Default terrain coverage looks ugly

O

OleBoy

Charter Member 2015
I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care for the looks, colors and overall appearance of the terrain surface colors. A lot of areas look like I'm looking down at the side of a ill Giraffe, Spotted Leopard or Hyena.
...I'm not sure why, but it just does not look right. I realize that the textures can only be so good, but they look hideous.

I'm thinking this is caused by the night textures over lapping (or something)

I know, FS9 is not FSX. And, I'm not trying to compare the two. I just feel there should be something better than the bland stock look.

Anyone care to comment? Or possible fix for this?

Note; I fly mainly in the mid-to-northwest regions. I'm not concerned with the rest of the world.
 
Could you post a screenshot so that we could see exactely what kind of terrain textures look ugly to you ?
Hard to recommend anything when we don't know what is recommendable ;)
I have some ideas to improve the terrain textures, freeware style, but I first want to see your problem.
 
You need Mesh

And this 19m Mesh is just what the doctor ordered.

It will sweeten up the West Coast of the USA.

The Mesh will change how the textures are displayed for the better.

FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Scenery FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains
[SIZE=-1] [ Download | View ] [/SIZE]
Name: usa19-1.zip Size: 68,137,759 Date: 03-07-2006 Downloads: 1,472
[SIZE=-1]
usa19.gif
FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains Mesh - California Coast. Enjoy the higher resolution of USA 19 m terrain mesh scenery. This is superior mesh scenery which will further enhance your flight simulation flight experience whether you are using any photorealistic scenery or any lwm vtp based roads or waters scenery. Files included with this zip cover most of the California coast. Data used Ned 1/3 elevation models. Designed by Raimondo Taburet. File 1 of 3. This scenery is also available as one single file (USA19.ZIP).
[/SIZE] FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Scenery FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains
[SIZE=-1] [ Download | View ] [/SIZE]
Name: usa19-2.zip Size: 44,659,504 Date: 03-07-2006 Downloads: 1,235
[SIZE=-1]
usa19.gif
FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains Mesh - California Coast. Enjoy the higher resolution of USA 19 m terrain mesh scenery. This is superior mesh scenery which will further enhance your flight simulation flight experience whether you are using any photorealistic scenery or any lwm vtp based roads or waters scenery. Files included with this zip cover most of the California coast. Data used Ned 1/3 elevation models. Designed by Raimondo Taburet. File 2 of 3.
[/SIZE] FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Scenery FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains
[SIZE=-1] [ Download | View ] [/SIZE]
Name: usa19-3.zip Size: 42,801,045 Date: 03-07-2006 Downloads: 1,420
[SIZE=-1]
usa19.gif
FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains Mesh - California Coast. Enjoy the higher resolution of USA 19 m terrain mesh scenery. This is superior mesh scenery which will further enhance your flight simulation flight experience whether you are using any photorealistic scenery or any lwm vtp based roads or waters scenery. Files included with this zip cover most of the California coast. Data used Ned 1/3 elevation models. Designed by Raimondo Taburet. File 3 of 3.
[/SIZE] FS2004 (ACOF) - FS2004 Scenery FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains
[SIZE=-1] [ Download | View ] [/SIZE]
Name: usa19.zip Size: 155,476,664 Date: 03-05-2006 Downloads: 3,108
[SIZE=-1]
usa19.gif
FS2004 Scenery--USA 19 - West Coast Terrains Mesh - California Coast. Enjoy the higher resolution of USA 19 m terrain mesh scenery. This is superior mesh scenery which will further enhance your flight simulation flight experience whether you are using any photorealistic scenery or any lwm vtp based roads or waters scenery. Files included with this zip cover most of the California coast. Data used Ned 1/3 elevation models. Designed by Raimondo Taburet. (Also available broken into three smaller files, see USA19-1.ZIP, USA19-2.ZIP, USA19-3.ZIP)[/SIZE]
 
I use the terrain texture from Golden Wings/Silver Wings with some other things added in here and there to make my freeware based installs look pretty darn amazing.

My ground vegetation set is by Gyula Kalcsó. Photoreal Seasonal Vegetation Ground texture Set. Second yellow box on the page, with a fix as well.

http://www.simviation.com/fs2004scenery111.htm

My runways and taxiway textures are from a set I found on Flightsim.com. By Brian Neitzel, the package is called aratsp.zip. I just use the runway and taxiway textures out of the Textures folder found in this package. Really gives the runways and taxiways that worn, cracked, patched, looked. Very life like.

Mesh is a bit more complicated. I use Rhumbaflappy's LOD5, 7 and 8 mesh as the base mesh (lots and lots of files to download), then use the freeware FSGenesis US mesh from Flightsim.com (lots and lots of downloading), with some other mesh used in areas that I do a fair bit of flying in (Hawaii, Greece and the like).

