FSX Advice on keeping Poly Count down

[connomar]

Hi, I am working on Minneapolis St Paul International KMSP, a complicated airport, and my scenery is getting rather large.

Please can anyone advise on the best techiques to minimize the frame rate hit?

i.e.
Is it better to:

• just create lots of boxes, or one box with multiple segments extruded into the shape?
• Use Compound Objects - boolean Union etc.

Also, I notice that with Microsoft Scenery, they appear to repeat the same texture across a long box - building. Are they doing this by creating equally spaced segments, then using the Face UV Modifier to place the same texture. Am I answering my own question ?? lol!

Thanks for any replies.
Martin

 

[jtanabodee]

Use repeated texture as much as you can. Nevertheless polygon count is not the main reason to cause fps drop, the drawcall might be the bigger problem.
The more texture sheets you use, the more drawcall it would be. Polygons problem can be solve by LOD but texture problem nothing can be done.
You can merge texture together to be a bigger one (2048x2048 or bigger) but you need to remap all the models again.

 

[lionheart]

LOD's. If you do not know about them, they are distance activated models. Either have some models have dual 'visibility' models, like one for long distance, and one for close up, then have some that just disappear when you are perhaps 1+ mile away. Microsoft used LOD's on their in-sim planes with perhaps 5 levels of LOD details. Really wild how it works. As you zoom out, parts start disappearing and the structure will start getting 'basic' till finally its just a couple of cards. Another thing is you can have super high detail small things and have them disappear when you are 100 feet away from them, like landing lights along a runway edge.

 

[connomar]

Thanks as always for the advice. I wish I'd asked the question before I started, as I have lots of texture files and could easily have made it less.

As for LOD's every texture I have created has 8 Levels of MIBs, which I assume allows for reduced texture size as one gets further away. My machine is only a humble i3 processor, so my frame rates are never fantastic, but I can usually live with them, but I get carried away. I have the multi storey car parks constructed so they are see through, with the floor's mapped so you can see the marking out. They look realistic, but I have yet to insert the Humphrey Terminal and car parks, so this may end up being of more use to someone with a faster processor than me.

 

[capt_x]

Also, I notice that with Microsoft Scenery, they appear to repeat the same texture across a long box - building. Are they doing this by creating equally spaced segments, then using the Face UV Modifier to place the same texture. Am I answering my own question ?? lol!

That's what I would do... For generic or autogen buildings, there may also be the possiblity of detail textures (like for apron surfaces, etc)

If you are thinking about remapping the whole thing: Try to map areas with repetitive patterns to the same portion of the texture. I.e. if you have parking lot markings, you'd rather make polygons three parking spots big (or any other sensible size depending on your use of LODs) and map all of them to a small area of your texture sheet, instead of having one big poly mapped to a big area of the texture sheet.

That would mean that polycount would go up, but you could use less textures, hence less draw calls. In theory, that should help with FPS.