FS2004 1024x1024 rock textures

[Jon_aus]

Freeware 4096x4096 FSX textures (not mine)reduced to 1024x1024. Much better then the boring lower resolution textures fs9 mostly uses. A bit embarrassed to post them when the showroom forum says its to 'show off your hard work'. Not really hard work. Just a few mouse clicks and copy and paste!

Anyway, some around Juneau using the cool Glacier Bay add-on.






Not as sharp zoomed in closer, but WAY better then stock.




Also done the same with some HD grass. Bit of a fan of clover!!

 

[JRobinson]

As I've mentioned before, there is absolutely no point in using 1024px textures in FS9 - you are not seeing the full 1024 resolution, you are seeing the 256px mip level of the 1024px textures.

Glad you're happy with what you see though .

 

[Heretic]

Nice work, Jon. I presume they're originally Aimé Leclerq's?

As I've mentioned before, there is absolutely no point in using 1024px textures in FS9 - you are not seeing the full 1024 resolution, you are seeing the 256px mip level of the 1024px textures.

If you only saw the 256px mip level, FS9 would be a blurry mess.

 

[robystar]

JR, maybe it is because it says so in your fs9.cfg? You'd better change that to 1024 then ( and Jon as well?).

 

[JRobinson]

Allright boys here's the proof:


I made a custom texture, 024b2Su3.bmp to be exact, copied it at 1024px from my FSX installation and added custom mips for the demonstration. Here's what it looks like in Imagetool:

So then I fired up FS9 for a look, you'll notice you don't see "1024" or "512" anywhere in the screenshot:

...and since someone will undoubtedly say "you're too far away to see the full resolution, you're seeing the 256 mip level because of the distance", here's a shot from the ground (and you're correct about the blurry mess Björn):

...and since I'm sure you're all still doubting my global max texture resolution, here's a shot from the hardware tab:

There you have it, FS9 is limited to 256px on ground textures, yes, aircraft and building textures can go as high as 1024px. Contrary to popular belief I was speaking from experience with my comment above (and the one over at flightsim.com a few weeks back), I went down this road myself several years ago...

Jim

 

[robystar]

Hi,

what does it say in your FS9.cfg?

 

[JRobinson]

Hi,

what does it say in your FS9.cfg?

TEXTURE_MAX_LOAD=1024, the same thing it says in my screenshot of the global max texture size slider...

 

[Jon_aus]

Nice work, Jon. I presume they're originally Aimé Leclerq's?

Yes. I've sent him same pics to look at. And he was a little surprised too that fs9 would show 1024 res.

My cfg does show 1024.


And Jim? You may be right. To be honest, I have NO idea what I'm even doing or what you meant. What's a mipmap?

But compared to default fs9 textures , it's night and day. Far superior. And I'm not the only one to do it. Some have done the complete world textures including higher res cities making fs9 look as good if not better then default fsx if the screenshots are anything to go by.


Interesting there is a payware grass add-on available that claims it offers for the first time 4096x4096 textures for fs9.

Interested to see what that looks like.

 

[hcornea]

Jim, if you remove MIPS and have a single level 1024 does that 'force' the hi-res to display like it does in FSX models?

 

[Jon_aus]

And to add those textures started life as 4096x4096 textures. The higher res to begin with is the key to downsizing from what I've heard.

 

[JRobinson]

Jim, if you remove MIPS and have a single level 1024 does that 'force' the hi-res to display like it does in FSX models?

No it does not Ian, the apparent difference being that FSX is capable of 4096 textures (beyond the normal range of the global max texture size slider) with the TML tweak where FS9 couldn't care less what you assign as a TML value beyond 1024. Given that logic I have to question whether 4096 landclass textures would actually display the full resolution in FSX, or would that be limited to 1024 as FS9 is limited to 256? Must test this out as I'm now curious...

In FS9 a 1024 landclass texture without mips actually doesn't show at all:

@Jon, here is the specially mipped texture I used for the demonstration, I added 128 and 64px custom mips and color coded each level:

http://www.cat-tamer.com/flightsim/atchmnts/024b2su3.zip


It looks like this now in Imagetool:

Back up your 024b2su3.bmp in FS9\Scenery\World\Texture and replace it temporarily with this one. Go to a forested area in the US and you should be able to find the colored text without much trouble. Slew closer/farther and you'll see the mip levels change between 256, 128, and 64. The idea is, mips unload part of the memory requirements in the sim when you're far enough away from these textures that the extra resolution would be of no value anyway. Basically they're just smaller versions of the same texture embedded into the .bmp and most editors capable of exporting directX compliant textures will generate mips automatically unless you specify otherwise.

