Ground blurries UTE and landclass

[out 769]

Hi, fellow simmers!

 

Like (I guess) many of you, I have been fighting with ground (texture) blurries for years. Sometimes it looks better, at other times it is worse.

But I can never get rid of them completely. Well, maybe 'completely' is not the best word here (I guess it would be impossible), so let me say 'to an acceptable degree'.

 

Although I tried FSX a few times, I still prefer FS9 for many reasons. It is another story, so let me just say that the one thing I really like in FSX over FS9 is the sharp look of the ground.

Even if I fly a jet at FL350 for some reasons the FSX ground textures almost always look sharp, which never is the case in my FS9. Well, but let me come back to the good old FS2004.

 

I bought a new PC a few months ago (see in my signature) and now it is powerful enough to run FS9 fine with all addons I wish to have. But still there are annoying ground blurries.

I admit they sometimes take away my pleasure of flying. I have read many threads and tips abound reducing the blurries. Most of them are about changing some fs9.cfg entries. I have tested all of them.

I still get the best results with the settings Paul posted some time ago. But it is still not enough for my eyes. Of course I am not so stupid to expect the ground textures to be of as high resolution as the FSX ones, but at least not to blur to such a degree.

 

I also know some simmers claimed the Ultimate Terrain series to give rise to blurred textures. I do use Ultimate Terrian Europe (with all available patches).

An interesting observation for me is that when I fly outside of UTE coverage (which happens quite seldom to be honest), the ground is much less blurry, actually I could say it remains sharp almost all the time.

At present I am considering uninstalling UTE since even though I love the features it adds, I can sacrifice it for the sake of good looking Earth down there.

 

And last but not least, I read many times that landclasses may get in coflict when they cover the same area. In my scenery.cfg I counted 22 landclass entries.

Most of them are for Europe and this way they share the area with UTE's own landclass. In some cases, like Frankfurt for example, I have three landclasses (UTE LC, Scenery Germany LC and EDDF 2008 LC).

So another thing I am concerning is getting rid of at least some of them, but on the other hand they are valid for showing the represented scenery area as it was intended by their developers.

 

I would like to add that I have double checked to make sure I have the proper order in the scenery library and no empty texture folders in the landclass addon scenery folders.

The order I have always used is the logical 'sandwich order' (layers of priorities), looking more or less like that:

 

 

I also tested flying with various locked FPS values (had 60 earlier, have 30 now), various clouds (using REX DXT3 for better performance now) and various aircraft (I fly in the VC only now.)

What is more, I tried four or five variour drivers for my graphics card (using NVIDIA Inspector). Of course I take care of my PC and my system, including a regular defrag (using the freeware Smart Defrag).

 

 

What are your experiences of fighting ground blurries, using Ultimate Terrain and combining many landclass files?

Your opinions will be appreciated and will help me make the right decision. I am afraid I simply cannot stand this blurry world anymore.

 

The environment addons I am using at present:

- Ground Environment Pro (with patches)

- Ultimate Terrain Europe (with patches)

- Real Environment Xtreme (with patches)

- ZInertek Ultimate Night Environment 2010

- Zinertek Ultimate Water Advanced

- FSGenesis mesh (all levels up to 19 metres)

- replacement autogen objects (houses and trees)

- replacement Moon and stars.dat

And a lot of addon scenery (mostly in Europe) - too much to list

[kiwiflyer45 123]

I have the same addons and share the same problem Rafal, so I don't have a direct answer to your question bu I will look forward to hearing what others have to say. I would hate to disable UTE too but now you've got me thinking about that.

 

What I can share is that for those using photorealistic textures, I have used a "fix" promoted by Megascenery. I have all of my phototexture scenery folders OUTSIDE of FS9. They are on the same drive but are directly accessed. Why this makes a difference I have no idea, and maybe it's just a placebo, but I very rarely have an issue of blurries with photoscenery whereas once it was almost endemic.

