• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Photoreal Background Optimization

soulmaril

soulmaril

Messages
61
Country
turkey
I am new and un-experienced with photoreal scenery design. I make my first trials and errors. I want to learn how can I optimize the images for simworld.

1. What is the optimal zoom level? Since I cant get a better image between Zoom 17 and 18, when I render the tiles it can still render for Zoom 18 which makes a huge file.

2. How can I optimize the file sizes? Altough I am using compression level at 85 I still get huge file sizes with zoom 17.

3. What is the optimal scale? What is the optimal way for splitting the backgroung map into smaller images of relatively large area?

4. how can I optimize the file sizes in total with reasonal and night variations?

5. And of course I what to consider in-sim performance for better detail but without effecting the fps and without blurries.

Best Regards.-
Ahmet M.
 
1. Zoom level 18 gets you 30cm resolution, zoom level 17 around 60cm, zoom level 16 is around 1m. You can control the resolution that Resample will go to via the LOD= line in the INF file. Instead of LOD = Auto, you can cap it with LOD = Auto,15 or another LOD setting.

2. It just has to be accepted that photo work creates large files and long downloads. Using compression does help to control file size, but there is a fine line between too much and not enough. As the developer it ends up being your judgement call for when the scenery is "as good as it can be".

3. The Terrain section has some guidance as to what it the best structure for a file, where they caution about files having too large of an area that is transparent in the BGL file.

4. Expect the file sizes to just keep growing with any seasonal and night variations. You will have to decide if they are necessary and if the user might be utilizing them for flying. If your intent is to paint a picture showing the beauty of an area, is a night texture called for?

5. There is no definitive answer to this, I suppose. There is a process of how the sim renders the scenery and a cycle for it. When the cycle runs out and there is still shapened textures to display, they get left out. Welcome to the blurries. What may be a complete cycle rendered on one machine becomes an 80% cycle on another, or maybe 90% on yet another.

There's the notion that smaller is inherently better, so it must be done that way. 30cm is better than 1m, but if 85% of the users can't adequately run 30cm textures over a large area? If your work displays an airport and the surrounding area, you might do the airport area in 60cm and the rest in 1m. But that is the balance only you can find.

Good luck!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top