Blurry Ground/Taxi Lines

[ron6468]

Overall, excellent scenery for YYZ - long time coming - thanks for a great job.
When taxiing, the Taxi lines are only sharply visible for about 100', then they fade from blurry to none. A lot of the runway and other ground textures seem the same. Nothing looks very sharp until I'm very close. No problem with distance/horizon detail though as I can see close and far off (buildings, scenery, etc) in very high detail.

I have a very fast custom built pc and am running most sliders full over, FTX Global, UT2-80%, REX, etc and getting a steady 20-30 FPS in all situations. I do get some OOM errors though but I have read your solutions which I'll try.

The biggest problem seems to be blurry ground textures when taxiing and on final approach, the airport scenery doesn't really build to full detail until I've almost landed. Runways don't even show up until I'm about 10 miles out. Not sure if that's part of the same problem.

Thanks

[martin[flytampa]]

Can you post a couple of screenshots so I can get a better idea of what and how blurry.

The only thing from your report that does sound normal is that taxilines and other grd markings will fade out in the distance. Attached a screenshot of how it should look like. This is by design because we're moving away from whats often referred to as "FS9 legacy ground polys". The fade-out in this case is to prevent the items from clipping/flickering in the distance or when viewed from higher altitude. I did notice on my Nvidia dual monitor testsystem, that when running the Sim in windowed mode on the secondary monitor indead of the primary, the fading-out is more sudden, because of what appears to be a FSX/NV driver issue where there is no smooth transition between mipmaps, instead it just switches from one mip to another without transitions. I did notice this for all textures tho, it wasn't particular to Toronto's grd markings.

If it doesn't look anything like the picture below, please post your own screenshots so I can see whats different.

[ron6468]

The image you show is exactly what I was describing although I was referring more to taxiing at ground level. The explanation makes sense and I'd rather have a slightly blurred taxing line than flashing and flickering textures. I have 3 x 28" LCD's running 6000 x 1080 so the graphics load is very high although I'm not certain if that is a factor.
BTW, I made the changes you show to reduce OOM errors and it made a huge difference. Virtually no OOM and my frame rates while taxing around went from 20-25 to 25-30!
Again - great job on the airport. Makes the shuttle between CYYZ and CYUL a perfect trip.

[martin[flytampa]]

You can try downloading and overwriting the attached file into /Addon Scenery/FlyTampa-Toronto/texture/

This may have the side effect of causing some lines to flicker a bit from high altitude.

[tasev1]

Thank you to OP for referring me to this thread. I have attached a pic of a similar issue I am having, though possibly more severe. My taxi lines disappear quite early only showing detail right in front of the nose. Same with runway markings.

Also attached is an image of how the runway edge and taxi edge lights appear at night - like "flames" (other than that, your night lighting is GORGEOUS!!!)

yyz taxi 1.png (2.41 MiB) Viewed 13943 times

yyz taxi 2.png (685.7 KiB) Viewed 13943 times

[tasev1]

Just as an update, this is what troubleshooting I have tried to no avail. The ONLY thing that helped with the taxi lines was the proposed file above - now I see them all the way down the line. With that, the runway lines still exhibit the same behaviour.

-resetting my stock fsx.cfg
-adjusting NVIDIA graphics settings for FSX, and adjusting settings within FSX
-Using Texture_Max_Load adjustmnet
-Changing sim and scenery seasons.
-Removed 3D taxi lights
-Installed low-tex files.
-Installed Grid Marks 1 file

[martin[flytampa]]

Just as an update, this is what troubleshooting I have tried to no avail. The ONLY thing that helped with the taxi lines was the proposed file above - now I see them all the way down the line. With that, the runway lines still exhibit the same behaviour.

-resetting my stock fsx.cfg
-adjusting NVIDIA graphics settings for FSX, and adjusting settings within FSX
-Using Texture_Max_Load adjustmnet
-Changing sim and scenery seasons.
-Removed 3D taxi lights
-Installed low-tex files.
-Installed Grid Marks 1 file

Yes, the file above only contains most lines but not the runway markings. I just wanted to see if you do notice the negative side effects or prefer this regardless. I'll make an optional set of textures that don't fade out and post it later.

[tasev1]

Thank you Martin. Yes, overall the risk of flickering is far preferable. I have not seen any artefacts as a result. Constantly watching lines and skid marks and runway markings appear in front of your aircraft's nose while taxiing is not only immersion breaking, but very annoying too.

The "LOD lines" as I call them are still there, but not nearly as noticeable now that the pavement markings extend to max distance.

[martin[flytampa]]

Because of how the fade-out is made within the textures, how far the lines etc actually extend can vary based on Gfx settings, like how soon does the Driver switch to second and third mipmap in the texture etc. I'm not sure if this is tied to a specific FSX or driver setting tho. I'll have the "full range" textures avail soon.

[martin[flytampa]]

viewtopic.php?f=29&t=7242

[ron6468]

Thanks Martin - the replacement .dds file worked perfect - for my system anyway. The runway lines are now perfectly clear all the way and I have no flickering or other graphics issues as a result of changing the file.

[LiftEquation]

Hi Martin - is there a setting we could tweak to make the runway lights less prominent without the "flame-like" appearance as shown in one of the screenshots above? It only appears like flames from certain angles. Thank you!

Jason

[martin[flytampa]]

You can't adjust that, the flame effect happens when viewing the light polygon from a side angle like in your shot. The only way I can prevent that will have the side effect that the whole runway lighting would only be visible from a short range during approach (like edgelights). They need to be visible for miles of course. To achieve that, the halos have to be "huge" and a side effect of this is the flame spike you are seeing. The old/traditional ways of doing Addon Airport lighting (similar to stock airport lights) are all broken or not working great in all Platforms (P3D), so we have been using this method in the last 4 or 5 releases if I recall correctly.

[LiftEquation]

Thank you, Martin. I have to congratulate and thank you for the tremendous responsiveness to your Customers. Not only do you build a wonderful product, but how you support people is second to none.

Jason