Why Does Scenery Blink?

I have a problem with the games I play (FS2004, Flight Simulator X, and
X-Plane) that the ground scenery blinks or shimmers rapidly. A grove of
trees end up looking like a swarm of bees. On a large format 37" HDTV that
does a true 1920x1080p (no interpolation of bits) this effect is more
pronounced. I'm using a 7900 GT PCI Express card on a 3.8 GHz Intel P4.

I've been told that the shimmering effect is caused by mipmaps. Is there a
trick to making this shimmering effect go away or at least be minimized?
The textures and antialiasing on this card are really good, and that much is
working well. But the problem with the scenery shimmering rapidly is so
bad that it really ruins the game.

nVidia has many 3D options that can be set, and I'm hoping that someone here
has played with them enough to have suggestions about how to set them to
minimize scenery problems.

--
Will

On Sun, 1 Oct 2006 16:45:39 -0700, Will wrote:

I have a problem with the games I play (FS2004, Flight Simulator X, and
X-Plane) that the ground scenery blinks or shimmers rapidly. A grove of
trees end up looking like a swarm of bees. On a large format 37" HDTV that
does a true 1920x1080p (no interpolation of bits) this effect is more
pronounced. I'm using a 7900 GT PCI Express card on a 3.8 GHz Intel P4.

I've been told that the shimmering effect is caused by mipmaps. Is there a
trick to making this shimmering effect go away or at least be minimized?
The textures and antialiasing on this card are really good, and that much is
working well. But the problem with the scenery shimmering rapidly is so
bad that it really ruins the game.

nVidia has many 3D options that can be set, and I'm hoping that someone here
has played with them enough to have suggestions about how to set them to
minimize scenery problems.

Use anisotropic filtering which is in your video card's performance and
quality settings.

"Garrot" wrote in message
...
I've been told that the shimmering effect is caused by mipmaps. Is
there a
trick to making this shimmering effect go away or at least be minimized?
The textures and antialiasing on this card are really good, and that
much is
working well. But the problem with the scenery shimmering rapidly is
so
bad that it really ruins the game.

nVidia has many 3D options that can be set, and I'm hoping that someone
here
has played with them enough to have suggestions about how to set them to
minimize scenery problems.

Use anisotropic filtering which is in your video card's performance and
quality settings.

Yes, of course, I have anistrophic filtering set to 16, and I tried both of
the optimizer settings for anistrophic on and off, and it didn't change the
result.

The textures on land look incredible, but the scenery is just a mess.

--
Will

"Will" wrote in message
...
I have a problem with the games I play (FS2004, Flight Simulator X, and
X-Plane) that the ground scenery blinks or shimmers rapidly. A grove
of
trees end up looking like a swarm of bees. On a large format 37" HDTV
that
does a true 1920x1080p (no interpolation of bits) this effect is more
pronounced. I'm using a 7900 GT PCI Express card on a 3.8 GHz Intel P4.

I've been told that the shimmering effect is caused by mipmaps. Is there
a
trick to making this shimmering effect go away or at least be minimized?
The textures and antialiasing on this card are really good, and that much
is
working well. But the problem with the scenery shimmering rapidly is so
bad that it really ruins the game.

nVidia has many 3D options that can be set, and I'm hoping that someone
here
has played with them enough to have suggestions about how to set them to
minimize scenery problems.

--
Will

I Googled for related stuff, and although this was mentioned for older
drivers, it may help.

In the nVidia display properties, under Performance and Quality settings, go
down to Negative LOD Bias, and set it to Clamp. Can also try setting the
image quality to "High Quality" and see if that does anything. Enabling
VSync is also supposed to help some.

Unfortunately though, most of the information I saw pointed to it being most
likely a game-related problem, and not a card or driver one, so only a game
patch would fix it. FS2004 seemed to be notorious for shimmering.

Which driver version are you using with your card, by the way?

RF.

"RaceFace" wrote in message
...
Unfortunately though, most of the information I saw pointed to it being
most
likely a game-related problem, and not a card or driver one, so only a
game
patch would fix it. FS2004 seemed to be notorious for shimmering.

I'm having the same problem with X-Plane unfortunately.


Which driver version are you using with your card, by the way?

Whatever was the latest download as of last week.

--
Will

Will wrote:
I have a problem with the games I play (FS2004, Flight Simulator X, and
X-Plane) that the ground scenery blinks or shimmers rapidly. A grove of
trees end up looking like a swarm of bees. On a large format 37" HDTV that
does a true 1920x1080p (no interpolation of bits) this effect is more
pronounced. I'm using a 7900 GT PCI Express card on a 3.8 GHz Intel P4.

