blurry textures

[pfs]

I guess I have to relativize that. I never enabled AI Traffic and I have the same problem with one of my libraries. I compiled a library with some gmax modells (i coded the library myself in XML). The blurrines appears a few miles out of the airport (I guess when the responsible object reaches a specific size). I am in the process of identifying the gmax object responsible, but all the proposed actions above didn't solve my problem.

I will keep you informed.

Regards,

 

[arno]

Thanks for the info, things are newer as simple as you might hope . Seems there are more things contributing to this problem...

 

[xbuddy]

PROBLEM SOLVED

there is a big resolution texture with 1024pixels for my building and cannot be reapet if I use uvw tile, now I stretch and reduce to 512px ... bingo, blur is gone.
and then there is a big uvw tile in my object coz I want my object is detail, with a few tile the blur is never come back.



I hope it can be solve to you guyz, try my solution.


Buddy

 

[pfs]

Hi everybody,

after a short design break i searched for and identified the object which was causing the blurry textures effect. I tried different things (removed the mipmapping, added the alpha channel, changed resolution and so on...) but the problem remained.

Now I compared the material settings in gmax of the object with the settings of another which does not cause the problem. I copied this special object from an older FS2002 version where I exploited a 'bug' to apply the chrome effect to this building to simulate the glass surface. As you needed 'special' textures (in TGA format with alpha channel) gmax does some special settings in the material editor which you are unable to change until you change the texture properties (I am unable to make screenshots of the form right now but will add them later. It has something to do with the alpha channel used for the chrome effect).

It seems that the FS2004 Makemdl and BGLComp has problems with such settings when they are applied to buildings. After I changed the base textures by removing the alpha channel and therefor changing the settings in the material editor for every single texture I recompiled my object library and the blurry effect was gone. I even added mipmapping levels again. Everything is fine now. Let's hope it stays that way. ;-)

Best regards,
Steffen.

 

[arno]

Hi Steffen,

That is interesting. It is indeed through that the Fs2004 MakeMDL does not allow reflection on scenery objects (this is because refection works as a subtexture of TEXTURE_AIRCRAFT only and not as a subtexture of TEXTURE_BUILDING). But I never realised that GMax changes other parts of the material definition as well. Good to know this.

 

[pfs]

Hi,

here is the screenshot I promised.

In the alpha section the (now grayed out) point 'Image Alpha' was selected and could not be deselected as long as the Source Image has an alpha channel (I always used TGA textures). After removing the Alpha Channel the form looks like the one on the picture. This is the only difference I found and thereafter it worked...

Best regards,
Steffen.

 

[bob5568]

interesting thread...

I was tempted to mention this before...I shall now. It's in regards to mip mapping big textures. I was using a set of 512x512 textures recently for good resolution appearance. After mip mapping, I became suspicious I wasn't seeing the big texture. I confirmed it by editing the 256x256 mip to be a solid color. Sure enough, the object went from texture to the solid color but NEVER returned to the texture (the full 512x512 mip). I concluded that the only way to force fs to display a 512x512 texture is to eliminate mip maps. Otherwise you never display anything beyond 256x256.

Bob

 

[arno]

Hi Steffen,

In the alpha section the (now grayed out) point 'Image Alpha' was selected and could not be deselected as long as the Source Image has an alpha channel (I always used TGA textures). After removing the Alpha Channel the form looks like the one on the picture. This is the only difference I found and thereafter it worked...

I never use TGA textures in GMax, but PSD files. I think I have never seen that option enabled with them. But I would have to check that. I will do some testing and see what differences the source code show if I use a TGA with and without alpha channel.

 

[arno]

Hi Bob,

I was tempted to mention this before...I shall now. It's in regards to mip mapping big textures. I was using a set of 512x512 textures recently for good resolution appearance. After mip mapping, I became suspicious I wasn't seeing the big texture. I confirmed it by editing the 256x256 mip to be a solid color. Sure enough, the object went from texture to the solid color but NEVER returned to the texture (the full 512x512 mip). I concluded that the only way to force fs to display a 512x512 texture is to eliminate mip maps. Otherwise you never display anything beyond 256x256.

I our scenery team we also had a discussion like that recently, but I could not reproduce it. I think the cause of such problems is more likely the object the texture is assigned to and not the texture itself.

Usually wrong mip selection is caused by the fact that the same texture is applied on multiple polygons with a different scale. In the texture list each texture has a scale which tells the scenery engine how many meter the entire texture spans. If this information is incorrect then the wrong mip can be selected. If GMax has the same texture applied on mulitple polygons I think MakeMDL does not always pick the lowest scale, which is needed of course to get the correct display.

 

[bob5568]

Its a simple test. Make a ground poly...just make a plane .. one polygon, 512m x 512m. Make a texture for that polygon 512x512 with mip maps, and write 256 in big letters on the 256x256 mip.

Then you'll see you will never see the 512x512 texture, you'll always get the 256x256 one.

Bob

 

[arno]

I did that test before one a cube. But it was between a 1024 and a 512. I did see the 1024 correct.

Are you sure you have not set your global texture size setting too low?

 

[bob5568]

that is possible, I'll check.

