Not 4,8m mesh textures resolution ... 2,4m!!!! here is how to!

[Guest]

Well, we all know that the standard FS mesh texture resolution is roughly 4.8m per pixel.Well, 4.8m is the resolution with the default 256x256 pixel textures, so, so logically using a 512x512 pixel texture instead concludes in 2.4m resolution per pixel.I tried it and DXT textures with that size are fully visible in FS2004.Sure, simple resizing the current FS texture is ridiculous (no more detail) but for custom hand drawn textures that 2,4m thing surely can be an improvement.I dunno if it's possible with 1024x1024 DXT textures ... will conclude in 1.2 m resolution.Mario :-)

[Shaka 2]

I thought of this before, and just assumed that FS wouldn't let it work. Of course, I never tried it, since I am very lazy. However, I wonder if FS would "re-size" the texture using it's graphics engine, thereby reducing the resolution, and negating the benefit. I guess teh SDK will tell us all the facts, but your discovery is very interesting. I think I'll give it a try myself this weekend.- Martin

[spotlope 0]

That sounds logical Mario, but my experience in FS2002 scenery design was that it didn't work. It seems as though any texture when rendered via VTP poly is projected at 4.8m/pixel regardless of the original resolution of the image used for texturing. I'd love it if you were right, though. And maybe FS9 has changed this. Let's hope.

[bob.bernstein 0]

Mario, I beleive this has been known but the difficulty is that resample.exe will not produce the texture you describe. Thus, the mods must be made after slicing. Interesting challenge, matching a high resolution version of the photo to the resultant slice from resample, hmmm...Perhaps worth some experiments.Bob Bernstein

[Guest PaulL01]

>Well, we all know that the standard FS mesh texture>resolution is roughly 4.8m per pixel.>Well, 4.8m is the resolution with the default 256x256 pixel>textures, so, so logically using a 512x512 pixel texture>instead concludes in 2.4m resolution per pixel.>I tried it and DXT textures with that size are fully visible>in FS2004.>Sure, simple resizing the current FS texture is ridiculous (no>more detail) but for custom hand drawn textures that 2,4m>thing surely can be an improvement.>I dunno if it's possible with 1024x1024 DXT textures ... will>conclude in 1.2 m resolution.>>Mario :-)Hi Mario,Yep FS will display a 512x512 but unfortunatly as with FS2k2 it will only display it as 256x256 not at full res. :(

[Guest PaulL01]

>Mario, I beleive this has been known but the difficulty is>that resample.exe will not produce the texture you describe. >Thus, the mods must be made after slicing. Interesting>challenge, matching a high resolution version of the photo to>the resultant slice from resample, hmmm...>>Perhaps worth some experiments.>>Bob Bernstein Bob,I have some tools that will do this no problem, trouble is FS will only display the 512x512 as a 256x256.

[bob.bernstein 0]

So thats it....I remembered we played with this idea before and it didn't work but I couldn't remember the detail. Thanks P....

[Guest Elrond]

Hi Paul,I'm a bit confused on that statement. Out of curiosity alone, how would/could that work exactly?If a texture of 512x512 is displayed in the same sized "slot" on the ground as a 256x256, it would indeed be shown at its higher resolution. The only way it would be the same resolution as the 256x256 is if it was stretched to fill four standard 256x256 ground "slots". If I remember your experiments from the past correctly, the higher res textures took up the exact same area on the ground... So, doesn't that mean it indeed shows 2.4m/p textures?Maybe I'm not understanding your statement that "it will only display it as 256x256". Do you mean to say that FS internally shrinks a 512x512 texture to 256x256 in real-time during load and prior to applying the texture? That would seem unlikely as it would be a big resource drag on performance, considering the amount of textures FS processes in PhotoReal sceneries. If FS indeed somehow did this, you'd think PhotoReal sceneries with 512x512 textures would drag FS performance down to a crawl. Has this been seen during tests? If not, and indeed 512x512 textures do display in FS at all, that would seem to indicate FS supports 2.4m/p resolutions.Any help clarifying would be much appreciated.Take care,Elrond

[Guest christian]

