Please allow LOAD_RADIUS>6.5

[yanlaoge]

Hi I just bought P3D V4, and I am disappointed to find there are still blurries in mid and far distance of the photo scenery. In FSX and FSW I can increase the LOAD_RADIUS to 12 and the blurries will be gone. But in P3D I can only go up to 6.5, or it will automatically be reduced to 6.5. I think this is not enough to eliminate the blurries. The computer now can handle bigger draw distance, so I really can't see why P3D is more conservative than the 11 years old 32 bit FSX.

I am mainly using barebone photoreal scenery made by myself, and I undertand bigger LOAD_RADIUS number is the only way to overcome blurries. I also tried adjusting affinity mask, TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP, FIBER_FRAME_TIME_FRACTION, TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT, but they are of no use for the blurries of the photoreal scenery.

[Kosta]

What you want is TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10. Goes under TERRAIN.
You will however need a GPU with 8GB+ VRAM.

[yanlaoge]

Thanks for the suggestion. I have tried TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, but it's no use for photoreal scenery. I think it can only improve the default scenery and autogen.

What you want is TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10. Goes under TERRAIN.
You will however need a GPU with 8GB+ VRAM.

[Kosta]

No. TSE specifically extends the texture loading radius. Just google it, there are numerous posts about it here. And it won't work if you have less than 8GB of VRAM. I have 1080TI, and I do see a difference between default 8 and 10.

[yanlaoge]

I tried raise TSE to 10 again (I have a GTX1080), and it indeed seemed to improve the blurries. Less sudden popping of clear texture. But the blurries are still there. Please see the attached pictures. The latter is only seconds after the first one: http://imgur.com/a/cwAYU

I'd like to know the difference between TSE and LOAD_RADIUS. Why do they both exist? Why limit LOAD_RADIUS to 6.5? I still think LOAD_RADIUS is more effective for photoreal scenery.

No. TSE specifically extends the texture loading radius. Just google it, there are numerous posts about it here. And it won't work if you have less than 8GB of VRAM. I have 1080TI, and I do see a difference between default 8 and 10.

[pmb]

Are you sure LOD is still limited to 6.5? I've seen (even educated) people reporting higher values and curing other issues (like texture snapping in mountains) this way. I tried it, but can't say it worked for me. Because of this, I opened a question to LM about LOD some time ago:

viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=125420

The result was a lot of opinion from users, but no definite statement from LM. :-(

Kind regards, Michael

[Beau Hollis]

The LOD radius limitations are the same as in 3.4, however the high resolution texture setting effectively doubles your LOD range. Using the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 in combination with enabling high resolution terrain textures will effectively quadruple your LOD radius. There is a known issue with this which is that photo-real textures don't currently improve in quality as a result. This is because the resolution of the texture is baked into the content. For non photo-real textures, much of the detail comes from vector data such as rivers and roads, and the base resolution of the global textures are about 1 meter per pixel. So, with TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, you'll see 1mpp texture quality at 4x the distance.

[pmb]

Thanks Beau, for the clear answer, much acknowledged.

Kind regards, Michael

[Carl]

Is this "known issue" being addressed? Like the OP, I'd like to know why photo textures look horrid in P3D.

In FSX, increasing LOD to 8.5+ resulted in sharp photo textures. In P3D v2, photoreal was acceptable. In v4, it is not. Other modern sims don't seem to have a problem with this.

P3D v4 is such a marvelous improvement except for this one glaring flaw. It's so bad that I find myself removing all photoreal textures where possible in all my Orbx scenery. This is probably not an issue with tubers, but for low and slow GA, it's a real disappointment.

[captain112]

Same here, photoreal scenery is unusable at the moment, I had to temporarily disable all of them for the time being, Hopefully this issue will get addressed soon.

[yanlaoge]

Thanks Beau. But I am still a bit confused. My interest is only photoreal scenery made by myself, and I don't care about the default scenery, so my question is: With photoreal scenery, does TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 improve the LOD radius? Does the "enabling high resolution terrain texture" option also improve the LOD radius of the photoreal scenery?

The LOD radius limitations are the same as in 3.4, however the high resolution texture setting effectively doubles your LOD range. Using the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 in combination with enabling high resolution terrain textures will effectively quadruple your LOD radius. There is a known issue with this which is that photo-real textures don't currently improve in quality as a result. This is because the resolution of the texture is baked into the content. For non photo-real textures, much of the detail comes from vector data such as rivers and roads, and the base resolution of the global textures are about 1 meter per pixel. So, with TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10, you'll see 1mpp texture quality at 4x the distance.