DC-3 mssing textures

[Chairman 8]

This is sort-of the same as the thread about missing bits of the aircraft, but it's different enough that I gave it a thread of its own.Sometimes when I change to spot view only some of the textures load and I end up looking at a plane that has a painted rear-half but white textureless wings and front half. Or maybe one side will be complete and the other side will be blank. Or maybe just one wing and the tail will be painted ... The plane is complete, it's just not completely painted. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, and no pattern to what gets loaded and what doesn't, and the only fix I have found is to go back to an inside view, wait a while, then try again.It doesn't happen often enough to make me want to hunt down new video drivers, although if I have to I have to ... What would be ideal is if some kind soul could say "ah yes, mine used to do that, here is how you make FS refresh the textures ....."ThanksGary.

[Guest KevR]

My graphic card, a ATI Radeon 9500 Pro with catalyst 5.7 does the same thing. My card will some times fail to load verious large 32bit textures (like 521x521 or 1024x1024 pixels). Converting them to DXT3 has always solved the problem for me. Perhaps this will work for you. Don't convert the little ones, just the big ones such as the exterior textures and interior textures. Generally any 32 bit texture 1 meg and over. Be sure to back up your textures first in case you accidentally mess up a texture.

[Chairman 8]

That sounds simple enough that even I could do it :-), what would I use to do the conversion ?(edit)- Found something called Image Tool from microsoft- Went through the textures folder for the version I fly most- If it was > 1 meg and contained external textures, I copied it- Then I opened it in Image Tool- Change the format to DXT3 (1 click)- Save the file (1 click)- Close the file (1 click)- Sizes of the files are down to about a quarter of what they were- There were 3 files affected, taking a total of 9 mouse clicks.- Loaded up FS- Hopped into the DC-3- Took off, and had a look around from outside- Everything looks right, sun glints in the right places, all that jazz ...Ummm ....It **can't possibly** be that simple, can it ? Image Tool and FS9 are both microsoft products for petes sake !CheersGary