Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Guest

Floating Trees !!

Recommended Posts

Guest sgreenwood

Hello Jacknife,You crash when you hit the trees because the sim thinks they are on solid ground. Here's my current take on at least some of what is going on - there are probably several issues.I believe the floating trees are testimony to both the remarkable ability of the simulator to present terrain that looks real, and small challenges in the syncrhronizing of the processes that make that possible.As the aircraft moves forward, the sim is constantly adjusting the level of detail, from the background to the foreground. This includes the number of points used to render elevations, the the resolution of the textures and the elevations of their polygons, the positioning and elevations of trees and buildings, ... To some extent, priorities in this process are guided by slider settings.Ideally, this occurs transparently, with a smooth transition from vague impressions at the horizon to much greater detail and accuracy in the foreground.But when the the system cannot process all the necessary data fast enough, it sets priorities and makes compromises. In the case of the trees, during these transitions they can be positioned using elevation data that is different from the data used for the textures. And this inconsistency is not resolved before your aircraft arrives.If you exit the sim and restart it, trees, textures, and buildings should all be placed using the same elevation data. What is interesting is the fact that sometimes the trees drop to the ground level, other times the trees are positioned correctly and the ground is repositioned to support them! (Building behavior seems even more complex.)The only ways to really address these phenomena seem to be to increase processing power and/or lower processing demands. The problem seems to develop over time, so you can keep restarting the program, but that's not very satisfying.So, here are a few alternatives (in no particular order) for reducing your processing demands while still enjoying the higher resolution mesh:1) When out sightseeing, fly small planes, slowly, so you can enjoy as much detail as possible. The default aircraft can have much smaller FPS impact than some third-party planes, especially if they were developed for FS2000.2) Reduce details using menu/slider options. You specify which aspects of the display are most important to you. Limit the target frame rate.3) Your TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL setting in the fs2002.cfg file determines the amount of your high resolution terrain data that is actually used. While 19 is the default value, I increase mine to 21 for more detail (see example), but you can reduce it to 18 or 17; you will lose some detail, but reduce processing demands as well.4) Create a second set of mesh files with a lower LOD value. This creates smaller files which require less processing, but can still provide good detail. You can then use the higher LOD data for slow flying, and the lower LOD data for flying high speed aircraft, and at higher altitudes, where small details are less important. (Assuming you install them in separate folders.)Regards,Stevewww.fs-traveler.com

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest

Steve,Thank You !!It appears that when I do the Same Mesh at say an LOD = 9 which compiles to about 730KB, I do not have the floating tree problems. The picture you see in my example was compiled at LOD = 11, size was about 4.3 MB.You are correct, If I reduce my settings to lower res they seem to be reduced or disappear.Thank you very much for the great explaination !!Many Cheers Jackknife...............

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

  • Tom Allensworth,
    Founder of AVSIM Online


  • Flight Simulation's Premier Resource!

    AVSIM is a free service to the flight simulation community. AVSIM is staffed completely by volunteers and all funds donated to AVSIM go directly back to supporting the community. Your donation here helps to pay our bandwidth costs, emergency funding, and other general costs that crop up from time to time. Thank you for your support!

    Click here for more information and to see all donations year to date.
×
×
  • Create New...