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Graphics Question


richiemo

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Hi Gang - quick question. I odten use my TDS Boeing 787. IMO, it's the most realistic freeware plane there is. A comparison of it and a photo of the real deal is just amazing. BUT, I do notice that when I switch from cockpit view to window view or spot view, it takes a second or two for the textures to load. For example, the engine in wing view will be greyed out when I toggle back to it from cockpit view, or in spot view it'll take a second or two to load the full fuselage textures. Not a big deal, but what's interesting is that on my Overland aircraft (777 or A320s for example), there is not that hesitancy to load textures. They pop immediately. I have a i7 computer and a strong graphics card. This leads me to believe that there must be more detail in the TDS textures than the Overland. BUT, its not like Overland textures aren't great. They are. Equally as good. So curious as to why the difference.
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There are at least two things that will determine loading times - the format of the bitmaps (888 32 bit textures are probably the slowest to load, I assume) and the size (the larger the slower). Also, it depends on the capability of your video card - a faster card will, well, be faster!

Tom Gibson

 

CalClassic Propliner Page: http://www.calclassic.com

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Hello

It could be your aircraft textures are 32bit (highest quality but may cause the very problem you are experiencing especially on older or possibly lower spec pcs.

I used to get the very same issue myself.

The solution I found is a freeware program called 'convimx' this is a texture editing program that allows you convert 32bit textures to a lower quality DXT3 format.

Don't be put of by my describing lower texture quality in dxt3 format.

After converting textures from 32bit to dxt3 I don't really notice any discernible loss of quality to an aircrafts paint.....But the good news !you should see a big difference in the speed of texture redrawing and there should be no lag no grey textures before as you pan around.

 

Hope this lot makes some sense.

PS to check the type of textures your aircraft of choice is using ,simply locate its texture folder open it hover your mouse pointer on the individual texture files and it should display which texture format is in use .

I might have made this whole process sound a lot more difficult than it actually is, but really isn't.

PS there are other texture altering programs out there , but the beauty of Convimx is that it will alter all the aircrafts textures in one operation, some of the others will only do one file at a time which is rather a slow operation.

 

Cheers hope this is of some use ,Convimx should significantly reduce ,or remove completely any lag issues that you describe in your post .

 

 

Cheers Andy

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I have found there appears to be some sort of bug in FS9 which can affect aircraft texture loading times.

Do you have multiple livery/texture folders for your 787 or do you just run one livery/texture folder all the time? If you use multiple liveries, are all liveries slow to load?

Mark Daniels
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Hey Guys,

 

I've been having this same problem far as long as I can remember. However, it's my theory that when you switch from cockpit view to spot plane view, very many, e.g. ground, sky and cloud textures, suddenly need to be displayed and only after those are done are the aircraft's textures given the chance to be displayed on top of the rest, at least that's what it seems.

"Heavy" aircraft textures also do seem to play a roll, so all my flyable aircraft textures have been converted to DXT3 without mips and this does seem to help ...... but only a little.

 

Hans

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Hey Guys,

 

I've been having this same problem far as long as I can remember. However, it's my theory that when you switch from cockpit view to spot plane view, very many, e.g. ground, sky and cloud textures, suddenly need to be displayed and only after those are done are the aircraft's textures given the chance to be displayed on top of the rest, at least that's what it seems.

"Heavy" aircraft textures also do seem to play a roll, so all my flyable aircraft textures have been converted to DXT3 without mips and this does seem to help ...... but only a little.

 

Hans

 

If you change from cockpit view to external view, do you have the aircraft half covered in a texture and it takes a moment or two for the other half to fill in?

Is this happening with all your aircraft and all your liveries?

Do you have an aircraft with just a single livery installed that this is happening too?

 

I'm asking all these questions because I am quite certain this in many cases is a bug.

Edited by Skywatcher12
Mark Daniels
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Hey there Mark,

 

With me it's exactly as you describe but there's a great positive difference if the background (ground) scenery is default or addon. I would want to suggest that you try to temporarily de-activate any mesh, LC or other background scenery, then fly the same route and when about in the same area as you previously were, you (test) switch from cockpit- to external view and report any aircraft texture loading delay differences. Also please see to it that all your aircraft's textures are DXT3. Mips are not necessary because you never externally view flyable aircraft from large and/or varying distances, like you do with e.g. AI aircraft and scenery in general.

