I get lots of big black squares coming out of the airshow ai

[dnsdodge]

I get lots of big black (pixels) squares coming out of the 6th anniversary airshow ai, that I think should be smoke, only the 6th anniversary airshow ai does this. can anyone help, very sorry if this is the wrong way to ask this question I'm totally new to forum posting

[Stewart Pearson]

Hi Dave and welcome to the forum.

I posted a reply on Facebook, before realising you were using FSX.

Not an FSX user myself, I can only make a stab at this. I would suspect that this problem relates to the effects and effects textures files.

Assuming all the files have installed correctly, check your effects folder. You should see;

fx_smoke_blue
fx_smoke_delayed_blue
fx_smoke_delayed_white
fx_smoke_green
fx_smoke_red
fx_smoke_white

Open each file and search for the following;

Texture=smoke.bmp
Texture=smoke2.bmp

in the text.

There will be more than one entry in each file.

I'm guessing that you need to change each entry to;

Texture=smoke.dds
Texture=smoke2.dds

Sorry if this is way off the mark, but as I said...............................I'm just guessing at the problem.

[dnsdodge]

Thank you so much for your fast response, I totally dig the work you guys are doing it is so fantastic, but, aw darn, changing the files from .bmp to .dds didn't work, I still get these big black pixels. I do think it is these files though I removed them and there are n big black pixels, but of course there is no smoke, (there is however a long plume of white smoke way behind the aircraft about a mile out, the airshow is a little bit better to whatch this way so until I can figure out a fix I think i'll leave the files out again thank you so very much for all of your efforts, when I get this small flaw figured out life will be awesome Rock-On

[Greg]

It sounds like this is another case where the different use of the alpha channel between FS2004 and FSX causes problems. Can anyone else using FSX see if it displays correctly for them?

[dnsdodge]

thanks for asking the community Greg I really appreciate it, also sorry for the multiple posts, I thought I was goofing it up. It won't happen again
thanks to all involved in MAIW, this stuff is amazing.

[shaggy22]

It sounds like this is another case where the different use of the alpha channel between FS2004 and FSX causes problems. Can anyone else using FSX see if it displays correctly for them?

All I got was black squares as well. I just removed the effects files so they didn't have any smoke

[Firebird]

OK this maybe a complete waste of time but what the hell you may want to try it.
If you are seeing black squares it sounds like the problem is the FS9 alpha channel. Now you could try using the MS Image tool to invert the alpha channel from black to white to see if that has any effect. I would suggest using the version that comes with FSX.

Failing that try creating a new alpha channel.

Of course it goes without saying that you back up the original before you start playing.

[dnsdodge]

dig it, thanks again for your suggestions, not really sure how to change this alpha channel thing, but i'll give it a shot over this weekend and if it works i'll let y'all know, I'm having a complete blast learning how to do all this stuff, youz have a great weekend

[dnsdodge]

oh ya I don't think I mentioned it before but all of the other MAIW stuff I have works flawlessly, you guyz really do Rock, so cool