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FSX Flickering ground poly

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kthy2003

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unitedkingdom
I am using gmax and/or 3ds max for the FSX scenery. I have used a poly for the ground which is slightly elevated from the FSX ground.

The poly is flickering as I look down from an altitude. Is there a way of preventing this? I have noticed that smaller polygons do not flicker but this one needs to be a little bigger. I recalled using z_bias for this poligons back in FS2002 but this is not working in FSX.

I would appreciate for your help.

kthy2003
 
Hi,

The best way to make ground polygons is not to make them as MDL objects. When using MDL objects it is almost impossible to place them without any trouble (flickering, wrong shadows, etc).

The best solution is to use the Fs2002 gamepack for GMax. That is because you can tweak the output of this gamepack, so that you can make real and proper ground polygons. There is an article on the Wiki that describes this process.
 
Does the user anywhere say he used MDL files? I don't see it. So could be that it is still FS2002 ground polygons.
 
I would only say so because I saw (or think I did) some nice specular effects on the ground polys which would need FSX material properties....but may be wrong..
 
That's my thought as well. It could be MDL files, but from the testing I have done it seems there are still quick some issues to work around when you want to use them for ground polygons.
 
Just looking at the photo can not tell which SDK was used. You can have the FSX effect on the runway just using textures with alpha channels on top of a standard FSX runway. It is also possible to use only FSX materials, but I have seen that the flickerings always appear at a certain altitude.
 
the biggest challenge for me would be the use of multiple layers as these would require giving each layer a different height which would indeed cause some 'sinking' of the wheels. another issue would be that .mdl would not accept shadows as FS2002 polys do no? although these specific polys may not be FSXSDK after all, it certainly is worth looking into how to make use of FSX materials for ground work...
 
hek293 said:
the biggest challenge for me would be the use of multiple layers as these would require giving each layer a different height which would indeed cause some 'sinking' of the wheels. another issue would be that .mdl would not accept shadows as FS2002 polys do no? although these specific polys may not be FSXSDK after all, it certainly is worth looking into how to make use of FSX materials for ground work...
Click to expand...

I'm finishing a work using just FSX materials. The solution to the multiple layers is to paint all the details into the texture. Works perfectly and runs faster, but it might be bad for long range airports, because you would have to use a lot of textures.

Amengol.
 

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That looks really nice indeed..! I love the specular effect on the runway, makes it realistic.

Do you use different layers for the runway markings? For example runway is set to 0m, runway markings at 0.1m and so on?

do you have any problems getting shadows displayed on these ground polys?

Emilios
 
hek293 said:
That looks really nice indeed..! I love the specular effect on the runway, makes it realistic.

Do you use different layers for the runway markings? For example runway is set to 0m, runway markings at 0.1m and so on?

do you have any problems getting shadows displayed on these ground polys?

Emilios
Click to expand...

I think I was not clear before. There is no concern with layers, it has just one. The details are painted in textures. In general there are no problems with shadows, except if you do a bit of slope on the runway, which is what I did. At some points the shadows may dissapear because of that slope.
 
Ok got you now, each layer has its own texture sheet. everything is painted there. never though of doing that, always seemed like too much texture/photoshop work:D Thanks for the images, I might give it a go..! it certainly seems worth.
 
I'm leaning that way too of using textures with all the detail already painted. What did you do to stop the ground polys from flickering? Did you still use the FS2002 sdk?
 
If you Ztest materials your shadows will disappear.

There are also some problems with FS9 ported AI aircraft and shadows/lighting.

Multilayered GP using FSX materials are not achieved by geometric offset.

Instead everything is made coplanar and the layers are achieved by organizing your multimaterial.

I was initially led to believe that a GMax compiled object compiled materials in alphabetical order

This does not appear to be the case. Indeed the drawing order is the opposite of the material ID order in a single compiled piece of geometry with a single multimaterial.

So determining the drawing order is as simple as creating a multimaterial with all the materials you want in reverse drawing order.

If you use LODs then all of these materials need to be present in the lowest LOD geometry.

Flickering is another issue ... That requires shaping and LOD tuning to get right and minimize the effect. It is possible to pretty much eliminate flicker ... Eg in a runway 2000m long
 
Badge said:
I'm leaning that way too of using textures with all the detail already painted. What did you do to stop the ground polys from flickering? Did you still use the FS2002 sdk?
Click to expand...

Just FSX materials. You can minimize the flickering separating the ground below a little bit more from the custom runway.

Hcornea, good observations!
 
Great sum up hcornea

So looks like one needs to construct the whole airport layout in detailed texture tiles and map them on polygons/planes or whatever suits him. Surely looks like all polys need to be so tidly arranged. That sure needs some planning, at least much more compared to FS2002 style where you just make a new layer if you forgot something...:rolleyes:

Assuming that shadows, flickering and everything else is taken care of, one other thing is this. And pls forgive my ignorance here for the following question :D

How will it ever be possible, using multi-material, to attain the high resolution that one can achieve simply by mapping a texture on the runway as many times as one wishes?

Does this require a planar runway with many polygons so that the user manually assigns to each polygon the 1024x1024 texture sheet (and of course save a few polygons to assign the runway threshold markings texture etc.)

Emilios
 
that's an option of course to increase clarity and visuals. May be wrong but when spread over the runway it gets dissolved to a low res texture inevitably isnt it?

I was mostly referring to true-high resolution by mapping and how to achieve this using the methods hcornea was referring to earlier.
 
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