Is that an Orion I see?

[BaiterOne]

Hi,

just looking at the pics of the P-3 Orion in a thread on this forum reminded me of a problem I am having with the recent Patuxent River package - adding the visiting NP-3D Orion AEW from VX-30 “Bloodhounds.

The image below is what I see:



The aircraft is not the only one of the AEW Orions in the sim that is fuzzy - I have three others, from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection at NAS Corpus Christi, which are fuzzy too.

Unfortunately, these are not the only aircraft appearing like this within the sim (if only).

Some throw the surrounding scenery out of focus too.

I run DXTFixerX and Erez Werber's AI Aircraft Texture Checker after each flightplan update and these textures do not show as problems.

I would obviously like to fix them all with a surefire, easy, not-too-techy procedure.

I have mentioned this problem on the forum before and I have tried some methods but got lost in the set of instructions.

Does anyone out there using FS2004 have the same problems with these aircraft?

I would love to feel that I am not alone - though that would be sad and bad news for others then too!

Can anyone help me out here, please.

I use the latest build of Win 10 (14393.576) and have an NVIDIA GeForce MSI GTX 970 Video Card 4GB Memory with Driver 376.33.

[shaggy22]

Turn your global textures all the way up, it should be on massive iirc

[BaiterOne]

Hi Dan,

the Global Max Texture Size is already set at Massive.

The vast majority of aircraft show up fine.

[Firebird]

What graphics card do you have and do you have the latest drivers installed?

A few people have had this over the years and it is always down to something on their system setup.

What I would try is renaming your fs9.cfg file, on W10 it is in your C:\Users\??????\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\FS9 folder.
Then start up your FS9 and set your Global Max Texture size back to massive and see if there is any difference.

The startup will create a new fs9.cfg file with the default settings . Once you have tested you can always delete the new one and rename the original one back to return to your current setup.

[gsnde]

Since this affects only few aircraft....might it be that these textures are not mipmapped?

[Firebird]

I just ran a quick check and found that the VX-30 aircraft is mipmapped and none of the Corpus Christi are mipmapped.

Whilst it is a very reasonable avenue of investigation my gut here says that if mipmaps were the problem then everybody would see the same issue. So if they are involved there has to be some other factor, at the very least, which must be down to the individual set up.

Hence the clear out of that first.

[BaiterOne]

Hi Steve,

I always assumed that you could tell if a texture was mipmapped by opening it with Imagetool.

If this is the case then the Corpus Christi ones are in fact mipmapped (Mip Levels = 9 in all cases).

If I have been barking up the wrong perennial plant then I would appreciate some hint as to how to decide if a texture is mipmapped.

I will do a job on the cfg file tonight.

My driver for the NVIDIA GeForce MSI GTX 970 Video Card is up to date (minus one, as I heard that the most recent is a bit buggy in some way).

I have always assumed that the problem is purely on my side, but I have recently upgraded to a new computer, Win 10, a new graphics card and carried out a re-installation of FS2004 - I would have assumed that I would have lost the cause of the problem somewhere along the way!

The new cfg may reveal something...

[Firebird]

OK well your Corpus Christi schemes are different to mine as mine do not have mipmaps. Mine are 1025 KB in size and yes imagetool is as good as anything to check whether you have maps or not.

The key thing is that you said that 3 out of the 4 Corpus Christi birds have the same issue. If this is correct,and it was mipmaps then all of them would have the issue. First thing we should do is rule out a setting in the fs9.cfg.

[hawk_sh]

Try using the the propeller texture (prop-hs.bmp) from another P-3 Orion with the VX-30 repaint, please.
Maybe this is the cause for the issue.
I noticed that the P-3 AEW prop texture is different than the other P-3 prop textures.

When I created the VX-30 repaint I probably copied one of the Corpus Christi P-3 AEW folders.

[BaiterOne]

Steve,

my files are 1398 kb.

I renamed my fs9.cfg, restarted FS2004, reset Mode=1280x1024x32, and looked at the Orion. Same blurriness.

Hartwig,

I copied the prop-hs.bmp from a standard P-3 (looks somewhat different alright!), but it had no effect on the blurriness.

[Firebird]

OK so we know that a clean cfg has the same issue and your graphics card is good.

So there has to be some other reason. Do you use Nvidia Inspector?

[BaiterOne]

I do use nVidia Inspector (I think).

I found a profile online and used it as a base:



I must admit that I never really understood how exactly to use it.

I call the profile up once and apply changes.

Once this is done I can forget about nVidia Inspector itself - the profile will load once fs9.exe is called?

If this is the case then I do use nVidia Inspector

[hawk_sh]

Maybe you could try converting the texture to another format and see whether this solves the issue - DXT3 without mipmaps, or DXT1 without mipmaps.

[BaiterOne]

After a bit of confusion and experimentation I converted the Bloodhounds' Orion texture to DXT3 with no mipmaps.

Here is the result:



Seems fine - is it now just a question of me converting the other textures in the same way?

Or is there a real drawback to a using a DXT3 texture with no mipmaps?

[VulcanDriver]

I always use DXT3 no MIPS.

[BaiterOne]

Just to add a 'slight' downer to my last post.

The Orion still causes the surrounding background structures to go blurry

[John Young]

I always use mipped textures. There is a potential drawback if you don't that I noticed a while ago when testing someone elses's package without them. If you have a large quantity of AI aircraft concentrated in one place, eg on a flight line or on a HAS site, the sim is likely to stutter violently as, say, 12 aircraft all come into view at the same time. That can be particularly noticeable when flying circuits in a user aircraft at 500ft and 12 un-mipped textures load in one go as they come into view.

Like LODs, I guess Mips were put there for a purpose.

John

[hawk_sh]

I think most of the latest packages here came with DXT3 textures with mips.
So I assumed this would the best approach.

However in the past I also had this blurry textures a few times but these were always caused by some odd scenery textures,
never by an aircraft texture.

Since the blurry texture issue is still there after removing the mips It think it might not exclusively be caused by the aircraft texture?

[hawk_sh]

Maybe there is something with the model file itself that triggers this issue?

Why not try the paint scheme on a different model - a standard P-3 Orion without the radar dish.

[John Young]

Hartwig might well have a point. In the case of the aircraft that blur, do they have more than one texture sheet for the airframe? I used two sheets to divide up the airframe on my AI B-29 and that resulted in sudden blurring. There is a technique in the mapping (in the model) to prevent it, but I've avoided using two sheets, even for the B-36 ever since and have long forgotten how to correct it.

In scenery design, I know that using multi-material (multiple textures) on the same object can also cause blurring. Something I also avoid.

John