My experiments with @##$##@$##@ blurries.

[GHD 21]

>George.....>You have 5 textures that don't have mips... 1 mip is no mip.>Try adding mips to those textures, that is, If they are not>default. >Also.... colorkey is done with a alpha chanel and is a>transparency notation, It's either full transparent or>opaque.>Alphas are not always needed. This is my personal opinion.>Joe W.I know, but this mix is the one which works. Go figure :-hmmm George

[Guest JohnC]

Thanks Joe,Holger,GHD,et al...lots of good ideas here...when I added mips to my radar dome files, (an easy experiment) the blurries stopped cold. I had inadvertently created no mip files and I have a giant airport scenery with lots of textures to go through....

[Guest JohnC]

I just converted all my 166 texture files to DXT1 or DXT3. I now have miraculous glass smooth 24 fps crisp clear textures. Thanks to all.

[Joe W 0]

I think all bmps in view have to either have mips or no mips.. There is no in between. You can't have a mix.There sure can't be 8 bit along with DXT1 w/o mips, DXT1 w/ mips all in view..... Blurries all over.I have spent weeks on this.Joe W.

[GHD 21]

>I think all bmps in view have to either have mips or no>mips.. There is no in between. You can't have a mix.>I have spent weeks on this.Mine works with a mix :-roll George

[Gridley 257]

Maybe the important thing is not to have mixed texture formats on the same GMAX object. Even further, textures applied to GMAX objects must have either mips or alpha.Keeping it simple is an easy way to avoid confusion too. Finding the fly in the ointment out of hudreds or more textures is next to impossible...How's that sound, texture gurus!?

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi all.As far as scenery objects, the FS2004 SDKs say very little.What they do say is this:From the gmaxSceneryTutorial...Notice that your house has no texture. The next step is to copy the day and night texture files to the correct folder so that Flight Simulator has access to them. 19. Start Image Tool (imagetool.exe is located in the gamepackFS2004tools folder), and then open House.bmp and House_lm.bmp.When you have both images open, the Image Tool window will look like the following diagram:20. Select House.bmp.21. On the Image menu, click Create MipMaps.22. On the Image menu, point to Format, and then click DXT1.This will change the image compression so that it is easier to render in the simulator. 23. Select House_lm.bmp.24. On the Image menu, click Create MipMaps.25. On the Image menu, point to Format, and then click DXT1.When you have compressed both images, the Image Tool window will look like the following diagram:The extra images that have been created allow the simulator to use smaller and easier to render versions of the texture for when the viewer is at greater distances from the house and can

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,beautiful summary! You know that I'm one of the guys who likes to think and make stuff outside the FS box (read: SDKs) but it's always useful to return to those docs once in a while and see what they have to say.Thanks for digging!Cheers, Holger

[Guest JohnC]

I should have added that all my files are now mipped, DXT1 with alpha or DXT3.

[Joe W 0]

>"Concerning terrain ( LWM and VTP ) from the Terrain Vector Data DOC:Please note, you must run textures used with the VTP format through Imagetool and save them in the 8-bit format. For example, to process a texture named mytexture.bmp, use the following imagetool command line:imagetool -8 mytexture.bmp.That commandline for ImageTool will create 8-bit, mipped... and if an alpha channel is present, it will use it. So, for terrain textures, ONLY 8-bit, mipped ( with or without alpha ) is used, and again ImageTool is the tool to achieve this."

[Guest Horst]

Hello,To change all:imagetool

[Guest luissa]

Hi Dick,Nice summary! As you say MS also make errors - in fact almost all the VTP default textures are DXT1 and not 8-bit! I think that in this particular case the error is in the documentation.Regards, Luis

[rhumbaflappy 113]

Hi Luis.The bitmaps for VTP2 lines are all 8-bit, mipped, with alpha. Airport Backgrounds are DXT1, mipped.If anything is to be gained from this, it's that in all but a few specific cases, the sim expects DXT1, mipped, and can have an alpha channel. Deviating from that format, without a specific reference from the SDKs could lead to problems in the sim. I also suspect textures should be a multiple of 2, no greater than 1024x1024, and squared.... and that might apply to aircraft, objects, terrain, and autogen texture sheets.When adding a 3rd party scenery or aircraft, it would take only a few moments to confirm the textures using ImageTool. Just remember the mips, and DXT3 is reserved for the exterior texture of an aircraft. No 16-bit, no DXT5, no DXT3 ( except as noted ) no 24-bit, no 32-bit ( except for props ). Clouds would be an exception ( also 32-bit ) and some other goodies, like rain masking ( DXT3 ).It does appear that removing mips will lead to problems with other textures, as noted by Joe in the above posts. Dick

[Guest luissa]

>The bitmaps for VTP2 lines are all 8-bit, mipped, with alpha.>Airport Backgrounds are DXT1, mipped.Hi Dick,Right now I have no access to FS2004, but I think that the reason why the bitmaps for VTP2 lines are 8-bit is because they use alpha. For example the random shape of the stream texture is made with transparency. For roads the alpha channel is used so that the road texture blends with the underground. I would use a DXT1 (with mips of course) if I had to apply an opaque texture either for a VTP line or polygon.>I also suspect textures should be a multiple of 2,You can be sure! If we use one texture that is not a multiple of 2 the sim crashes ...>no greater than 1024x1024I never have seen a texture greater then this ...>and squaredI do not know if there are non square default textures( I can not access FS2004 now). I use them frequently for objects. I think that VTP textures need to be squared but I am not sure.Regards, Luis

[arno 1]

>I never have seen a texture greater then this ...I have used a texture of 2048x256 once and that also worked. But 2048x2048 does indeed not work. So I think there is a limit on the total amount of pixels.>I do not know if there are non square default textures( I can>not access FS2004 now). I use them frequently for objects. I>think that VTP textures need to be squared but I am not sure.Yes, I use them as well. And Fs2004 also has a few of them by default (for example antenna textures). But of course all sides still need to be a power of 2.