I've been playing with FTX a bit, which I might add is by far the best scenery product to date, and I've noticed the ground textures get slightly sharper when moving to 60cm, 30cm, and 15cm. I'm sure its not noticeable without doing a direct SS comparison, but the textures seem to have a softer look when set to the 1m setting.FTX appears to use 15cm road textures as I do not see any increase in road resolution when moving to 7cm. The difference between 1m roads and 15cm roads is massive, so make sure you are using 15cm if not maxing the texture slider.Here's 1m compared to 15cm. If you open both and flip back and forth you can see even the ground textures are a bit sharper at 15cm. http://sio.midco.net/silly22/FTXroad1.jpghttp://sio.midco.net/silly22/FTXroad2.jpg

Funny, I didn't notice that before... But you are right. Railways even have visible sleepers (or ties in american english).

I had not noticed any difference at all in the sharpness of the ground textures, but people sometimes see strange things:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186322.gifhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186325.gifOf course, any difference would be impossible to see in these highly compressed jpeg images.Even if there is a benefit from the higher resolution roads, this is more than balanced by the extra processor load required, so performance will be affected by setting texture resolution higher than the default 1 meter.Best regards.Luis

Interestingly-a few including me have reported that performance actually seems to go up with the texture setting set to the highest level. I know it defies logic-but results are results.The roads do sharpen up-but on my machine performance also does-and since it looks great I leave it there.http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

Geoff,Agreed, 7cm looks great and actually seems to perform better. It appears to help reduce any blurries too.

Priority to the function?In other words, its not that it makes a 1m texture appear higher res, it places a higher priority on the application to that system, and, in the process removes priority from another in FSX that was dragging the system down.However streets are better at 7cm... I recall reading vector roads are higher resI only run 7cm as well and I put all systems on 7cm when tuning, no matter what they are..Ask SteveLewis about that on a P4 and 256MB video cardthere is the theory/design and calculation, and, how -one part- of the system works.. and then there is the real world where the -combined requests- and total application/system is applied to get the result, which with MSFS usually goes against the grain of the theoryLOLI run a TBM of 80, otherwise I see minor texture blurs here and there... and all the experts who know the theory say thats BAD. Well , its not bad.. its the combination of my hardware ability, the settings I use and the clock I run. Bottom line, the science and the real world are 2 different things and since MS does not spend time in developing the "best" settings for system X, we do that insteadAnd just like the people that use the tune-up list I posted and followed it right, many cant believe the result of making a few settings changes and optimizing the file calls correctly. You are not going to find a list like that at MS... its done by taking the theory/science and extrapolating an outcome based on the 'big picture" instead of how the engineer designed one part of that system to workits called thinking outside 'the box':)

One of the general rules of the universe: If it seems too good to be true, then it isn't.It really makes no sense to push texture resolution beyond the 1 meter default, except of course in order to get higher resolution roads or if one has higher resolution custom ground. There is no doubt that pushing all those textures through extra filters will degrade performance.However, if somebody has a sufficiently powerful computer, it is quite reasonable to suppose that they will not notice any discernible degradation.To each his own.Best regards.Luis

Luis-You got me interested so I went and took a shot at the highest res (7 cm) and then 1m while keeping it on pause. The roads looked much better at 7-the fps were very close within 3 so pretty hard to tell-though I will concede it makes more sense the higher would cost a few fps.What I was interested in was when comparing the pictures-the autogen in the higher res close in was smaller than the autogen in the lower res. Not only did it look more real, but perhaps that would an answer for a performance difference? Am I seeing things-I haven't had any beer yet! This was with the ftx add in but both shots with ftx.http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

Geoff, did you ask John Venema this over at the FTX forums?The one thing I love about FTX is the low level flying. Okay, not "real", but darn good.I like to buzz around in the Extra 300 over it. Lotsa fun! :)Well, they say it is a "Revolution" and I am not about to argue that point with them. ;)The best part of FTX "Blue" is that it is just the start, and having spent some serious time talking in person with Mr. Venema I suspect that the future will even be much better than what we see now.Go pay them a visit at their forums and ask away.Regards,http://www.dreamfleet2000.com/gfx/images/F...R_FORUM_LOU.jpg

>Geoff, did you ask John Venema this over at the FTX forums?>>The one thing I love about FTX is the low level flying. Okay,>not "real", but darn good.>>I like to buzz around in the Extra 300 over it. Lotsa fun! :)>>Well, they say it is a "Revolution" and I am not about to>argue that point with them. ;)>>The best part of FTX "Blue" is that it is just the start, and>having spent some serious time talking in person with Mr.>Venema I suspect that the future will even be much better than>what we see now.>>Go pay them a visit at their forums and ask away.>This isn't limited to FTX, this tip also improves the roads in UTUSA, (And probably default as well)! Here's a sampleThanks sillyeagle for finding this! Never realized it before.UTUSAX 1m Texture Resolutionhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186339.jpgUTUSAX 7cm Texture Resolutionhttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186340.jpg

>>>>>I run a TBM of 80, otherwise I see minor texture blurs here>and there... and all the experts who know the theory say>thats BAD. Well , its not bad.. its the combination of my>hardware ability, the settings I use and the clock I run.>Bottom line, the science and the real world are 2 different>things and since MS does not spend time in developing the>"best" settings for system X, we do that instead>Funny you mentioned that. I run FSX on a 2 ghz box here so there has been plenty of tweaking here to get a balance of everything acceptable. After I popped my TBM up to 100 I was able to start using Anti Aliasing for some reason. With UTX the scenery textures really snap into place alot quicker. I also notice a faster loading time when starting up a flight.DaveESSB

On my single core P4 3.4Ghz, I actually get better performance from FSX in general if I slam all Scenery sliders to the right EXCEPT for water set to 2Low.xNick could possibly explain that, but I sure can not.Mitch

>This isn't limited to FTX, this tip also improves the roads in>UTUSA, (And probably default as well)! Here's a sampleAll vector based graphics (like roads, railroads, shorelines) are 7cm in FSX. This is indeed not a FTX or UTX exclusive: it's like that with FSX out of the box. I have textures at 7cm all the time!

My question is not about the roads but about autogen. Interesting in the shots above it looks identical-however it seems to be different on my rig. In ftx is is more apparent-however I tried also gex,utx and also saw a difference. (Fuzzy because of jpg compression but check the difference in the trees-1st shot 7cm -2nd 1m).http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpgMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186355.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/186356.jpg

>Interestingly-a few including me have reported that>performance actually seems to go up with the texture setting>set to the highest level. I know it defies logic-but results>are results.>>The roads do sharpen up-but on my machine performance also>does-and since it looks great I leave it there.>http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/1b5baf...b9f427f694g.jpg>>My blog:>http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/Hi Geoff,You are absolutely right!! And I have to give credit to 'Sillyeagle' for the heads-up in his post to this amazing little tweak too.Went for a test run over Brisbane in the Trike, just to make sure that I would be able to clearly observe the difference, and by jingo's!!What an amazing result, it may defy the maths of FSX as you mentioned, but it does work and like you, I'm definitely keeping this setting.