 

The effect of "heavy" background scenery can also be demonstrated by slewing at maximum slew speed across quite some distance in external view. You will notice that towards the end of your slew the background scenery will be blurry but will become normal again after a few seconds, depending on the power of your rig. This is because FS9 itself and/or your graphics card, cannot keep up with correctly rendering the scenery as you (speed) slew over it. It needs some time to catch up, so to speak.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Hans

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Hey there Mark,

 

With me it's exactly as you describe but there's a great positive difference if the background (ground) scenery is default or addon. I would want to suggest that you try to temporarily de-activate any mesh, LC or other background scenery, then fly the same route and when about in the same area as you previously were, you (test) switch from cockpit- to external view and report any aircraft texture loading delay differences. Also please see to it that all your aircraft's textures are DXT3. Mips are not necessary because you never externally view flyable aircraft from large and/or varying distances, like you do with e.g. AI aircraft and scenery in general.

 

The effect of "heavy" background scenery can also be demonstrated by slewing at maximum slew speed across quite some distance in external view. You will notice that towards the end of your slew the background scenery will be blurry but will become normal again after a few seconds, depending on the power of your rig. This is because FS9 itself and/or your graphics card, cannot keep up with correctly rendering the scenery as you (speed) slew over it. It needs some time to catch up, so to speak.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Hans

Hi Hans,

 

No, it's an undiscovered bug. What you are suggesting is true to a point and on lesser PC's. I have found you can have fast loading aircraft textures, then at some point, maybe weeks, maybe months, BOOM, suddenly you get the slow loading textures I described. Same hardware, same scenery files, same everything, the loading just suddenly becomes slow and stays slow.

I have then found a fix to get the textures loading quickly again without making any change or converting of the texture files themselves. Most modern PC's should comfortably be able to load any aircraft textures quickly even 32bit textures. T'is a bug.

I want to get some more information and do some more testing before I post any fixes to make sure the fix will work for everyone.

Mark Daniels
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I have then found a fix to get the textures loading quickly again without making any change or converting of the texture files themselves. Most modern PC's should comfortably be able to load any aircraft textures quickly even 32bit textures. T'is a bug.

I want to get some more information and do some more testing before I post any fixes to make sure the fix will work for everyone.

Please, keep us informed. Maybe I'll end up reinstalling FS9 in my new laptop.

Best regards,

Luis Hernández 20px-Flag_of_Colombia.svg.png20px-Flag_of_Argentina.svg.png

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Please, keep us informed. Maybe I'll end up reinstalling FS9 in my new laptop.

 

Mark,

 

I'm burning up with inquisitiveness. Could you please, please, please, at least give me/us a hint as to where your bug might be hiding and/or what it looks like.

 

Regards

Hans

 

I really need some time to check a few things. I've had it happen 3 times over the past maybe 3 years or so. One day you load a flight and suddenly you get the half untextured aircraft for a moment or two. It stays like this until you fix it. It was also happening on my friends FS. I managed to fix all 4 texture loads so they were fast again.

 

I do need some details from other people, it will help. If you have this issue:

 

1. Do all your aircraft liveries load slow or just certain aircraft?

2. For slow loading aircraft, does every livery load slow or just certain liveries?

3. Do you have mutiple texture folders/liveries in all your aircraft? Are there any aircraft you only have the one texture folder/livery and this still happens?

Mark Daniels
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Hmmm.. Wonder why I don't have this problem?

 

Once I had an issue with blurry textures on one aircraft and it turned out to be a bad .bmp file.

The fix was to ensure the DXT3 bmp had a alpha channel added.

 

All my aircraft and AI textures are in DXT3 format with a alpha channel added.

If you open up you're textures with "imagetool.exe" and is displays DXT3 and alpha no, this may be your problem.

 

I used DXTBMP to fix the issue.

 

https://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

 

RJ

 

No, it's a common problem, been around for years. Back in 2003 you could blame slow machines but not today.

It may not affect every user but from the 3-4 posts in this thread alone you can see it affects people. I've had a fix for it but to offer it up publicly and make sure it works for everyone, I have to work out and understand exactly what is going on. This will then allow me to provide the best and simplest solution.

I think I understand what is happening and will be able to deliberately re-create the issue and then of course resolve it. Need the free time to do some flying to test.

Mark Daniels
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Check your global aircraft quality in FS2004 (Settings - Display - Aircraft tab) and Set to Ultra High.

 

Like Hans mentioned, make sure all your User aircraft textures are in DXT3 format containing an alpha channel and NO mips maps.

