active Does this new Enhancement pack look correct?

[Jack Sawyer]

I'm going to post some screenshots below.  The first one is is from Orbx, I'm not seeing the planes at any KSEA/Boeing airfield.

 

Then my settings in both Central and XP.

 

Please advise.

 

Thanks.

 

Orbx

Can anyone tell me the name of this airport?  Is it Renton?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mauricecohen]

Paine Field KPAE, right next door to the Boeing factory in Everett (WA) in the first picture.

[Jack Sawyer]

5 minutes ago, mauricecohen said:

Paine Field KPAE, right next door to the Boeing factory in Everett (WA) in the first picture.

Maurice, much obliged, I thank you kindly.  Now I need to get the chance to test it.

[mauricecohen]

13 minutes ago, Jack Sawyer said:

Now I need to get the chance to test it.

 

If you ever go to Seattle, book in advance a guided tour of the Boeing plant, it is really worth the drive up to Everett.  Each of the 6 bluish hangar doors you see in your first screenshot is wide enough and tall enough for a 747 to drive through.

[mauricecohen]

2 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said:

 not seeing the planes

 

Check the “Draw parked aircraft” box in Graphics settings.

[Jack Sawyer]

2 minutes ago, mauricecohen said:

 

Check the “Draw parked aircraft” box in Graphics settings.

I’m hoping that’s not it because it kills my frames.  I thought those planes were supposed to be part of the scenery.  

[mauricecohen]

1 hour ago, Jack Sawyer said:

because it kills my frames

I am surprised that the Number of World Objects at Maximum does not do that already ;-)

[Jack Sawyer]

5 minutes ago, mauricecohen said:

I am surprised that the Number of World Objects at Maximum does not do that already ;-)

Well Paine Field was it Maurice.  It looks amazing.  The new Enhancement Pack looks fantastic.

[oldboy43]

Hi Jack Very nice shots, thank you.

But I have a problem with the TE US WA Enhancement Pack.

I have large black areas without trees there and I have a deep cannon on the Canadian border.

It is at a latitude of 49 degrees on the border with Canada. See pictures.

cheers

Karoly

[Jack Sawyer]

Gosh Karoly, I’m sorry to see this.  I wish I could help but this one has me stumped.

[mauricecohen]

7 hours ago, oldboy43 said:

It is at a latitude of 49 degrees on the border with Canada

 

That border is hundreds of miles long between WA and BC.  If you want someone to check, please identify the location.  Here is what I see at the border, flying north along the Okanogan:

 

[Gulfstreamtwo]

19 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said:

Can anyone tell me the name of this airport?  Is it Renton?

 

 

 

 

As noted earlier, the first one is Paine Field/KPAE. The second and third are the south end of Boeing Field/KBFI. That's the Museum of Flight in the second one. The last one is the south end of Renton/KRNT. The blotchy appearance of the (US) football field looks like a custom POI added to the high school field there to improve a lower rez underlying photo texture. Compare it with Google Earth and you'll see they've done a nice job.

[Jack Sawyer]

1 hour ago, Gulfstreamtwo said:

As noted earlier, the first one is Paine Field/KPAE. The second and third are the south end of Boeing Field/KBFI. That's the Museum of Flight in the second one. The last one is the south end of Renton/KRNT. The blotchy appearance of the (US) football field looks like a custom POI added to the high school field there to improve a lower rez underlying photo texture. Compare it with Google Earth and you'll see they've done a nice job.

Thanks Gulfstream!  I appreciate your help.

[renault]

20 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said:

I'm going to post some screenshots below.  The first one is is from Orbx, I'm not seeing the planes at any KSEA/Boeing airfield.

 

Then my settings in both Central and XP.

 

Please advise.

 

Thanks.

 

Orbx

Can anyone tell me the name of this airport?  Is it Renton?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi Jack

 

Regarding the Texture Quality Setting

 

My understanding of how the slider works is as follows:

 

Maximum and Maximum (with compression) are both 4K settings. There is no pixel difference between the two. With compression is still a .dds format, but one interesting aspect of compressed .dds is that they can be loaded and held in vram in a compressed state and only decompressed when it is needed.  All modern GPU's do this decompression in hardware so it is a very efficient process & saves a ton of vram. But the image quality is identical. 

 

Moving 1 texture setting to the left from Maximum (with compression) to high is 2K. (Compressed). Moving again to the left then is 1K(compressed) and the .512K(compressed).

 

I presume that you have Texture quality set to High for fps and Vram considerations. Do this means that all  textures will now be 2K.  This also includes aircraft, any add ons etc. so if you have payware aircraft for example that have 4K panels or outside rendering at 4K they will now become 2K.  You can check this by looking at a scenery such as TE GB (objects - buildings etc) or TE Washington HU when flying.

 

Individual mileage will vary of course, but on my system compared to a setting of Maximum(with compression), 4K - one notch from full right , when I set at High I notice that distant objects etc. will show a significant degree of texture shimmer at times. This disappears when using the Maximum(with compression) setting.

 

In addition for example I noticed a significant visual deterioration with TE Oregon SD when using a High Texture Quality setting vs a Maximum(With Compression) Texture Quality setting even though the SD package has lower resolution orthotextures.  This appears to be consistent with my understanding of how the Texture quality setting works.

