Mip Mapping Quality Setting

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OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I currently have my Mip Mapping quality set at 4...only because I read in a thread on FS2004 tweaks that having it set on 4 is the best setting, that the default 6 is too high. What does this setting do? If I have all the textures for all of my planes resaved without Mip Maps, could I turn Mip Mapping off? Or are mip maps used for other things as well?

OBIO
 
OBIO, I know a lot of scenery uses mipmapping but have no idea what would happen if you turn it off, maybe those textures would be affected
 
I dont think you can turn it off. Mips are created in the textures when compiled. You are given a slider to adjust their 'power'.

With Mips set at 5 or 6, you might experience blurries in terrain, especially with high detail terrain. Running them at 50% will usually do you well. Now if you have a water cooled, 10 Jiggawatt, 40 killajule, ultra computer with 20 SSD linked HD's, then you could probably run at highest setting with no problems and no blurries.

Mips, by the way, were created so that computers could run faster under the strain of all these textures. They basically 'fuzz' the texture (as I am sure you know) thus making the texture (when fuzzy) a low memory resource texture. Similar to LOD's (level of detail) models in some planes (like in CFS). When at a certain distance or angle, the blurry starts. Sometimes they can really look horrible...



Bill
 
Thanks for the input gents....I will leave my Mips at 4. Scenery looks good at that level, my sim flies smooth as glass with frames locked at 20 (can go higher, but I can't tell any difference in the sim at 20 FPS and 40 FPS, so I keep it locked at 20 to free up resources for scenery drawing). I do, however, have a major dislike of Mip Maps on my planes...when I want to step outside the cockpit and take a look at my plane, I want it to be as sharp as possible and having fuzzy skins due to MIPs is just about against my religion.

OBIO
 
One thing I know that is affected by the mip map setting is the ground and tree texturing. Turn it all the way up and while everything get's crystal clear, it also causes what has become known as "shimmering", where those textures appear to me sparkling. . .turn it down to 4 or 5 and that effect goes away.
 
yeah, mip maps on an aircraft are the cause of 'fuzzies', none of my repaints have mips, i like things crystal clear, i have mips maxxed out and am locked at 20fps (though if i do a peak test it gets to 60-65),
resaving textures minus the mips works but keeps the blurriness due to DXT Artifacting, lower spec PC's should use mips as it frees up loading times of the textures, most PC's inside the last 4 years should be able to handle no-mips, and those that use laptops should stick to mips or if they have the resources to draw high qual textures use them.... at the end of the day its the same "what do you want?" question, some like performance, some like graphics, and some find a medium between the two (such as myself) :kilroy:
 
falcon409 said:
One thing I know that is affected by the mip map setting is the ground and tree texturing. Turn it all the way up and while everything get's crystal clear, it also causes what has become known as "shimmering", where those textures appear to me sparkling. . .turn it down to 4 or 5 and that effect goes away.
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. I keep mine at 4 and still get horrible shimmering that can only be cured by aa.
 
Interesting... with my current card and current settings for said card, I actually get far worse shimmering when running at a low mip-map setting... I have to keep my FS9 settings at max-mip (8) because (4) or similar shimmers like mad... must be some sort of odd ground-bump-texture interaction, 'cause it sure is weird...
 
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