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FSX Graphical and Other Settings Tutorial.

Started by PiP , May 20 2007 02:28 PM

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#21 .Ben

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Posted 24 May 2007 - 03:30 PM

Nice topic, PiP! :lol:

--Ben.

#22 iKettles

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Posted 29 May 2007 - 02:54 PM

You did fix the spelling error, but it's still wrong :lol:
It is:

Quote

IMO there are to many at even quite low settings.
It should be:

Quote

IMO there are too many at even quite low settings.
I win! :angry:

#23 PiP

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Posted 29 May 2007 - 04:40 PM

View PostiKettles, on May 29 2007, 08:54 PM, said:

You did fix the spelling error, but it's still wrong :lol:
It is:

Quote

IMO there are to many at even quite low settings.
It should be:

Quote

IMO there are too many at even quite low settings.
I win! :angry:

to and too are correct.

#24 iKettles

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Posted 29 May 2007 - 05:03 PM

View PostPiP, on May 29 2007, 10:40 PM, said:

View PostiKettles, on May 29 2007, 08:54 PM, said:

You did fix the spelling error, but it's still wrong :lol:
It is:

Quote

IMO there are to many at even quite low settings.
It should be:

Quote

IMO there are too many at even quite low settings.
I win! :angry:

to and too are correct.
My English teacher always said it's too because there's more o's.

#25 Metalex

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Posted 30 May 2007 - 04:39 AM

PiP, I like the edit you made to the original post, however I think you posted the wrong screenshots.

The last three looked identical to me, so I checked them and it appears they are the same file size!  The reason I noticed is because the last screenshot should look significantly better than the previous one, but the blurries are just as bad.

#26 PiP

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Posted 30 May 2007 - 09:48 AM

View PostMetalex, on May 30 2007, 10:39 AM, said:

PiP, I like the edit you made to the original post, however I think you posted the wrong screenshots.

The last three looked identical to me, so I checked them and it appears they are the same file size!  The reason I noticed is because the last screenshot should look significantly better than the previous one, but the blurries are just as bad.

Prolly has more to do with Photoshop's JPEG compression than anything else.

Could be that my graphic card sees any old AF trigger as 16x anisotropic. The guide will still work for people, I'd be interested to know if anyone finds a noticeable difference between isotropic and anisotropic filtering...

We're likely to re-write this one a few times more yet, but that's what it's all about.

Edited by PiP, 30 May 2007 - 09:49 AM.

#27 Metalex

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Posted 30 May 2007 - 10:12 AM

View PostPiP, on May 30 2007, 03:48 PM, said:

View PostMetalex, on May 30 2007, 10:39 AM, said:

PiP, I like the edit you made to the original post, however I think you posted the wrong screenshots.

The last three looked identical to me, so I checked them and it appears they are the same file size!  The reason I noticed is because the last screenshot should look significantly better than the previous one, but the blurries are just as bad.

Prolly has more to do with Photoshop's JPEG compression than anything else.

Could be that my graphic card sees any old AF trigger as 16x anisotropic. The guide will still work for people, I'd be interested to know if anyone finds a noticeable difference between isotropic and anisotropic filtering...

We're likely to re-write this one a few times more yet, but that's what it's all about.
It's just a shame, because those screenshots don't show off the fact that 16x AF looks much better.  They all look as if they're running on just FSX's AF setting.

To answer your question about the difference between isotropic and anisotropic, I could tell no real difference between the two.  I settled with trilinear, because I think it was minutely sharper, but you wouldn't be able to tell without a side-by-side comparison, and even then you would struggle to tell.

#28 Metalex

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Posted 07 June 2007 - 06:06 AM

View PostPiP, on May 30 2007, 03:48 PM, said:

View PostMetalex, on May 30 2007, 10:39 AM, said:

PiP, I like the edit you made to the original post, however I think you posted the wrong screenshots.

The last three looked identical to me, so I checked them and it appears they are the same file size!  The reason I noticed is because the last screenshot should look significantly better than the previous one, but the blurries are just as bad.

Prolly has more to do with Photoshop's JPEG compression than anything else.

Could be that my graphic card sees any old AF trigger as 16x anisotropic. The guide will still work for people, I'd be interested to know if anyone finds a noticeable difference between isotropic and anisotropic filtering...

We're likely to re-write this one a few times more yet, but that's what it's all about.
PiP, I don't suppose you could post the same screenshot (FSX Trilinear, ATI 16x AF) using Catalyst 7.5, could you?

I had an issue, on more than one PC, where FSX would not pick-up ATI CCC settings without been "kicked" into action by another 3D app.  This seems to have been resolved in Cat 7.5.

This might explain why your third screenshot looks no better than than the previous two.

Thanks

Alex

#29 PiP

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Posted 16 July 2007 - 07:49 PM

View PostMetalex, on May 30 2007, 10:39 AM, said:

PiP, I like the edit you made to the original post, however I think you posted the wrong screenshots.

The last three looked identical to me, so I checked them and it appears they are the same file size!  The reason I noticed is because the last screenshot should look significantly better than the previous one, but the blurries are just as bad.

I think the only reason your pics are different sizes is because the clouds moved. I paused.

I think the modern drivers don't do linear filtering. They just see the trigger and do 16x Anisotropic instead.

