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#381474 - 05/17/02 04:30 PM Terrain Shimmer  
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Ordered the Sim from the US at the weekend, took only 3 days to arrive. Excellent.

The only spanner in the works is the shimmering middle distance terrain. I've tried using some of the add on terrain sets but although they look great close to and in the far distance the middle textures shimmer very badly.

From forum searches this seems like an issue with this Sim that some people have and some don't. Iv'e played around with the GFX settings and my GF4 4400 settings but no change.

Has anyone with this problem managed to resolve it? this moving terrain is making me feel ill.

Its a pity as this is the first fast jet sim that Iv'e bought since TAW and it seems very funky.

Somebody Please Help

ABIT GF4 4400
Athalon 1.4
Philips Acoustic Edge
MSFF2

MOG


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#381475 - 05/17/02 06:12 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Funnily enough I too have a Ti440 and ahve noticed the 'shimmer' but it doesn't trouble me too much.
Try with ansiotropic settings and or anti-aliasing, I'm sure it's just a texture thang.

#381476 - 05/17/02 07:12 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Iv'e tried messing with FSAA and setting Aniso. In the GF4 settings. They don't seem to make things much better. (Does the Aniso setting make any difference if theres no box to enable it from within the Sim?)The shimmering is quite bad, at times the whole visible terrain is swimming round. It's odd because the close textures are sharp, and the far distance looks fine. Its just the mid textures that shimmer. At high altitudes 10000+ things look OK, I suppose from up there all the textures are displyed as far.

I accept that this is quite an old game engine but I'm sure it shouldn't be like this. I fired up TAW with the res, patch about 12 months ago and the ground textures were fine.

Incidentally does everyone get a jumbo frame rate hit with the mirrors enabled?

May try playing with some settings in GTU, also I see that there are some new addon textures on the way from this board. Maybe those will sort it.

MOG

[This message has been edited by Mogster (edited 05-17-2002).]


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#381477 - 05/17/02 08:11 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Shimmering w/ GF4 440 also though doesnt sound as bad as yours. Maybe your faster card.

Used to have a Savage4 card in which shimmering was not a problem so could be a GF problem.

Does your 4400 card run 2.51 under antialiasing well? What is your max AA setting?

Antialiasing must usually be turned off under 440 1.6P4 to fly w/ recording turned on.

[This message has been edited by chumley (edited 05-17-2002).]

#381478 - 05/18/02 10:55 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Runs up to 4x and somthing called 4xS whatever that is. I don't normaly use FSAA much as to me it just blurs the tetures, the Flanker A/C models do benefit from it though.

Anyone know if Aniso. filtering can be anabled on your card if the prog. your running doesn't have options for it? doesn't seem to make any difference with flanker.

MOG


WAS C2D 8500 3.16ghz, 285gtx 1gb, 4gig ram, XP NOW Win7 64, I5 2500K, SSD, 8Gig ram, GTX 570
#381479 - 05/18/02 01:11 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Just tried the 4xS(?) FSAA setting, things are better and I don't seem to get a bad performance hit , but below 3000 where you can't see into the far distance the terrain still swims.It's a shame as this spoils low level flying.

Great Sim all the same though, still worth my 15 quid.

MOG


WAS C2D 8500 3.16ghz, 285gtx 1gb, 4gig ram, XP NOW Win7 64, I5 2500K, SSD, 8Gig ram, GTX 570
#381480 - 05/19/02 09:50 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Hi Mogster,

You mentioned that you had tried some of the 3rd party scenery enhancements, etc...
Which version are you running with Flanker now? The original or an addon?
You mentioned that your closest scenery looks good, the "middle" areas shimmer badly, but the "far" areas look ok?

I'm sure that you've tried setting the "detail distance" in Flanker's options to LOW and MEDIUM. What effect did this have on your shimmering problem??

And YES, you can use 3rd party utilities for your GF card. Some driver versions leave out useful options and settings that are still supported in that driver build. nVidia reference drivers are usually basic drivers without many of these useful options.
Try RivaTuner (my favorite), or GeForceTweak utilities for unlocking hidden tweak settings. Here's a site where you can check into and/or download the tweak utilities.
http://guru3d.com/rivatuner/

CAUTION: I've had issues with 2 separate versions of GF tweak utility. Using that utility REMOVED controls and options from my drivers, causing me to have to reinstall my drivers.

Mag....

[This message has been edited by Magneto (edited 05-19-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Magneto (edited 05-19-2002).]

#381481 - 05/20/02 11:01 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Thanks, hadn't heard of the problems with GTU.

MOG


WAS C2D 8500 3.16ghz, 285gtx 1gb, 4gig ram, XP NOW Win7 64, I5 2500K, SSD, 8Gig ram, GTX 570
#381482 - 05/23/02 04:28 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Mogster,

I've been doing some testing with Flanker 2.51 on my machine. Although I realize that you've probably tried everything I am going to mention, I thought I would let you know what I came up with anyway.
System specs:
AMD T-bird 1.1 (KT-133 chipset)
256 meg PC-133
Hercules GeForce2 GTS 64 (slightly overclocked), Herc drivers 21.81
SB Live value sound

1. The original Flanker textures cause less shimmering, even at max detail distances, and without FSAA turned on. I believe this is because the texture's colors look so flat, without much contrast.
2. I experimented with many different combinations of detail distance, object density, greenery and roads, but none of these appeared to help any with the shimmering.
3. I'm currently using MLK's land textures (they look killer!), and these textures cause quite a bit of shimmering in the distances without FSAA turned on. Even with FSAA enabled (at 2x), I get some shimmering. Once again, experimentations with object density, greenery, etc, didn't help with the shimmering.