Here's an example of my scenery.cfg file to show how it looks

 

[Area.110]

Title=megaScenery-DC-Washington East W

Layer=110

Active=TRUE

Required=FALSE

Local=D:\megaSceneryMidAtlantic\Washin_ew

Remote=

 

I have also found that their recommendation of using unlimited FPS when using photoscenery really does help. In fact, with Georender Alaska it is absolutely essential for the textures to be anything but totally blurry.

 

This will be a thread I will be following with great interest

Cheers

Ian

[out 769]

Cheers, Ian, for being the first contributor to this thread.

I also believe (and hope) this is going to be a very long, interesting and educative thread.

 

I use little photorealistic scenery. Except for Austria Professional, they are only the bites which are part of some of my addons (like LEPA, LHBP or DD Polish Airports).

But I will surely try your advice flying over Austria or Mallorca to check the difference it might make.

[pgaudet 0]

Rafal:

 

Could you post the pertinent areas (Graphics, Realism, Display and Terrain sections) of your FS9.CFG file and perhaps a screen shot of how bad your blurries get and let us know where in the world you took the screen shot from?

 

Your machine should run FS9 without any issues what-so-ever.

 

Thanks.

 

Paul.

[mark22 2]

Rafal, I notice from your list of environment add-ons that I have the same top 5 as yourself, with the exception of GE Pro as I only have the original older version Ground Environment (I would like GE Pro installed and I have it in one of my folders but for some strange reason this programme does not work on my PC, won't go into that as I have discussed this issue in previous forums!)

 

Anyway, what my point is, how do you find having Zinertek's Ultimate night environment 2010 used in conjuction with Ultimate Terrain Europe as I did, and do have Zinetertek's UNE 2010 but found that the night lighting in UT Europe to be more realistic so I unistalled Zinertek's product and just go with UTE.

 

I was just wondering if you have tweaked anything to make them both work together as in my opinion I think it's one or the other. Or maybe it's just me!

 

Cheers, Mark.

[out 769]

Friends,

Thank you for participating in this discussion!

 

 

Could you post the pertinent areas (...) of your FS9.CFG file and perhaps a screen shot of how bad your blurries get and let us know where in the world you took the screen shot from?

 

Paul, here you are:

 

 

The screen was taken SE of LFPG, where I have no special addons except for GE/UTE.

You can clearly see the disgusting blurred textures and the awful jaggy roads.

It will get better for a while when I refresh the scenery, but will come back in a moment.

 

And my current fs9.cfg excerpts:

 

[GRAPHICS]

FULL_SCREEN=1

PERFORMANCE_MODE=0

DEF_PERF_MODE=7

TEXT_SCROLL=1

AUTO_LOD=0

DETAIL_TEXTURE=1

WATER_EFFECTS=2

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1

EFFECTS_QUALITY=2

GROUND_SHADOWS=1

SMOOTH_VIEW=1

IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024

COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

LANDING_LIGHTS=1

IMAGE_QUALITY=0

TEXTURE_BLDG=1

TEXTURE_GND=1

TEXTURE_WATER=1

AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2

SEE_SELF=1

TEXTURE_QUALITY=3

LOD_TARGET_FPS=42

NUM_LIGHTS=8

 

[REALISM]

INDASPD=0

PFactor=1.000000

Torque=1.000000

GyroEffect=1.000000

CrashTolerance=1.000000

General=1.000000

UnlimitedFuel=False

TrueAirspeed=False

AutoCoord=False

RealMixture=True

StressDamage=False

GEffect=True

ManualLights=True

GyroDrift=False

CrashWithDyn=False

CrashDetection=0

 

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti.0]

Mode=1920x1080x32

TableFog=0

TriLinear=1

 

[DISPLAY]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=60

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=4000

TextureMaxLoad=10

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=0.3

WarnBadSecondary=0

 

[TERRAIN]

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000

TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8

TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5

TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.5

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.0

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

 

[sCENERY]

IMAGE_COMPLEXITY=5

DYNAMIC_SCENERY=1

DYN_SCN_DENSITY=5

DAWN_DUSK_SMOOTHING=1

SUNGLARE=1

LENSFLARE=0

FSM_TweakMode=Max Quality

 

I tried a few different drivers for my NVIDIA GTX 560Ti card, including the two latest editions.

