Geez, I hope I do thid right.

I did some repaints of Nick's Hornet. In FSX they start disappearing. I've done other repaints of this aircraft and have not had this problem.

In the first image you can see the ones way in the background are black. Then the others start to disappear.

Hopefully someone has an idea of what is going on.









More info: The textures do not disappear as I am watching. They disappear when I am using external view and change the views direction. When I swing back that is when I see they have turned black. After awhile they seem to reappear.

I'm by no means an expert, but I get something similar in FS9. It happens when theres quite a few AI or objects around, when you start to pan around it takes awhile to load up the different textures, altough in FS9 they appear grey instead of black because thats the base colour of the model you see until the texture loads. you've probably got a lot of varied or detailed textures in one area.

That was one of my thoughts, too many ai aircraft with different textures. If this is the case, do I need a better video card. Using an ATI 4850 w/512mb at the moment.

Now I'm out of my depth! I'm not really familiar enough with computers in that respect, but maybe you should look at your textures and see if you can reduce the quality, like turning off mip-maps and save as a smaller size. this works for me but like I said I use FS9 and as I understand it the textures in FSX are different so you might want to experiment a bit with the texture types.

Mipmaps are off. Texture files are Extended Bitmap DXT3 as are all my other repaints.

Well looks like you will either have to turn down your FSX display settings, just have one generic texture for all your hornets or get an upgrade. Don't know what else to tell you really. With mine I just turn a blind eye and get used to it, my display settings are at a comfortable level for my system but with all the different texture files especially fom MAIW packages with each individual aircraft depicted the texture call is a bit of a nightmare particularly at places like Miramar. So if all else fails you're just gonna have to be patient and wait for the textures and stop swinging the camera around so much, works for me

Thanks for your input Clarke. Much aprreciated. Still have a few things to try out.

Something I forgot to mention. Textures on other AI aircraft are unaffected. Just the F/A-18s.

OK you say that this only happens to your repaints of Nick's F-18s. Are you adding an alpha channel to the schemes?

No, I don't think I've added an Alpha channel. Is this something I should do?

These same textures do not have the problem at other airfields, but then I don't have that many AI at the others, yet.

If you get and use the freeware proggie Image Tool you can do simple manipulation of aircraft schemes. It is what it was designed for. What we found out when we produced the Lakenheath pack many years ago was that the fps hit was appalling and that some of the schemes would keep disappearing and reloading.

We eventually found out that by adding a plain alpha channel to each scheme solved this problem. FPS doubled at least, I think, and no more of the texture dumping and reloading problems. It seems that it has always been there but it only gets noticed when you have an enormous amount of different schemes to load. Lakenheath was our first pack that we really fell foul of this.

If you will load any of our produced scheme textures into Image Tool it will tell you on the right hand side if you have an alpha channel or not. Format: DXT3 and Alpha: Alpha is good. Anything else and this could be causing the problem.

Thanks Steve. I'll check into that Image Tool program.

Steve, the only Image Tool program I found does not run on VISTA. Do you have a link to the programs site so I can see if it's the same one I found? Thanks.

I found it Steve. It is in the Terrain SDK.

I opened several of my repaints of Nick's Hornet and one from a MAIW package and they all report:

Model "NBAI_FA-18CD_Hornet
Size 1048576 bytes
Width 1024 pixels
Height 1024 pixels
Format DXT3
Alpha: Alpha

# Mip Levels: 1
Displayed: all

In that case you have alphas so that is not the issue.
So the format appears to be OK, but your repaints have this problem. Do Nick's repaints for the same model have the same problem?

I guess the other questions I would have are how many different aircraft do you have at the base? What graphics card do you have? is there another base with the same or more aircraft on it (e.g, Miramar, Seymour Johnson) and does it have the same problem?

Do Nick's repaints for the same model have the same problem?

No, and my repaints are fine at other bases, but like i said, I don't have that many at the other bases yet.

There are over 60 of Nick's Hornets here, mine and the ones from the package that has VFC-12 in it, plus other AI that stop by from other packages that do not turn black. "I see a red door and I want it painted.......". Oh ya, my graphics card is an ATI 4850 w/ 512MB on a crappy Dell Core i7 920 machine w/ 6GB. My power supply specs are below that of what is recommended for the card (Thanks Dell) which cause FSX to crash on occasion. I do plan to upgrade that though.

I don't think I have Seymour Johnson installed and I know I don't have Miramar as I try to keep things current. I do have the Nellis package but that brings my FPS to a crawl.

If I don't have Seymour Johnson installed I will do that and check to see if the problem happens there.

Thanks for all you help!

Hello All,

I am trying to resolve this very same issue with repaints I have for both C and D models of Nick's Hornets. While my VFA-106 repaints are on the ground and fly according to their schedules, they are transparent except for various pieces of the landing gear struts, HUD, dummy blue bombs and such. I thought it might be an issue with matching the texture files to the correct model. I will examine a few things that I am considering my be the issue. I do have a F/A-18D repaint of VFA-106 that does show up. I guess for now I can modify the other flight plans to point to only this plane and report what I discover.

Keith

One plane works, and the others have issues. That is weird. I take it that you have FSX as well.

What I would do is to see whether its a model issue or a texture issue. Trying swapping the models around that use that scheme. Also can you say which scheme is OK and give an example of one that has the issue?

Steve,

I am using FSX. Everything else works fine, such as converting flight plans. So far I have changed the invisible jets to a model that does appear. Later I will trouble shoot the individual textures against various models. I am mostly filling my airfields with models that do not have full load of live ordnance under the wings. I am primarily using various fuel tank models, clean models, and selective number of drill models.
Thank you for your advice.

Keith

Do you have SP2 installed? I know this can cause graphical issues if it isn't installed.

Nick