On some missions the textures load at low res...

[retrovertigo]

I recently got back into this game and did a fresh re-install in order to add the service pack. I saved my settings and am running the game exactly as I used to. BUt on some missions (notably Tokyo executive) the textures are not loading as they should. While the airports remain crisp, the ground textures only load very low resolution ones.

I have the texture resolution set to 1m and it's never given me a problem. I bought another gig of ram as that mission was always a stuttery one for me near the start, but that hasn't helped at all.

Can someone shed any light on this for me please? many thanks.

[Daube]

The ground textures are blurry because your CPU is too busy in loading the rest of the surrounding scenery/autogen.
In your case, this is not a problem of insufficient RAM, it's just a lack of CPU power.
Lowering the level of detail for the scenery may help, waiting a moment without moving may hep as well. I suggest you to lower your texture res to 2m only, the texture will not look as crisp as before anymore, but they will load faster.

[retrovertigo]

I honestly don't think that's the problem - no offence. It did used to load the textures fine before I did the reinstall with the service pack. My machine is an older one - an Athlon XP3200+ processor, 2 gigs ram and an ATI X800XT Platinum edition graphics card.

I have scenery detail set quite low as I prefer smooth framerates over masses of square buldings, and have autogen set to off. On a typical flight I can acheive anything from 25fps upwards.

It just seems to be odd ones where no matter what I try the textures won't switch in for higher quality ones. I have sat on the airfield and waited until my HDD stops accessing before taking off to see if that helps. And even as I fly the mission and end up over sparse countryside, the textures don't load in. However, if I fly out to sea and to some new area then the textures load up in any new area I fly to.

It's as though it can't find the right textures or something.

Not very well explained I know, but hopefully this is fixable without doing yet another reinstall. Thanks you for replying.

[Daube]

The SP1 alters the way the scenery is loaded.
Scenery loading INCLUDES ground textures loading.
I would suggest you to tweak your FSX.cfg in a better manner instead of just relying on the game settings, which are inaccurate and ineffectives. A good tweaking of your FSX.cfg would allow you to get a much better performance WITH the autogen.

A world wihtout autogen is wortheless.... (AND ugly)

However, even if you still do not want the autogen, the tweaks contain some stuff for fastening the loading of the scenery. You should check this out in the links of the FAQ.

[retrovertigo]

Ok, thanks. I'll check out the faq and do some tweaking. I understand what you are saying about autogen, but my best moments are when I'm flying over either snowy mountains or expanses of country side taking in the views. I'm not much of a city person

[Daube]

Ok, thanks. I'll check out the faq and do some tweaking. I understand what you are saying about autogen, but my best moments are when I'm flying over either snowy mountains or expanses of country side taking in the views. I'm not much of a city person

Oh OK I get it.
For the high and snowy montains, of course you do not need any autogen, since there isn't any there.
However, you may find usefull the tweak which allows you to display only the trees, and not the buildings. this will save you a lot of ressources while occasionnaly flying over some populated areas (villages, towns etc...), but will give a much better look to the medium mountains and valleys, places which you must cross frequently if I understood right

[retrovertigo]

I'm going to tweak the autogen settings, but at the moment it makes my machine work very hard. Even autogen set to trees 800 and buildings 400 makes my framerate go to half what I have at the moment.

I need to next tweak the texture bandwidth. But there is another setting that goes with this which I can't find in the cfg file.

Oh and thank you for helping so far

[Daube]

Try 400 trees and only 1 building (0 doesn't work, 1 will desactivate buildings).
Also, in the game settings, make sure you set your autogen density to the setting you need, depending on the visua result of the tweak. 400 and "Very Dense" will not look like 400 + "Sparse", see what I mean ? This has a strong impact on the performance.

For the FFTF, I have a Pentium 3,2 GHz, which is quite similar to your CPU, and I set it to 0.34.

For the TBM, start with 40 and see what happens. Then try 80 and compare.

The main tweaks do not exist by default in the FSX.cfg, you have to add them, in the correct section of course.

