Radius at which details get fuzzy

[PRB]

Ok, see the pic? The highway, and all the scenery, gets fuzzy as it gets further away. I’ve seen people post screen shots that evidently don’t do that, or are set to “blur out" at a greater distance. In the scenery settings, the "Level of detail radius" is already maxed out (large). In the FSX.CFG file, I tried messing with the LOD_RADIUS, but that’s not it either. So how do I set my BLUR_OUT_THE_HIGHWAYS_RADIUS to some greater value?

 

[heywooood]

Paul,

So much depends on your computer....what do you have ?

It looks like you are familiar with the fsx.cfg tweaks...I left my lod distance alone at 4.5 I think is the default number...

But I upped my Texture Bandwidth Multiplier to 140 and made the BufferPools entry addon with a PoolSize value of 4000000 I think..but the important thing to remember with these entries is that all the variables will have different effects on different computer hardware combo's

be careful with these adjustments as the 'combination' of the two are somehow related AND some machines either cannot support or do not need the BufferPools entry at all.

You have to use trial and error method and keep track of the numbers and combinations you have tried to get the best values for your machine.

FSX is a fickle, needy mistress with no heart and just when you think you have it working where you like it it gets wonky again

 

[PRB]

Thanks, Heywood. Will look into those settings!

My system:

MB: Asus P6T Deluxe (LGA1366)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
CHIPSET: Intel® X58 / ICH10R<o></o>
CPU: Core i7 920 2.66Ghz (LGA1366)<o></o>
RAM: 8 GB DDR3/1333MHz Non-ECC Non-Registered Memory Module<o></o>
VIDEO: NVIDIA 9800GTX+ 512MB Dual DVI (PCI-E) Video Card (2)<o></o>
OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit<o></o>
SOUND: ADI® AD2000B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC<o></o>

 

[heywooood]

well - you should be able to get a little crisper look with that hardware...

do you have the framerates locked or unlimited? having the FPS locked can help your rig render surrounding scenery more crisply...unless...

are you using any FPS specific tweaks or files?

I have my FPS locked at 33-35 depending on where I am trying to fly
I am using a reduced tree texture file and less than max texture clouds
I have added the following lines to my cfg to reduce the number of buildings and trees my GPU/CPU have to render:

[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_TREES_PER_CELL=600
TERRAIN_MAX_AUTOGEN_BUILDINGS_PER_CELL=400

with those lines added I can run my in game autogen and scenery settings on max slider settings - it seems FSX likes having those sliders on full and reducing the number per cell as above lets me do it.

There are other tweaks and I'm sure someone will come along and say the settings I have are wrong or don't work on their machine and etc... and they are probably right WRT their machinery - so

It has taken me along time to get FSX to run well on my rig and it is still what I consider a work in progress - FSX is a fiddlers dream

 

[heywooood]

I suppose I should post a screenshot or two...forgive me Ickie et al...

 

[harleyman]

Nice shots Heywood....



Have you flashed your bios for your ASUS yet?

The ram is a tad low for the i7, but certainly plenty fast for FSX...

An OCed CPU would certainly help you some too !

 

[Lionheart]

Nice shots Heywood....



Have you flashed your bios for your ASUS yet?

The ram is a tad low for the i7, but certainly plenty fast for FSX...

An OCed CPU would certainly help you some too !

Goodness! Sounds almost like a foriegn language or perhaps talking in code over military radio bands.

To think you didnt know alot of these things a year ago, Mason. Now you are a genius in them, lol.. arrghh..

I am falling at the wayside.......

 

[Daube]

Ok, see the pic? The highway, and all the scenery, gets fuzzy as it gets further away. I’ve seen people post screen shots that evidently don’t do that, or are set to “blur out" at a greater distance. In the scenery settings, the "Level of detail radius" is already maxed out (large). In the FSX.CFG file, I tried messing with the LOD_RADIUS, but that’s not it either. So how do I set my BLUR_OUT_THE_HIGHWAYS_RADIUS to some greater value?

This kind of blurriness, especially for the roads, is linked to three settings:
- the texture filtering in the game settings: set t to anisotropic or trilinear
- the texture filtering in the drivers settings: ensure you are in "best quality" mode, not "best performance".
- the anisotropic filtering settings in the drives settings: ensure it is at 8x or more.

 

[PRB]

Thanks, Daube, I think your suggestion worked the best! I was set to bilinear texture filtering in the game. Triliniear didn't have much of an effect, but anisotropic was huge. The attached pic is after changing the game setting only. Then I set the graphics card setting as you suggested. I'm not sure it had as big an effect, but I think it's even better. And there are much better details now. The runways are sharper, and I can see the tire marks from way out on final now!
:ernae:

 

[harleyman]

PRB..

For the future we have many set up tips at the top of the page here.Both for Nvidia and ATI and FSX itself.... Have a look around there and you may find something else there that may help you..

You are looking better though....

 

[Daube]

Glad to see I could help.
The texture filtering settings tells to the video card how she should deal with the distant textures, and wih the transition between the various levels of details (Mipmapping). If set to a low setting, the card will make everything blurry with very poor transitions, like you could see in your first screenshots. Of course, this is better for the performance, because it's easier for the card.
If you set it to a higher setting (Anisotropic is the best), then the card will make a hard job painting the textures as precise as possible, with very smooth transistions.