Blurry textures?

[PRB]

See the pic? This is a repaint for the Carenado T-34B. When I zoom out in spot view, the textures become blurry, as though they are automatically switching to lower resolution verions of themselves. When you zoom in they become sharp. I've seen this before, but don't know what causes it. I "fixed" it by saving out the texture files as "regular" bmps, then saving them out again as extended bitmaps with DXTBmp, so I think it's "built-in" to the texture file in some way, but DXTBmp reported before and after that they were simple 32 bit extended bitmaps. Is this done on purpose to help slower machines cope with the otherwise high resolution files? How is it done?

[johnh_049]

uncheck the save with mips box in dxtbmp.
should be problem solved.

[pfflyers]

Some textures are compiled with mipmaps, which work like you suggested, loading lower resolution versions of themselves as you zoom out.

As johnh said, if you open the texture with DXTBmp and resave without mipmaps you should get rid of that.

[PRB]

Rgr, that's what I did. Never knew what the mips option did. Thanks all.

[Mick]

Yeah, it's something of a plague for many of us, as FS goes to the lower resolution mip when the plane is still close enough to see the loss of quality. I've seen a paint on the stock DC-3 turn completely black when seen from across the ramp!

As you've found out, the cure is to save the texture files without mips.

Something else you might want to watch out for is saving files in DXT format. DXT formats are very lossy, meaning that every time the files is open (and possibly every time it's used, though I'm not sure about that part) it loses a bit of quality. You can see that by opening any DXT file and zooming in on a panel line, or especially a place where a couple of panel lines meet, or on some sort of insignia or lettering.

The solution here is to avoid using DXT formats, and save your texture files in "888-8 32 bit" format. 32-bit files are completely lossless and will retain their quality no matter how much you monkey around with them. The downside is that they are very large files and can take longer to load and/or impact your frame rates on older, less powerful computers. These days I don't think many people have computers old enough and slow enough for that to be a problem.

[WarHorse47]

These days I don't think many people have computers old enough and slow enough for that to be a problem. I do. That is until the family raises enough ransom money to help me retire and afford a new box.
:ernae:
--WH

[hurricane3]

I have an old computer also, it's now 10 years old,although some parts have been replaced ,still have the oridginal HD, though now I have a second HD both 200GB , and a 2 TB external HD. I can't afford a new one just yet , checking out banks I could holdup (just kidding of course)Running my 3rd vidieo card ,but it's an old ATI 128 Radon ,so most of my FS9 install can look like a slidshow at times.
So until my rich uncle ,who I don't have, dies and leaves me his fortune ,this old Dell 8250 will have to chug along.