Image resizzer

[DJJose]

Image resizer doesn't work.

Can you please upload one that will work with fsx KFLL. I would like to resizer the texture folder to see if it improves the scenery.

Thanks.

[virtuali]

As said in the other thread, you can probably fix it yourself, by editing the .BAT file posted there, and removing all the -yflip commands.

However, that was just a test but, as the other poster verified, an image resizer for FSX doesn't do much, because the whole point of having a resizer, was to overcome the issue of stuttering when loading lots of textures, which happens in FS9 only, because FS9 doesn't fully use multithreading on separate cpu cores to load textures so, the sim can be stalled in this process. This is why we never did any texture resizer for FSX, because it will just lower the graphic quality, without much advantages.

Note, you can obtain the same effect, by lowering the Max Texture size slider one notch below maximum: this will force all textures to be 512x512 max. If you don't see much improvement, it won't change using the resizer.

[DJJose]

I just wanted to see if it did anything for the initial load a few miles away from the airport.

The pop up setting doesn't look like it does anything on my system.

Thanks.

[cmpbllsjc]

I just wanted to see if it did anything for the initial load a few miles away from the airport.

The pop up setting doesn't look like it does anything on my system.

Thanks.

I have fiddled with the popup setting for a few weeks now. I have had it set at 4, 10, and 20. Each time I think that it works better, but in the end I am thinking for me that I just get a placebo effect, because no matter where I set it, I still get too many little pauses when approaching for the first time. If I am in a small plane of a GA aircraft and flying around the airport it seems ok though.

I wish there was a way that I could recompile all the ground textures into one .bgl that would load all at once, including all the taxiway, runway, and other ground markings. I believe on my system that its all the ground artwork that causes all the micro pauses, not the actuall scenery object like buildings, hangers, cars, etc.

I have tried to fiddle with this stuff myself, but not being really experienced in scenery design, aside from making some photoreal ground textures, I haven't had success. What I was going to try was placing my own photoreal ground bgl and remove the FSDT bgl that had the ground tiles and gound artwork linked to it. There are 9 bgl's in the scenery folder.

KFLL ADE
KFLL papi sa
KFLL strisce
KFLL markings
KFLL terrain
cvx KFLL
KFLL jetway
KFLL Apron
KFLL Fondo

So far I am not sure what the strisce and Fondo bgl are linked to. Plus I dont know if I can use a bgl decompiler to decompile these and recompile to one bgl or edit the load settings internally. It's a lot to mess with and test , especially if you dont know to much about this stuff.


Plus like Umberto said in another post where we were talking about this, he said that the scenery isn't sold as a "do it yourself project". I understand that, but am always trying improve what I have if I am having an issue at an airport or sccenery addon.

DJJose, I know how you feel though, As much as I love the sceneries, its sometimes a little disappointing to be getting good FPS on approach, but keep having little pauses while on approach. Takes a little of the fluid motion feel away. I wouldn't mind so much if it was just one pause while the initial thing loaded, it just the little pauses that get me. Last night I flew into KORD and was getting pauses like crazy. I thought it was just KFLL that did it but I guess for me KORD does as well. All the other sceneries are fine on my computer though.

[virtuali]

Putting all the BGL together in a single file will not change anything. BGLs are read well before the scenery is visible, not at the last moment.

And, the loading of textures doesn't have anything to do how the BGL are layed out, it's entirely out of control: Flightsim has his own strategies to load textures, regardless of how the actual files are organized.

In fact, it's more complex than this, because there are different codepaths if the BGL is made using the FS2002 SDK, or the FSX SDK, they are loaded and processed in entirely different ways, and using different strategies and optimizazion so, on top with the fact you can't mix them in the same BGL, you can't really control what happens inside Flightsim.

Without even mentioning that, those 9 BGLs you see, are probably less than 20% of the actual scenery, because most of it is handled by the Addon Manager so, it doesn't live in the BGLs.

And. the Anti-pop up setting is only relevant for the things handled by the Addon Manager, and doesn't have anything to do with the scenery BGLs.

The only thing you can try, is to REMOVE each of those BGL, one by one, and see if the pauses are created by one of these. Obviously restart FSX at each try, do not remove all the files together.

And, DO NOT remove the KFLL_Fondo.bgl, because otherwise the whole scenery will disappear.

[cmpbllsjc]

Thanks Umberto I will give it a shot and obviously not remove the ADE or Fondo bgl.

Is it safe to say that the KFLL markings, terrain, and Apron bgls are all related to the photo ground textures? Or is the terrain bgl a mesh?

What does the strisce bgl do?

Would there be a way to get all the ground textures, I think you said there are 2 layers, maybe 3 layers in some areas, to load all at the same time. I wouldn't imagine them having much of a performance impact compared to object or buildings.

[virtuali]

Would there be a way to get all the ground textures, I think you said there are 2 layers, maybe 3 layers in some areas, to load all at the same time.

As I've said already, there's not much we can do to control the *loading* of textures, because it's FSX that decides when to load and when to discard. We can only control the actual *display* of objects but, it's not so automatically easy to determine if a pause is due because of *loading* or *displaying*.

The fact that we ask an object to displayed, doesn't mean the actual loading is happening. It might well be FSX has pre-loaded the object anyway, and having the object loaded, doesn't even mean its textures are loaded at the same time, since FSX decides also to discard textures on its own, for objects that are very well in view range, but maybe not directly on view, which can be easily seen when switching views: sometimes textures are reloaded, even if the object was fairly close.

[/quote]I wouldn't imagine them having much of a performance impact compared to object or buildings.[/quote]

They do impact quit a bit, also because they don't use the FSX SDK but the FS2002 one so, they are inherently slower, also because their complexity is even higher at runtime that what we designed, because they are triangulated when the scenery is loaded, to conform to the round earth.

