Re: The "Fuzzies"
Postby JonPatch on Mon Dec 22, 2008 1:23 am
Here's a summary from Holger, taken from FSGenesis forum archives. He is referrring to parameters in FS9.cfg. If you don't know where to find or edit that file, let us know.
In order to maximize the detail/sharpness of ground textures it's a good idea to use terrain extended textures. Below is a summary of what these parameters mean and what values are possible. However, if you're using photoreal scenery (such as MegaScenery) you should turn off extended textures and reduce visibility to 30 miles or so. That is because without extended textures FS needs to load about 5000 texture tiles but with extended textures the number jumps to about 20,000!
There's still a lot of debate what exactly those parameters mean and what units they have but here's what I compiled from various sources and, IMO (!), makes sense:
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
* that's easy: ON/OFF switch to load higher res textures beyond the initial "ring", which extends to about 40 miles
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000
* apparently, values can range from 0 to 9.99 and higher settings will be ignored
* extends the use of the highest detailed mips (sharper textures) within the inner circle; lower settings means less than 40 miles and higher settings up to the 40-mile max.
* changing this value doesn't seem to make much of a visible difference
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.500000
* same range of values as above
* extends the use of higher maps for the outer circle(s). Supposedly, "1.5" reaches to ~70mi and "9.9" to about 100mi
* careful!!! A setting higher than 3.9 can lead to "texture tearing" (blue slivers) in the mid- to far distance when high-res mesh is used. Some add-on mesh files - like some of mine - provide additional "buffer" mesh files, which prevent those blue slivers even at settings >3.9
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4
* range from 0 to 8
* is tied to TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS and defines the max. mip level to be used for the outer ring(s), that is the sharpness of the outer ring textures
* I never noticed much difference between 0 and 4; no changes at all when >4
In summary, the TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS parameter appears to be the one with the biggest visual influence.
Oh, and TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT apparently determines the speed or priority with which ground textures are sent for processing to the graphics card.
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Re: The "Fuzzies"
Postby Dieter on Thu Dec 25, 2008 10:48 am
Hello,
there is another important point to pay attention to:
MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=
This factor is automatically and always changed to 96560 whenever you do a change in FS2004 settings, whatever value you had before!
Realistic value for landscape is 64000.
By the way, following values are recommended by Germany's well know "Texture Pope" Jobia.
(Holger will know him for sure)
He published his intensive studies in his "texture bible" - sorry, about 500 pages all in German.(
http://www.jobia.de/)
His proposals are:
MAX_UNLIMITED_VIS=64000
TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024
MipBias=8
[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
By the way, I'm really no texture specialist, just a user, depending on specialists' experience and I don't want to start a new discussion. These settings are excessively discussed in all forums since the appearance of FS2004. In the end, everybody has to find his best values.
Greetings
Dieter
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Re: The "Fuzzies"
Postby BC_Holger on Thu Dec 25, 2008 11:03 pm
Hi guys,
Joachim (Jobia) is correct in that the maximum values for TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS and TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS are 4.0, not 4.5 as I had posted. Similarly, TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS does only reach to 4, not 8.
Thus, the settings I use are:
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=4.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=4.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4 (as Joachim has shown in his document, this value makes no difference if the first two are set to the maximum 4)
Different from Joachim's suggestion I set
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=90.000000
and
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20
The former is the Mesh Complexity slider value and it has been shown that a value of 100 (percent) has a disproportionate impact on frame rates while any values above 70% or so make no visible difference in the sim.
With TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL at the default 19 the highest resolution that terrain mesh can resolve is 76-m spacing (LOD9). Most of my projects - as well as lots of other add-on landscape files - use 38-m spacing (LOD10), which is why I tend to use TMVL=20. The maximum value of 21, on the other hand, can lead to visual problems with terrain shading (large blocks instead of accurate shapes).
Cheers, Holger
