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JYAI F-15's

Military AI repaints by Mark Walsh.
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f47420
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by f47420 »

Now we know .

MW
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Re: JYAI F-15's

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So if they load what about the detail .
In a texture that is 2048x2048 In size will the added detail remain or will it be lost .??
Now I have been playing (with myself %^^^ ) No did't I have't Sorry its not Monday ..LOL With the two types of texture both 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 and yes the added detail is much sharper on the bigger texture .
So if you use the bigger format you end up with much more detail .
If you look at the repaints I painted of John Young F-15's because of the texture size the detail is very clear.Party on.!!
On the F-15 textures you can read some of the tex.
So if you use bigger texture you end up with a much better aircraft ..
Just a thought ...


MW
Last edited by f47420 on 13 Feb 2016, 18:42, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by MIKE JG »

At what cost to frame rates?? That's the question. If you have a ramp full of AI models each using a non-mip mapped 2048 texture, what affect does that have on performance?
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Greg »

Mike to avoid any confusion: non-mipmapped 2048 won't work in FS9 as it needs the 1024 mipmap to display at the highest detail.

I have no knowledge of how the mipmapping algorithm works but I guess it does a much better job at keeping details than when you reduce the texture to half the dimensions yourself...
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Re: JYAI F-15's

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When I format a texture mip maps are added .
So the texture are not non-mip mapped .
I looked at the frame rate at nellis and was getting 40 fps fixed.Un fixed 65 ish..

I was just looking at getting more detail on to a model that was all.
Sometimes a good repaint can make a poor model usable and a great model great!!

I will do some more work and see..
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by campbeme »

You reading this Kev, sounds exciting.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by John Young »

Using 2048 textures for FSX scenery works very well, but there is a snag that may apply to AI aircraft also. I thought I would run some tests to see what happens.

The snag is with the FS9 and FSX.cfg files. They both contain a [GRAPHICS] section with an entry for TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=. This is set to 1024 by default. If it's kept that way there's no chance of loading a 2048 texture. It needs to be changed to 2048, at least for FSX that is:

Image

Now comes the rub. If you change any of your display settings in FS9 or FSX, the max load value of 2048 reverts automatically to 1024 and the texture no longer displays at 2048 if present. Lockheed have sussed this and the max load 2048 entry thankfully stays put in P3D.

My first test was to try 2048 textures on one of my F-15s in both FS9 and FSX and compare them with standard 1024s. I used exactly the same date and time in all the tests, producing Dxt5 .dds textures for FSX and Extended Dxt3 bmps for FS9, both with mips. I made sure I wasn’t loading from a saved situation so that I knew I was getting a fresh load of the texture for each test. I also added a small chunk of text to the nose for comparison purposes.

Trying to convey the results here is potentially a tad unrealistic because I have had to convert my 24bit screenshots to .jpg. That in turn will degrade the images a tad. However, after careful study of the .bmps, I can tell you that this isn't a big issue. I'm hoping the screen shots look OK though, because I've changed my monitor recently.

This is FSX:

Image

Image

The drop out of the 2048 value does seem to revert the texture to 1024:

Image

Overall, I really can't see much difference in the 3 results.

This is FS9:

Image

Image

I can’t see any difference at all this time. I would conclude that FS9 can't display 2048 textures I think.

If these results are indeed typical, you can move on to ask yourself whether whatever benefit is achieved is worth two potential big penalties.

The first is performance related. Not so much frame rate, because no additional draw calls are involved. However, the textures are 4 x the size of 1024 sheets. That may well induce a significant stutter as perhaps a flight line's worth of them come into view at the same time. Much like the same thing that happens with 1024 textures without mips. Unfortunately it's not an easy thing to test.

The second relates to the increased size of the textures. With a scenery like Lakenheath, around 80 AI aircraft are needed. I duplicated up that quantity of 2048 textures and zipped them. The total came to a tad over 140MB for both FS9 and FSX textures separately. That's too big to upload to the MAIW Download Hangar, assuming no other items in the zip. Pro-rata then, around 73 2048 textures are the maximum for the 128 MB upload limit. 80 x 2048 textures will also require 426MB of user disk space, rather than 107MB with 1024s.

I'm pretty sure this is not a viable option, at least not for large quantities of paints. Be good to see any further test results though.

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Re: JYAI F-15's

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Here are my test textures .
There 4 of each size .
2048 are the top of each shot .


The numbers are smooth and crisp in the top shot.

Image
Image

As you can see from this the Star and Bar is smooth again ..and also tex
Image
Image

From this shot the panel lines show up well as a hinge and tex..

Image
Image

last the numbers don't show on the bottom shot as well as the refueling markers and also the vents.