The bufferpools stuff, will have an impact on the performance while panning around, like when you're going forward, and suddently you decide to make a U-Turn, or to look around. The BufferPools will have an influence on the stutters you get whille turning. Try with 2500000, then eventually try with 5000000 (other members, please correct me if I'm wrong there, I'm not too sure about the number of zeros)

The settings in-game, as I mentionned before, should also be set in a appropriate maner. Here are my settings, and my hardware:
- Pentium 3,2 GHz
- 1 Gb RAM
- GeForce 6800 GT

Graphic settings:
- Ground texture 2m
- Scenery density "normal" (or even "sparse" sometimes, those scenery -not autogen- buildings are killing my video card)
- Autogen density at max (with max_trees at 800 and max_buildings at 800 as well
- Mesh resolution 19m
- Mesh complexity 100%
- Water... depends, sometimes Lox 2x, when I want some reflections on small lakes, sometimes High 1x, when I do not care
- FPS limit 17 (yes, it's low, but still smooth, and my scenery loads much faster !!)

Basically, I would say that the Scenery/Autogen density, the Ground Texture resolution and the FPS limit have the greatest impact on the performance. 1m textures look so cool, but I can't afford them with such a small CPU. I found the balance 2m/17 FPS to be quite pleasant for GA and gliding

Now you have to find what balance satisfies you best.

[retrovertigo]

Thank you for a very nicely detailed post!

Can I ask what FFTF is? I can't think what that might be.

And also I am not sure where I should put the bufferpools command. I found a post here that mentions it, but I am not sure in cfg where it should go.

But thanks again - and it gives me some good starting points for getting the best from the game. It seems that so far (apart from autogen) that we have it set up very similarly.

I've noticed - just to continue from my original post, that helicopter missions in general have glitches when I play them. Maybe it doesn't matter too much as I'm useless at the heli ones!

[Daube]

The FFTF is explained in one of the FAQ links I think... However, this is the FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION if I'm not mistaken.
It is a parameter that defines the percentage of time that the CPU shoud spent for building the scenery.
A higher setting makes a better-looking, faster-to-build scenery, with sharper ground textures of course.
A lower setting lower the CPU work, the scenery may not look that good anymore, but some FPS are earned.
After the SP1 install, this tweak does not work anymore with the multi-core CPUs, but with our old mono-core CPUs it's fine
0.33 is the starting value to test, then change it by small increments (0.34 or 0.32 etc...) and see what happens. 0.34 gives good results on my CPU.

The BufferPools tweak is a completely new section, with only this parameter in it. You can paste it directly at the very beginning of the FSX.cfg.

[retrovertigo]

Excellent, thanks for being so helpful!

[alrot]

. Here are my settings, and my hardware:
- Pentium 3,2 GHz
- 1 Gb RAM
- GeForce 6800 GT

Graphic settings:
- Ground texture 2m
- Scenery density "normal" (or even "sparse" sometimes, those scenery -not autogen- buildings are killing my video card)
- Autogen density at max (with max_trees at 800 and max_buildings at 800 as well
- Mesh resolution 19m
- Mesh complexity 100%
- Water... depends, sometimes Lox 2x, when I want some reflections on small lakes, sometimes High 1x, when I do not care
- FPS limit 17 (yes, it's low, but still smooth, and my scenery loads much faster !!)

.

Daube  :) we both have almost the same specs ,I'll try you settings  :D

[alrot]

Wow ,This probably the best tweak I ever found ,Three questions Daube , do you work on 1280X1024X32 or1024X768X32 ? How do youi deal with the antiasiliasing and asinotropic filters??

[retrovertigo]

I have to say that so far the bufferpools setting has made a huge difference to the game for me. It no longer stutters as I'm flying around and I can enjoy the lovely textures as I sit back and relax flying over the countryside.

Could someone please explain what the difference os between "mesh resolution" and "mesh complexity" as they kind of sound like the same thing to me.

Really enjoying this game more and more as I tweak it to my own likings. Friends think I'm crazy to play a game where you can just sit for ages with basically nothing to do. But it's a great form of escapism really, and it's amazing to see the work that's gone into the game creating a whole world.

[Daube]

Wow ,This probably the best tweak I ever found ,Three questions Daube , do you work on 1280X1024X32 or1024X768X32 ? How do youi deal with the antiasiliasing and asinotropic filters??

Hi Alrot, I'm glad to see that my settings are usefull for you
For the resolution, because I have a old CRT screen, I am limited to 1152x... (don't remember, 954 maybe ? however, 4/3 conventionnal)
The anti-aliasing is unchecked in my game, my video card driver is set to Best Quality sometimes, Quality most of the times.
My AA in the drivers is set to 8x
My AF is set to 16x.
My MipBias tweak in the FSX.cfg, I can't remember it... I think I set it to 4... not sure anymore, and since I'm abroad I cannot check in these days...

PS: oh, of course my bloom, self-shadows and ground scenery shadows are set to OFF !