Blurries FIX for FSX [Experimental]

[bojote 20]

I've been testing a combination of settings that appear to be working with very good results. This is, of course, under my very specific testing scenario, so I don't expect this to work for all of you, however, I would like to invite you to test it and provide feedback as to the results you see, so we can determine if this is a valid 'tweak'.First, a little bit of background, THEN the tweak.The terrain engine in FSX works based on the loading of terrain textures based on the user A/C location. The priority used by FSX to determine what ammount of CPU is allocated to this function is the FIBER_FRAME_FRACTION value.Another setting that affects the Loading of textures if the SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT value. This value is the number of frames that the above process will have to wait before 'asuming' a particular tile has been already loaded into VIDEO MEMORY.If SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT is too high, then FIBER_FRAME_FRACTION (no matter if it is set to 0.99) will have to wait X number of frames (the SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT value) before ATTEMPING to read a tile/texture from VIDEO MEMORY, in the other hand, if SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT is too low AND the requested texture has not YET been loaded into VIDEO memory you will see a white flash. The white flash is the terrain engine trying to read the texture from video memory, every flash is an attempt of the terrain engine to fetch that texture from VIDEO MEMORY, this is BAD and it means SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT is set too low.Now, there IS a setting that controls how 'fast' textures are loaded into VIDEO MEMORY. Unfortunately, this setting (TextureMaxLoad) ONLY SEEMS TO WORK (at least for me) when frames are set to UNLIMITED inside FSX. (I use an external frame rate limiter) So, what is the actual 'tweak'? well it involves the following:Setting a FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION of 0.5reducing your SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT to a VERY LOW value, such as 2and increasing TextureMaxLoad to 60frames (inside FSX set to UNLIMITED) this is VERY IMPORTANT!Now, go to an area where you usually see a lot of BLURRIES and report back. This is EXPERIMENTAL, I'm only publushing this in hopes of getting some feedback on the benefits of this (if any) and.. this is NOT a performance tweak! it simply helps with the blurries, and specifically on MY setup.I would suggest that you try this only if you have a fast video card/CPU combination (GTX 480 / CPU >= 4.0Ghz)Cheers,

[Bert Pieke 7,584]

I've been testing a combination of settings that appear to be working with very good results. This is, of course, under my very specific testing scenario, so I don't expect this to work for all of you, however, I would like to invite you to test it and provide feedback as to the results you see, so we can determine if this is a valid 'tweak'.

A. Does this work with or without Pools=0?B. Under what headings do these various parameters go in the cfg file?

[Guest freebird77]

Are you describing dynamic blurries vs static? As in not the Texture mipmaps that are controled by driver LOD and in game LOD but more of a CPU/memory sub-system issue when flying fast and low and slowly the terrain becomes "blurred" due to the system not keeping up in rendering terrain mesh and textures- Is that correct?It might be more helpful for everyone to know which the tweak is for, though it may be obvious for some.

[bojote 20]

Are you describing dynamic blurries vs static? As in not the Texture mipmaps that are controled by driver LOD and in game LOD but more of a CPU/memory sub-system issue when flying fast and low and slowly the terrain becomes "blurred" due to the system not keeping up in rendering terrain mesh and textures- Is that correct?It might be more helpful for everyone to know which the tweak is for, though it may be obvious for some.

Correct, the above is related to the terrain engine in FSX not keeping up when flying fast and slow, driver related blurries were addressed already in the Shader 3 Mod I posted a while ago, in that mod the minification, magnification and mipmap LOD bias were changed to make the terrain at distance look more crisp regardless of the LOD set inside FSX (this is achieved in the mod by changing the shader sampler filters from Linear to Anisotropic) and using a negative LOD bias of -1 which helps making the terrain look more sharp, but also creates a bit of shimmering unless you set the aniso filter in your driver to 16xHope that helps.

A. Does this work with or without Pools=0?

No difference. It will work regardless.