Image
Image

At the end of the day I was just looking to add something more..

See what you think ..

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Re: JYAI F-15's

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I had look in game and the detail doesn't show that much .

So sorry to get your hopes up guys .Better luck next time ..
But it would work in FSX as John said ..
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by MIKE JG »

Good set of tests guys, Mark that's actually very useful to know. Thanks for taking the time to explore that.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Firebird »

I seemed to remember that the highest texture_max_load for FS9 was 1024 but that was what somebody else had published rather than gospel. However, you guys seem to have proved it.

So in a nutshell if you have an FS9 2048x2048 bmp that does not have a mipmap then nothing will show in FS9 but if it has a mipmap then it will show but not use the highest mipmap as the size of 2048 is too high for FS9, and will waste resources.

Are those the facts?
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Re: JYAI F-15's

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That's about it Steve..

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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by petebramley »

Does this mean that the best thing for me to do (using FS9) is to convert the textures to 1024 x 1024
with mips (or without). ??
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by John Young »

Pete, If that means re-sampling the master downwards from 2048 x 2048 to 1024 x 1024 then yes and include the mips to avoid stutters. If the texture master is at 512 x 512 don't up-sample it to 1024. That won't help the definition at all.

Just a thought overnight, is the result also influenced by screen size? My screen is 27" on the diagonal and has a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels. If I view an aircraft across the entire width and it has a 2048 pixel texture, what happens to the excess pixels? Is compression at play or is it the dpi setting of the texture ( I use 300 dpi) that influences things, or is that just for print?

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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Firebird »

John,
It is a simple maths thing. Your screen size is kinda irrelevant. The key thing is the pixel resolution.

To be optimum your proggy would need to be set to the same DPI as the screen is capable of. Anything else then your work will either be scaled up or down. This maybe why sometimes painters have trouble with straight lines not behaving exactly as they want them.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by John Young »

Thank you Steve. Understood.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Woogey »

Hey guys,

I just wanted to add something to the conversation if I may. FSX-Steam Edition has actually increased the max texture load to 4096 when available, same for P3d. While I understand about the keeping the overall file size down when uploading packages to the site here, maybe we can have Seperate "HD package" downloads broken up into sections. Individual Squadron downloads for example.

As an alternative, Maybe John could offer his Ai model paint kits in a higher resolution, while the final liveries could be downsized to suit the needs of each simulator? Just a thought. -Woog
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Firebird »

It's a thought, Woog. I would say though even if you take the extra time to produce paints in the larger size it wouldn't necessarily be worth it.
What I mean here is that 2048 will work perfectly well in Steam, and lets face it we are talking about AI aircraft here so 1024 is not at all bad. The same can be said for P3D.

The bottom line as an org we couldn't commit painters to support every possible max texture size. It would have to be up to the individual. You may get some, you may not. You have already read about the issues Mark came up against trying to keep his workload to a manageable level. My guess would be that you are likely to get 2 sizes 1024 and 2048.
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by bismarck »

I need to clear up what to-do, about the repaints for Lakenheath of the JYAI F-15 for FS9.

I’ve downloaded the files:
JYAI_F-15_RAF-Lakenheath_FS9.zip
JYAI_F-15_RAF-Lakenheath_FSX.zip

Unzipping the FS9 zip, I obtain:

JYAI - F-15 RAF Lakenheath > with this subdir:
JYAI - F-15C 493FS pack
JYAI - F-15D 493FS pack
JYAI - F-15E 492FS pack
JYAI - F-15E 494FS pack

The aircraft has FDE + Model, and have the JYAI_F15_t.bmp texture of 4.097Kb
In every dir, there is also a Sound folder with many files, unused in FS9.

Unzipping the FSX zip, I obtain:

JYAI_F-15s_FSX_Lakenheath_Repaints > with this subdir:
24bit
Effects
Scenery
SimObjects
2015-8-29_16-23-12-676.jpg
README.txt

The aircraft haven’t FDE or Model, and the JYAI_F15_t.DDS textures under both 24bit and SimObjects directories, are 1.025Kb

I think I have to use the content of JYAI_F-15_RAF-Lakenheath_FS9.zip, ignore the sound folder and convert the texture into Extended Bitmap DXT3 (16bit) with MipsMap (1.366Kb)
Is it right?

Thanks, Giorgio
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Re: JYAI F-15's

Post by Firebird »

You don't need to do that, if you want to add mipmaps to your dds textures just load your textures into DXTBmp and tick the 'include when saving' option in the mipmap section and then save the file as a DDS Texture and it will automatically become 1.33mb.
The models and fde you can get from the jyai_f-15s_fsx_1.zip package from avsim.
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