FSX-SE Blurry Textures

[Alex Miles 2]

Hi, in the last few months I have started to experience blurry ground textures when flying into most airports, this didn't use to be a problem until I installed rex 4 textures direct, I have played around with the settings and fsx cfg but no improvement, I am using FSX:SE with addons like Aerosoft A320, PMDG NGX and others and using asn as a weather enngine, I also use UK2000 scenerys. My specs are AMD A8 9600 3.4GHZ, Nvidia GT1030 2GB, 16GB 2400MHZ, 1TB HDD. I know my specs aren't brilliant but I play at quite low settings and at a frame rate I am happy with - average about 16-20, anybody have any ideas?

[scianoir 610]

Hi Alex,

As this started after you installed Rex Textures Direct, have you tried uninstalling it to see if that resolves your problem? I don’t have that Rex product myself but I assume it comes with a facility to backup and restore the textures it replaces. If Rex Textures proves to be the issue then it may be worth seeking advice from them as they provide excellent product support.
If Rex Textures does not prove to be the cause then you will need to look elsewhere. I would suggest start by looking at your system settings and I would recommend going through the Avsim FSX Configuration Guide and following the excellent advice it contains, if you nave not already done that. As you say, your specs seem reasonable for running FSX and, in fact, are not dissimilar to mine. However the blurry ground on approach does suggest slow loading of textures for some reason.

Bill

[stans 702]

Blurry textures are an indicator that your computer cannot render the textures fast enough.  My guess is that the REX textures are 1024 x 1024 or 2048 x 2048 and your computer simply cannot render the larger size textures.  You can try further reducing scenery settings, if that does not work, uninstall the REX textures.

[Alex Miles 2]

Ok thanks I have uninstalled REX and will test later today, just wondering, in my FSX CFG , I have TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024 so should I turn it down to 512 or doesn't this effect it?

[scianoir 610]

It shouldn’t really be necessary to turn it down to 512 - with your system you should be able to run FSX at 1024 without problems. A setting of 512 will produce a discernible reduction in the quality of cockpit visuals compared to 1024, so you are best not doing that if you can avoid it. Sometimes you find that an addon might have increased the TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD to 2048 or even 4096 without you even being aware of it so it is always worth checking that, as you have already done! Let us know how you get on when you retest without the Rex textures.

Bill

[stans 702]

Scianoir is correct, at 512 you end up with blurry aircraft and virtual cockpit textures.

[Alex Miles 2]

Thanks all for the help so far, I'll keep it on 1024, I saw a small improvement removing rex but still witnessing blurries around the London area, would it help tweaking the fiber_frame_time_fraction setting in the cfg to devote more time to loading scenery? It's currently on 0.33, and i wouldn't mind too much losing one or two frames to reduce blurries.

Edited June 18, 2020 by Alex Miles
Add more detailed information

[scianoir 610]

1 hour ago, Alex Miles said:

would it help tweaking the fiber_frame_time_fraction setting in the cfg

Alex, one of the best pieces of advice (I think it came from the late Jim Young) I ever had with respect to FSX was to keep tweaks to a minimum and ideally use nothing except the highmemfix, which I think you don't need as it has already been incorporated into FSX:SE as far as I know.

I guess you could alter the fibre frame rate fraction just to see if it helps although, for what its worth, mine also reads 33 and I don't have problems but, before you tweak anything, I would again suggest going step by step through the Avsim FSX Configuration Guide to ensure that your system is set up to conform with the advice it gives. It doesn't take too long and it is time well spent!

Bill

[Alex Miles 2]

46 minutes ago, scianoir said:

Alex, one of the best pieces of advice (I think it came from the late Jim Young) I ever had with respect to FSX was to keep tweaks to a minimum and ideally use nothing except the highmemfix, which I think you don't need as it has already been incorporated into FSX:SE as far as I know.

I guess you could alter the fibre frame rate fraction just to see if it helps although, for what its worth, mine also reads 33 and I don't have problems but, before you tweak anything, I would again suggest going step by step through the Avsim FSX Configuration Guide to ensure that your system is set up to conform with the advice it gives. It doesn't take too long and it is time well spent!

