FSX BLURRIES ............ I can do no more!

[Guest RichardL]

As initially stated, I can do not more to fix the, yes, late updating, popping, blurry texture images.After 50+ replies I am no closer to determining what is causing this than when the post was started.I do thank all who responded. I just do not see any point in continuing this if popping texture files are normal for FSX.Best Regards,Richard

[Guest PPSFA]

Richard, they are not normal for a machine that is set up properly. I supplied a solution earlier, you could have had it fixed ny now :-)Everyone is good intentioned but no one can fix your machine but you.

[jjjallen 37]

I too struggled endlessly with the blurries but finally came to a solution after rethinking the problem. First of all, I had installed just about every scenery addon available as they came available on my mid to high end system.. A point was reached so that NOTHING helped. Anyway it seems that FSX is a tightly coupled system in regards to file IO. IOW it is OK to REPLACE existing textures, landclass ect. but it is NOT OK to add files. It is these extra file loads that bog down ground texture throughtput and leads to the blurries. I believe that Phil Taylor had something about this in one of his blogs.My solution was to start with a fresh Vista 64 / FSX install and limit my addons to 1) FEX, 2) GEX, 3) Ultimate Traffic (90%), 4) SceneryTech Landclass and 5) The trusty F1 441 Conquest. Also, most of my graphic settings are maxed except for water which is at 2x high. MipBias=6, LOD 6.5. Blurries with this setup are non-existentLike I said, I have other ground packages but am limiting addons to the above so as to minimize load times and stay out of blurry ####. Hope this helps

[jjjallen 37]

Correction - Water is 2x low. Also autogen is set to sparse as it is really not needed with GEX. BTW, FPS are across the board as usual but when flying over LAX @ 14.5 FPS the ground textures are still sharp.TBM = 70Jim AVista Home Premium 64Intel 6800E @1360 mhznVidia 8800 GTX4 Gig Patriot @4,4,4,12 - 800 mhz