I experimented a bit more with mipmapping. My mipmapping was set at "best image quality" in my driver's control panel. This is usually DEFAULT with most nVidia drivers, and I rarely mess with it.
With this "best image quality" setting, turning mipmap on/off from within Flanker's control panel did very little to help with the shimmering.

But changing the setting (in driver control panel) to "BLEND", caused a dramatic reduction in the shimmering textures, and with FSAA enabled at 2x, virtually eliminated the shimmering in the distance. I do experience a framerate hit on my rig by using mipmapping and FSAA in Flanker, but I believe that's more a limitation with my GF2 GTS. They don't do FSAA very well. With your GeForce4, this would probably not be a problem.
I also tried lowering the mipmapping to high performance, but this really affected visual quality from with the game, and didn't lessen the small amount of shimmering that I had.

Mag..

#381483 - 05/27/02 12:40 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  
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Blend does seem to make a things better. Nice one Mag. I never normaly toutch those settings.

MOG


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#381484 - 05/31/02 08:27 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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gentlemen..

the shimmer thing is specific to gef3 and 4 and has to do with multisampling and not with supersampling as used by gef2. Noone around has any solution to the shimmer thing except understanding what it is..maybe. It is NOT AA or anisotropy or driver related. What is is, apparently, is a problem with mipmapping and multisampling. The polygons are not rendered correctly when viewed on angles as the mipmaps are not designed correctly for multisampling.
All of this stuff can be found by searching for 'shimmer' , particularly at nvnews.com and some stuff is at geforcetweak.com

Whatever, there is no real fix and yes, turning down mipmapping will lessen the effect but wont fix it..so dont bother messing with gtu or rivatuner or det drivers..i already have and even kennung et al dont know a real fix. Apparently nvidia is aware and are 'looking into it'..dont hold your breath.

if you play other games, the shimmer is present in most also, depending on the method used for texture modelling.

You should see how bad janes f15 looks on a gef3...absolutely shocking...and no fix either.

believe me, ive been researching and trying to find a fix for this for months now.. no joy.

#381485 - 06/01/02 12:10 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Quote:
Originally posted by oxymoron:
gentlemen..

the shimmer thing is specific to gef3 and 4 and has to do with multisampling and not with supersampling as used by gef2. Noone around has any solution to the shimmer thing except understanding what it is..maybe. It is NOT AA or anisotropy or driver related.


That's really interesting because I have two rigs set up, one with a GFti4600 and the other with a Voodoo5 and the GF version looks better to me with less shimmer than the V5. Very strange.

#381486 - 06/04/02 05:31 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Stopp press..!!
forcing bilinear from rivatuner seems to fix some of the horrible grpahics in f15..also i believe falcon 4...im going to try it in flanker 251 tonite...mind you, it still has some probs.

#381487 - 06/07/02 11:34 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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shimmer a function of anti alias and Anisotropy..

unfortunately, i havent been able to find the perfect settings for all games. And, of course, the fix also impacts on FPS.

#381488 - 06/09/02 04:37 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Been playing around with some of the settings in RivaTuner this morning. Found that with anisotropy settings at 'force level 2' there is a noticeable reduction of the shimmer without loss of framerate. Anything above that does cut into framerate. My AA settings are at 4xs. Using standard terrain.

#381489 - 06/09/02 11:36 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Nah, been playing with aa and ani for ages...

i think this is the best solution..

have mimaps to low detail in vcard settings and terrain detail set to middle or low in the game..then use 8x aniso and 4xaa...even 2xaa is fine...detracts from terrain tho...and still not the perfect solution.

also, this is for flanker only.. these settings are rubbish for janes f18 and other games...for instance 4xaa and 8x aniso in jf18 makes the hud unreadable.

#381490 - 06/10/02 02:19 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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Interesting.
What card are you using?
Also, are you using the standard terrain, or is it one of the new terrain sets?
I have a GF4 ti4600 and it is a real improvement over the GF3 I had. Also better than the Voodoo 5.
In Flanker the picture for me is slightly improved using 8x aniso but there is a definite framerate loss. At 2x no loss of framerate and the terrain is about the same as with 8x. Using the 4xS aa settings.
Out of curiosity I did load up Jane's F-18 and find that the hud is quite readable with settings at 8x for aniso and 4xS aa. It becomes nearly illegible without the aniso being used.
Also, have found in Combat Mission that the shimmer in some of the graphics is gone by setting aniso to 8x. Can do that safely in that game without worrying about framerates. :-)
In any case, good luck with your attempts to get some good settings.

#381491 - 06/11/02 05:30 AM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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that is interesting..i got so peeved that i went out and bought a radeon 8500 128 mb!!

yeah, the jf18 was with 4xaa, 8xani, i think...it mightve been even just 4x aa only.

no aa and no ani makes it as sharp as a tack, except very blocky, pivxely graphics..even with the radeon..

and did i mention that i have a 16x aniso and 6 x aa option with the radeon?...i can use one but not both before i get frame hits.
sweet.

i had the gef3 ti200 128 before.


[This message has been edited by oxymoron (edited 06-11-2002).]

#381492 - 06/11/02 01:42 PM Re: Terrain Shimmer  

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What you've been posting makes a little more sense to me now. When I had a GF3 ti card I was not even able to play Flanker at all because the shimmering terrain made me physically ill.
Sounds like you got a great card. :-)


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