Shimmering airports

[spitzer 19]

Hello all, 

I have shimmering problem with many custom airports and buildings. I think this problem is related to manufactures technic. Some scenery developer is caring about it some is not. So is there any setting at nvidia control panel to reduce these annoying shimmerings? 

[JYW 2,980]

1 hour ago, spitzer said:

Hello all, 

I have shimmering problem with many custom airports and buildings. I think this problem is related to manufactures technic. Some scenery developer is caring about it some is not. So is there any setting at nvidia control panel to reduce these annoying shimmerings? 

Setting AF (Anisotropic filtering) to 16x can help. (This can be done in Nvidia Control Panel, or in MSFS settings - I prefer it set ON in Nvidia Control Panel, and OFF in MSFS.

Setting Texture Supersampling in MSFS to 6x6 also helps - but with some performance hit.

But I agree - some airports just seem to shimmer more than others, even with higher AA/AF settings.

[cmpbellsjc 2,961]

I wonder if this is due to problems back in the FSX days of some developers not including mip maps with their airport textures. I remember Aerosoft back then was one of the worst. Every airport I bought from them in those days, I’d have to check each texture to see if it was mipped and if it wasn’t, I’d have to add mip maps myself. 

Used to be really annoying to spend $30 or so on an airport then spend another hour fixing the textures.

[yanfeng12342000 132]

1 hour ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I wonder if this is due to problems back in the FSX days of some developers not including mip maps with their airport textures. I remember Aerosoft back then was one of the worst. Every airport I bought from them in those days, I’d have to check each texture to see if it was mipped and if it wasn’t, I’d have to add mip maps myself. 

Used to be really annoying to spend $30 or so on an airport then spend another hour fixing the textures.

How do you fix them?

[shamrockflyer 647]

1 hour ago, cmpbellsjc said:

I wonder if this is due to problems back in the FSX days of some developers not including mip maps with their airport textures. I remember Aerosoft back then was one of the worst. Every airport I bought from them in those days, I’d have to check each texture to see if it was mipped and if it wasn’t, I’d have to add mip maps myself. 

Used to be really annoying to spend $30 or so on an airport then spend another hour fixing the textures.

What compression do texture files need to be saved at in MSFS? I have had a few issues editing some textures and trying to get them to show in MSFS, but they just don't exist as textures and just show up as "ghost" textures.

Edited June 8, 2022 by shamrockflyer

[BIGSKY 316]

I have shimmering problem with many custom airports and buildings. I think this problem is related to manufactures technic."

I agree,look at my specs,using 1080P doesn't help,For example,Flytampa Boston,no issue, A_A SCENERIES VTBS Bangkok,massive shimmering on runways.I have been pulling my hair out messing with settings,have everything maxed out in NCP,and ultra settings in sim,MS needs to fix what they broke,to keep the Xbox people happy......

[cmpbellsjc 2,961]

1 hour ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

How do you fix them?

Open the textures in an editor and re-save them with bit maps.

[cmpbellsjc 2,961]

56 minutes ago, shamrockflyer said:

What compression do texture files need to be saved at in MSFS? I have had a few issues editing some textures and trying to get them to show in MSFS, but they just don't exist as textures and just show up as "ghost" textures.

Back then we usually used DXT3 or DXT5. I don’t have MSFS yet so I don’t know the file structure, but if the airport is saved in the Community folder, I’d assume there would be two folders for an airport, a scenery folder containing bgls and a texture folder containing all the textures that need to be worked on. But, since I don’t have MSFS, I don’t know if that type of file structure still exists. That being said, the textures for the airport must be stored somewhere and editing then and re-saving as the same file name and compression should work I’d imagine.

[CFIJose 5,485]

9 minutes ago, cmpbellsjc said:

Open the textures in an editor and re-save them with bit maps.

LOL. This brings back nightmares.

 

1 hour ago, yanfeng12342000 said:

How do you fix them?

Try a different nVidia driver. Sometimes it's as simple as that.

[cmpbellsjc 2,961]

3 hours ago, DJJose said:

LOL. This brings back nightmares.

Yeah me too. I remember after FS-GS did my set up I called them one day complaining about shimmering textures and that’s when Michael taught me about the mip mapping trick. Fortunately it solved the issues and gained me a lot of performance, as well as giving me deeper knowledge of how that stuff works. The down side was that as many addon airports that I owned, I spent quite a lot of time fixing the ones that were like that, as well as downsizing overly large textures and converting huge 32 bit ones.

Don’t miss those days.