• There seems to be an uptick in Political comments in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religious comments out of the forums.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politician will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment among members. It is a poison to the community. We appreciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

Graphic definitions

WarHorse47

WarHorse47

SOH-CM-2024
Can anyone give me a definition of a graphic "spike" or "tear"? Are they one and the same or something different? And how are they different from a "flashing" texture or "artifacts"?

I keep coming across these terms as I research graphic issues and am not sure what they mean or what might cause them to occur. Any good reference would sure help.
 
It all depends on the fault to which somebody is referring. And their knowlege. In beta testing, the dev has to learn to interpret as many terms like spikes and tears, flashing and "holes", "splits" and more are used to describe all manner of issues, depending n the tester's vocabulary and command of the English language.

Flashing is usually a result of one plane or polygon lying directly over another with no gap. There's a thing called "Z" buffer which one can use in the construction of the model to "force" a visual separation between the two if they are not in error and need to be there.

Tearing is usually when a polygon(s) has not been mapped correctly or there is a rogue vertice (pixel) out of alignment that is carrying the texture. The graphics engine is "searching"to complete the image but failing. Mind you that is just one explanation of the term. It is used for so many different interpretations it is not easy to give you an exact answer there.

Most graphics anomalies in models are caused by incorrect or incomplete mapping. Also any model has what we call a "bounding box" which is a bit like a perimeter fence around the model to provide location reference for avoiding obstacles, crashes and of course setting the scale of the model in relation to its surroundings. If there is a fault here, it can wreak havoc with graphics presentation.

There's more but I won't bore you with it...:engel016:
 
In my experience tearing can be minimized or eliminated by changing the Vsync settings on your GPU control panel. I keep my settings on Adaptive. As far as spikes, even with my new GTX960 SC, I see spike/anomalies with different aircraft models which occur depending on my FPS setting. With some models, I need to run on the Unlimited setting but with other models, I have to keep the FPS locked on 32 up to 50 or I will get all sorts of odd spikes/anomalies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top