active Flickering textures to parts of buildings, trees, shadows & static aircraft

[Dreamsofwings1]

Hi, something I have been seeing a fair bit in recent months, and not sure what has triggered it, is that parts of buildings, quite often signs, windows or panels will flicker.  Can also effect ground shadows and some textures in static aircraft e.g. wheel fairings.  Quite often a few trees will be effected but most of the forest is fine.   I have no idea what has caused it and no end of messing with settings seems to have fixed it.  Here is a video showing an example of this at PAVD Valdez Pioneer.  Any ideas would be most appreciated!

 

[Larry_R]

Hello,

 

The issue as shown in your video is not all that clear on my netbook, but what comes to mind is the clip mode of the camera you are using. At least that's one possibility.  That camera might be controlled by the cameras.cfg  or by the the aircraft.cfg so it's important to make sure you are looking in the right place. There is a fair amount on this topic in the Orbx forums and elsewhere. It's worthwhile understanding what clip mode does and how it's related to z-fighting, if in fact that's what's going on.

[Dreamsofwings1]

Hi Larry, 

Yes Clip mode certainly seems to have an effect.  I use Chaseplane and my cockpit view, where I have Clip mode set to None sees less of this than outside views where Clip Mode is set to minimum.  So "none" improves it but doesn't cure it.  However these I have only set in cameras.cfg so will check the aircraft too.

Thanks for the heads up, I have looked at other posts and I might try the ‘Normal’ clip mode.  There are some cooling towers near Bowerman than always flicker for so will test there later.

Cheers,Rob

[Dreamsofwings1]

….unfortunately changing clipmode to Normal doesn't seem to have had any effect at PAVD

[Larry_R]

I've noticed several references to ClipMode=None however this is not listed among the clip mode options in the P3D SDK (copied below) which I think is unchanged from the FSX SDK:

 

This setting is used to control how the clip planes are computed. Clip planes are used to set the minimum and maximum distances for rendering in a 3D graphics program. The relative location of these planes determines how precise the graphics engine can maintain the Z-order of objects. A discussion of clip plane management is beyond the scope of this document. However, the concept is relevant to the camera system because it determines whether the camera favors near or far objects in the view:
• Normal – The near clip plane is scaled along with the zoom level. Useful for most views.
• Minimum – Clamps the near clip plane at its absolute minimum value (1 meter). Useful for cameras where the camera is placed close to object geometry (e.g., aircraft cameras).
• Spot – Favors distant objects by scaling the near clip plane with altitude and distance. Useful when the camera is positioned a reasonable distance away from the target object (e.g., spot view).
• Tower – Favors near objects by scaling the near clip plane by one-half the zoom level and clamping the far plane based on visibility settings with an absolute limit of 20km. Useful when objects at the limits of visibility aren't important.

 

Unless "None" is an undocumented setting  I would guess that setting the Clip Mode to None is not recognized per se, and that the Clip Mode is treated as Normal, the default specified in the SDK. Nonetheless, in the past, people have claimed an improvement in z- fighting when setting the clip mode to normal when it should have defaulted to that entry anyway, so there are some things that at least in the past have not been entirely consistent. 

[Dreamsofwings1]

Thanks Larry.  Might take up in the Chaseplane forum and continue experimenting.