CRJ now, knowing that little tidbit.And so the transition begins...Jim