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Aircraft loses texture at a distance

S

Sig Hansen

Messages
18
I downloaded a new airplane the other day and the textures look great up close, but when the plane gets about a half mile from the camera, the whole thing turns grey. You can still clearly make out the jet, it's just grey. Anyone know what would cause that or any fixes. Thx.
 
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Which Sim: FS9 or FSX?

Is the model made native for the sim or ported over (eg FS2002 ported to FS9).

There are a couple of possibilities:

The model might be designed that way to LOD out the textures at distance.

The model may have been made using the FS2002 MDL tools, where the Material designated to aircraft drops the texture at distance.

So many possibilities ... more information required ...
 
Thanks for the replies guys. I am running FSXA and the model is native, it's CaptainSim's F-18D. But I think you're right, it does have something to do with LOD. When viewed at a distance all kinds of weird things happen to the model and texture. Is there a way to tell FSX to just stick with the highest LOD?
 
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As far as textures are concerned you might check whether they have MIPs, and if so, run a set of duplicate files through imagetool with the -nomips flag set. Need more info on that?
 
I'm ashamed to say: yes. I have no idea what any of that meant. :o I know textures, but MIPS and Imagetool.... those are new to me.
 
Standby a sec.

Point of information: in order to save frame rates when the model is seen from afar developers usually embed several less detailed versions ("LODs") in their mdl file. Similarly, the textures provided will often include smaller versions of themselves -- MIPs.

To trace and possibly edit the MIPs status of texture files proceed as follows.

Step 1. D/l a copy of IT here [link deleted] and acknowledge when done.

Step 2. Unpack to a folder of your choice and create a link on your desktop.

Step 3. Drag and drop a texture file into Imagetool. You should see something like this.

it_01.jpg


The circled area indicates that this model uses MIPs.

Do this with your problem exterior textures. Now,

- If the number of MIPs is 1 then you can abort the process, and best contact the developer describing your problem and asking for a cure.

- If, however, the number is > 1 then you can try to kill them using Imagetool or another easily accessible tool (Martin Wright's convim).

At this point be careful not to save anything from within Imagetool unless you are working from a duplicate texture.
 
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Ugh. No dice on the MIPS but great info mjahn. It has to be the LOD's that are causing the problem. Anyone know if you can remove the LOD's from the model? ...I'm guessing the answer is not without the source data.
 
Just bumping this with the hopes that someone can help me. I've determined the "problem" is the LOD. The aircraft goes from LOD_400 down to LOD_5 at about 1 mile from the camera. Now I just have to find a way to tell FSX to continue to display LOD_400 at greater distances. I figure there must be a way. I mean we have a slider for terrain LOD, why not for the aircraft? If anyone has any ideas I'd be VERY grateful.
 
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Terrain LOD radius is a different concept.

LODs can be forced higher by using a higher resolution or monitor zoom ... which unfortunately won;t solve your problem.

You could beg Captain Sim to recompile the model without the LOD_05 in it.
 
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