PSA: NVidia Anisotropic Bug: in-game setting disabled (was: Some tests on Texture Resolution and Quality)

I’m updating this post with new information I’ve just discovered today:

I believe I’ve found a bug which could explain why some of you are finding graphics are not as good as before.

NB: I’ve rebooted a few times before realizing the bug with Nvidia drivers 471.47 SD (Studio Drivers). There is a possibility this bug is also affecting the GRD version (Game Ready Drivers).

Below is a series of screenshots comparing different types of settings in isolation. When doing this a few days ago, I’ve been changing both in-game Anisotropic and in-NVidia CPL Anisotropic settings for comparison. After changing the Nvidia CPL Anisotropic from 16x to “Let application decide”, like I used to have it set to, I realized the day after that in-game Anisotropic setting was no longer working.

What has happened is that once I’ve set Nvidia CPL Anisotropic to 16x then back to “let app decide”, It is as if the game is rendering with Anisotropic 1x regardless of the actual in-game value, as if the Nvidia setting is not letting the app deciding and is instead overriding this with anisotropic 1x only.

And I can tell you it shows a lot, like strong loss of ground texture details not too far from the aircraft when flying even at low altitudes, and this resemble a lot the typical symptoms of blurry textures in the distance, and of course blurry ground decals (yellow lines etc…) not far from the aircraft when looking at a shallow angle from the ground.

I’ve managed to find a cure though:

When viewing the Nvidia CPL custom settings for FS2020, the only way to cure it was to press the “Restore” button to let Nvidia CPL reset the settings from scratch. After this, and restoring the few Nvidia settings I adjust specifically for FS2020, and with Nvidia CPL Anisotropic settings reset to “let app decide”, the in-game anisotropic settings was finally working back like expected.

I hope this will help some of your to restoring back your graphics if you’re affected by this. Please make sure to post your driver version and type (NSD, GRD) in the topic if you’re also affected by this bug and if this helped you cure it.


There is a discussion at avsim about Texture Resolution setting value saving in reverse value order in UserCfg.opt file: The dev team has acknowledged the issues... - Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020) - The AVSIM Community

My understanding until SU5 has been:

Texture Resolution: cockpit textures (restart required)

  • affects the resolution of the extra texture channels (normals, metallic etc…) and below a certain level (I think it is MED) it also changes the albedo resolution.

Texture Synthesis: ground details overlays (no restart required)

  • affects the LOD ring distances they are displaying. ULTRA = full details kept farther away, LOW = full details only a few meters away.

And from the discussion, here is one of my latest remark:

I’ve not tested all the things discussed here yet, but I’m starting to get a possible explanation:

  1. The Texture Resolution value is saved in reversed order

This is not a problem in itself as long as the code reading and writing the value is using the same reversed order, but…

  1. Some parts of the rendering engine is using the Texture Resolution setting as a “quality” param

Say Pixel Shader code for specular or something else is using the Texture resolution value in order to lower the processing if you’re using lower texture resolution for example. Then this is a problem, because if the code using the Texture Resolution value as a “quality” param is coded expecting the correct value order, then LOW texture resolution = ULTRA quality param for the other parts, and ULTRA texture resolution = LOW quality param for the other parts.

Therefore I’ve tested a few settings and here is the raw material:

NB: I know that other settings might have also an influence on these results, like Aniso and TLOD, but these are just trying to compare some of the settings in isolation according to the points discussed in the Avsim topic.


1- with Tex. Res. ULTRA:

Tex. Synth. LOW:

Tex. Synth ULTRA:

not any visible change to me.


2- with Tex. Res. ULTRA:

Tex. Synth LOW:

Tex. Synth ULTRA:

not any visible change to me.


3- with Tex. Synth. ULTRA:

Tex. Res. LOW:

Tex. Res. HIGH:

Tex. Res. ULTRA:

Tex. Res. ULTRA changed to LOW without restarting:

Like expected, this setting:

  • affects the quality of the cockpit textures
  • doesn’t affect external textures nor interior decals.

4- with Tex. Synth. ULTRA:

Tex. Res. LOW:

Tex. Res. ULTRA:

Like expected, this setting:

  • affects the quality of the cockpit textures
  • doesn’t affect external textures nor building textures.

BUT: this changes the Texture Synthesis details on the ground next to the aircraft!


5- with Tex. Synth. ULTRA:

Tex. Res. LOW:

Tex. Res. ULTRA:

Tex. Res. ULTRA changed to LOW without restarting:

Again, doesn’t change anything on the ground texture which is expected.


The only test where something unexpected is happening is the test #4. Changing the Texture Resolution to LOW or ULTRA (and restarting) is having an effect on the Texture Synthesis on the ground, which is not expected.

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Great work with the analysis.

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If im not wrong, Texture Synthesis affects only to autogen textures like buildings walls drawing at a distance, More quality equals to more variety of visible textures.

Never though of It being responsible of textures used on autogen runaways but may be possible, who knows

Wouldn’t setting it to force 16x also work?

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Did you restart the sim when changing texture resolution?

Yes.

Yes, otherwise I’m mentioning it explicitly:

Ah, thanks missed that.

If you didn’t restart, it won’t change the texture resolution.

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Late to the party, discovering this thread…
Could be the bug I already saw from memory pre-SU5, even from the beginning, but from time to time it was fixed by itself weirdly, when moving the external camera around the plane and going back and forth to cockpit camera. It was during my test scene at Courchevel, when appearing on the tarmac the white line right below was always destructed (no anisotropic) even with my Texture at ULTRA, Texture Synthesis at ULTRA and the one I can remember its name at max (“texture supersampling”, I guess in English at 8x8 or 6x6, the max). I never forced or touched this setting in NCP.

Good find!

This one and the fact it seems settings are not correctly saved from “SU5 the First”

prevent me to fly. I know it’s stupid but I guess I want those ones to be fixed before trying again the Sim (and here the heat prevent me to put the VR headset, more than 30 degrees in the room :hot_face: ).

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