Bill

Thanks Bill, I did a flight this morning and had no major blurries in the sim which was good, it seems to only be worse at airports like Gatwick but looks like uninstalling rex helped more than I thought it did. I agree with what you said about not applying many tweaks, I only have the highmemfix and afffinitymask=14 which active sky put in automatically. Thanks for all your help, if I see many more blurries I'll play around with the fiber frame but I'm happy with how my sim is for now, thanks again.

[scianoir 610]

You’re welcome - glad things have improved!

Bill

[SteveW 1,792]

3 hours ago, Alex Miles said:

afffinitymask=14 which active sky put in automatically

Only four cores and one disabled, 14 = binary 1110 which shows the simulator using cores 3,2,1 and Active Sky would be on core zero (rightmost binary digit 0). The reason for that is to avoid share core zero with AS. FSX can have blurriness when not using core zero, depending on systems.

Alternatively you can share the last two cores 3,2 with AS and FSX and allow FSX to use 3,2,1,0. Two cores should be plenty for AS.

So you might be able to improve that with no Affinity Mask setting in FSX cfg so that FSX uses all four cores including core zero but you would apply a mask to Active sky 1100 binary = 12 decimal by starting AS with a .BAT file. The BAT file can be left on the desktop or a shortcut dragged from it.

AS.BAT content will look something like:

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "AS" /affinity 12 "C:\Program Files (x86)\HiFi\AS_FSX\AS.exe"

That way you might be able to squeeze a little more out of the four cores. It's something worth trying. When testing out this you can use Task Manager details tab and look at AS after starting it up. More help with .BAT files here:

http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=632

There I show various methods. Alternatives to .BAT are available but that's an easy approach.

[Alex Miles 2]

On 6/18/2020 at 5:31 PM, SteveW said:

Only four cores and one disabled, 14 = binary 1110 which shows the simulator using cores 3,2,1 and Active Sky would be on core zero (rightmost binary digit 0). The reason for that is to avoid share core zero with AS. FSX can have blurriness when not using core zero, depending on systems.

Alternatively you can share the last two cores 3,2 with AS and FSX and allow FSX to use 3,2,1,0. Two cores should be plenty for AS.

So you might be able to improve that with no Affinity Mask setting in FSX cfg so that FSX uses all four cores including core zero but you would apply a mask to Active sky 1100 binary = 12 decimal by starting AS with a .BAT file. The BAT file can be left on the desktop or a shortcut dragged from it.

AS.BAT content will look something like:

 

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c start "AS" /affinity 12 "C:\Program Files (x86)\HiFi\AS_FSX\AS.exe"

 

That way you might be able to squeeze a little more out of the four cores. It's something worth trying. When testing out this you can use Task Manager details tab and look at AS after starting it up. More help with .BAT files here:

http://www.codelegend.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=632

There I show various methods. Alternatives to .BAT are available but that's an easy approach.

Thanks for the idea, I gave this a go today however I have got Active Sky Next through steam so I had to modify the route of the file and the name but I couldn't get it to work as it is more just a shortcut to steam to open it, do you have any ideas on how this can be fixed or if it can't work in this circumstance, thanks.

[SteveW 1,792]

You could try Process Lasso, that would identify the processes of AS and can move them to the later cores..

[Kronovan 14]

On 6/20/2020 at 7:27 AM, Alex Miles said:

...I have got Active Sky Next through steam so I had to modify the route of the file and the name but I couldn't get it to work as it is more just a shortcut to steam to open it, do you have any ideas on how this can be fixed or if it can't work in this circumstance, thanks.

Note: you can launch the Steam version of Active Sky Next from a shortcut or batch file. When you start Active Sky Next from the Steam-Tools menu, you're really just doing the equivalent of starting a shortcut. ASN is typically installed to steam under the following folders: \Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\DLC\364340\ . The actual ASN file is named ASNext.exe. So to do what Steve is suggesting you'd just replace the "\Program Files (x86)\HiFi\AS_FSX\AS.exe" part of that command line with: "\Steam\steamapps\common\FSX\DLC\364340\ASNext.exe"  . Of course if the drive you have Steam installed to is different than C:, you'd need to change that as well.

[Alex Miles 2]

Ok thanks, I tried the suggestion with the affinity only on asn but somehow that didn't change anything, might of even made it worse, thanks anyway though. I don't really understand whats going wrong though, I never had this issue before and now my sim is struggling, would it be worth trying P3D or upgrading something on my PC which could be a difficult task at this time?