Not trying to be offensive...but I am curious why when I run X-Plane my textures remains clear and gradually fads with distances (no really obvious blurries or texture detail swaping). But under FSX, I get significant blurries and very obvious texture swapping.I see several posts saying that nobody has the hardware to run without some blurries, but that doesn't really explain why my X-Plane can work well with a very good terrain mesh and texture details and no blurries and with many scenery objects?So I'm a little confused? What graphically is in FSX that isn't in X-plane that might be causing the blurry problem?Please don't take this in the wrong way, this is NOT a debate about FSX vs. X-plane -- I enjoy both, just curious why one doesn't have a problem with texture and the other does?Robin.

>So I'm a little confused? What graphically is in FSX that>isn't in X-plane that might be causing the blurry problem?Only about 1000x more detail is all; hardly worth mentioning... :-roll

Yeah what he said...Xplane is more about flight dynamics and stuff, while FSX is about that and eye candy hehe

>Not trying to be offensive...but I am curious why when I run>X-Plane my textures remains clear and gradually fads with>distances (no really obvious blurries or texture detail>swaping). But under FSX, I get significant blurries and very>obvious texture swapping.I think the main reason is that X-Plane probably does not use mipmaps, certainly it does not use dynamic LOD for terrain geometry (although its engine is capable of, and will probably use it, in the next version).The downside is that X-Plane seems to require more memory and processing power: infact its max visibility is restricted to 25 miles.Marco

>>So I'm a little confused? What graphically is in FSX that>>isn't in X-plane that might be causing the blurry problem?>>Only about 1000x more detail is all; hardly worth>mentioning... :-roll Ever tried X-Plane with the World scenery? :-rollYou're comment seems very uninformed. Out of the box X-plane has a full SRTM mesh (entire world not just some area's) and lots of road / city data (as long as its freely available like the USGS stuff) FS-X's bonuses are Navtec roads, handmade scenery, autogen and AI traffic.With freeware you can add autogen forrest and city data into X-plane. Lots of standard FS9 / FS-X standard scenery can be converted by hand and get a 2nd live in X-plane. So in the end they seem to be pretty evenly matched in detail. The X-plane rendering engine has no blurry problem and because of its working principle X-plane has to do this with at least 20 fps (which it manages). Its still comparing Apples ;-) to Oranges but its amazing that a few guys with Power Macs can compete with the Aces team on some specific FS features.

Could you be more specific? I assume you use both regularly?I use both and from an graphical point of view (eye candy) I'm never distracted or stuttering with texture detail swapping like I am in FSX.Thank you, Robin.

But the eye candy in XPlane doesn't stutter nor does it seem to be victim to very distracting texture swapping as in FSX? It seems that one sim engine handles textures very well while the other doesn't. Perhaps Ace's can learn something from the XPlane crew. Maybe Ace's realize it can be done, but are locked into a compatibility design?AvioApp is a great enhancement to XPlane similar to WideFS for FS.Where did you get the 25mi limit?? I don't see that limitation in any of the configuration settings?XPlane is FAA certified so the flight dynamics can't be that far off base.Anyway, I'm just curious why XPlane doesn't have any texture swapping issues (blurries) like FSX.Thank you, Robin.

That's true.. FSX includes several different low resolution versions (mipmaps) of each textures. Not sure how many FSX uses but it's a lot. The highest is 1024 pixels, the next 512, the next 256, 128 etc. The idea is that textures far away are displayed in their low resolution version, and the sim gradually switches to the 256px version, then 512px, and finally 1024 version close up. This is meant to spare video memory, as drawing high resolution 1024 px textures all the way to the horizon would require a lot of RAM.The problem is that as CPU resources are eaten up by other things like AI, VC's, Autogen, reflective water etc., the engine doesn't have time keep switching between the different mipmaps in time. So, it simply doesn't switch textures, and you end up with the low resolution versions even close up.In all honesty, I'm not sure how necessary this is with today's hardware. Modern videocards have 256MB of RAM, and 512MB or even more is common these days. Texture compression allows one 1024px texture to fit in under 1MB of memory and the landscape doesn't use *that* many unique textures, making heavy use of repeating tiles.Including each miplevel into the system is, IMO a bit overkill. Forcing the engine to first load 512px textures, then a few seconds later load the entire 1024px texture seems a bit pointless to me. Maybe a better approach would have been to display 1024 textures, quite far out, then do some kind of alpha/trilinear blend with e.g. 256px textures several mles from the aircraft, and keep drawing those to the horizon line (or have another smooth blend with 128 or 64px textures). This would mean less texture switching for the engine, and everything would still fit nicely in VRAM. If the engine "falls behind", this would happen so far from the viewer, that there'd still be plenty of time to load the texture before it becomes noticable. It should be pointed out that videocards can do mipmapping "on the fly" (to prevent texture shimmering) if you upload a 1024 texture to the card, saving the 3d engine (and thuse the CPU) from having to do these calculations.

