Confusion about High Resolution Terrain textures setting

[bpieke]

There appears to be some confusion about the two settings:

Use high resolution terrain textures (in the UI)
and
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 (under Terrain in Prepar3d.cfg)

What do each of these actually do?

I would welcome a short explanation of each, and whether they influence each other
if both used.. Thanks!

[bhorv67]

Perhaps also add to this question, what does the 'texture resolution' drop down setting affect in Display settings.

[bpieke]

The Texture Resolution under Display in the UI has been explained on this forum, I believe.
It is the maximum resolution that objects/bitmaps will be rendered at.
If a cockpit has 4096x4096 bitmaps and this parameter is set to 2048, these bitmaps will be shown at 2048x2048.
Terrain is not really affected, since terrain tiles are typically 1024x1024 or less.

My original question still stands, however..

[bhorv67]

Thanks - my question is really, what are those objects that this setting affects. I've heard different answers, such as this only affects the VC and not the scenery or airports.

[bpieke]

I will attempt to answer my own question, and would like someone from LM to either confirm or correct..

The UI allows High resolution Terrain textures to be checked or unchecked.

Internally, P3D has three settings for this:

Texture_Size_Exp=8, 9, 10 corresponding to 2^8=256, 2^9=512, and 2^10=1024.

Default is: Texture_Size_Exp=8, same as High resolution Terrain textures unchecked in the UI.

Optional: Texture_Size_Exp=9, same as High resolution Terrain textures checked in the UI.

Not settable in the UI: Texture_Size_Exp=10.

[vgbaron]

I agree that it is confusing Bert but the way I understand Beau's post where he says "using HighResolution Textures in combination with T_S_E means that the High Res Textures is sort of a modifier.

TSE=8
TSE=8 + HRT
TSE=9
TSE=9+HRT
TSE=10
TSE=10+HRT

To me, in combination with means added to. If HRT simply makes TSE=8 become TSE=9 - doesn't make sense to say "in combination with"

So to me - the MAX setting you can have is TSE =10 *PLUS* HRT.

Vic

[bpieke]

Hi Vic, well that is the source of my original question..

I now believe the Beau may have expressed himself imprecisely ...

[vgbaron]

Hopefully he'll catch this thread and clarify!

Vic

[Beau Hollis]

Sorry, I thought I had clearly spelled this out, but I apparently did this on the beta forums during v4 testing. I'll clarify it here, but please also read this post for some more detail:
viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=126479#p166316

If High Resolution Terrain Textures is not checked: (default)
Each terrain tile has a 256x256 texture generated. The texture exponent is 8 and cannot be changed.

If "High Resolution Terrain Textures" is checked:
Each terrain tile has a 512x512 texture generated. The texture exponent is 9 and can be set to 10 using a cfg tweak)
This requires 4x the terrain texture memory and loading work as the default resolution setting.

If TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and "High Resolution Terrain Textures" is checked:
Each terrain tile has a 1024x1024 texture generated. This requires 16x the terrain texture memory and loading work. The load time and GPU memory requirements at this level are extreme and only a very small subset of GPUs can handle it today. We opted not to make available via the UI. We left the exponent tweak in so that power users could override the exponent used for "High Resolution" mode, while still being able to disable it via the UI.

The high resolution terrain textures setting only applies to the terrain textures which are generated at runtime. More details provided in my other post.

Textures used for things like aircraft and buildings are created by an artist at a specific resolution. We load textures at their native resolution, but will down-res if the app settings have limited the global texture resolution. (eg setting global texture resolution of 1024 would cause 4k building textures to be scaled down to 1024. This was more useful in previous versions where the 32-bit 4GB memory limits applied, but it can still be helpful for avoiding running out of GPU memory.

[vgbaron]

Thanx Beau - exactly what I was looking for.

Vic

[pmb]

Thanks Beau, finally a definite answer. I've bookmarked your reply as ther's been much confusion about these settings.

Kind regards, Michael

[bhorv67]

I'm slightly confused by Beau's response.

"If High Resolution Terrain Textures is not checked: (default)
Each terrain tile has a 256x256 texture generated. The texture exponent is 8 and cannot be changed."

I understand this to mean that if the check box is not checked, the TSE tweak will not be used - but I can say definitively that it does. My VRam usage on my 1080ti is almost 10g withthe TSE tweak, and the check box is NOT checked.

[bpieke]

I believe the intent was to have the HRTT setting in the UI be the "gatekeeper", and TSE=10 a modifier for people who knew what they were doing (only)...

As we have all noticed, both TSE=9 and TSE=10 can be activated independently of the HRTT setting.

I believe this was not intended, and should be considered a "defect".

The intended way was as Beau indicated.

Three settings:

- HRTT=unchecked (default 256)
- HRTT=checked (512)
- HRTT=checked + TSE=10 (1024).

[Beau Hollis]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. There are actually two places, and one of them does not override the TSE value based on the HRTT setting. As a result, mismatched settings may have some negative side effects. Until we can fix this, please limit your combination of these options to these three combinations:

For default 256:
HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=0
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8 (or not set)

For 512:
HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=1
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 (or not set)

For 1024:
HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=1
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

Please do not use these setting combinations as they may cause problems:

HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=0
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9

HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=0
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10

HIGH_RESOLUTION_TERRAIN_TEXTURES=1
TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8

Thanks