OBIO
 
OBIO said:
I use the terrain texture from Golden Wings/Silver Wings with some other things added in here and there to make my freeware based installs look pretty darn amazing.
Click to expand...

OBIO, please post a screen shot of your setup. Does Rumbaflappy's mesh cover the globe?
Thanks.

John
 
Sorry for not taking time to circle areas that bug me, but the areas that are black-white-green (patchy looking) and the general areas through out where houses and other buildings. There's a lot of white and bland colors that appear to make the whole area look like a huge blur between all the buildings.

I just loaded the default airport for the screens, but it's the same everywhere basically.
...I don't know if I'm being too picky or not. There may not be anything any better for textures.

Also, I'm using FSglobal 2010. Will the mesh interfere with it?
...I think I have it set too low in the library (3rd of bottom) because there are too many cliffs everywhere. But that's a totally different issue.

Here's the pictures. I'm tired. Hope this is right. http://img25.imageshack.us/g/ob2010jun25007.jpg/
 
Hey OleBoy. Very much agree that default FS9 ground textures are bad. When I fly in GW3, I use Moskvin Stanislav's photoreal grass textures. Really helps with the blurry ground. Also some CFG mods.

[DISPLAY]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=25
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=60
[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=2
 
Hurricane91 said:
OBIO, please post a screen shot of your setup. Does Rumbaflappy's mesh cover the globe?
Thanks.

John
Click to expand...

Rhumbaflappy's LOD5 and 7 mesh do cover the entire world...and make it look much better than stock mesh. His LOD8 mesh covers the areas where WW2 air combat took place...the Pacific and a vast chunk of Europe and North Africa (about 1/3 of the entire world is covered by the LOD 8 mesh).

I will get some screenshots tomorrow showing Rhumba's mesh.

OBIO
 
What really annoys me about the ground "textures" in FS9 and CFS2 (and even FSX from some of the pictures I've seen) is the blurred, out of focus, colour-slurred effect seen very clearly in this screenshot -
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1876/ob2010jun25004.jpg

Even the light green (grass ?) area on the right is out of focus and blurred. In fact, all that does seem to be in focus are the buildings and trees.

I have no idea what part of the flight sim display system causes this, but if somebody could tell me I'd appreciate it. More particularly, I'd like to know whether products like GEX or UTX will make any real improvement on what is shown here,
thanks in advance for any input,
Ro
 
Great thread. I've been spending more time in FS9 because the MAIW packages are just so awesome, but I hate the textures and terrain of FS9. This will help me, also. Can someone post some pics of the payware GEX Pro?
 
FS Global 2010 is a Mesh but what LOD or Meter is it.

If it is 38 Meter than you can install the 19 meter in the addon scenery in its own folder with a higher priority and it will draw the 19 meter mesh over the 38 meter mesh.

The 19 meter mesh will give you stronger valleys and higher sharper peaks.

You also need to make a terrain change in the cfg file as pointed out by robert41

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

I suggest using 21 instead of 19 if you use the 19 meter mesh. 21 does have a quirk in it. When the sun is setting as it drops you will see shadows around the mountains that form perfect square boxes on the ground. Its no big deal to me it only happens during sunrise and sunset and only for a few minutes while it sets or rises. The rest of the days everything is sharp and looks great.

If you don't like 21 try 20 but each number lower will make the 19 meter mesh weaker.
 
rohan said:
What really annoys me about the ground "textures" in FS9 and CFS2 (and even FSX from some of the pictures I've seen) is the blurred, out of focus, colour-slurred effect seen very clearly in this screenshot -
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/1876/ob2010jun25004.jpg

Even the light green (grass ?) area on the right is out of focus and blurred. In fact, all that does seem to be in focus are the buildings and trees.

I have no idea what part of the flight sim display system causes this, but if somebody could tell me I'd appreciate it. More particularly, I'd like to know whether products like GEX or UTX will make any real improvement on what is shown here,
thanks in advance for any input,
Ro
Click to expand...

That's normal. FS9 ground textures are limited to 5 meters per pixel, which will be blurry whatever you try.
If you want better ground textures, you'll have to buy a new computer and switch to FSX, which provided 1 meter/pixel textures per default, and can handle up to 7cm/pixel ground textures !
 
One thing made my FS9 fields areas look much better in the past.
It was a texture package nammed "us midwest rural textures", unfortunately I cannot find it back on the net, neither avsim or flightsim have it anymore... strange...

Here is how the cultivated area next to Concrete Mun looked like with those textures, it was really more realistic, less like a Giraffe skin...

