Minot AFB and Several others

[dk1213]

Hey guys, I am at the end of my rope. The other day I was working on Zweibrucken Airbase, by Bryan Clark, and It had a bunch of black objects. I flew over Zutendaal, same deal. Then today I get over Patuxent River, and several black objects there too. Now I downloaded John's new Minot AFB and end up with black objects there as well.
I have every single MAIW package installed, I think 267 of them so far, so I can't figure out what textures for the objects I can possibly be missing. I know that whenever I install a new package and it has scenery library objects, I overwrite the ones already in there - but isn't that correct anyway? What can be causing this? Any thoughts are appreciated it is so annoying. I am assuming I have some black objects all over the world.

[Firebird]

What you need to do is use a tool like Procmon and set it up to look for anything called for by FS9 that is not found and then highlight the output for anything from the path of the scenery that you want to check.

That is the only way that I know how to do it, if you don't know the object.

[Joecoastie]

I believe Dan is running FSX.

[dk1213]

Yep. Fsx. They are objects with no textures, apparently. It isn't all the objects, some are cars or trucks, and some buildings. A real pain in the ass.

[fishlips]

These could be transparencies created in the alpha channel or FS9 effect files???

Best way to find it is to turn off all of your third party sceneries and then add them back one by one until you find a problem scenery and then look through that download and remove files from it until you find the one/s causing the issue. Start with removing effect files first, then tree's, etc.

[dk1213]

Thanks, I have been messing with this all day so tomorrow is another day and I will try your suggestion then. Thanks man

[Firebird]

OK my bad to assume that it was FS9, but the same method still applies. You set procmon to search for any not found files that FSX tries to call.

It does work that is how I found what was missing from John's Minot scenery. OK, John actually announced it before I installed it on my system and checked but it did verify that it was the cause and the only cause.

Once you set it up you just move around the scenery and see what it catches as missing. Then you have to check if the files were found elsewhere in the FS path, i.e. texture or scenery/world/texture but you have at least a list of all textures not found from that folder.

[dk1213]

Guys its baffling, and those bases in the pics are not even in Japan, those are all over, Harzerim, one is Pax River, one is Zweibrucken. It makes no sense, I have every MAIW package, yet I have black buildings in almost every airfield. I doublechecked my scenery library objects folders and the files are in their, however I am not sure if the right textures are in there, there are like 260 something texture files I am amazed that the textures for these buildings aren't in that file. I am at the point where I may need to reinstall all 270 packages again just to fix this stupid problem, and my fear is it will be the same deal because I did not make any mistakes when I installed these. It will be really interesting to see what the problem actually is when I figure this out, because as of right now, there is no reason why this should be happening. Its a total mindbender and its driving me nuts.

[Firebird]

Before you start, have you got your MAIW Objects library activated in the right place above the default MS folders and below the actual scenery folders?

Also, you don't need to restore all of your packages. At worst you just need to manually re-install the MAIW scenery Objects and for that just start at he latest scenery and work backwards until you have them all. The chances are that you will need only 5 or 6 packages to get all the default ones.

[dk1213]

Yea, my scenery library is set up right, I have been pretty meticulous with it since I started FS

which makes this even more surprising. Which packages should I work backward to? I mean, I honestly don't know what I am missing, or how long they have been missing. I don't even have a list to know if I have them all, which would be nice. I have been working on this on and off since Saturday, and I am still stumped. I did everything right. I should have everything activated, and in my gut I think I am missing or overwrote textures, somehow, or something is corrupted. Trying to figure out exactly what is going on is frustrating because there are no obvious errors. I am almost out of options on what to do next. I could do what you said, but without a list of the textures and scenery, how will I even know where to stop ... this is so frustrating.

[Firebird]

If you look under the resources tab you will see an option for the Owl's Nest. Martin keeps a list of all released packages in chronological order. That should help.

[dk1213]

How far back do you think I should go?

