The importance of MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE

[Ted Striker 338]

Great discovery Ray. This should be put in the P3D Tips and Tricks Forum after the comments fade.

Ted

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

7 minutes ago, Ted Striker said:

Great discovery Ray. This should be put in the P3D Tips and Tricks Forum after the comments fade.

Ted

I’ll do that Ted but I assumed everyone bar me knew this tweak. 😁

[Sparkrite 188]

11 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ll do that Ted but I assumed everyone bar me knew this tweak. 😁

To be fair Ray, you might not be far wrong....😁

I've been using it for yonks.

[tamba765 54]

     I'm holding off building a new computer until Samsung releases nvme's that are compatible with PCI Express gen 5. I've had a new 3090ti sitting in its factory sealed box for a year and I'm still waiting. I'm going to get the latest hardware when I build the new machine and will probably get a new GPU when Nvidia comes out with the next series. The 3090ti should be OK till then. I don't know why Samsung is so late to the party. Enjoy your new setup.

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

@tamba765, I bought the Crucial T700 4TB Gen5 NVMe M.2 SSD. Gen5 compatible.

Why wait when one is available now?

55 minutes ago, Sparkrite said:

To be fair Ray, you might not be far wrong....😁

We’ll know when more people respond. Many have moved to the other sim but with EA and a card capable of doing it justice v5 has never looked better.

[tamba765 54]

Well, I've read the reviews on the Crucial nvme and although most are positive, several users have said it failed early on. I suppose this could happen with any drive though. I'm planning on two 2 TB drives instead of one 4TB. If I decide to have 2 sims, including that other one from another company on my machine, I can keep them totally separated. I know many simmers do it all on one drive, but I prefer 2. I'll just wait for Samsung, since I also like the Samsung Magician tool.

[Rogen 1,092]

This is not a new setting, in fact there have been many threads regarding just this setting and it surprises me so many P3D users fail to take advantage of the setting simply because it is not exposed in the UI, although yes I do agree exposure in the UI would be the place for it given the large effect it has.

My notes regarding the setting.

On 9/1/2023 at 12:46 PM, Rogen said:

// MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE
// Rob Ainscough's vid showing the values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vFgfBSSXeE
// The information comes from beta testing discussion notes:
// There's no cap on this value itself because it's intended as a limit.
// If you want textures requesting aggressively, you can set it something very high like 1000000.000000
// Units are memory allocation units (not distance).
// There are two other checks that must pass before textures are requested:
// 1) Object is within the far clip distance. This varies by altitude.
// 2) Object pixel size at a given distance passes min radius check. This we made configurable in 4.3 using RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS (default is 2.0px).

RS_MIN_OBJECT_PIXEL_RADIUS=1.000000

//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=1000.000000  // default value, 1000000.000000 is max I've tested.
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=32000.000000
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=64000.000000
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=128000.000000
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=180000.000000
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=320000.000000
//MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=640000.000000
MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE=1000000.000000

Here's a September 2023 post showing the setting (in the spoiler) as well as other useful settings.

Cheers

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

15 minutes ago, Rogen said:

This is not a new setting, in fact there have been many threads regarding just this setting and it surprises me so many P3D users fail to take advantage of the setting simply because it is not exposed in the UI, although yes I do agree exposure in the UI would be the place for it given the large effect it has.

I never spotted the many discussions because as far as I know I didn’t have a problem that needed resolving. I assumed the black buildings were caused by other factors.

It’s only when I experienced it with a 4090 I entered a suitable phrase into a search engine and it returned a few posts but many were a few years old. The key one was linked to a post by Rob Ainscough giving the solution. I’ll try the highest setting tomorrow.

Given its criticality it’s strange LM don’t include it in the interface.

[Ted Striker 338]

5 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

I’ll do that Ted but I assumed everyone bar me knew this tweak.

If I knew it once, my old brain cells forgot it.  Like you, I figured the issue was just my old system. I'm looking forward to trying this after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Ted

[verbal 106]

I've used this tweak ever since going from v4.5 to v5.2 and now onto v5.4.

I remember getting the annoying black buildings A LOT, especially at Aerosoft EGGL and Orbx YBBN, did some googling and came across the tweak now buried somewhere in these very forums. Figured it was something that was well known and I was just late to the party. 

*EDIT* - it may have even been this post by @G-RFRY back in 2021:

 

 

 

Edited November 21, 2023 by verbal

[Stefti 16]

Like someone once landed  in a new island only to discover a new world....

Thank you

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

I set a value of 1000000.000000 for this parameter and it had unintended consequences. I use Pollypot GIT for assigning commands to my GoFlight hardware.

It couldn't load the aircraft profile. It reverted to a generic model which is useless. Reverting to 320000.000000 fixed the problem.

Don't ask me why a texture setting should affect a third party program but it did. Any SimConnect experts out there?

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

A flight from Boston to FSDT Chicago O’Hare in the Xtreme Prototypes Lear25 this afternoon. 320000.000000 was the highest stable value to ensure correct operation of my GoFlight software.

Poor weather on approach with a cloud base of 800ft. The runway textures were greyed out when I broke through the cloud but were drawn before the landing. The terminal buildings were too far away to check if they were drawn.

I’m going to have to accept this is the best I’ll get. Rob Ainscough doesn’t post here any longer but I have his email address. I’ll ask him for his thoughts.

[CO2Neutral 278]

To eliminate flickering textures (z-fighting) another very important setting for cameras and/or ChasePlane camera configs is the NearClipOverride value in the CAMERAS.CFG ... value 4.0 to 5.0 will completely eliminate the issue.  However only to be set with external cameras NOT VC or Cockpit cameras.

EDIT: completely agree that all these settings (very important ones) should be made available via the UI and include a "reset" button to bring them back to default values in case users get overwhelm with changes they've made.

Edited November 21, 2023 by CO2Neutral

[Ray Proudfoot 8,980]

I discovered the problem with GIT with a very high value set in MAX_TEXTURE_REQUEST_DISTANCE.

I use SimStarterNG to start other programs and you can set the AM for each. I had only allocated two VPs to GIT. Clearly not enough because after setting it to use all the problem was resolved.