Dash 7 - Flying Online Troubles

[Guest]

First off, This plane rocks! I love it, great job on the team for putting it together and offering it for us to download and fly.Now a question related to flying it in multi-player sessions. We tried last night with three of us flying the Dash 7 and it kept kicking us all out of the multiplayer session. I've had an occasional problem before with the "Host leaving the session" message you get sometimes, but this happened every 3 minutes to us. We then changed planes and everything was fine.Has this happened to anyone else? Is there a fix for this? I love this plane and so do my online flying counterparts, but we are just unable to fly it curretnly in a multiplayer session without it crashing the session??Thanks!

[Guest Milton]

Hi Fred,Glad to hear you're enjoying the Dash 7. Sorry to hear about this issue.Most of the team has been flying the Dash 7 in MP since May every night in groups of 4-8 players. The Dash 7 is heavy on fps in MP sessions. Try turning off Send and Receive Details to see if that helps.The textures do not have mipmaps included because of their size. In FS, try turning on Mipmaps in Options/Settings/Display/Hardware.For more help, you can try turning off Reflections and Aircraft Shadows for the MP session.The next release will address MP efficiencies.Hope this helps... let me know.Milton

[Guest]

Thanks Milton, I'll give that a try next time we fly. Great plane, a pure joy to fly!

[Guest Milton]

Fred,If that doesn't help, let me know and I will upload a set of DXT3 textures with Mipmaps.You can add them yourself if you are comfortable with ImageTool. (Find Imagetool.exe in your FS2002/Gmax folder)1. Just open ImageTool, then open each _t texture one by one,2. Click on Image3. Click on Create Mipmaps4. Save the textureThis will create 8-12 smaller bitmaps of the original (on the same texture bitmap and they will be used at varying distances from the viewer.Let me know how it goes. If you are uncomfortable doing this, either backup the texture folders first, or I will prepare them for you.Milton

[Guest]

I really appreciate your assistance. Aren't they already DXT3 format? If so I could just open them up in Image tool and create the mipmaps now.Maybe I was just seeing things though ;-)) This is great, maybe I can get this working by tonight (If I get my computer working that is) ;-)))

[Guest Milton]

Yes, the packaged textures are DXT3, but the textures do not have Mipmaps. You can add them simply with ImageTool.Milton

[Guest]

Great! I'll do that tonight ;-))Once again, Great Plane! and thanks for your help.