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

I see that I have come to late to this party and that it has all been explained and Richard has left anyway, but I spent time writing it up, so I hope that nobody minds my contribution.This discussion clearly demonstrates the confusion surrounding the problem of the dread Blurries. This has been going on since the release of FS X, and while it has been discussed numerous times here in this forum, inevitably many people have not seen all the comments or do not understand or wish to understand the problem. At the risk of belaboring the point, here is how I view this problem.As usual, the following is not based on privileged information from the developers at ACES, nor am I myself a systems expert, nor qualified in any way in computer graphics. However, I have been working with the FS terrain engine for many, many years, have read the S.D.K. documentation for various versions of the game, and also the all too short technical papers available on the official Flight Simulator site. Nonetheless, I do not claim to know the truth about this in all the details, and can only hope that the broad lines are true, and that one of the ACES developers will step in and correct me where I am wrong.Many people complaining of the Blurries do not, as a matter of fact, suffer from them. So:1. What are the dread Blurries?If, for any reason, video memory cannot be filled with required textures, the game will drop the largest MIP maps so that more important textures such as those of the user aircraft and other objects can be displayed. Since the largest and most numerous textures are those of the ground, their largest MIP maps are the first to go, thereby creating the dread Blurries.The Blurries are not when patches of distant ground are not completely clear. This is not the Blurries.The Blurries are when all the ground textures, even those directly below the user aircraft, are not clear, for example:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/192092.jpgHow to get the Blurries: Very simple, place the aircraft close to the ground, less than 1000 ft. AGL where the largest MIP map is always displayed, and then slew as fast as possible, 1500 knots should do. Quickly, the game will not be able to catch up with the ground textures and will start to drop the largest resolution MIP maps in favor of smaller ones, giving the above result.2. What are MIP maps and what is their purpose?All the textures in FS, and probably in many other games, contain multiple images with different resolutions. For example, the maximum resolution in FS is 1024 x 1024 pixels, but the image also contains progressively smaller versions of the same image: 512 x 512, 256 x 256, 128 x 128, etc. up to 9 different sizes of the same image.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/192093.jpgEach of the images has a different resolution: - 1024 = 1 (1.2) meters per pixel - 512 = 2 (2.4) meters per pixel - 256 = 5 (4.78) meters per pixel - etc.Not only are the dimensions smaller, but the sizes in kiloBytes as well, since 512 x 512 pixels is 1/4 the size of 1024 x 1024, 256 x 256 is 1/16th the size, etc. The game will display the smaller MIP maps as viewer distance from the object increases, since it makes more sense and is a more efficient use of resources than always displaying the largest, highest resolution image at all times, even when the object is barely visible.(This is why the very common use of non-MIP mapped textures by third-party add-ons is a serious mistake and can only increase the probability of the dread Blurries, since it is a means of trying to force the game to always use the largest texture, thereby more easily saturating memory.)3. What causes the dread Blurries?In previous versions of Flight Simulator, and Combat Flight Simulator 2, the Blurries were caused by insufficient threads allocated to terrain texture loading. The terrain team at ACES fixed this for FS X:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=searchNow, the problem is insufficient video memory. Right now, many are thinking, "No, that is not it, I use MemStatus and can see with my own eyes that there is plenty of memory left."If only life were so simple. Video memory does not exist in isolation, and there are other things to take into account. For example, bandwidth - if this is limited compared to the immediate needs of transferring textures, then the memory will not have the large textures and will display the lower resolution that were already present until they can be loaded.For example, memory speed. The video card is swapping unused large resolution textures that are no longer needed out of memory and swapping in those that will be needed. A small lapse can create a bottleneck leading to a sudden and short-term case of the Blurries.For example, contiguous memory. As Phil has pointed out many times, the game will require a mimimum size for the blocks of memory and if those available are not large enough, then the required textures cannot be loaded, and the result is the dread Blurries. (By the way, have you changed the default value for Bufferpools? You may yourself have created the problem by making FS look for very large pools that are sometimes not available. Something to think about.)In all cases, the problem is getting the required high resolution textures as quickly as possible into memory so that they can be displayed for the user before the Blurries manifest themselves. So, if you get the Blurries, your problem is most probably something like the above.4. How to solve the Blurries?Certainly, I do not mean to lecture anybody. FS is a computer game, do what you want. But, if the above is true, then there are different approaches to solving the problem of the Blurries.First, upgrade the hardware. Not just the video card, but also the bus, and the memory on the card. Throwing hardware at display problems has always solved them (in the short term, until developers decide to stress systems again.)Or, if you are not willing or able to do so, then turn down the requirements of the game to levels that the hardware can handle. In other words, lower slider settings.Or, you can try "tweaking", that is, a desperate search for some hidden and badly understood setting that will allow your hardware to outperform its specifications. Aside from overclocking, there is really very little that can be done in this domain, so it is often doomed to failure, or at most to very small gains.Given the above, it seems very clear that the image posted by Richard does not show the dread Blurries at all.What he sees is simply the Level of Detail Radius at work. So:1. What is Level of Detail Radius?There are at least 2 major elements to this function

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

Luis, great post and very informative.Might I add though, that the issue that some users complain about is not the final look of the scenery, but rather the way that FSX dynamically updates it. It is the noticeable tile updates from one LOD level to the next, involving changing texture resolution, mesh resolution and sometimes autogen popping into view that catches the eye.Especially when you fly into a more demanding environment like near big airports and cities, the updating process can get a bit behind, and again, it is these inconsistencies that the eye is sensitive to.This leads me to believe that not only the video system can be the bottleneck, but that it is also possible to bottleneck the CPU with traffic and other settings that are compute intensive.