 

I know this for a fact regarding AI models and might apply to user aircraft:

Any AI model that uses two or more texture files to cover the model, and if mip-mapped, will cause blurry images when viewed within FS2004.

I only use AI models that has one texture file for the model, then make sure the texture is in DXT3 format, with alpha and mip maps on.

If using AI models (FSPainter, PAI) that have more than one texture file to cover the model, then use DXT3 format, with Alpha and NO mip maps.

 

 

Check your TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT setting under "DISPLAY" in your FS9.cfg, I think default is 40.

Try these settings:

DISPLAY

UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=45

TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=200

TextureMaxLoad=20

 

I don't think TextureMaxLoad= is used in FS9, but it is in FSX, but I still have it in my FS9.cfg file.

If you use TextureMaxLoad= you can't set your frame rate limit to unlimited, because it will not be used then.

 

Good luck.

 

RJ

 

No, it's none of those things.

If it is what I think it is, it won't happen to everyone, it won't happen to every aircraft and it may not even happen to every livery of a particular aircraft.

Need some answers from people.

Mark Daniels
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Quote

1. Do all your aircraft liveries load slow or just certain aircraft?

2. For slow loading aircraft, does every livery load slow or just certain liveries?

3. Do you have multiple texture folders/liveries in all your aircraft? Are there any aircraft you only have the one texture folder/livery and this still happens?

Unquote

 

Mark,

 

Your questions:

 

1. It's just my larger high flying (non AI Boeing/Airbus) types of aircraft, which initiate the problem. Probably because the higher they fly, the more ground scenery needs to be spontaneously loaded (or rendered) into view every time I switch from cockpit to external view. Once it's all loaded there's no further problem.

 

2. All liveries/textures belonging to the same model have the problem.

 

3. Per model file I have multiple liveries/folders, all containing exactly the same texture names. DXT3 compression, no mips and all have alpha channels.

 

Tomorrow I will temporarily delete all but one texture folder from a such a problematic B737-800 model to see if the problem remains or whether or not there are any differences. However, I doubt it.

 

Hans

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Quote

1. Do all your aircraft liveries load slow or just certain aircraft?

2. For slow loading aircraft, does every livery load slow or just certain liveries?

3. Do you have multiple texture folders/liveries in all your aircraft? Are there any aircraft you only have the one texture folder/livery and this still happens?

Unquote

 

Mark,

 

Your questions:

 

1. It's just my larger high flying (non AI Boeing/Airbus) types of aircraft, which initiate the problem. Probably because the higher they fly, the more ground scenery needs to be spontaneously loaded (or rendered) into view every time I switch from cockpit to external view. Once it's all loaded there's no further problem.

 

2. All liveries/textures belonging to the same model have the problem.

 

3. Per model file I have multiple liveries/folders, all containing exactly the same texture names. DXT3 compression, no mips and all have alpha channels.

 

Tomorrow I will temporarily delete all but one texture folder from a such a problematic B737-800 model to see if the problem remains or whether or not there are any differences. However, I doubt it.

 

Hans

 

Hans, (or anyone else with problem)

 

Try this, do EXACTLY what I say:

 

Create a new folder in the problem aircraft folder. Can be named anything, just "New Folder" will be fine.

Copy all your texture/livery folders to the new folder.

Now delete all your original texture/livery folders.

Cut and paste the livery/texture folders from your New Folder back to your aircraft folder.

You can now also delete the empty New Folder.

 

Let me know if anything changes.

Mark Daniels
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Mark,

 

Like I said I was going to do, I deleted all texture folders but one from one of my "problematic" flyable A-320 folders, together with their related references in it's aircraft.cfg file.

I then made several test flights over third party photo/LC and mesh areas but the aircraft texture loading delay remained. I tried different altitudes ranging from 30,000 to 10,000 feet, with and without clouds, but the problem remained.

 

However, a remark by 3Green, a bit further up in this thread, about (all) flyable textures needing alpha channels, almost immediately got me going down that path and after adding alpha channels to all my test A-320's textures, it certainly made big a difference. The aircraft's texture loading delays in external view were suddenly very much faster. Almost in a flash every time.

 

After this was done I restored my complete A-320 folder with it's 8 liveries from my backups and then proceded to add alpha channel to all of them, even to internal textures of e.g. floor carpets, passenger seats, etc. just to be absolutely sure.

 

As far as I've now learned, the problem had nothing to do with my so called "heavy" background sceneries but most definitely with the evidently necessary alpha channels, with which many flyable aircraft "developers/painters" seem not to be too concerned about. Only 3 of the 8 liveries from my backup A-320, had full alpha channels and the rest were unpredictably varied.