As there were no satisfying results, I tried some older ones and thought it looked best with 275.33, which I currently have installed (after thorough driver cleanup of course).

I also have my NVIDIA Inspector (1.9.6.5) set up according to the famous Nick's guide.

 

Mark,

 

I only have the original older version Ground Environment

 

So did I for many years until, not long ago, I decided to buy GEPro for the discounted upgrade price.

I can't say I am seeing a huge difference though and I am not using the option to switch textures according to weather conditions (I'm just too lazy to bother).

 

how do you find having Zinertek's Ultimate night environment 2010 used in conjuction with Ultimate Terrain Europe

 

I really liked it in screenshots and the promo video, so I decided to buy it.

I like it and have no tweaks. I just have the 'Use special urban night textures' unticked in the UTE setup.

[pgaudet 0]

I took a pic on my machine SE of LFPG - Compare for yourself.

 

Here are the same .CFG file settings from the same areas I got you to show me.

 

[GRAPHICS]

FULL_SCREEN=1

PERFORMANCE_MODE=0

DEF_PERF_MODE=6

TEXT_SCROLL=1

AUTO_LOD=1

DETAIL_TEXTURE=2

WATER_EFFECTS=1

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=0

EFFECTS_QUALITY=2

GROUND_SHADOWS=0

SMOOTH_VIEW=1

IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1048576

COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

LANDING_LIGHTS=1

IMAGE_QUALITY=0

TEXTURE_BLDG=3

TEXTURE_GND=5

TEXTURE_WATER=1

AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=1

SEE_SELF=1

TEXTURE_QUALITY=3

LOD_TARGET_FPS=18

NUM_LIGHTS=8

FORCEFULLSCREENVSYNC=1

ForceWindowedVSync=1

HIGHMEMFIX=1

SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1

STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647

 

[REALISM]

INDASPD=0

PFactor=1.000000

Torque=1.000000

GyroEffect=1.000000

CrashTolerance=1.000000

General=1.000000

UnlimitedFuel=False

TrueAirspeed=False

AutoCoord=False

RealMixture=False

StressDamage=False

GEffect=False

ManualLights=False

GyroDrift=False

CrashWithDyn=False

CrashDetection=0

 

[DISPLAY.Device.ATI Radeon HD 5700 Series.0]

Mode=1680x1050x32

MipBias=6

BiLinear=1

Tablefog=0

 

[DISPLAY]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=24

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=25600

TextureMaxLoad=30

WideViewAspect=TRUE

UseDeviceTextureCache=1

TextureThrash=1

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.4 //adjust values to suit your scale

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.4

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=0.4

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=0.4

 

[TERRAIN]

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000

TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=150.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=1500.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8

TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=14

TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=40.000000

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=60.000000

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1307992

[out 769]

Dear Paul,

 

Thank you very much for pasting the screenshot and your cfg exceprts.

 

One look is enough to see that your ground looks much better than mine. Sharp textures and no jaggy roads.

Why is it so, I don't know yet. What I can see though is that there are a lot of differences between our fs9.cfg files!

To be honest there are many entries in yours that I do not even have. At first I thought you had pasted your fsx.cfg instead.

 

The differences are (P - Paul):

 

[GRAPHICS]

DEF_PERF_MODE=6 (P) vs 7

AUTO_LOD=1 (P) vs 0

DETAIL_TEXTURE=2 (P) vs 1

WATER_EFFECTS=1 (P) vs 2

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=0 (P) vs 1

GROUND_SHADOWS=0 (P) vs 1

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1048576 (P) vs 1024 <-- wow!

