Having issues getting fs9 to look right

M

mytincantruck

Guest
I have tweaked and tuned and cannot get fs9 to look as good as I have seen some of the shots I have seen. I go one way I have fuzzy roads I go another I have jaggies. I cant make heads or tails of it all. Any help is appreciated.

Here are my specs and current settings

Intel Pentium D 930 Presler 3.0GHz LGA 775 95W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80553930

ASUS P5N-D LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 750i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard

EVGA 512-P3-N980-AR GeForce 9800 GT Hybrid Power 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit

RAIDMAX HYBRID 2 RX-530SS 530W ATX12V V2.2/ EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Modular Modular LED Power Supply

image3lmo.jpg
 
Setting up your video card is just part of the battle to get FS2004, or any sime for that matter, looking its best. The in-sim settings are just as important...probably more so that the video card settings. I let my sim setting do all the work and set my video card to allow the individual programs to dictate things. Works for me and my CFS2 and FS2004 look great...not as good as some I have seen screenshots of, but then again I don't have tons of money invested in payware mesh and scenery, and don't have a super duper high tech system.

OBIO
 
Get NHancer - simply a more user-friendly front end for the NVidia cards - which will at least explain what it is you're setting.
I've forgotten which applies to the 9800GT, but some NVidia cards work best with AA unchecked in the sim, others the opposite. Try both for starters, then go tweaking.

Some in-game settings (from several previous posts)
Holger S posted this on the Fsgenesis forum: (http://portal.fsgenesis.net/index.php?n ... 51&start=0)
"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. "
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 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
 
Wozza that is extremely strong medicine, and I for one would be very nervous of going into the registry before trying all other possible avenues.
Kurt's problem may have been his SLi setup.

For a 9800 card one of the older drivers like 162.18 will do just fine BTW.

One other setting often forgotten: in the sim, reduce the visibility to 20 or 30 miles, which is pretty much what you get IRL.
In concert with some of the above tweaks, you can get good depth of field effects:

fs92009-05-1317-56-01-95.jpg
 
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