Bonjour,

Je me permets de faire appel à votre aide car je fais face au problème suivant:

En faisant vol libre dans FSX, avec le package MAIW Rafales, uniquement sur la scène de Saint-Dizier Robinson (LFSI), [u]certains[/u] Rafales affichent leurs textures et d'autres s'affichent en noir, certaines noir mat et d'autre noir brillant. Après un aller-retour, [u]tous[/u] les rafales s'affichent en noir, et même celui que je pilote.

-A savoir que ce problème n'a pas lieu avec tous les avions, pilotables ou traffic AI, mais uniquement sur le rafale.

-Quand je desactive la scène, tous les rafales ont bien leur texture.

-Cela affecte tous les rafales qu'il s'agisse de repeints ou non.

-Quand je suis sur d'autres scène, aucun rafale ne souffre de la disparition de texture. (exemple à LFBM Mont de Marsan, sans avoir relancé le jeux).

J'ai essayé de réduire le traffic, mais il faut que le traffic soit très faible pour que tous les rafales aient leur textures.
J'ai changé le format des textures, dds puis bmp, sans grand succès.
J'ai réduis les paramètres graphique, sans changement...

Si quelqu'un a une réponse, merci de votre aide.
Et si quelqu'un peut me rappeler comment insérer des photos pour que ca soit plus clair, merci d'avance!

Drag

In the hope that somebody can help Drag, I have taken the liberty of using Google Translate to enable more people to read this:-

Hello,

I allow myself to call for your help because I am facing the following problem:

By free-flying in FSX, with the MAIW Rafales package, only on the Saint-Dizier Robinson (LFSI) stage, some Rafales display their textures and others display in black, some in black matt and other shiny black. After a round trip, all gusts are displayed in black, and even the one I'm piloting.

- Note that this problem does not occur with all airplanes, flyable or AI traffic, but only on the burst.

-When I deactivate the scene, all the bursts have their texture.

-This affects all bursts whether repainted or not.

-When I am on other stages, no burst suffers from the disappearance of texture. (example at LFBM Mont de Marsan, without relaunching the game).

I tried to reduce the traffic, but the traffic must be very low for all the bursts to have their textures.
I changed the format of textures, dds then bmp, without much success.
I reduced the graphics settings, without change ...

If anyone has an answer, thank you for your help.
And if anyone can remind me how to insert pictures to make it clearer, thanks in advance!

Drag

thanks steve!

From what I understand it sounds like a problem with the LFSI scenery. Is there FSX users out there that can confirm that this problem exists or if any action needed to be taken to convert the scenery for FSX?

Hi,

I thinks I've found the solution,

The problem seems to be coming from the flightplan-traffic file. There is too many aircraft for the same repetition periode, and I thinks it gets the same aircrafts appearing multiple times in one game and then cause a bug for FSX.

I had to change the parameter in the flightplan.cfg of the concerned aircrafts, concerning the repetition period (2Hr, 4hr, 8hr, 24Hr, WEEK,etc...) and the pourcentage before they appear (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) and then put my fsx traffic parameter to 99%, and they diseappeared. However they continue to appear if I put to 100%

It's a temporary solution that helps to keep most of them showing up.

I hope it could help!

Drag

Interesting. Anybody else found this before?

I come back here today because the problem is still not solved. I realised that in the day, this problem diseappers, but it came back at the other period of the day (afternoon, night, etc...).

I tried different issues:
-I change the model of the rafale (fs2004 and FSX models), not that,
-I erase all sceneries, not that,
-I checked every files of LFSI, not that,
-I erase every traffic files other than the rafale one, not that,
-I change all my rafales by other rafales from the royal french navy, and I realised they all have their textures, and then I realized that the problem was no more the scenery, but the model or the textures.
-I change the traffic file by the original one, get the old ones rafales, with the original textures, and I realised that they all have their textures.

So I checked my textures, but I still do not find the problem.
All files are .dds, DXT1 with alpha, 1024*1024, same as the mirage 2000, but the problem doesn't want to leave....

I'm still interested by any advise

Drag,
Just so that we don't go looking at the wrong thing. Can you confirm exactly which textures have the problem and where you got them from?

It is some personnal photoreal repaints for the MAIW Rafales

OK. This might explain why nobody else has the problem.
For dds schemes instead of using DXT1 with alpha, try using DXT5 with alpha. DXT5 came in with FSX and I feel that dds DXT5 textures on the FSX models maybe get a better result.

Drag,
Did my suggestion help?

Hi,
it seem's not, I converted all the files in DXT1, DXT5, Bmp, 16bit images, and the problem is still appearing. The textures are black in a first time, then they appeared on some aircraft for a few second, and the next passage they disappeared again :/
It seems it do not come from my computer because an other person tried but had the same problem.