Also note that what I'm saying re: resolution limitation @256px only applies to FS9's landclass (ground) textures. Aircraft textures, scenery model textures, and your detail1.bmp (grass detail) for example can all go as high as 1024px.

Jim

 

[Maxman]

FS9 would be a blurry mess.

It's FS9, it already is a blurry mess, LOL

 

[Jon_aus]

Not denying it,only going by what my image tool says when I select a ground texture tile. If it only shows 256, so be it. But the 4096 textures resized - photoshop - to 1024(256) looks far superior to default and in some comparisons to fsx which I have, BETTER then default fsx which is pretty significant.

And considering the far superior stable platform without the issues fsx has - I have it, it performs crap even with a i5 2500 and gtx560- with better performance in fs9, that's more then significant. That's impressive.


Jim? Not sure what you mean by using special mipmaps or whatever that loose the visuals the higher you get. Found with the resized textures the opposite is true which to me is kinda preferred - up to a point - as I fly higher, the forest, rock textures etc still look good if not better.

 

[Jon_aus]

By the way, here's the link to the product offering fs9 grass textures with 4096x4096. Interesting.

http://secure.simmarket.com/prealsoft-grass-environment-pro-x-v2.phtml

 

[JRobinson]

Since the default textures where likely sourced from lousy aerial imagery at 1m/px or less back in the days when FS9 was being developed it wouldn't surprise me a bit that some 4096 textures sourced from today's 30cm imagery or greater might look better in the sim than default even when resized down to 256 px (which is effectively what you're doing in spite of your 1024 pixel size).

Regardless, you're covering a distance of approximately 1100 meters in the sim with 256 px whether you use your 1024 textures, default, GEPro, FSScene, or whatever. That works out to about 4.3m/px any way you look at it so your resolution has not changed.

When FSX came out I found a folder full of shiny new 1024px ground textures. I was bent on finding a way to use them in FS9 since blurry ground textures were always my biggest complaint with that sim. I fiddled with textures ad nauseam back in those days just as you're doing now, but I did the tests and experiments early on and determined that using texture sizes beyond 256 px in FS9 did nothing but consume unnecessary hard drive space.

It boils down to what you like better in terms of what's actually on the .bmp, I used resized FSX rock textures in FS9 myself for the last couple years I flew that sim and to my eye they were a vast improvement over FS9 default and I liked them better than GEPro as well.

As I said in my first post, I'm glad you're happy with what you see in the sim.

Jim

 

[hcornea]

The point Jim is making is that FS9 is displaying the 256 x 256 version of your texture.

In this case you would be just as well to down sample to 256 x 256, as the 1024 version is not displaying.

That is what MipMaps are all about.

As for FSX performance, that is baffling. Most people get nice performance in FSX on today's hardware ... But clearly not all.

 

[Jon_aus]

True. But really, overall, the point I have been making is that higher resolution textures to begin with re-sized look FAR better then default.

Like I said too, with a couple or so full world textures for fs9 doing the rounds that look as good or better then default fsx, then all the trouble is more then worth it.

FSX and great performance shouldn't be said in the same sentence. I've gotten fs9 to look as good or better with triple or quadruple the ai with heavier clouds as perform better then fsx ever will. Not worth it in my opinion .

 

[Jon_aus]

Angry face not intended.

 

[Jon_aus]

The point Jim is making is that FS9 is displaying the 256 x 256 version of your texture.

In this case you would be just as well to down sample to 256 x 256, as the 1024 version is not displaying.

That is what MipMaps are all about.

As for FSX performance, that is baffling. Most people get nice performance in FSX on today's hardware ... But clearly not all.

Curious though. How do you explain the promise of 4096 textures being made available for first time in fs9?

 

[JRobinson]

Curious though. How do you explain the promise of 4096 textures being made available for first time in fs9?

They simply are not. It is not a "breakthrough", it's BS pure and simple. Just because someone will sell you a 4096 texture for FS9 doesn't mean you will see the full 4096 resolution.