This has been tested by several people in FS2002, including me. The problem was that FS2002 is producing mipmaps on the fly. The 512x512 texture gets mipmapped to lower resolutions and FS2002 was indeed only displaying up to the 256x256 mipmap, but not the 512x512 resolution. This will have to be retested for FS9.>Maybe I'm not understanding your statement that "it will only>display it as 256x256". Do you mean to say that FS internally >shrinks a 512x512 texture to 256x256 in real-time during load and >prior to applying the texture? Not in real-time. While the scenery is loading, that's why it takes so long to load the textures. Mipmapping is supported by opengl cards in hardware anyway, so it's reasonably fast.Actually, to be 100% correct, you have to mipmap your texture with imagetool anyway, so what happens is that FS2002 simply discards the highest mipmap. We have even tested to not make mipmaps in imagetool. What happened then is that FS2002 indeed makes it own mipmaps during startup. It really doesn't take that long, as I explained above.Hope that helps.Cheers, Christian

[Guest PaulL01]

>Hi Paul,>>I'm a bit confused on that statement. Out of curiosity alone,>how would/could that work exactly?>>If a texture of 512x512 is displayed in the same sized "slot">on the ground as a 256x256, it would indeed be shown at its>higher resolution. The only way it would be the same>resolution as the 256x256 is if it was stretched to fill four>standard 256x256 ground "slots". If I remember your>experiments from the past correctly, the higher res textures>took up the exact same area on the ground... So, doesn't that>mean it indeed shows 2.4m/p textures?>>Maybe I'm not understanding your statement that "it will only>display it as 256x256". Do you mean to say that FS internally>shrinks a 512x512 texture to 256x256 in real-time during load>and prior to applying the texture? That would seem unlikely>as it would be a big resource drag on performance, considering>the amount of textures FS processes in PhotoReal sceneries. >If FS indeed somehow did this, you'd think PhotoReal sceneries>with 512x512 textures would drag FS performance down to a>crawl. Has this been seen during tests? If not, and indeed>512x512 textures do display in FS at all, that would seem to>indicate FS supports 2.4m/p resolutions.>>Any help clarifying would be much appreciated.>>Take care,>>ElrondGreat to hear from you Elrond,I can't add anything more to what Christian has stated other than I tried every format as well as the non mipped versions and fs would "re-draw" it as 256x. I also tried in vain to find a "hidden" switch in the fs.cfg.I have re-attempted this in FS9 thinking that since MS killed the only terrain code that could do hi-res (Meshwith1tex) they must have enabled support for higher res in the terrain but no dice.In my old FS2k2 meshwith style scenery I used about 40 1024x1024 textures and the only penaly was an obviously slower loading time of each texture but once loaded it was hard to "see" a fps difference unless I benched.With high res data so much more easily available I think it is a sin for FS not to be able to render better than 4.75m. :(

[Guest Elrond]

Ah yes, of course. I should have remembered the mips... Goes to show how long I've been out of the "game", so to speak.What an extremely silly artificial limitation for FS. The texture is right there, being read and ready to use (and being mipped on load if not in DXT)... Boggles the mind why they would leave higher res support out - even for limited areas - in a flight sim, when it would be relatively trivial to support it.Thanks for the clarification Christian,Elrond

[Guest Elrond]

I couldn't agree more Paul. Thanks for the clarification.Take care,Elrond

[arno 1]

I think this does not work.I have tested this by making a texture with different text on different mips. The 512x512 mip shows 512, the 256x256 mip shows 256 and the 12x128 mip shows 128. When I load it in Fs2002 or Fs2004 the highest mip that is shown is still the 256 (so I never see the word 512).

[Guest christian]

One can of course only guess. I think it's to limit texture memory usage. If you use large textures over a bigger region the datarate of texture swapping to and fro the texture memory may just get to low. To prevent people complaining about blurry textures Microsoft may have decided to put an upper limit on things.On the other hand, I think that MS tried to use so called detail textures in CFS3 (I don't own CFS3 so I don't know how it's been implemented). I don't know what happened to that approach in FS2004...Cheers, Christian