However, I have noticed that, when i put the LFSI rafales in FSX files, the problem seems to impact other rafales like at Landivisiau, but when I erase it, Landivisiau rafales don't have this problem.

I also thought that it my come from a to important quantity of texture in the same aircraft file?
Could that be possible?

Thanks,

I will admit that I am unsure when it comes to FSX stuff.
The only thing that I know that affected texture loading on FS9 was if they did not have an alpha layer. The most universally acceptable format for an FS9 scheme was that it was no more than 1024x1024 in size and was a bmp saved in DXT3 with an alpha channel.

As far as I am aware for FSX the schemes can be a 1024x1024 or 2048x2048 dds file in DXT5 format with an alpha channel.

If that is what they are currently in then at the moment then without actually seeing everything in game I can't really do any more investigating.

If you want what I could do is install your package to see the problem.
What I would need to know from you is where the aircraft have a problem, where they don't have a problem. Is it the same aircraft all the time or any of them at random.

What I would also need is your traffic file, and what aircraft models you are using and scenery.

All this stuff is way to big to attach here, so if you create a giant zip folder, load it to your Google Drive or OneDrive and pm me the link so that I can download it.

It would be with a great pleasure!
Can you send me an email in order to share the file with you !
Thanks for your help!

Pm sent.

OK I think that I have exhausted all testing. These are the results.

Firstly, I used exactly the same scenery as Drag, as he supplied it. I placed the textures and flightplans in game unaltered.

I saw what Drag was saying. The biggest problem was at LFBM where all the aircraft were black, unless you viewed a rafale at another base (LFSI) first.
Even then at all bases there was an anomaly. When it first loaded the aircraft could be seen but as you got closer the aircraft disappeared entirely, then they reappeared with the texture. I saw something similar with the FS9 pack where the aircraft appeared then went white when you closed on them and then they got their schemes quite close.

This lead me to think that there might be an issue with the LODs of the models.
To check this out I replaced Drags work with the textures from the FSX conversion. This is where I got some differences.
Firstly the aircraft did not appear at the far end of the pan, then disappear, then reappear with schemes.
What happened was that aircraft did not appear at all, then around the distance that Drags ones appeared, they showed up in schemes.

So I had a difference. I then had to rule everything out that I could,
So I copied the models from the FSX pack over the top of Drags supplied ones to rule out different models.
I also ensured that the schemes were in the same format as the conversion pack. I converted them to DDS DXT3. To reduce further possibilities, removed the mipmaps, added the alpha from the conversion pack schemes, and then re-mipped them.

This meant that the scenery was the same, the models were the same, the mipmaps were fine and the alphas were the same. The only difference was the base texture but it was in the same DDS DXT3 format.

Tried again, and the problem was exactly the same as the original pack.

I can't explain this.
The only thing that I can think of is that paint package that was used to create the schemes somehow adds extra info in which the game finds difficulty with. How feasible this is only a person well versed in texture creation can answer, but I think I covered everything else.

So anybody any ideas?

FSX doesn't load the AI aircraft in the same order each time you launch the sim, unlike FS9. In FS9 it's quite easy to check a flight line for correct numbering because they usually start at the first number and run sequentially down the line. In FSX they are usually random down the line each time you launch the sim.

Now, if FSX meets a problem texture in one of the folders, it halts the process of texture loading with that aircraft and any not yet loaded. That means you get a different number of black aircraft each time you launch the scenario because of the random nature of the loading.

So one texture in the wrong format, or with a wrong name can play havoc until it's spotted and sorted.

I don't know if this is the problem here, but if I could have the package, I'll gladly test it too.

John

Hi everyone, i see you've done a lot of research. I'm also trying to do some modification, but nothing really conclusive right now.

John Young, i'm sending you a link with the model we're using.

Firebird, could you send me the DXT3 files please? I'm also going to convert all my textures files to try something...

John, does this mean that if a plan calls for an aircraft that it can't find this will cause this issue, or is it a narrower situation?

Steve, no, in the case of the wrong texture format, the flight plan will still find and display the aircraft, but it and any others to be loaded after it, will cause those aircraft to render black. Those loading before with the correct textures, should display fine. The difficulty is because FSX loads randomly, the aircraft generally don't generally keep to the same parking spots, with all the spot parameters being the same of course. You will almost certainly get a different result each time, with a varying amount of black aircraft.

It's actually a useful feature. If I want to take a screen shot of an FSX flight line with different paints and I want to change the order of the aircraft in the line, I can go to 8 x speed to reset the AI and back to 1 x to cycle though until I get the aircraft I want at the beginning of the line. You can't do that if FS9 - you have to change the flight plan order.

Drag set me links to the files to download and test, but I couldn't get them to download. Is it possible you could e-mail me just the aircraft files please - or is the zip too big?

John