B. Under what headings do these various parameters go in the cfg file?

[Display]TextureMaxLoad=60 // Not to be confused with the TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD setting that goes in the [GRAPHICS] section, this is a completely different setting.UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0 // to set FPS to unlimted so the above setting will work.[Main]FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION=0.5[TERRAIN]SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT=2having a SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT of 2 is a 'VERY' aggresive setting, what you are doing setting it that low is 'assuring' the terrain engine that 'textures' are always loaded into VIDEO MEMORY and this can ONLY be achieved with TextureMaxLoad=60. Remeber, this is an 'experimental' thread. Its purpose is to determine the benefits (if any) of the tweaks dicussed. Nothing revolutionary about it.. just a simple blurries fix alternative to see if it works for others as it has worked for me.

[HUSSAR 272]

A. Does this work with or without Pools=0?B. Under what headings do these various parameters go in the cfg file?

[MAIN]FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION[TERRAIN]SWAP_WAIT_TIMEOUT[DISPLAY]TextureMaxLoad

[Guest freebird77]

Correct, the above is related to the terrain engine in FSX not keeping up when flying fast and slow, driver related blurries were addressed already in the Shader 3 Mod I posted a while ago, in that mod the minification, magnification and mipmap LOD bias were changed to make the terrain at distance look more crisp regardless of the LOD set inside FSX (this is achieved in the mod by changing the shader sampler filters from Linear to Anisotropic) and using a negative LOD bias of -1 which helps making the terrain look more sharp, but also creates a bit of shimmering unless you set the aniso filter in your driver to 16xHope that helps.

I apllogize for going into this here because I dont want to clutter up another tweak post (sorry) but I am interested in your LOD/mod, did you do -0.1 or - 1.0? I ask because there is a BIG difference. Also was this done in the registry at the driver level or only in the User>Local>Microsoft>FSX>Shaders files?I think it would be interesting to explore simply the LOD adjustments as a stand alone depending on which route you took. Thanks (Edited for clarity)

[bojote 20]

Also was this done in the registry at the driver level or only in the User>Local>Microsoft>FSX>Shaders files?I think it would be interesting to explore simply the LOD adjustments as a stand alone depending on which route you took.

It was done at the shader level. The 'sampler' is an object with certain 'properties' (such as filters and LOD bias settings) which is used to render graphics in-game. The Mod has been out for a while, look at my signature. And the mipmap LOD bias is set to -1 not 0.1.You can adjust this yourself if you want without downloading my shader mod. Simply go to:ShadersHLSL/terrain/Water20.fxh (notice the letter h at the end of the extension) this is a 'header' file. It contains 'common' data.inside the above file you'll find the bump 'sampler' it looks like this:sampler Water_BumpSampler = sampler_state{ Texture = (Water_BumpTexture); AddressU = Wrap; AddressV = Wrap; AddressW = Wrap; MinFilter = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; MagFilter = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; MipFilter = D3DTEXF_LINEAR; MipMapLodBias = (State_MipMapLodBias);};Notice the filter settings and the MipMapLoadBias.. The State_MipMapLodBias is a constant that is taken from the file ShadersHLSL/Common/Common.fxh (default value is 0)Most filters in the FSX shaders are set to LINEAR (for compatiblity reasons). In some cases, such as Bump samplers for water and terrain, having the Aniso filter will give you much better visuals, and in case of ATI cards better performance. (nVidia cards don't suffer from performance issues with linear filters as the ATI cards do)EDIT: BTW, freebird77.. there is something strangely familiar about you. do we know each other? I think its your signature.

[HUSSAR 272]

It was done at the shader level. The 'sampler' is an object with certain 'properties' (such as filters and LOD bias settings) which is used to render graphics in-game. The Mod has been out for a while, look at my signature. And the mipmap LOD bias is set to -1 not 0.1.

So it is already contained in the Shader Model 3.0 for FSX v1.5, correct? No need for any changes to the mod then?I made the changes as outlined above and I find there is a better representation of the textures and autogen. I changed my LOD radius to 5.5 from 4.5 because I was experiencing autogen popping up as I approached the airport.I must say that even the blurry ground textures I experienced have been reduced in the amount of time they appear when descending from higher altitudes, so far so good.

