Texture Shimmering at Add on Airports

[Guest CHRISH]

Over the last few months, I have noticed that a number of developers new sceneries shimmer. This is a problem I have never noticed before.Recently the new Mega Frankfurt Airport runways and taxiways shimmer, Aerosoft always produce excellent Airports. Preiously EDDS and EDDM have been fantstic no shimmers at all !Also, Flytampa's KSFO (even with the new textures shimmer terribly), and yet KMIA is superb.Just wondering, as I am a complete novice can anybody help and offer a simple solution to stop the shimmering?Many thanks and Best Wishes,Happy New Year!ChrisEGBB ~ UK

[Guest Firestriker]

Chris,The problem is caused by the sim not knowing which ground polygon is above the other, a process called layering. It is the way the code for the scenery was developed and you, as an end user, can do nothing about it that I know of. You just have to live with it or remove the scenery if the author does not fix the problem.Lou

[Guest CHRISH]

Thanks Lou, that's a real shame.I read somewhere that it was possible to create a bat concersion file which would convert the textures, to DXT3 textures, to erradicate the shimmering.Best Wishes,ChrisEGBB

[arno 1]

Hi Chris,Normally it should not matter if the textures are DXT1, DXT3 or another format. The reason of the shimmering is not the textures, but the polygons they are applied to.It is a bit weird that something like this happens in a commercial scenery, maybe there is a conflict between different addons?

[Guest artmartin]

Given the constraints of the FS graphics engine, it's a compromise sometimes for scenery developers to put out features that have the potential for the shimmering on some of their customer's computers. To completely avoid the shimmering, a developer must pretty much throw away the technique of using high resolution ground polygons to enhance the limitation of 4.8 meters/pixel that normal photoreal textures have. The Phoenix scenery I developed cried out for high res photo detail in certain areas such as downtown. A city like Phoenix has few hills and one can flatten a number of downtown blocks and create a GMAX plane object overlayed with a high res texture of the overhead view. In order for it to look realistic, especially at lower altitudes, I suspended that plane a very short distance above the ground terrain. Too much distance and the ground climbs up the buildings and if you land on it, your plane sinks below it. The edges look very strange. Too little distance and as soon as you get any altitude, the z-buffering flickering begins. So, it's a crapshoot. You can offer some incredible low level views of the ground at the risk of higher altitude flickering or you can play it safe. I'm not sure there's a right answer.Art Martin

[arno 1]

Hi Art,I must say that I do not fully agree here. If you flatten the ground properly, you can completely remove the flickering. The only thing you need to do for that, is to use the proper commands. To make proper ground polygons, you need to use pre-Fs2004 commands to define the polygon as a real groundpoly (ADDCAT or LayerCall command). If you do that there is absolutely no flickering (as long as the terrain below is nice and flat).