FSX Blurries - Eureka!

[rgatkinson]

For many years now I have been tweaking the FSX.cfg file trying to achieve optimal performance and achieve my Holy Grail of eliminating scenery blurries - I never quite got there, until now! I just discovered this little tweak:

[DISPLAY.Device.AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series.0]
Mode=1920x1080x32
TriLinear=1
AntiAlias=0
MipBias=6

MipBias makes a huge improvement, so much so that I honestly couldn't believe my eyes!

Now the only downside, seems there's always a downside, is that the scenery can shimmer a bit but there's even a cure for that. ATI Radeon owner's like myself should download an app called 'Radeon Pro' that allows your to set your LOD (Level Of Detail) value to a minus value, I use -4, which virtually eliminates the shimmering. I believe nVidia owners need to 'clamp' their LOD settings via the nVidia GeForce Experience utility.

Hope this is of help.

Taff

[YoYo]

For many years now I have been tweaking the FSX.cfg file trying to achieve optimal performance ....

You are not alone

More is here: http://iblueyonder.com/fsx-relief-for-the-blurries/ .

thx for this info! I must check it too.

[StormILM]

Question, does this mod cause any OOM or VAS over-usage issues or that you've seen in testing?

[YoYo]

Sharpness of texture is better but I see something like "shimmering" on textures of trees. I have ATI, not nVidia.

ATI Radeon owner's like myself should download an app called 'Radeon Pro' that allows your to set your LOD (Level Of Detail) value to a minus value, I use -4, which virtually eliminates the shimmering

Max of minus LOD is -3. Maybe You think about -0,4?

[rgatkinson]

Question, does this mod cause any OOM or VAS over-usage issues or that you've seen in testing?

I assume you mean OutOfMemory and VirtualAddressSpace issues? I've not done exhaustive testing, as I've only just started using the mod, but not that I've noticed.

Give it a go, you can always remove it if you don't like the results ;-)

Taff

[rgatkinson]

Sharpness of texture is better but I see something like "shimmering" on textures of trees. I have ATI, not nVidia.





Max of minus LOD is -3. Maybe You think about -0,4?

Oops my mistake. I had mine set at -0.4 not -4 which seemed to produce acceptable results. Even more room for manoeuvre though :-)

Also, you could try MipBias=5 to help eliminate shimmering if LOD changes don't totally fix it. As always, it appears to be a trade off.

Taff

[YoYo]

I checked LOD -3, -0,4 and +1. No any differences. Maybe the reason is than RadeonPro (I used this too) dont officially support "R" series ( http://www.radeonpro.info/download/ ).
Some of this shimmering solved by Super Sampling on GPU.

[Daube]

As far as I understood, there are mainly two reasons for a ground texture to be blurry in FS:
1- the sim is loading a low resolution texture for the terrain tile
2- the video card is displaying a low resolution texture for the terrain tile (also valid for 3D objects)

Now, I would like to know which case is impacted by the MipBias tweak. Until now, I thought that only the second case was impacted by the MipBias, because even if the sim provides a high resolution texture to the video card, the card will decide if this texture should be displayed at full res or low res, depending on the texture filtering settings. However, the video card cannot display a texture at a higher resolution than what the sim provided. So if the sim has loaded a distant terrain tile with a low resolution texture, then the video card will only be able to display a low resolution texture.

I always though the MipBias was a kind of alternative to the "texture filtering" settings in the sim and the video card settings...

[Daube]

Bonus question: I took a look into NVidia Inspector, and I saw a setting which sounds similar to that LOD value in Radeon Pro. The name is LOD bias or something like that...
I didn't have the time to play with it this morning, so I have no idea about the effects of this setting in the sim. I don't even know if the sim will take it into consideration or totally ignore it.
Has anybody tried that ?

[heywooood]

Bonus question: I took a look into NVidia Inspector, and I saw a setting which sounds similar to that LOD value in Radeon Pro. The name is LOD bias or something like that...
I didn't have the time to play with it this morning, so I have no idea about the effects of this setting in the sim. I don't even know if the sim will take it into consideration or totally ignore it.
Has anybody tried that ?