TEXTURE_BLDG=3 (P) vs 1

TEXTURE_GND=5 (P) vs 1

AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=1(P) vs 2

LOD_TARGET_FPS=18 (P) vs 21

 

and some extras I do not have (!):

 

FORCEFULLSCREENVSYNC=1

ForceWindowedVSync=1

HIGHMEMFIX=1

SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1

STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647

 

[DISPLAY.Device...]

Mode=1680x1050x32 (P) vs 1920x1080x32

MipBias=6 (P) <--- I don't have one!

BiLinear=1 (P) vs TriLinear=1

 

[DISPLAY]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=24 (P) vs 30

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=25600 (P) vs 4000 <-- wow!

TextureMaxLoad=30 (P) vs 10

WideViewAspect=TRUE <-- I don't have one!

UseDeviceTextureCache=1 <-- I don't have one!

TextureThrash=1 <-- I don't have one!

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=0.4 (P) vs 0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=0.4 (P) vs 0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=0.4 (P) vs 0.3

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=0.4 (P) vs 0.3

 

[TERRAIN]

TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=150.000000 (P) vs 0 <-- wow!

TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=1500.000000 (P) vs 200 <-- wow!

TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=14 (P) vs 5

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=40.000000 (P) vs 9 <-- wow!

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=60.000000 (P) vs 9.9 <-- wow!

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=1307992 (P) vs 4 <--- wow wow wow!

 

wow! - means I am particularly surprised with the difference

 

Paul, is this a collection of advice you have gathered here and there for years or maybe you have personally got to thoses numbers?

I am really interested why some of them should be so different from mine. Whatever it is, your screenshot defends itself.

 

Anyway, I am going to try all these entries after making a backup first, of course.

[out 769]

OK, Paul, so I have applied all your entries which were different than mine.

Unfortunately it is neither better nor worse. The problem must lie somewhere else:

 

 

Afterwards I also reinstalled graphics drivers into the latest ones (296.10) and reset the Nvidia Inspector. No change.

So the next thing will probably be uninstalling UTE to see if that is the ultimate solution or maybe not.

If that does not work either, I will consider... going FSX*!

 

* - On condition that Rob helps me take my AirSimmer A320 with me!

[pgaudet 0]

Rafal I will get back to you when I get home from work. Just checking out the forums quickly before I leave for the day.

 

Talk to you soon.

 

Paul

[out 769]

Thanks a lot Paul!

I hope you had a nice day.

 

In the meantime I have uninstalled UTE and I already know it was not the culprit (pity then):

 

 

One more thing I plan to do is to eliminate landclass files one by one (I've currently got 22).

Then I may think of uninstalling all FS stuff and the FS itself and make a clean install in steps.

Just the things I need and watch the ground to see when it possibly gets blurred again (hope not).

 

As for the jaggy roads there is one more thing coming to my head.

Even though I have a new PC and a powerful NVIDIA card, I am generally not satisfied with anti-aliasing in my sim.

I wouldn't say it works 100% and I also get some shimmering plus objects like posts or fences tend to look dancing.

I have it set up in NVIDIA Inspector just like NIck recommended and OFF in the sim itself.

Maybe the problem has something to do with the roads which, all in all, are just lines and curves.

[pgaudet 0]

Hey Rafal:

 

I'll start by saying that some of those entries in my config that you either don't have or have never seen or heard of were things I've seen/read about over the years and even some of them were when people were talking about FSX. I've tried them and they didn't hurt anthing. I'd say add them in and see how it goes.

 

Secondly, for all the WOW entries you highlighted I would say yes they are values that are way out of the 'norms' we've heard about over the years and people will say that the values are incorrect but hey until you try it who knows. I've arrived at these values from GaryGB whom you've probably seen or seen his posts here at AVSIM and it sums them up in the following link....