[bojote 20]

So it is already contained in the Shader Model 3.0 for FSX v1.5, correct? No need for any changes to the mod then?

Correct. No need to mod the mod ;) I simply gave an explanation on how its done.

I made the changes as outlined above and I find there is a better representation of the textures and autogen. I changed my LOD radius to 5.5 from 4.5 because I was experiencing autogen popping up as I approached the airport.I must say that even the blurry ground textures I experienced have been reduced in the amount of time they appear when descending from higher altitudes, so far so good.

Good... thanks for testing!! now, try to do some regular flying throughout the week and see if this is a keeper. I do 'feel' things smoother overall. But, its good to see others experiences first.

[Guest freebird77]

It was done at the shader level. mipmap LOD bias is set to -1 not 0.1.P.D btw, freebird.. there is something familiar about you. do we know each other?

Ahh Muchas Gracias-1 relates to 1.0 (I think) and is a bit steep for any AA and AF to work with, but I can only relate that from driver work.Am getting a nice new fat 580GTX this week and will try pushing the IQ a bit further with some of the BP=Stock/BP=X&0 AND RejectThreshold tweaks to see If I can get something to stick with ultraHigh IQ so this maybe of great value - Will spend some time with it after some bench runs.Do you find my sig offensive or something? Its a rip from something but I dont remember what. Will pm you sometime.Back to the tweak, my system is close to yours with maybe an exception to memory or other minor things in setup and I really have nothing to complain about, is this mainly in issue for your system when there is a lot of variation of landclass combined with max settings of AG and complex meshes? What is your scenario like?

[bojote 20]

Do you find my sig offensive or something? Its a rip from something but I dont remember what.

Don't worry, its just that the sig was used by someone with the nick 'Shockwave' a while ago, Shockwave was posting anonymously so he could insult me publicly while I was researching new FSX tweaks back in April. No big deal. It simply surprised me you had the same sig.

Back to the tweak, my system is close to yours with maybe an exception to memory or other minor things in setup and I really have nothing to complain about, is this mainly in issue for your system when there is a lot of variation of landclass combined with max settings of AG and complex meshes? What is your scenario like?

I max every single slider, so when I fly the Aerosoft F-16 doing tight turns in Seattle with ORBX's PNW I do get some blurries... Yes, it is an unrealistic scenario, but is good for testing, which is what this tweak is all about. I really don't experience blurries that much except when flying FL350 and panning around.

[Guest freebird77]

Don't worry, its just that the sig was used by someone with the nick 'Shockwave' a while ago, Shockwave was posting anonymously so he could insult me publicly while I was researching new FSX tweaks back in April. No big deal. It simply surprised me you had the same sig.I max every single slider, so when I fly the Aerosoft F-16 doing tight turns in Seattle with ORBX's PNW I do get some blurries... Yes, it is an unrealistic scenario, but is good for testing, which is what this tweak is all about. I really don't experience blurries that much except when flying FL350 and panning around.

This any better? LOLWell I think it is a good scenario for testing but maybe even better with some big iron?Will give some of these a try next week.

[HUSSAR 272]

ORBX PNW is an issue for me, I could have sworn that I read in the product description or review that FSX would run smoother due to the work they had completed texture-wise.I really do enjoy the addon although at a cost especially when running Active Sky Evolution and REx 4096x4096 textures. I am planning on building a new rig in the next few months and I look forward to flying the smooth skies no matter what I throw at it.Thanks again *******.

[Guest Zorg_DK]

It seems like I have less blurries after the tweaks. Cool beans!

[jjjallen 37]

 I tried the tweaks but no success in PNW stuttering and unloaded textures..  Probably interferred with Texture-Flow.Removed tweaks and now using TBM=120, FPS Unlimited.  Still some slow texture loading in PNW.jja