 

[Thorsten]

Hi to all,

are there any news concerning this mipmap/blurry problem? Actually i´ve got it again with my new project. The one and only "workaround" for me is to use 99% of DXT1 Textures without mipmaps that have a blank alpha channel to surpress also the rendition of mipmaps.
In the case I use normal DXT1 or DXT3 Textures: Initially the scenery seems OK, but when I turn to another view it suddenly appears and all textures, terrain, snowflakes and buildings are switched to the lowest mipmap level.
At some buildings the texture is completely dissapering from farer distances.
For me it seems that there is a limitation in "mipmap-memory", that the FS will exeed a limit while it loads the texture and will suddenly switch back to the lowest mipmap level??? Or is it a problem to use textures below 256x256 size? (32, or 64 for instance) Of course I extensivly used the tile mapping feature, could this be a problem together with mipmaps???
BTW: I tried it on a Radeon 9800 PRO and a Radeon X800SE. Could this also be a graphic card problem?? (I remember that in FS2002 I had the same problem while building Mallorca2002 using a Vodoo 5500. After i upgraded to an Gforce the Problem was gone)

Thorsten

 

[stevo]

Hi everyone

I've been having this problem recently only with my scenery, it does'nt happen anywhere else, looks the same as xbuddy's pics.I thought it may have been some photographic scenery I have, but I removed this and still have the problem, I eventually tracked it down after many hours of searching, to my buildings, well I think the textures on them or on a few of them.

If I remove all the building bgl's (18 of them) the problem does not occur.

if I place them back and just remove the texture folder, the problem does not happen. Of course all my buildings are just Gmax colours.

So.....

I tried removing all mipmaps from every texture (god what a job), and this just made the problem worse. I did get at least a few minutes with unaffected textures before I removed the mipmaps. But without mips as soon as fs loads its blurry.

Next I tried, adding mipmaps to every building texture and reducing the size of each texture to below 512x512. I had a few 1024x1024, 512x512, 512x256 and 1024x512. So I resized all these to 256.

I reactivated the photographic scenery and tried it, and the problem has gone I've been flying around now for well over an hour, but the textures look....well.... Sh#t

So now I'm going to put back some of the larger textures, on at least the buildings you see close up and see what happens. hopefully It will be ok.

I'll let everyone know what happens.

Its interesting reading about the tile textures and mipmaps, I use a few tiled textures, I'll have to investigate.

Can I ask what graphics cards people are using? Mine is a Nvidia Geforce 2

Argh

Stevo

 

[Pilon]

Hi stevo

Just 2 weeks ago I had the same problem.
I made 3 different types of fence around my airport, each one with it's own texture bmp.
All was just fine until I did some testing and was flying away from the scenery.
All of the sudden....boom...all of the textures became blury. I to was trying
textures without mip-maps, nothing.
As a last resort I compiled the different fences as separate bgl files...
thank God, this one did the trick.

This is an optional action I suggest you try. Who knows, it might just do the trick for you to.

good luck

Neal

 

[Thorsten]

HI,

very interesting. Perhaps it´s really a problem of 512 x 512 pix textures. As bob wrote the fs seems to display only up to the 256 x 256 Mipmap and never shows the 512 x 512 final resolution. Maybe this is the key? (using 512 textures without mipmaps and alpha to surpress and 256 pix with mipmaps????) Or maybe this is just a display setting problem. I´ll investigat later.

Thorsten

 

[arno]

Hi Thorsten,

Perhaps it´s really a problem of 512 x 512 pix textures. As bob wrote the fs seems to display only up to the 256 x 256 Mipmap and never shows the 512 x 512 final resolution.

I can say that FS does display higher mipmaps. I have made a test object for this, where each mip shows the number of pixels it has as text. Up to 1024 everything shows fine. Only for mesh scenery this restriction is true (there 256 is the maximum).

 

[stevo]

Hi,

An update to my earlier post,

I, replaced almost all of the 1024x1024 & 512x512 textures and everything (fingers crossed) is ok.

The only textures I didnt replace, and I havent tested if this is the cause but i will are;

a 1024x256 tiled (with mips) roof texture,
a 512x512 tiled (with mips) brick texture,
and i think a 512x256 tiled (with mips) window texture.

All the above textures are still in the scenery, but have been reduced in size to 256x256 256x64 and so on (cant remember if I added mips, i'll have to check).

This is only a thought, but maybe a combination of large textures, mipmaps, and being tiled in Gmax produces this strange effect.

I'm going to try it now and replace my larger tiled textures so see if it happens again.

Fingers crossed

Stevo

 

[stevo]

well....mmmm

I placed the large tiled textures back into the texture folder and I cant get it to happen now.

So it must not be the tile texture theory, although I'll test it a bit more.

If I cant get it to happen again, I dont know what causes it. The only thing I've altered is the Textures. No models have been altered

Other thoughts, maybe Image tool saves errors with some textures? I've removed and readded the Mipmaps to all textures. As you read below it's all I've really done!

This is what I've done so far

What I Did
Removed the buildings one by one to see if I could find which one/s causes the problem.

What Happened
Seemed to be 6 buildings, that causes the blurry effect. All have Tiled textures.

What I Did
Removed all mipmaps from textures.

What Happened
Seemed to make the effect worse.

What I Did
Resized all textures to below 512x512 and readded Mipmaps.

What Happened
Blurry effect does not now occur, seems to be fixed, but texture now look to low res.

What I Did
Moved most of the 1024x1024, 512x512 textures back into the texture folder, except tiled textures, which where still 256x256

What Happened
Worked ok, no blurry effect happened

What I Did
Moved large 1024x1024 tiled textures back into texture folder.

What Happened
well, no blurry effect has occured as of yet. Textures are now back as they where almost.

What I Did
What now??!!??!!

It looks like back to the old drawing board.

Stevo