Airport approaches in clear weather

Hi Guys,

 

When approaching many of my airports in clear weather, white blotches appear on the ground in the distance, which then gradually become textured as I get closer. Is this a texture mipap problem and if so, how can I edit the mipmaps of those textures so that they become visible at around 20 - 30 % greater distances ?

 

Regards

Hans

If this is add-on scenery, disable it and see if the problem persists with default scenery.

 

It could be as simple as the terrain settings in your cfg file; these control the size of the "full detail" circle under your aircraft and the number and depth of texture rings beyond it. There are numerous threads on tweaking this, and as many recommendations for "correct" settings. Here is one -

 

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?194445-Terrain-texture-settings-help-in-FS9-cfg

 

(a search for "fs9 terrain settings cfg" will find more)

In the meantime I've tried all possible variations in my FS9.cfg terrain entries according to recomendations made in quite some threads on the subject but alas, without any real improvements.

 

For testing purposes I placed a test row of static EZ/RWY12 objects, alongside the runway of a randomly selected default runway and then approached this setup from different directions in clear weather at around 1000 feet AGL, to see what would happen.

 

Even although my whole (test) runway becomes fully visible from normal eye-sight distances, the static objects themselves only begin popping up one by one at far lesser but different distances, especially when approaching the runway from either end.

 

I've tried removing the mipmaps from all textures related to the static objects used but even that didn't make any difference.

 

The only conclusion I can now make is that my problem has something to do with the contents of the (scenery) BGL files concerned, but what could that be ?

 

Comments ....... anyone ........ please.

 

Hans

It could be a texture error such as an incorrect alpha channel flag, which can be repaired by Peter Nyman's DXTFixerX here: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/fslib.php?do=copyright&fid=183172

 

FS2004 (ACOF) - Misc.

FS2004/FSX Utility--DXTFixerX

[ Download | View ]

 

Name: dxtfixerx.zip

Size: 127,071 Date: 11-27-2014 Downloads: 1,601

 

FS2004/FSX Utility--DXTFixerX v2.2 This is a tool that fixes the dxt3/dxt5 alpha channel bug in textures, that is unfortunately very common. These buggy textures causes stutters and slow texture loading. The root of the problem is when developers use imagetool to convert a texture with 100% opaque alpha channel to dxt3/dxt5 format. This tool simply and quickly scans your installation and fixes any faulty textures. By Peter Nyman.

Thanks Tim for your reaction.

 

The DXTFixer program (in scan only mode) says that the textures it was made to pojnt to are "good" and that nothing needs fixing. However, I assume that this only means that all alpha channels are present and O.K. but does not say anything about the mipmaps being correct, which I still believe is my basic problem.

Do you know of any software via which I can directly check/edit the mipmaps concerned and possibly even increase their number and/or the distances between them ? Via the program DXT.bmp (Martin Wright) I can add or remove any mipmaps but this doesn't seem to solve my problem, unless of cause I'm doing something wrong here.

 

I hope this was the correct thing to ask because I have absolutely no experience with this kind of thing.......yet !!

 

Thanks in advance and regards from the Netherlands.

Hans

Hi Hans, glad to hear that DXTFixer didn't find any problems. There's a very useful program for adding or removing mipmaps to or from a batch of textures all at once, Don Grovestine's MipMapManager utility: http://stuff4fs.com/newpage.asp?Folder=Mipmaps

This can only add or remove mipmaps, it won't increase their number or the distances between them. Note that not all scenery textures need mipmaps, such as runways with markings.

One other possibility if your textures are OK is that your FPS setting may be too high for FS9 to render the distant textures in time. I have mine set to 25, it might be worth a try if yours is higher?

Thanks again Tim but I've already had the mipmap manager program for quite some time and I've used it extensively as a standard check procedure for all my new addon scenery textures. Ditto for the whole folder containing my two (library) test textures. My maximum FPS setting has been at 25 for as long as I can remember.

 

Via the following I will try to explain how I made and positioned my so called "popup" objects for my test setup. I must also admit that my latest test setup produces more extreme examples of my problem than I originally posted.

 

The library BGL concerned contains 14 MDL files, which call for only two separate BMP files. Each of these two BMP files is evidently divided into different sectors, each exhibiting a different type of vegetation, e.g. grasses, trees, shrubs, flowers, etc.

 

When this library BGL file is selected via, e.g. the Abacus EZ program and a type of (test) vegetation is selected to be positioned alongside of my test runway, a call is made for either one of these two BMP files but the MDL file concerned in fact only processes the contents of it's targeted sector, ultimately producing the selected scenery object, which can then be positioned within my (test) scenery. This procedure is then repeated for a whole row of the same objects alongside of my test runway.

 

The problem remains that my positioned test objects (trees) already begin poping up one by one at around 300 meters distance during my approach to the runway and then keep popping up until the whole row has visibly passed by the time I get to end of it.

 

The two BMP files concerned are both mipped DXT3 texture files and my question remains as to what I can possibly do to get such objects to begin popping up at far greater distances. If a solution exists then I can possibly also do something about my "white blotches" as in my initial post.

 

I thank you for any (further) reactions.

Hans

Hi Hans, thanks for the more detailed breakdown of the issue - the problem bitmaps are tree textures in DXT3 format. DXT3 is quite high resolution for FS9 scenery objects, which are normally DXT1 (with alpha). Have you tried converting them from DXT3 to DXT1 format?

Hi there Tim,

 

Thanks again for your continuing thoughts on my problem but I've now thrown my towel into the ring on this very specific problem because when comparing the different (now DXT1) textures with each other, there seem to be no technical differences whatsoever and yet my problem kept manifesting itself with all sectors of one of those textures and not with the other texture file. I could now draw only one conclusion and that is that the problems lie within the different MDLs which process each of those texture sectors and not in any of the others.

I also had a go to see if there was an (almost impossible) duplicate GUID somewhere but that quickly turned into more than trying to find a single needle hidden in one of 25 haystacks.

 

It was only a test setup anyway but even while being reluctant to use my trusty delete button, in the end I did exactly that and peace was immediately re-established. Moreover, my original "white blotches" can simply be hidden by making the weather a little more hazy.

 

Thanks again.

Hans