Winter:
daube_image132.jpg


Spring
daube_image112.jpg


Autumn
daube_image126.jpg

daube_image106.jpg
 
Daube said:
One thing made my FS9 fields areas look much better in the past.
It was a texture package nammed "us midwest rural textures", unfortunately I cannot find it back on the net, neither avsim or flightsim have it anymore... strange...

Here is how the cultivated area next to Concrete Mun looked like with those textures, it was really more realistic, less like a Giraffe skin...
Click to expand...

I tried searching also for this. It does look much better.
... http://www.xs4all.nl/~oosterlo/scenery/uspage.html

But the links lead to Avsim, which are no longer in the library there.

Does anyone have this who could upload it to restock the library there?
...I also found it on the crook site fsplanet. But I am not Paying for something that is freeware
 
Daube said:
That's normal. FS9 ground textures are limited to 5 meters per pixel, which will be blurry whatever you try.
Click to expand...

I think that there's something else going on here - having a texture at a particular resolution will not in itself cause that texture to appear blurred or out of focus. For example, any of the add-on products like GEX must ultimately follow the same process using the same resolution, yet in almost all cases they do look better. However, I've seen screenshots which supposedly came from a copy of FS9 using one of those products, yet which had the same blurred, smeared, out of focus appearance as the default. Either that particular product had limited geographic coverage or the user involved made a mistake in labelling their screenshot(s).

In other cases, I've seen screenshots of some of these add-on products which had terrain features which were still out of focus, though no longer with blurred, smeared colours. Obviously, some are better than others, and I'd love to find a product which did away with these problems everywhere, even if it was a case of buying the product by region as opposed to a single global product.
Ro
 
Dangerousdave26 said:
FS Global 2010 is a Mesh but what LOD or Meter is it.

If it is 38 Meter than you can install the 19 meter in the addon scenery in its own folder with a higher priority and it will draw the 19 meter mesh over the 38 meter mesh.

The 19 meter mesh will give you stronger valleys and higher sharper peaks.

You also need to make a terrain change in the cfg file as pointed out by robert41

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

I suggest using 21 instead of 19 if you use the 19 meter mesh. 21 does have a quirk in it. When the sun is setting as it drops you will see shadows around the mountains that form perfect square boxes on the ground. Its no big deal to me it only happens during sunrise and sunset and only for a few minutes while it sets or rises. The rest of the days everything is sharp and looks great.

If you don't like 21 try 20 but each number lower will make the 19 meter mesh weaker.
Click to expand...

What a long and crazy week.

Dave, I'll look into the mesh you mention once I get things (in my head) sorted as for the installation procedures of all this mess. My head is starting to get foggy trying to absorb all the info shared here.

...FSglobal 2010 LOD is as follows;
High Quality Coverage of North America (and p.Canada!): Nationwide LOD11 (19m)

After reading the installation docs for FSglobal again, I learned that my library (order) placement is correct. Upon further reading I also learned that there are irregularities for many different places that can not or will not be fixed due to the data acquired to create the mesh.

Moving on,..
Config settings are TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

Continuing from;
OBIO said:
I use the terrain texture from Golden Wings/Silver Wings with some other things added in here and there to make my freeware based installs look pretty darn amazing.

My ground vegetation set is by Gyula Kalcsó. Photoreal Seasonal Vegetation Ground texture Set. Second yellow box on the page, with a fix as well.

http://www.simviation.com/fs2004scenery111.htm

My runways and taxiway textures are from a set I found on Flightsim.com. By Brian Neitzel, the package is called aratsp.zip. I just use the runway and taxiway textures out of the Textures folder found in this package. Really gives the runways and taxiways that worn, cracked, patched, looked. Very life like.

Mesh is a bit more complicated. I use Rhumbaflappy's LOD5, 7 and 8 mesh as the base mesh (lots and lots of files to download), then use the freeware FSGenesis US mesh from Flightsim.com (lots and lots of downloading), with some other mesh used in areas that I do a fair bit of flying in (Hawaii, Greece and the like).

OBIO
Click to expand...

Since I can not find the us midwest rural textures that Daube mentions, I am heading in the direction OBIO speaks of. I have downloaded the Photoreal Seasonal Vegetation Ground texture Set by Gyula Kalcsó.

OBIO...Now for a question I think is real important.

1)...Do I need the Rhumbafluppy Mesh if I am using FSglobal 2010? If yes, does the readme give instruction for library order priority?

2)...What bits and pieces do you suggest for other textures?

3)...Should I download/install anything from Silver Wings? (Note; This is a standard (all era) FS9 install)

Please be specific on what to install where (ie: seperate folders in the add-on scenery folder or in the FS9root scenery folder)

Another note, just thinking of doing all this makes me extremely nervous. I don't want to botch up my install of FS9 and have to start all over :isadizzy:
 
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