#30 Metalex

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Posted 18 July 2007 - 08:32 AM

View PostPiP, on Jul 17 2007, 01:49 AM, said:

I think the only reason your pics are different sizes is because the clouds moved. I paused.
I don't think that is the only reason.  When converted to JPG, file size should vary from picture to picture due to the nature of file compression.  The file sizes should differ when using different AF levels, even if only by a few bytes.  The chance of the file sizes being exactly the same would surely be tiny.  The reason your pictures are the same size is because they are identical to each other.

Edited by Metalex, 18 July 2007 - 08:36 AM.

#31 PiP

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Posted 22 July 2007 - 04:13 PM

View PostMetalex, on Jul 18 2007, 02:32 PM, said:

View PostPiP, on Jul 17 2007, 01:49 AM, said:

I think the only reason your pics are different sizes is because the clouds moved. I paused.
I don't think that is the only reason.  When converted to JPG, file size should vary from picture to picture due to the nature of file compression.  The file sizes should differ when using different AF levels, even if only by a few bytes.  The chance of the file sizes being exactly the same would surely be tiny.  The reason your pictures are the same size is because they are identical to each other.

Yes, the only reason you get 2 identical file sizes is because not 1 pixel as changed. I did it paused, you didn't, your clouds moved, and that's the reason yours are different file sizes. I think the various AF setting you tried land with the driver forcing 16xAnisotropic, as they do for me.

#32 Metalex

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Posted 23 July 2007 - 06:47 AM

View PostPiP, on Jul 22 2007, 10:13 PM, said:

View PostMetalex, on Jul 18 2007, 02:32 PM, said:

View PostPiP, on Jul 17 2007, 01:49 AM, said:

I think the only reason your pics are different sizes is because the clouds moved. I paused.
I don't think that is the only reason.  When converted to JPG, file size should vary from picture to picture due to the nature of file compression.  The file sizes should differ when using different AF levels, even if only by a few bytes.  The chance of the file sizes being exactly the same would surely be tiny.  The reason your pictures are the same size is because they are identical to each other.

Yes, the only reason you get 2 identical file sizes is because not 1 pixel as changed. I did it paused, you didn't, your clouds moved, and that's the reason yours are different file sizes. I think the various AF setting you tried land with the driver forcing 16xAnisotropic, as they do for me.
My point is, even if I had paused, the file sizes would still be different due to the different AF levels in my screenshots.  It is obvious from your last screenshot that when you tried 16x AF with ATI drivers, it didn't work.  There should be a clear difference between your last two screenshots, as there are with my two screenshots.  If 16x AF had been running on your last screenshot, the land and water detail would be much sharper.

#33 PiP

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Posted 29 July 2007 - 03:28 PM

I can;t see any difference in your, other than the waves have moved an the clouds, I think you should try it paused too.

#34 Metalex

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Posted 30 July 2007 - 05:40 AM

View PostPiP, on Jul 29 2007, 09:28 PM, said:

I can;t see any difference in your, other than the waves have moved an the clouds, I think you should try it paused too.
You can't see that the waves are much sharper?  :lol:

Nothing to do with the clouds moving.  The result would be the same if I paused.

It's even easier to see in the originals.  I'd post the originals too, but they're 5MB each.

I might do some new ones later.

#35 PiP

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Posted 30 July 2007 - 07:57 AM

The waves can't be compared like that if they move.

#36 Metalex

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Posted 30 July 2007 - 10:35 AM

View PostPiP, on Jul 30 2007, 01:57 PM, said:

The waves can't be compared like that if they move.
I will post some more screenshots later (paused) - you will see the difference.

#37 Metalex

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Posted 07 August 2007 - 07:08 PM

OK, I've finally had chance to post some new screenshots.  They were taken from a saved and PAUSED flight.

I think the difference between the two different settings is clear to see.

FSX Anisotropic only
Posted Image

FSX Trilinear / ATI CCC 16xAF
Posted Image

FSX Anisotropic only
Posted Image

FSX Trilinear / ATI CCC 16xAF
Posted Image


I have uploaded the original unedited BMP files to my webspace.  The differences are even more apparent when they are compared:

FSX Anisotropic only (1)
FSX Trilinear / ATI CCC 16xAF (1)
FSX Anisotropic only (2)
FSX Trilinear / ATI CCC 16xAF (2)

#38 PiP

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Posted 13 August 2007 - 02:09 PM

It does indeed seem that my driver is causing problems, would you mind doing some screens of as many combinations of filtering as you can think of, just one place which shows land far and near, and water far and near, somewhere with ideal conditions for the blurries. I'll replace my images and stick your name at the bottom of the tutorial too.

#39 Metalex

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Posted 13 August 2007 - 04:35 PM

View PostPiP, on Aug 13 2007, 08:09 PM, said:

It does indeed seem that my driver is causing problems, would you mind doing some screens of as many combinations of filtering as you can think of, just one place which shows land far and near, and water far and near, somewhere with ideal conditions for the blurries. I'll replace my images and stick your name at the bottom of the tutorial too.

No problem PiP, although you might need to give me a couple of days as I've reformatted my system with Vista, so need to get everything setup again.  :lol:

Can I ask what driver you're currently using?  I know that I had driver problems around Cat 7.3/7.4 where FSX wouldn't take any notice of ATI CCC AA/AF settings unless I ran another 3D program beforehand.  I suspect that might be what you happened to you.

#40 PiP

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Posted 14 August 2007 - 04:39 PM

I'm on 7.3 I think, I'm on the AMD rig right now, my black beast is in bits, motherboard is dead  :lol:  replacement arriving tommorow, maybe it's time to move to 7.8.

Edited by PiP, 14 August 2007 - 04:41 PM.

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