Yes - setting a negative lod bias in nvidia inspector is recommended in the DX10 user guide on this site in the DX10 forum
- it works for me

[Daube]

Interesting.... I might try this with P3D, I'm really curious to see the result.
Thanks for the explanation.

[JensOle]

Hi,

I want to ask for some help regarding this mod! I can get it to work and the blurry ground textures disappears, but I cannot get rid of the shimmering. I'm running a GD 690 card, but I cannot find any Minus LOD setting in the NVidia Inspector. I'm using the 344.11 driver. Any advice?

[rvn817j]

Hi,

I want to ask for some help regarding this mod! I can get it to work and the blurry ground textures disappears, but I cannot get rid of the shimmering. I'm running a GD 690 card, but I cannot find any Minus LOD setting in the NVidia Inspector. I'm using the 344.11 driver. Any advice?

The thread started out to be about ATI / AMD graphics cards and now we have switched to nVidia graphics cards. You would be better served checking out some of the stuff in the DX10 area. Using the set-up instructions from that DX10 area I was able to get my nVidia card (GTX760) set up real nice. To answer your question directly, in nvidia inspector go to the Driver Version line. Click the little square with the tools. It opens a new dialog box...LOD stuff is adjustable there. (I should also add that I got SteveFX DX10 Fixer which has been a great tool to fix some of the DX10 issues I had with FSX.)

[ZsoltB]

I checked LOD -3, -0,4 and +1. No any differences. Maybe the reason is than RadeonPro (I used this too) dont officially support "R" series ( http://www.radeonpro.info/download/ ).
Some of this shimmering solved by Super Sampling on GPU.

What is this tool?

I use the ATI R9 200

[JensOle]

Thanks Jay, but I cannot find any such menu.. All I can find is the advanced 3D settings and it is just a lock/unlock option for the Negative LOD setting. No variables.

[JensOle]

Found it :-)

[gray eagle]

For many years now I have been tweaking the FSX.cfg file trying to achieve optimal performance and achieve my Holy Grail of eliminating scenery blurries - I never quite got there, until now! I just discovered this little tweak:

[DISPLAY.Device.AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series.0]
Mode=1920x1080x32
TriLinear=1
AntiAlias=0
MipBias=6

MipBias makes a huge improvement, so much so that I honestly couldn't believe my eyes!

Now the only downside, seems there's always a downside, is that the scenery can shimmer a bit but there's even a cure for that. ATI Radeon owner's like myself should download an app called 'Radeon Pro' that allows your to set your LOD (Level Of Detail) value to a minus value, I use -4, which virtually eliminates the shimmering. I believe nVidia owners need to 'clamp' their LOD settings via the nVidia GeForce Experience utility.

Hope this is of help.

Taff

I added that MipBias=6 to my Display:

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 .0]
Mode=1024x768x32

And I don't think I saw any improvements. Then of course I don't have AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series like you have. Wonder if I could benefit using that MipBias setting?

[lownslo]

And I don't think I saw any improvements.

It's not just you... didn't do anything for me and my GTX 770 either.

Greg

[rvn817j]

Guys...Notice the thread started out to be about ATI / AMD (R 290, 7700, etc.) video cards. That ATI / AMD "stuff" doesn't always (hardly ever) work with nVidia (GTX, etc.) cards. Go to here - http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforum...ide-a-new-home!

Adamski_NZ has done a great outline for tweaking the nVidia cards. It works and works even better with SteveFX DX10 Fixer. I've said enough...good luck.

[res non verba]

I tried the MipBias=6 but image just look too sharp and grainy...


i have a GTX580

[JensOle]

You need to try to equalize that with settings for the video card as the smart people are trying to tell us in this thread. I suspect there are rather many settings to get right for optimal performance, many which are personal for your computer setup.