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FSX glittery fences

jyarddog

jyarddog

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us-washington
Some chain-link fencing I am using looks glittery, shimmery... in other words very busy. I've seen this many times before and never really was concerned with it. However, it is bothersome.

Contrary to this the fences used in AFX do not do this. The chain links "behave themselves" with no glittering or apparent movement.

I have tried adjusting the bmps for the fence to DXT3, nada, extended bitbap 32 bit (888-8), no change, DXT5, no change. I've rearranged my FSX settings, trying, anti-aliasing, anistropic, bi-linear, tri-linear, nochange.

Is there a fix or is this just the way it is? Bob
 
If you're using the native fence texture as a basis for your fence texture, set the mip number to seven to match the original. I found I had to do this to keep my addon fence consistent with the native fence. The native textures are ChainLink512.dds and ChainLink256.dds

Jim
 
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Jim Thanx so very much from Bill and me. I think I at least went half way on this. I changed the textures for the add on fencing we're using back to DXT 3 and added mipmaps. The results were great. I usually car3 not to use mips due to terrible fuzziness I see many times, but it seems when (my guess) ya get into an object with fine detail, close together like chain link then it's necessary. Again, thanks from Bill and me. Bob
 
Jim- One more item about this fence. I did notice I see no fence when looking at an angle. As I move further to the side I see the fence "building" itself into view. Any way to fix that. I noticed I'm at mipmap 8 right now. Could I remove one mip and see what happens or is this a LOD thing? Bob
 
Are you building it on a plane? if so and you've made the other side by cloning side 1 and flipping the normals, go ahead and attatch the two planes. if that's not it, beats me.

Best,

Jim
 
This was a fence from someone's library; very nice looking fence- shimmered and glittered until I added mips. Bill was saying, once placed and looking at it say... from a corner of the fence and off to the side just a bit you can't see anymore fence except the portion in front which is horizontal to you. But the verticle... (going away from you) it's gone until you move down that line and you see the fence "build itself" as you move. Doesn't bother me much but Bill is having a small cow about it.... can't blame him. jpg's included here. Ithink it's just an optical illusion. Bob
 
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Planes are like that. They have a limited view angle when they have a transparency feature. It may be as good as you're going to get without building it from scratch. I'd try both a DXT-5 and DXT-1 transparency and see.

Jim
 
At the risk of incurring someon'e wrath for promoting a payware product, FenceBuilder Pro (a much enhanced version of a freeware offering originally posted in the FSDeveloper Downloads section) allows you to control specular color and, hence, reflection from sunlight. If the glitter/shimmer you are currently experienceing is due in part to specular reflections, you may want to take a look at FenceBuilder Pro (which also places sloping, ground-hugging, fences/walls/hedges - that it creates on the fly - and user objects, library objects and effects - including sound effects - individually, in a row or in multiple rows - with or without randomization.)

Don
 
Hi Don:

I have a question for folks like myself and others who may not yet be creating and/or working with their own 3D models, and who might still like to experiment with use of custom and/or "customized" textures for fences. ;)


When working with FenceBuilder Pro (aka "FBP"), I understand from your nicely detailed tutorial in the Manual, one can not only use the textures provided with FBP, but also different texture sheets (whether dimensions are square or not), provided one specifies texture indices to "tell" FBP how to interpret the texture sheet.


Would I be correct that once one's custom and/or "customized" textures have been substituted and implemented correctly in an FBP Project, the end user can then adjust FBP to control specular color for one's custom textures ...just as one might with the textures provided by FBP ? :scratchch


Thanks for your clarification on this aspect of FenceBuilder Pros' numerous innovative and adaptable capabilities for FS Developers ! :)


Regards,

GaryGB
 
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Thanks for asking, Gary.

FBP users may easily substitute their own textures for FBPs stock textures. Simply add the new texture(s) to FBP's Texture folder, designate the texture(s) in the project definition and (re)compile. (FBP will look after moving the textures into FlightSim.)

Specular color (which controls the amount of ambient light - usually sunlight -reflection) is associated with the model, not the texture. FBP creates its segmented models (i.e., fences, wall, hedges, etc.) on-the-fly and applies whatever amount of specular reflection the user has specified for the project - no matter what texture is used.

You also mentioned texture indices. FBP assumes:
  • a texture sheet represents an equal horizontal and vertical distance as specified by the user (for fences, usually the distance between posts) - irrespective of the aspect ratio of the texture sheet,
  • the bottom of the texture sheet represents the bottom of the model, and
  • the texture for the top element (if any) starts immediately above the that for the bottom element.
However, not all textures you may want to use will be laid-out this way. Or, you may want to vary the dimensions of your fence segment such that the above "rules" no longer apply. You could re-work the texture sheet. But with FBP, that's not necessary. All you need do is "tell" FBP where, vertically, on the texture each element (upper/lower) of the model starts and ends as a fraction of the height of the texture sheet - i.e., the texture index. A much fuller description is provided in the User Manual.

As well, two recently-added features allow you to:
  • use different texture sheets for the top and bottom elements of the model, and
  • control whether a model casts a shadow (Yes, a mostly-transparent texture will cast a solid shadow unless the model to which it is applied is designed to suppress, or otherwise modify, it's shadow.)
Hope this clarifies.

Don
 
Excellent, thanks Don ! ;)

Looks like I'll now be more able to do some things I've been considering doing for a while (...but hadn't yet done, as I'm still too new to 3D modeling) ! :p

Regards,

GaryGB
 
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Thanx for the reply, Jim. I think we'll live with it for the time being. FBP sounds great, but I'll pass on it for now. I'm pretty busy with so many things, learning much, doing well with it, and at other times making very good mess of things, but that's how we learn along with the help of all of us here.

Dad... How did you become so succeful?
By making right decisions.
How do you learn how to make right decisions?
By making wrong ones!

Ain't it the truth! :) Bob
 
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