I thought I would ask this group a question that I have related to the ground textures. Why the ground textures in MSFS are so blurry? Is this a limitation of MSFS or has anyone created a better texture so the ground looks more realistic?

I don't know what you call blurry? I can be caused by the mipmapping, this makes the textures more blurry when they are far away. Also the resolution of the texture is limited to 4.8 meters/pixel, so when you fly very low this also gives a sort of blurry look.

Thanks for the response Arno. I am referring to the blurry look that you see when you are close to the ground. Are there any replacement textures can be created that give more clarity and eleviate the blurry look to it. Thanks.

No, not really I think. When you are close to the ground the problem you see is the resolution of the textures. At this moment that resolution can not be increased.

There is one option, one could use a solid color, but that would be a step backwards, I would think.Richard;

If you're not using it already, there's an option that helps this, I think it's called 'detailed textures' in the FS options. It adds a default texture that becomes noticeable at very low altitude and reduces the blurred effect. I always use it as I regard it as an excellent feature. However, it could be better. The equivalent effect in IL-2 is far superior and makes the ground look very realistic when you're taxiing. Sadly, judging by screenshots, the detailed textures effect in FS2004 is the same as FS2002. Maybe in FS2006.... Best regards, Chris

Is the reason that the resolution cannot be increased due to a limitation in the program? Also, are there any textures that could be created that don't look as bad. What I mean by that relates to two things that bug me. The first is the strange appearance of ground textures in cities. If I had a choice, I would rather see sidewalks and street pavement, which would be similar to runway textures, instead of the bluffy mess that I see in the default textures. Is that a possibility to do? The other strange looking texture is the green and dark forest texture. Looks good from up above, but close up, it looks like jello. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the responses to my question. Just out of curiosity, what is the limitation that MS places that causes the ground to look out of focus. Also, could a person place a pavement type texture in cities between buildings similar to runway textures in order for a city to look better.

I found my photorealistic scenery got worse after I went to higher resolution terrain mesh. Time to build a faster computer like I did to resolve it.CheersAndy

Hi Mike.The sim has a ground texture resolution of 4.8 meters per pixel... so it will look pretty blurry at ground level.You can display textures as ground polys or even make the streets as objects. This requires the ground to be flattened, and the polys or objects may need to be positioned slightly above the flatten elevation. Most FS runways are displayed this way... slightly above the flatten elevation ( recently discussed as being 1/128th of a meter above the flatten height ).FSArchitect 2002 displays photoreal with this method ( at least I think it still does it this way )... but any design program should be able to do this with a little work.Obviously, there may be an issue with FPS, but it might not be that bad.If the area cannot be flattened, perhaps you could use older commands that display textures as elevational planes, or make the streets as textured objects in Gmax.All this would allow greater display resolution. Arno might know what limit we have for poly or object texture resolution, if any.Dick

Hi Chris,Yes, its called "Texture Quality" and it adds a kind of "graininess" to the default MS textures which looks OK.Question is: How to make this graininess apply to a ground polygon with a texture? The max size you can have for a textured ground polygon is 1024x1024 (I think?) this is just about big enough for a small airfield, (I have tried joining 1024 x 1024 panels together to get better resolution but I can't get rid of the joins) so it would be great if there was some way to make this graininess apply...I wondered if you could make a land class tile of the airfield but I think these are limited to 256 x 256 and have to be DX3 format, perhaps its the DX3 format that does the trick.Any ideas?Geoff

Textures on the mesh indeed are limited to 256x256 pixels (DXT3 not necesairy).If you place them with SCASM you can get any resolution you want. I think the maximum texture size is 2048x2048 (but ussually I use max 1024x1024). If you then make a SCASM grid in one RefPoint you will not have any joins and it will look perfect. Depending on the size of these squares you can get any resolution you want.