A Strange Marriage of RTM and SP1

[Guest Werd]

Interesting... I was messing around with few versions of autogen.bgl at the time trying to get back the "alpha-faded" rtm autogen. What about your method? Your rtm autogen takes a lot of FPS but what does he look like?

[Guest jase439]

Having never spent much time with RTM until now, I don't really know what the autogen USED to look like, so I can't answer that definitively. My guess is that if you replaced autogen.bgl and propdefs/propautogen.xml with the RTM equivalent (in addition to my above changes) you could probably get the original look back.I'll take some screen shots and you can decide.

[PhilTaylor 45]

This is a really bad idea, like running with scissors. Do not do this unless you want no support since it is going to leave you in territory unsupported by MS or any 3rd party.

[Guest jase439]

Well, given the overwhelming support we've received for this problem from Microsoft, we return to our regularly scheduled program "Running With Scissors":Here are the screenies:EDIT: Images far exceed our max width of 1024 pixels.

[Guest jase439]

So...anyway, there are still some blurries - so it remains a less-than-perfect solution - but if I replicated these exact shots in SP1 or SP2, you'd be reaching for 3" thick glasses.The frame rates are very acceptable also. Enabling even sparse autogen, however, will cut performance in half. This is not unexpected, however. Personally, I find I only miss autogen on those low-altitude VFR flights where depth perception is key. The GEX textures are really good and make up for alot of that "autogen look" when you're flying above 10K.

[Guest Werd]

Looks like sp1 autogen, thanks for screens.

[Guest jase439]

Yeah, it looked like the same autogen I've always known.If you decide to try this experiment, try changing out autogen.bgl and propdefs/propautogen.xml (and maybe terrain.cfg?) and see if you can't get back that alpha-blended effect.

[PhilTaylor 45]

This is not a solution, this is a franken-sim. And given it is "less-than-perfect" then performing such franken-surgery is that much more of a bad idea. You have no idea what is going to work and what is not, there could be a disaster just waiting to happen. And you will not know until it does strike, and then no one will be able to help you.I repeat a strong recommendation against doing any sort of muddling versions together like this for several reasons:1)unsupported territory from both an MS and a 3rd party perspective2)likelihood of errors in random scenarios3)likelihood of uninstall/repair issues, since I doubt the uninstallers will be able to properly cope with this version muddling. If #3 is true,the only way to undo this is to delete the folder, use a registry cleaner, find all the "local user" files and delete those, and start over. So you buy yourself a lot of trouble for a "less-than-perfect" solution....hmmmmm...some things are best not done even if you can.

[Guest jase439]

It's not clear to me why you're so bent on naysaying ideas and solutions from the community when Microsoft has, to date, been unwilling/unable to provide one and shows no intention of providing one. Your audience has been left to fend for themselves on this front, so why not allow us to engage in that dialogue. Every 3rd party add-on modifies content of the simulator. Every installation is a Frankensim as soon as you molest any part of the original MS-blessed files. FSUIPC, ASX, GEX, UTX - modified air and mdl files: all poke and prod at the static or runtime environment of the simulator. Honestly, could there be a greater "hack" than FSUIPC? Why are we not blasting it for its hackery? Sorry to untint your rosy glasses, but this whole community is based on Frankensim. Very little aligns with the "Microsoft published and approved" way of doing things.While I am first to concede this is not the "perfect" solution to the blurries (there probably isn't one), so far it has proven to be orders of magnitude more effective than any config file mojo in the context of everything else I've tried. I'm not saying do this. I'm not saying don't do this. I'm saying this is what I did and it was reasonably effective for me: maybe it could be for others also. I've chosen to share that information with others.Anyway, yes, it goes without saying: please backup your SP1 files in the above list if you decide to try this. If you want to run the uninstaller for SP1, you will need to restore your original files or the installer will choke.

[Guest wjotten]

>This is a really bad idea, like running with scissors. >>Do not do this unless you want no support since it is going to>leave you in territory unsupported by MS or any 3rd party.Gosh Phil, even a full install of Acceleration with SP2 leaves one in territory unsupported by MS doesn't it? Where did I hear "no more work on FSX, there will be no further fixes for it" from? (Not a verbatim quote, but isn't that the essence of it?)I'm NOT having problems with Acceleration or SP2 by the way...I think encouraging people to try to fix FSX would be good. What's the worst that could happen? Having to do a 'clean install'? Heck, that's what's recommended prior to an install of Acceleration/SP2 anyhow!bill

[PhilTaylor 45]

You mischaracterize my contribution, as well as how FSX extensibility works.When there *is* a real solution, one that fixes something without danger - that I do support and promote.When there is something that is simply dangerous, with marginal benefit - that I will stand up and state is not a good solution.