I've been told that the shimmering effect is caused by mipmaps. Is there a
trick to making this shimmering effect go away or at least be minimized?
The textures and antialiasing on this card are really good, and that much is
working well. But the problem with the scenery shimmering rapidly is so
bad that it really ruins the game.

nVidia has many 3D options that can be set, and I'm hoping that someone here
has played with them enough to have suggestions about how to set them to
minimize scenery problems.


Will, what you are noticing is "texture aliasing", which is similar in
concept to "full screen aliasing" that we apply "full-screen
anti-aliasing" to correct. But instead of it apply to the polygons and
edges of triangles, it is applied to the textures themselves.

The applications you are mentioning, MSFT's flight sims, are notorious
for being susceptible to texture aliasing "crawling" "shimmer" "angry
ants on parade" while the viewer is in motion.

You are correct when you state that mipmaps "Multim In Parvo" maps are
responsible, correct in that how those maps are applied, and at what
distance, determines the level of filtering applied and if the observer
can notice any artifacts, such as shimmer, or "bow wash".

There are a few things you can do to correct this problem, and the
problem can be corrected! It's easy, but you have to have all the pieces
in place for it to work to your satisfaction. First: Be aware that you
are one of those individuals who have the ability to notice such
artifacts, and the hardware to render them, you have to modify your
settings to always counter that, or your eye will always pick up the
flaws. This means, from now on, no nvidia optimizations for you! When in
doubt, go or "quality" over performance in every option. This means.

1) FSAA should be set for a minimum of 4X, 4X+S (A mixed multi-sample
mode available on GF7 class cards is preferred) Also, since you have the
hardware, enable gamma-corrected anti-aliasing as well.

2) Trilinear Filtering, always enabled, no bilinear, and definitely no
"brilinear" optimizations.

3) Filtering Quality on the nvidia control panel should be set to High
Quality, no Trilinear Optimizations (this is the biggest component of
texture aliasing), no Anisotropic Filtering Optimizations (bad for high
frequency textures like trees, picket fences), and no Anisotropic Sample
optimizations (can and will likely produce predictable, moire-like
patterns on near and far textures).

4) LOD Bias should be clamped to 0.00, no negative numbers! this is a
handy setting to adjust the distance (in radius units) from the
observer, closer or farther, that mipmaps "shift" to a lower
dimension/resolution. You want them to stay put, and where the artists
intended.

The nvidia control panel offered in their Forceware driver suites are
capable of doing all these settings, enable coolbits to be sure, but I
have a recommendation that can do it all, and more.

http://www.nHancer.com

This freeware application (which requires, regrettably but also free,
net 1.1, but worth it!) does everything the nvidia game-profiler does
but it does it better (no checking to see if the settings took, they
always take!), no bugs, more options, and you can import and export the
game profiles through any and all driver revisions! I have been looking
for a program like this ever since game profiles were made for nvidia cards.

The bottom line is: Texture Aliasing is a known problem and a weakness
with nvidia cards, flight sims are very bad offenders, the technical
reasons are complicated, but understood, and can be minimized with heavy
post processing and the proper settings, many of which are not readily
available to the end user unless a third party program is used, or
manual editing of a game profile.

Best of luck to you, and I hope you get the IQ (Image Quality) you are
seeking, I have confidence you will!

On Sun, 1 Oct 2006 21:10:41 -0700, Will wrote:



Yes, of course, I have anistrophic filtering set to 16, and I tried both of
the optimizer settings for anistrophic on and off, and it didn't change the
result.

The textures on land look incredible, but the scenery is just a mess.

Well, I've read this is an issue with Nvidia cards. The fix is to buy an
ATI card but I expect you didn't want to read that.

"Garrot" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 1 Oct 2006 21:10:41 -0700, Will wrote:
Yes, of course, I have anistrophic filtering set to 16, and I tried both
of
the optimizer settings for anistrophic on and off, and it didn't change
the
result.

The textures on land look incredible, but the scenery is just a mess.

Well, I've read this is an issue with Nvidia cards. The fix is to buy an
ATI card but I expect you didn't want to read that.

That's funny. I bought the nVidia because the problem was so bad with the
RADEON X1x00 cards.

--
Will

On Sun, 1 Oct 2006 21:10:41 -0700, Will wrote:


Yes, of course, I have anistrophic filtering set to 16,

Why "of course"? AF causes a performance impact so not everyone runs with
AF, and especially not at 16. I never use it.

On Tue, 3 Oct 2006 14:59:20 -0700, Will wrote:


That's funny. I bought the nVidia because the problem was so bad with the
RADEON X1x00 cards.

Nothing "funny" about it. It's a fact. Look up any vieo card review
comparing Nvidia to ATI image quality. Either the problem is caused by the
game itself or the problem is between the keyboard and your chair.