 

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showpost.php?p=231814&postcount=7

 

Give that a read through and try changing your settings accordingly - Remember to backup your files before changing :)

 

Then give the sim a try and see how it looks.

 

If it still isn't working then you must either need to play with your AA and AF filtering settings or you may have some texture files that might be either too 'big' or not setup right. Are you using Ground Environment or any other Ground textures?

 

Lets try a few things at a time before changing everything and then getting mixed up and forget everything we changed so we can't go back.

 

Thanks.

 

Paul.

[phlux 1]

You would think after all these years I would stay out of threads like this because I almost always leave disappointed. I have the exact same issue as Rafal and have made myself live with it, but once I see a pic from someone who doesn't have the blurries I just can't help but give the tweaks another go. Alas after trying every tweak from the link in the previous post I have yet again come up empty. I would give FSX a try, but I simply have too much invested in add-ons and can't justify (nor afford) paying for them again. Therefore I will continue to peek at threads like this in hopes of finding the magic tweak.

 

Long story short, I feel your pain my friend.

[pgaudet 0]

Phlux:

 

How could you possibly be having issues with the computer specs I am reading in your signature? :)

 

Could you post your FS9.CFG or at least the pertinent sections?

 

Also have you got AF and AA filtering set for your video card?

 

I don't have near the machine you do and seem to be running the sim just fine - even if I set my frame rate limit to only 24 FPS

 

Paul

[phlux 1]

Phlux:

 

How could you possibly be having issues with the computer specs I am reading in your signature? :)

 

 

Hence my frustration brother.

 

My FPS (and everything else for that matter) are fine, it's just my ground textures at a distance (see Rafal's pic). I have GEPro, Ultimate Terrain, and FS Genesis Mesh... I'll post my cfg, but I promise you I have tried every number I could find in that post and thread you linked to (and many, many other threads as well). Including installing that "4GB patch" thing.

 

These are the settings that have given me the best results, but as I've said not nearly to my satisfaction...

 

[GRAPHICS]

FULL_SCREEN=1

PERFORMANCE_MODE=0

DEF_PERF_MODE=7

TEXT_SCROLL=1

AUTO_LOD=0

DETAIL_TEXTURE=1

WATER_EFFECTS=2

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_MAP=1

TERRAIN_USE_VECTOR_OBJECTS=1

EFFECTS_QUALITY=2

GROUND_SHADOWS=1

SMOOTH_VIEW=1

IMAGE_SMOOTHING=1

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024

COCKPIT_HIGH_LOD=1

AIRCRAFT_SHADOWS=1

LANDING_LIGHTS=1

IMAGE_QUALITY=0

TEXTURE_BLDG=1

TEXTURE_GND=1

TEXTURE_WATER=1

AIRCRAFT_TEXTURE=2

SEE_SELF=1

TEXTURE_QUALITY=3

LOD_TARGET_FPS=24

NUM_LIGHTS=8

 

[DISPLAY.Device.AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series .0]

Mode=1680x1050x32

MipBias=6

TriLinear=1

[DISPLAY]

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=35

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=4000

TextureMaxLoad=10

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_SURFACE_SCALAR=.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_VASI_SCALAR=.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_APPROACH_SCALAR=.9

RUNWAY_LIGHTS_STROBE_SCALAR=.9

WarnBadSecondary=0

[TERRAIN]

TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000

TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=0.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=200.000000

TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21

TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8

TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=5

TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1

TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.500000

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.000000

TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4

 

I 've changed the DETAIL_TEXTURE, TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD, TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT, TextureMaxLoad, and tried every conceivable suggested number under the [TERRAIN] heading. I've even tried the terrain.cfg tweak, but no joy. Anti-Aliasing and Anisotropic Filtering are both set through Catalyst Control Center and are at 4x respectively.

 

I'm willing to listen to any suggestion. Thanks for having a look.