>Where did you get the 25mi limit?? I don't see that>limitation in any of the configuration settings?It's in the weather settings menu. Max visibility is 25 miles.Marco

I completely agree with you. My 8800GTX comes with 768MB video RAM (DDR3) -- the next generation cards will be 1GB and higher of DDR4 video RAM. With 64bit OS becoming more common along with 4GB or more of main RAM it seems like FSX is missing the current market and trying to produce both great eye candy that will run on lowest common denominator -- I think this is unrealistic and perhaps what has hurt FSX or atleast hurt the folks who get the current hardware.Is the texture swapping approach being retained in FSX for purpose of backwards compatibility? -- for the 3rd party vendors? If so, that really isn't helping the primary source of revenue - aka the customers buying FSX. Maybe great for 3rd party vendors, but without customers there is no 3rd party vendor.There are plenty of techniques to apply to a texture to make it appear less or more detailed without having to resort to swapping them in and out. Disk I/O alone will kill this process regardless of how much you try to predict or load ahead -- probably explains why view switching can result is 2-7 seconds of more texture swapping -- and rotate of view another 2-7 seconds.I really hope Aces rethink FSX DX10 - texture swapping approach has just gotta go.Robin.

With all the developer resources spent optimizing the system, and all the CPU cycles and harrdrive "bandwidth" spent on the user's PC to decode it, maybe a more "brute force" approach would indeed be more efficent. Just cram the textures into VRAM. Low-end users can switch to 5m textures, instead of selecting 1m textures and only seeing 10m because their slower systems can't keep up. This would indeed probably break most FS9 scenery addons, but maybe it's time to move on? Most of them don't work anyway for other reasons (such as recent findings about the earth being round rather than flat and including things such as "poles").

Let's getone thing straight - the normal DVD X-plane set is NOT FAA certified, you have to buy the more $$$ one through PFC if yout want that. The standard X-plane that'd you buy 8.1 or whatever they have is NOT FAA certified....The "eye candy" in x-plane is not as extensive as FSX's.

>>Where did you get the 25mi limit?? I don't see that>>limitation in any of the configuration settings?>>It's in the weather settings menu. Max visibility is 25>miles.>>Marco>That slider says sm so I guess it means seamile.25 sm is about 27 mi or 46 kmI regulary set MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS in FS9 to about 33 km (needs to be set in fs9.cfg by hand). Its more realistic looking (yes I'm from Europe how did you guess ;) ). The whole unlimited visibility in FS9 / FSX is a bit puzzeling though. Where on earth do we get such a perfect view.It might be beter to make a limited visibilty the standard setting in FS (lets say we set it arround 40 km). Experienced user can always increase this number, first timers get a beter frame rate without the need of tweaking.

>That slider says sm so I guess it means seamile.>>25 sm is about 27 mi or 46 kmI think it's statute mile, so equals about 40 km.>I regulary set MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS in FS9 to about 33 km (needs>to be set in fs9.cfg by hand). Its more realistic looking (yes>I'm from Europe how did you guess ;) ). The whole unlimited>visibility in FS9 / FSX is a bit puzzeling though. Where on>earth do we get such a perfect view.Totally agree, I used to set it at 29 miles for perf reasons, otherwise I'd put it at 59 miles (FS9 had visibility shifts at 30 and 60 miles).I believe though 25 miles are too little, especially at high altitude. IMHO X-Plane should increase max vis to 50-60 miles at least.Marco

>I regulary set MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS in FS9 to about 33 km (needs>to be set in fs9.cfg by hand). Its more realistic looking (yes>I'm from Europe how did you guess ;) ). Ok, you get the prize for being the first person to make me laugh this morning. :D