BTW, have you tried lowering the Scenery Density notch to low levels, like "normal" ? Does it change anything ?

[cmpbllsjc]

Thanks Umberto. I have tried turning the lowering the Scenery complexity slider to the second to last setting of Very Dense. I have however not tried lowering it to the middle which is Normal or the one to the right of it which is Dense

Is that slider actually linked to the KFLL airports objects to be displayed? For some reason I though that unlike some sceneries FSDT's sceneries were unaffected by the Scenery Density slider.

I will try setting it to normal and report back whether it makes a difference or not.

Regards,

Sean

[cmpbllsjc]

BTW, have you tried lowering the Scenery Density notch to low levels, like "normal" ? Does it change anything ?

Umberto, I finally got a chance to test lowering the Sceneriy Complexity slider to Normal and I removed the Popup entry from the FSX.cfg to test your idea. I loaded a quick flight from Miami in day and night and also the in the LDS767 and Capt Sim 727 to test it. I am surprised to say that placing the slider on Normal rather than where I usually have on on either Very Dense or the max which I think is Extremely Dense, seems to have smoothed out the loading when I am approaching KFLL. I didn't see much difference in the scenery except that the two cruise ships were missing and maybe one building in downtown Ft. Lauderdale was gone, but everything else appeared to be the same. Losing the 2 ships and 1 building is a small price to pay to get KFLL to provide a smooth experience. Going forward I will reset the Scenery Complexity slider to normal prior to my arrivals at that airport.

This make me wonder however, how lowering that slider and losing those 2 ships and one or two builings made that much of a difference in the smoothness of the scenery being loaded? Prior to lowering that setting I was getting good preformance on arrival in terms of FPS, just that the loading pauses were getting me. Make me wonder if even though I have a dual core running at 3.85ghz, a move to a quad core with more RAM like 6gb of DDR3 and a 64 bit OS would improve the experience even more and allow me to move the Complexity slider back up.

Thanks for the suggestion on trying that slider. I am happy to be able to enjoy KFLL much more now.

Regards,

Sean

[virtuali]

This make me wonder however, how lowering that slider and losing those 2 ships and one or two builings made that much of a difference in the smoothness of the scenery being loaded?

Because they are not made by FSDT...

Jokes apart, the default scenery in the KFLL is quite taxiing for performances. And, we noticed this happens whenever there's a port/dock/cranes/ships objects, which is why the default Seattle is also so slow. I guess these default library objects are simply too unoptimized.

And, I think that at "Normal" complexity, all of our KFLL airport is in, except for the 3d cars on the parkings, which are quite complex as well, they are split into 3 objects, one for each parking, and they also have 3 LOD levels plus a loading range of about 0.3 nm (that will be multiplied by the Antipop setting, of course) so, getting rid of them, might have contributed a bit.

We were wondering why, of all our sceneries, KFLL is the only one that performs much better in FS9 (there's no such big difference at, let's say, JFK), and the reason is because the default KFLL in FS9 is bare and empty, while the default KFLL in FSX is quite heavy on fps, even without any airport.

[cmpbllsjc]

Well that's good to know. I never would have though those default object were so bad.

Maybe that's an idea for another FSDT project in the future, a replacement pack of optimized ports, docks, cranes, and ship objects to replace the default FSX ones.

[cmpbllsjc]

Umberto I forgot to ask after reading you last reply if there is another way to get rid of the cars besides the slider setting? I noticed that there were no vehicle.bgl's or anything of that sort.

Perhaps in the next version of your Addon Manager you could put a tick box or something like that in it so we can choose to eliminate the cars without having to lower the Scenery Density slider. Or, put the cars in an external bgl so we can either rename it or remove it altogether.

[virtuali]

Umberto I forgot to ask after reading you last reply if there is another way to get rid of the cars besides the slider setting? I noticed that there were no vehicle.bgl's or anything of that sort.

There's no bgl because, as I've said already, most of the things you see in the scenery are not in Bgl, but handled by the Addon Manager.

Perhaps in the next version of your Addon Manager you could put a tick box or something like that in it so we can choose to eliminate the cars without having to lower the Scenery Density slider

Doesn't make any sense to put an option in the Addon Manager so specific to a single scenery.

Not that I see any point wanting to remove the cars, since it was already proven that what really impacted the frame rate, was NOT out scenery, but the default ships/cranes.

If you want to remove the cars, put the Scenery Complexity down, so you ALSO remove those ships, which *are* the problem, why you would to leave the Complexity Slider up (unless is for the phsycological effect of being able to run "at all sliders up"... ) and keeping the ships just to get rid of the cars, when the cars are not the problem, the ships are ?

[cmpbllsjc]

Ok. I was just asking since you had said that the cars are split into 3 objects, one for each parking, and they also have 3 LOD levels plus a loading range of about 0.3 nm (that will be multiplied by the Antipop setting, of course) so, getting rid of them, might have contributed a bit.

Either way, I guess I will just leave the density slider where it is and accomplish the same thing.

BTW, I sent you a PM last night asking if you could email me or post a copy of the latest ADE/AFCAD file. I was using ADE to modify the default file to add a start position for the helipad on the north side of the airport and a few excludes to get rid of some of the default radio towers that aren't there in real life. In the process I made a mistake and saved the file, however for some reason I can't find the original ADE that came with 1.2 when I made a back up of it. I know that I could uninstall and reinstall the scenery but was thinking that I may be easier to just ask you or anyone else who has a stock copy of it, if they could email it to me.

Thanks

[virtuali]

About the AFCAD, we haven't updated it yet so, the latest version we have, is the one that comes with the scenery installer. There might be other versions of it, made by users, which are downloadable in the forum.

You don't need the ADE file, because you can open the AFCAD BGL directly.