[scott967 62]

Excellent tutorial Luis.A couple things.1. In FS9, the LOD settings would affect both textures and mesh. The mesh settings affected only the mesh. Thus you had to consider both together when working with mesh resolution. Now, in FSX I don't know what the situation is. But, just as you can see texture pops, you can also see mesh pops while flying. So I suspect that having HI texture slider along with HI mesh slider may (and I repeat MAY) require performance that could detract from the rate that textures are loaded.2. The dynamic loading problem is one that can't be captured with static screen shots. It appears that the scenery terrain engine tries to emphasize loading textures in the direction of travel, with textures to the side lagging behind. My observation is that the effectiveness of the dynamic texture loading varies quite a bit and it isn't obvious what other things going on in the sim are driving the performance. I've noticed instances when the textures at a "corner" of a LOD radius ring are sort of "stuck" while textures all around are displayed at higher resolution. I suppose it could be a function of texture reuse and landclass assignment. I have not noticed any particular relation to the amount of vector terrain in a cell, though at times it appears that line features (roads and shorelines) sometimes seem to be a bit lower resolution than expected.edit: didn't see Bert's post, but we're on the same wavelength.scott s..

[PhilTaylor 45]

Luis, this is such a clear explanation that I feel it should be made sticky so the images dont get lost.and stuck in the user and sdk documentation to explain this part of the terrain engine.thanks for taking the time.Phil

[Geofa 108]

I agree about making Luis's post a sticky.I wrote him an email asking for permission.GeofaMy blog:http://geofageofa.spaces.live.com/

[Guest Nick_N]

smooth as glass here Richard... 24inch BenQ HiDef LCDyou have been reading myths and if you see that on your system its NOT set up rightperiodI suggest locking at 30, not 24 for LCD and good systems for a reason and unlimited with a saturated buss does smooth out the play if the rest is in order. Time and time again in system after system I have found the same results however as I always say.. YMMVMy settings recommendations are for any FSX systemthe XP tweaks I post are mostly for XP, yes, but the use of the defrag O&O 8.6 as I specified (without the layout.ini change in Vista) and doing a few simple things in Vista go a LONG way even if you don

[jwenham 1]

Thanks Luis!That is probably one of the best replies I have ever read here. Very very well done!Jim W

[PhilTaylor 45]

Similarly, can Aces publish an extract of this on our web site and in our documentation?

[Guest Nick_N]

Yes, LOD blur is normal Richard however you can minimize the effect by setting things up a certain way and that was my point.and Luis is correct below, --never-- increase LOD radius at least not until next gen hardware may come around with the resources to do that.Since no one is sitting in front of your system it is hard to tell what it is you do not like about what you see.. a still image is difficult to assess and although there are things about FSX which one must get use to, same as FS9, there are in fact ways to make the experience more enjoyable and with a much greater image quality from merely installing and moving sliders around.How far one wishes to go is up to them. I cant say for sure what you are seeing is normal and I wont assume that either. There are inherent visual things about the FSX terrain engine and unless I am sitting right in front of the system I cant tell you for sure if all you are seeing is normal LOD radius blur or if something else is out of sorts.The image you posted had no AG on it and I know for a fact if I turn AG off I will see the natural tile distortion. You lose 3D and clarity percetion without the scenery on the tilesAt the same time every time I have run low sliders even on my fast system its a blurry mess so there are factors involved which a balance of internal FSX settings, 3PD settings or tweaks and hardware setup that assists in making it all fall into place. I am very critical about what I see on my screen and do not settle for less than the best I can achieve so I do understand where you are coming from in wanting to get rid of something which may be annoying. Unfortunately... remotely I can not tell for sure if this blur you are seeing is in fact normal, or not, or if it can be minimized. All I can do is make suggestions which I know have worked over and over again on many systems and hope they helpNickN

[ryanbatc 12,834]

I finally got around to reading this entire postMost of my questions have been answered.What I've gathered is that it all comes down to hardware :)

[GaryGB 10]

Excellent treatise once again, Luis... thanks so much for your clarity!:-beerchugI think ACES should hire you (at the very least as an independent contractor!) to write or supplement the FS documentation to explain both the user experience of the sim's scenery rendering engine, and an FS SDK "How-To Guide".:-halo Very important FS details made comprehensible for the end user!:-)GaryGB