 

For the form and as per your suggestion, I tried moving all the liveries from another of my flyable aircraft to a new folder and back but during a number of following tests I found no differences.

 

I would now want to suggest to you that you "alpha channel" ALL textures related to one of your own confirmed problematic flyable plane liveries as I have done and to then perform some test flights of your own, to see whether or not you can confirm my findings.

 

Regards

Hans

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Hans,

 

Glad to hear you got it sorted. Your problem was different to mine so my fix wouldn't work for you. There are a number of reasons why textures on an aircraft may load slow and the common ones were outlined by 3Green. None of those apply to my situation.

 

Anyhow, it's all good. I don't have this issue, I had resolved it on my old PC. I now have a new PC and chances are high I will never even see it again.

 

The fix I outlined I am reasonably confident should work for anyone. This is assuming you have all other things in your FS correct that will not lead to slow loading textures and have an appropriate machine to run FS. If you still have slow loading textures, then try my fix. I have yet to test it due to time but I am reasonably confident it will work without having conducted a test.

Mark Daniels
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Mark,

 

"-----then try my fix".

 

Where can I find your "fix" ?

 

Hans

 

The fix is copying the folders as I said in post #18. This will fix it IF everything else in FS is as it should be. Doing what I said will reset things to remove the issue. Haven't bothered explaining what is going on because I don't want to type a million word post. All people need to know is the simple solution I gave will fix some aircraft texture loading problems.

 

My tips were directed at the OP's question (richiemo), not some "New" undiscovered bug.

"New" bugs are most likely related to your "new" operating system (Windows 10).

 

If you reply directly after my post and don't reference who you are referring too...

 

No, my Win 10 has never had the problem, my Win 7 did. No, nothing is incorrect in my FS to cause this and yes, it almost certainly is an undiscovered bug.

Edited by Skywatcher12
Mark Daniels
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Quote

Try this, do EXACTLY what I say:

 

Create a new folder in the problem aircraft folder. Can be named anything, just "New Folder" will be fine.

Copy all your texture/livery folders to the new folder.

Now delete all your original texture/livery folders.

Cut and paste the livery/texture folders from your New Folder back to your aircraft folder.

You can now also delete the empty New Folder.

 

Let me know if anything changes.

Unquote

 

A far better solution is to go into your back yard on a dark night under a full moon and wiggle your toes for half an hour or more, while thinking strongly of the issue !! LOL.

 

An even better solution and possibly the only real one, is to add alpha channels to ALL flyable aircraft textures.

 

The main reason why different DXT3 paints belonging to the same model have different loading times when switching from cockpit to external view, is that some textures within each different paint have alpha channels, while others do not and this can vary strongly per paint. Ideal is that ALL textures, (no exceptions) within each flyable paint, have alpha channels.

 

Hans

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A far better solution is to go into your back yard on a dark night under a full moon and wiggle your toes for half an hour or more, while thinking strongly of the issue !! LOL.

 

An even better solution and possibly the only real one, is to add alpha channels to ALL flyable aircraft textures.

 

 

Thinks it's time to retire from FS forums. lol

Mark Daniels
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What you are suggesting is true to a point and on lesser PC's. I have found you can have fast loading aircraft textures, then at some point, maybe weeks, maybe months, BOOM, suddenly you get the slow loading textures I described. Same hardware, same scenery files, same everything, the loading just suddenly becomes slow and stays slow.

 

Hans,

In your situation, the above certainly did not apply. You would've ALWAYS had this problem. It means, no, waiting for a full moon will not help in that case and you needed to fix your texture files first.

Mark Daniels
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Mark,

 

I took the trouble of adding alpha channels to the textures of my whole flyable fleet, took me around five hours via a program called MipMap Manager. Via another program called Alpha Searcher I could randomly check (before and after) whether or not the alpha channels had in fact been added where they were missing before.

 

Loading times are now a lot faster and the same holds true for each separate paint (texture folder) belonging to the same model.

 

The MipMap Manager program can add or delete mips but other than it's name suggests, it also structurally adds alpha channels to all texture files which it finds within each texture folder that it gets pointed to.

 

In hindsight however, the original problem was not really a serious one but having learnt from it I'm now considering testing some scenery textures as well, e.g. to see if stuttering can be positively influenced by also adding alpha channels to those.

 

Anyone else have opinions on this ?

 

Merry Christmas to all.

 

Hans

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