Blocky brown ground textures at low alt.

[Klarck]

Hi all

Just installed FS2004. It runs smootly and with decent framerates on my mid end computer (AMD Athlon 1.5 ghz, Radeon 9600 256 MB (Cat. 4.4), 512 MB RAM).

But when I switch wiew at low altitude I get some blocky brown ground textures. It only last a split second or so, then everything looks ok, but it's very annoying. Is this a know problem?

I have tried every combination of graphic settings (in the game and on my videocard) that I can think of, tried using catalyst 4.2, re-installing the game, but no luck so far.

Strange thing is that all my other fligt-sims (Falcon 4, Il-2 FB AEP, FS2002, and even LOMAC (on low settings)runs ok.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance

Klarck
edit: screenshot is taken with high graphic setting, it's not that bad with low settings, but I cant get rid of the brown scenery textures completly.

[garymbuska]

Where are your sliders set. From what you decsribe this is normal. The rate at which autogen is displayed is controled by a slider in the settings menu. But even with it maxed out you will still notice a little difference between near and distance objects. Like the real world one can see a building that is close in better detail than one that is far away. FS2004 is a verry graphic intensive game even compared to FS2002 the differance is drastic.
You control what you see with the different sliders in the settings menu.
Also do you have a 3d card if not you or going to have display issues
In order to get fair graphics you need a 3d card with a minimum of 64 meg ram. but to get descent graphics you need at least a card with 128 mb but 256 works even better

[Klarck]

My card: Sapphire Atlantis Radeon 9600 256 MB.

I've tried using both low, medium high and high graphic in-game settings, different resolutions, AA on and off, AF on and off, different settings for mipmapping quality, different settings for terrain texture size etc.

I'm using the same flight for testing every time, taking off from my local airport (small airport outside Aarhus, Denmark).

I know that FS2004 is graphic intensive, but I thought that I was able to run it at 1024x768x32 with at least low or medium high settings on my machine without having graphic anormalities.

Has anyone else seen these blocky brown ground textures, when switching wiew in the 2d cockpit at low altitude?

Regards

Klark

[Smoke2much]

This happens to me as well and I asked about it a few months back.  The trick is to alter the bandwidth settings in your FS9.cfg file:

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600.0]
Mode=1600x1024x16
TriLinear=1
[DISPLAY]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=50
TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=40
[TERRAIN]
TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=80.000000
TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000
TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=19
TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8
TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2
TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1
TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=0.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=0.000000
TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1242456
[SCENERY]
IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=3
DYNAMIC_SCENERY=0
DYN_SCN_DENSITY=5
DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1
SUNGLARE=1
LENSFLARE=1

I have highlighted the section that I mean.  Increasing this should solve your problem but I make no guarentee.

Will

[Delta_]

What does that parameter control, what will take-away from/give to if it was increased.  
I don't get this problem, but i know a few that do play FS9 and if they had this problem i would know how to fix it, with minimal loss in anything else, assuming that it works, which we will have to wait and see if Klarck has his problems solved.

[Smoke2much]

I just trawled back through several hundred pages of posts.

[Delta_]

Thanks, excellent fix!  ;)

Just need to wait and see if Klarck's problem has gone...

[Klarck]

[quote]I just trawled back through several hundred pages of posts.

[Klarck]

Sleep2much, thanks, but unfortunately the trick didn't solve my problem.

I'd tried to set TEXTURE_BANDWIDT_MULT to both 80 and 120, but the brown scenery textures was still there in both cases.

Stange thing is that you gave an exact description of my problem in your own post; large parts of the scenery (like fields) that dosn't load fast enough.

But maybe the fix only helps on nvidia cards? Mine is ATI.

Maybe I'll just have to live with it