 

Using the HD enhancement pack with settings on High, unless I am mistaken, may result in a reduction in visual quality from what the HD enhancement package is intended to achieve

 

Might be of interest for you to investigate the differences. Of course I appreciate what you are trying to achieve in terms of usability and frame rate/Vram considerations with your settings.

 

BTW the reason that frame rates deteriorate so much if VRAM is exceeded is that the GPU starts dumping textures from the VRAM to system RAM when this happens. Even though System RAM can be fast i.e 3000 + MHz  it is no match for the DDR5/DDR6 memory which a GPU has. 

 

Also I noticed , again on my system because it is an MSI card and I also have a program called MSI afterburner which gives a real time display of relevant system settings such as VRAM , that the XPlane VRAM usage is more than the corresponding VRAM usage reported by MSI. In many cases XPlane is reporting that I have exceeded the GPU VRAM, but MSI is still reporting a VRAM usage which is less than the physical VRAM that I have. 

 

I don't notice any deterioration in frame rates when this is occurring so, I have concluded that on average it seems on my system I can exceed the XPLane reported VRAM usage by about 15% (i.e about 9.5 GB reported by XPlane). My card is 8 GB VRAM.  It is only when MSI reports that I am above 8GB that I see a drop off in fps

 

Hope this is of some interest and help

 

Cheers

Pete

[oldboy43]

@mauricecohenFor me it's 49 degrees north latitude and 121 degrees 42 minutes west longitude.

cheers

Karoly

[Jack Sawyer]

4 minutes ago, renault said:

Hope this is of some interest and help

Thanks Pete, it's quite helpful, now I have to re-read it several times to understand it.  I seems you're saying to change the settings almost every flight depending now where you are?

[renault]

1 minute ago, Jack Sawyer said:

Thanks Pete, it's quite helpful, now I have to re-read it several times to understand it.  I seems you're saying to change the settings almost every flight depending now where you are?

No I'm not saying that at all Jack.

 

What I'm saying is that based on my experience the best setting for the Texture Quality setting is to set it one slider setting back  from full right which will be Maximum(With Compression) and leave it there.  Of course , it may mean that you will encounter some extremely poor frame rate situations , even on a powerful system due to VRAM useage and then the only recourse is to pull it back to High and live with the visual quality issues.

 

I do this from time to time, but as much as possible I leave it alone and just deal with the temporary fps issues. Even flying over London it is still quite workable , even though my fps is around 20 - 25. The biggest issue is when you attempt to pan around, since XPlane is really swapping textures within VRAM. In fact this is the most obvious indication that you are full up - usually panning should be silky smooth.

 

There is no right or wrong answer here. Its what works for you that you are most happy with. 

 

I was simply trying to provide a bit of background of what I understand to be going on "under the hood" so to speak

 

Cheers

Pete

[Jack Sawyer]

10 minutes ago, renault said:

No I'm not saying that at all Jack.

 

What I'm saying is that based on my experience the best setting for the Texture Quality setting is to set it one slider setting back  from full right which will be Maximum(With Compression) and leave it there.  Of course , it may mean that you will encounter some extremely poor frame rate situations , even on a powerful system due to VRAM useage and then the only recourse is to pull it back to High and live with the visual quality issues.

 

I do this from time to time, but as much as possible I leave it alone and just deal with the temporary fps issues. Even flying over London it is still quite workable , even though my fps is around 20 - 25. The biggest issue is when you attempt to pan around, since XPlane is really swapping textures within VRAM. In fact this is the most obvious indication that you are full up - usually panning should be silky smooth.

 

There is no right or wrong answer here. Its what works for you that you are most happy with. 

 

I was simply trying to provide a bit of background of what I understand to be going on "under the hood" so to speak

 

Cheers

Pete

Thanks Pete!  Gosh, you should be getting paid for your knowledge.  I’m extremely impressed.

[mauricecohen]

8 hours ago, oldboy43 said:

For me it's 49 degrees north latitude and 121 degrees 42 minutes west longitude.

 

@oldboy43, I can confirm that a problem exists with a gap in the mesh along the 49th parallel starting at West 121.5 degree longitude and ending at West 122 degree West longitude when using either TE WA orthos or Forkboy2 WA orthos on the US side of the border and any of the default mesh, HD or UHD v4 meshes from Alpilot on the Canadian side.

 

Given the gap of the TE WA orthos with the default mesh between 121.5W and 122W longitude on the 49th parallel, it appears to be a TE WA bug and should be so reported.

 

 

[oldboy43]

Thank you Maurice to try to report the problem. Let's see what will be the reaction of the creators of TE US WA scenery.

cheers

Karoly

[renault]

21 hours ago, Jack Sawyer said:

Thanks Pete!  Gosh, you should be getting paid for your knowledge.  I’m extremely impressed.

Hi Jack 

 

I completely forgot I posted this note a while ago (old age and a lot on my mind recently- that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it)

 

Here you can visually see the difference in the series of screenshots

 

Sorry mate...

Pete

 

 

[Jack Sawyer]

Much appreciated R!  As soon as I get a chance to run XP again I'm going to try this.