[beatle 0]

<Actually, FSUIPC for FSX uses almost entirely documented API calls (ie SimConnect). There are only a couple of functions within FSUIPC that currently have to resort to "hacks", everything else is done via the SimConnect API.

[Guest Beetle]

jase-you should be commended for taking a problem that MS has decided to not address (i.e. blurries caused by the changes made to the rendering engine between RTM and SP1) and looking for a solution, instead of what everyone else who has been cursed with blurry ground textures usually does. for the most part, they either (a) give up and quit simming or revert to FS9, or (:( complain loudly on the message boards and generally denigrate the efforts of the ACES staff. it appears you "did your homework" and provided a clear set of instructions for this hack.what baffles me is the strong negative sentiment coming from MS regarding trying out your fix. i mean, what is the worst that could happen- an uninstall and reinstall? manually uninstalling programs (deleting files and folders, deleting registry keys) is an order of magnitude easier than some of the tweaks and tricks one must perform on FSX in order to get it to run optimally. one glance at fsinsider.com and the myriad tweaks listed there would bear this out, not to mention the dozens of user-suggested tweaks proposed on this forum.aces' response smells more like "pride of ownership" more than anything else and reminds me of my own reation when (as product manager of a software application) i fielded questions about tweaking that application to run better in certain situations and environments. i remember saying something to the effect that "tweaking this app will result in the termination of support and will most likely cause unexpected and unwanted results." but our testing team tweaked the app countless times in the lab and when they did create a so-called "showstopper", uninstalling and reinstalling worked with no big deal.i applaud anyone who, on their own time and own nickel, creates something to better the sim. some folks are successful, some are not. but the effort is worth the praise. i would suspect that MS would have taken the same stance with Christian Buchner (author of TileProxy) when he began his project but am certainly glad they did not (maybe Christian ignored them) because he created one of the greatest add-ons i have ever seen for a MSFS.ACES' tone in response to your posts carries with it the connotation of snickering and derision ("running with scissors"; "franken-sim") and this belittles your efforts. i hope you are not discouraged by it.

[Guest jase439]

It does indeed use SimConnect today, but until FSX it was all hard-fought reverse engineering of weather.dll and friends - poking and prodding at bits in memory. I'd argue that SimConnect exists BECAUSE of of the blood sweat by Pete Dowson not the other way around. No doubt, if there weren't so many third party products that relied on FSUIPC, Pete would be out in the snow reading tea leaves again (and all of us with him).

[PhilTaylor 45]

This is more than tweaks of files within a version, this is the wholesale commingling of files from two versions.So the two are not comparable. Tweaking the files of a particular version is nowhere near as problematic and when limited to properly formatted data files is almost always ok. The only warning I remember giving during the wholesale tweaking of textures and other files before SP1 was that SP1 would require clean files for install.Mixing and matching files between two versions - who knows what is going to happen? We the author of the program certainly do not. Has this been fully tested in all basic and advanced FSX scenarios? Are there hidden dependencies in any scenarios? How about behavior across a representative set of add-ons? Will all add-ons even recognize this version correctly since some of them have conditional code? It is almost guaranteed that the uninstallers wont work, but what is their actual behavior? Does repair work?There are a lot of questions about anything like this; that is just a start. This is certainly something we cannot recommend since in general mixing and matching files from two different versions is going to cause some sort of trouble, from mild to outright disaster. That sort of advice from the platform provider is at least as fair as advice and direction on how to perform such hackiness. Even were this dead-letter-perfect in removing the blurries I would still have major qualms about this approach and given it is not dead-letter perfect that makes it less clear why this approach would be worthwhile.It is hard to see how this approach could be characterized as something "to better the sim". Just because you can do a hack does not mean you should, or that it is a good idea.In the specific case of TileProxy I personally had Christian added to the beta program and have corresponded with him; so you are off base there.