[campbeme]

I dont think your grasping what people are saying to you Dan. The latest packages which use those library's have all the textures included for every package from number 1 to latest. So what me and Steve have tried to tell you is if you have the latest packages with the latest library that's all you need. If the problem still persists then its not because your missing textures.

You say you have a black tower at Atsugi, have you installed Atsugi again.....what was the results?

[clickclickdoh]

I doublechecked my scenery library objects folders and the files are in their, however I am not sure if the right textures are in there, there are like 260 something texture files ...

There's part of your problem. I just checked my MAIW Scenery Library Objects texture folder and there are 425 files in it. Looks like 165 files have gone on vacation.

[Firebird]

Just to clarify because I think that maybe some of the terminology used might be confusing.

We supply two types of libs and their associated textures.
One type is standard libs that we use from package to package and were designed to be generic in nature. Examples of these are GGSE, JGSE, MAIW ABO and MAIW Cargo. These you can pick up from the latest packages. There have been newer versions over the years which are backwards compatible, so start with the newer packages until you get them.
In packages there will be in the 'MAIW Scenery Library Objects' folder, which obviously has to be activated, as per our readmes.

The second type are scenery specific, such as Beaufort Object Library, which were designed for and supplied as part of the Beaufort package. These libs would be found in their own scenery folder which has to be activated as per readme. To install these you have to download and install the specific packages for those libs.

Now if you don't see objects then you have not placed the libs in an activated scenery folder.

Now if you are seeing the objects and they appear black then you have the libs in your path but you do not have the textures. In FS9 they appear white.

What you seem to showing us is black objects so you need to ensure all the textures are there. If you automatically installed previously then just install manually to a temp location and copy the items across.

There is one possibility I can see where you could get this issue and done everything correctly. This is that you started from the oldest packages and if you found that you have a lib already installed then you did not copy the textures over. This would mean that later updated versions of a generic library would have the objects but you would not have the textures added for the newer objects.

As click identified one lib, in one scenery, that you have a problem with then start with that one. The MAIW ABO is included in the very new IAF part 2. Reinstall the libs and textures found in the 'MAIW Scenery Library Objects' folder in that package and see if it solves some of your problems.

[dk1213]

After I actually checked I have 439 files in the texture folder of MAIW Scenery Library Objects, texture, I was just making a point. Steve, I think you might be onto something in your post:

"There is one possibility I can see where you could get this issue and done everything correctly. This is that you started from the oldest packages and if you found that you have a lib already installed then you did not copy the textures over. This would mean that later updated versions of a generic library would have the objects but you would not have the textures added for the newer objects."

This actually makes sense, I am going to assume I did that and try to fix it with that in mind. How would you go about fixing it if this in fact is what I did?

[campbeme]

New home for this problem Dan.

[Firebird]

Dan, the last paragraph in my reply says how to start with a specific instance.

[dk1213]

Steve, I have always manually installed every package, I am running FSX remember, so I have to and I am meticulous about it. My flight today was from Oceana NAS to NAS Key West and, inevitably there were black support structures at both places so its across the board, as a matter of fact I don't think any base does not contain at least one of these untextured supporting structures. It leads me to believe that the problem is not with the individual packages, but with the supporting scenery libraries, so it might not even serve any purpose to re-download all of these from the beginning. I am not sure what to do because I downloaded Hatzerim again and the problem is the same, I am stumped maybe I am just gonna have to live with these untextured things in my sim. I mean, what on earth can cause this, I am no noob, so this is just really puzzling.

Mark, what does "New home for this problem mean?" Did you find some way to fix these issues or have a different thread in mind for a solution? I have been working on this since Saturday, obviously not straight through but a little bit at night after flying, and I am still stumped. I just don't get it, and if and when I figure this out I will really be relieved. It stands as a mystery right now.

[Firebird]

Dan, if you re-downloaded a the IAF package and you still get the problem at that base then there has to be another problem. What version of FSX are you using? Also are you using DX9 or DX10 output?