Scenery Designers...Need experienced builders...

[Guest abent]

I will preface this with an apology for saturating the forum with this topic. I'm just desperate. I need someone (or as many as are willing)to examine my scenery to see if they can find what's causing the texture blurring. One fella I sent it to had no problems at all with blurring - he had a very good video card.. Another guy has the same problems as I. I am requesting the gracious help of knowledgeable designers to receive my Gmax file and/or .bgl and textures to look over the scenery and see what I'm doing wrong.I'll do whatever it takes to get this scenery working properly so I can release it to the community - when it's done naturally.So, I'm begging for help! :-zhelp :-zhelp :-zhelp Thanks, AdamThe first 2 pics are how I would like it to look all the time.The last one happens when I minimize and maximize or change times etc.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/62485.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/62486.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/62487.jpg

[Shaka 2]

I've seen this happen to my own scenery a few times. Of course, the "bluriness" is a product of mipmaps in your textures. For some reason, FS decided to load a lower resolution mipmap over the higher ones. I'm going to assume you know all about mipmaps, but basically, FS calculates which one would be optimal to use, and then loads it onto your object.As I said, I had this happen to some of my scenery too. It was always the same object and it was very annoying. The strange thing, is that eventually it went away, and I suspect that this happened when I updated my video drivers and/or when I changed my video card settings and/or when I changed my hardware settings in FS.I'm doing a lot of guessing here, but let's assume I'm right (for once). I had some other ideas about how to kick FS into using higher resolution mipmaps. One I came up with was to use higher resolution bitmaps - many of mine at the time were 128 x 128 pixels. Now a lot of mine are more like 512 x 512 pixels. I'm not sure if this has had much of an effect, but it "might" have.So, there's a couple ideas. Naturally, you can't plan for everyone's specific hardware configuration, so some people may experience the blurries more than you do depending on their setup.- Martin

[martin_ktpa 0]

As far as I know what you describe depends on the users' mipmap setting within FS, the amount of RAM on his vidcard and other things. If you want you can force FS to always use the sharp original texture. Just re-save your bmps with something like Martin Wright's DXTBMP, before saving (usually as DXT1) uncheck "include mipmaps" under prefs. Note that some people won't like this effect, since everything will be sharp no matter the distance (Okay for scenery buildings if you ask me).

[Guest abent]

Thanks Martins, I will try your suggestions. After work today I will download DXTBMP and try the process.My offer stands to anyone who would like to have the files and see if they can do anything.I would mention them in my release notes...big deal, eh! :-roll Not having DXTBMP, I tried ImageTool without mipps and it was, frankly, much worse. I couldn't get the textures clear even right up next to the building.Mipmapping seems to be working because as I approach, I can see the subtle changes in the textures as each mipp is loaded. The problem is is that it should happen at greater distances - not so close to the building.Thanks, Adam

[Shaka 2]

Sometimes if you you use a texture without mipmaps, FS seems to create mipmaps "on the fly", usually with unwanted results. It only seems to do this with scenery though - it doesn't happen with aircraft. The more I think about this, the more I think it's going todepend on the users hardware settings in FS, which you can't control anyway.- Martin

[martin_ktpa 0]

The creation of mipmaps "on the fly" affects only normal 8bit bitmaps I think. I've never seen a correctly saved DXT1 or 3 bitpmap blur out.

[Guest abent]

I'm beginning to think it's a hardware problem. This has been suggested a number of times. I'm going to try FSAutoStart as suggested by Bill, as well as other tweaks.Though something that Arno said still sticks in my mind: I used one 512x512 texture (with many smaller textures on it, ofcourse) scaling it for numerous different parts of the building. It was used mainly for the exterior walls but also for all kinds of smaller polygons on the building. Maybe a scaling conflict.Regardless of what happens, I can't release this scenery if it performs like this on my system when other equally, an often more, detailed 3rd party sceneries work fine. And I've only done (to this point) 4 separate buildings in a scenery that might contain a dozen or more.I'd really like people with different setups to try it on their systems, but that doesn't look like it's going to happen.Anyway, thanks for the suggestions and help guys. If you think of anything else, I'm listening.Adam

[martin_ktpa 0]

send me an email to martin_at_brunken_dot_org and i'll try it out.

[Guest abent]

Problem solved...Happy Camper!!!:-jumpy :-jumpy :-jumpy Thanks to Dave Madge, Martin Brunken,Martin Strong and Arno. It works fine now with DXTBMP DXT1 non-mipmapped textures.Thanks guys! Work will continue on the project tomorrow morning.Adam

[Guest abent]

And a special thanks to Bill Womack for his valuable assistance. :-beerchug Adam

[Bill Womack 7]

I'm glad to hear it's working, Adam! That's a mighty fine looking terminal you're building. You should be quite proud of it. I'm really looking forward to d/ling the entire package when available.