FSX water on older grfx card

[kbr]

In my other post I mentioned that I didn't like the way the water in the FSX demo looked on my ATI Radeon 9500pro DX9 card. Being the tinkerer I am, I decided to see if textures designed for a DX9 card would work with FSX. I picked one of my favorite Bill Lyons' water sets and set about trying this idea out. I was rather pleased with the results.

Here is the default water on my card;


Here is the water in FSX with Bill's Lakewater set installed. I couldn't believe the difference! I'm even getting cloud reflections now.


Just thought I'd share this.

[Jakemaster]

I believe that FSX water is for DX9 now, because DX10 only works with Vista and DX10 compliant graphics cards, neither of which are availiable yet.

Does replacing the water affect performance?

[kbr]

I'm only using the DX terminology for lack of something else to refer to it as. My card, a fully DX9 compatible mid level card is not compatible with the FSX demo's default water textures and from what I've read on the various forums, it's the same for a lot of others. Though I know that some newer cards do support it, I really don't know of a term to separate them from the cards that are currently the standard. I also use this reference because a lot of the time someone says the water isn't displaying right, someone else usually will say that you'll see them when DX10 is out. But just to be more clear on the matter, I changed the title of this post.

Performance actually seemed to be improved on my system. Bill Lyon's lakewater textures are about 1/10 the size of the default textures. But to quote Tom, 'You're mileage may very.'

Being able to get the water effects that MS has been bragging about to work on my current card is certainly a plus in my book.

[ScruffyDuck]

Talking about DX9 capable cards is probably misleading. The issues are related to a lot of complex things that graphics cards can do - not whether it is DX9 or OpenGL. For example the improvements in things like reflections will be related to things like whether or not your card can support the later forms of shaders, not what version of DX is being used. I have seen some stuff from MS insiders (can't remember where exactly) which says, in effect, that FSX will not go to DX10. In fact it won't matter that much DX9c is pretty powerful stuff.

I would not expect DX10 to be available on XP. In the long term we will all need to go to Vista.

Anyway just to really throw things into a turmoil - assuming you really care - and I wouldn't it I did not program the stuff - the future is the XNA Framework ;D ;D

[Roger]

Going to try that...thanks Kevin.

[kbr]

scruffyduck said:

Talking about DX9 capable cards is probably misleading. The issues are related to a lot of complex things that graphics cards can do - not whether it is DX9 or OpenGL. For example the improvements in things like reflections will be related to things like whether or not your card can support the later forms of shaders, not what version of DX is being used. I have seen some stuff from MS insiders (can't remember where exactly) which says, in effect, that FSX will not go to DX10. In fact it won't matter that much DX9c is pretty powerful stuff.

I agree with you, I never should have used DX in the example. The way that a lot of people's answer to anything that is not working well (graphic wise) is to wait for DX10.

I'm not trying to get into a discussion about DX, my goal was to show that with a little tinkering you can get the water effects on a typical card. Sorry for the confusion.

[kbr]

roger said:

Going to try that...thanks Kevin.

You're welcome. Hope it works for you. Now if we can just find smaller cloud textures.

[ScruffyDuck]

my goal was to show that with a little tinkering you can get the water effects on a typical card

I agree completely with you Kevin ;D

[scubakobe]

So, with Bill's textures in there I can turn up the water effects to make them look like this, without losing as much performance as before:



Note, I am able to get that right now, but the performance hit is so great that it is undesirable to fly with it like that.
Could you provide a picture of how the water looks when sitting on it? Because if it performs that good looking on your 128 card it should run like a champ on a 256.

But for now I am seeing no cloud reflections, oh well..

[kbr]

Here are a couple of shots with my current setup. The more I fool around with it the better I'm getting it to run on my system. I'm getting from 20-30fps with this detail.

[scubakobe]

Wow!!
That's just about the highest water effects setting (If not the highest).
Where is it possible to pick up one of Bill's water texture sets?
I have got to give this a shot myself!