FS2004: Floating buildings at Meigs, Part 2

[Scott Miller 12]

This is a re-posting of a message I posted last week. I only just discovered a mistake or two in the original message (too late to simply edit the oritinal posting). Hopefully this version will make more sense to the 63 people who read the original message but didn't respond (or anyone else who didn't see the previous version):To compare scenery between FS2002 (still my preferred version of FS) with FS2004's scenry I loaded and flew FSNavigator's Miegs Field flight plan in each version. When I started up FS2004 and selected Meigs Field I discovered something rather odd (to say the least)! Namely, there are two large factory-like buildings on the "mainland" directly west of the 36 runway threshold that are suspended in mid-air! I'm not sure if this is a bug in the default FS2004 scenery or if it occured when I installed FSGlobal 2005 into FS2004. Either way, has anyone else seen this, too? How can it be corrected if a patch isn't available to fix the problem?While this problem doesn't render FS2004 unusable, it would certainly be a lot more fun, even if no longer entirely realistic (since Megis Field no longer exists in real life), if this buildings could be replanted on the ground! A reply would be very much appreicated!Scott Miller

[gsand 105]

Hi Scott,I checked and McCormack Place (those are the buildings, by the way) is fine on my system. I have FSG's mesh.Maybe an issue with FS Global's elevation data around Lake Michigan?Happy Holidays!

[John_Cillis 2,406]

I have the default mesh and scenery in this location, and no floating buildings. But I seem to recall them at one point in time early on in my use of the sim--do you have the 9.1 patch installed?-John

[Scott Miller 12]

Hi Gerald!"Maybe an issue with FS Global's elevation data around Lake Michigan?"Humm....could be, that or else it might be a just fluke of some kind that happened when I originally installed FSGlobal. Perhaps removing and reinstalling FS Global would make the problem go away... I trust you had a Merry Christmas!Scott

[Scott Miller 12]

Good question, John! I've got the patch, but I can't recall for sure ever installing it (though I'm pretty sure I must have. Can't believe I'd go to the trouble of downloading a 27mb patch and forgetting to install it!). Is there a way to check if it's been installed, such as the Build number? The current build number for my installation of FS2004 is 30612.02. Does the patch change the build number?FS2004 seems to be a bit flaky (more so than FS2002 anyway). When I start it up the message that it needs to rebuild the scenery database because new scenery was found, or something to that effect, even though I haven't installed any new scenery files lately. Also, FS2004 has nasty habit of hanging if I switch between full screen and windowed options (though not every time I switch). Is this normal or is something amiss?Scott

[gsand 105]

Hi Scott,Had a very nice Christmas, thanks. Hope you did, as well. My FS9.exe version is 9.1.0.40901, so you may not have the patch installed. I remember that the patch had to be applied to a clean, unchanged version of FS9. If you had made any changes to the original install files the patch would fail. Check the FSX forum and search for 9.1 patch. The old FS9 posts were not ported over to the new FS9 forum.Hope this helps...

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"When I start it up the message that it needs to rebuild the scenery database because new scenery was found, or something to that effect, even though I haven't installed any new scenery files lately."I started getting that message shortly before my last hard drive failed. Since switching to my new Seagate a few weeks' back I haven't seen it since. You can trace the scenery where it seems to be challenged by doing a search for all the scenery.dat files and sorting them in date order. The most recent scenery.dat will be in the folder where FS9 thought it had to rebuild the scenery database. Sometimes a bad file or a file located on an iffy sector is the cause, other times some odd add-on that's constantly updating a file in the folder will cause it. Or, you could have my problem, and be facing a HD failure altogether.-John

[Scott Miller 12]

Hi Gerald,By "clean, unchanged version of FS9" do you mean a fresh install of FS9 with no addons (aircraft, Scenery, etc.) installed or or an unmodified version of FS9 itself?Scott

[GHarrall 494]

Having 'Render to Texture' on in the FS9 settings can cause the problem when switching between full screen and windowed mode.Glenn

[Scott Miller 12]

It could be addon related. I recently downloaded some aircraft repaints for Ultimate Traffic. Since then I've noticed that when I'm in the spot plane view that the scenery seems to "skip" a bit as I use the hat switch on my CH usb yoke to swivel from one side of the aircaft to another. I'm thinking of uninstalling UT then reinstalling it to remove the added AI aircraft to see if that might help. That or perhaps reducing the scenery detail a bit might do the trick....Although I've got a fairly fast system (2.2ghz) and FS9 has an excellent over all frame rate even in dense scenery....At least I hope the problem is due to one of these causes! However, I did get a 250 Segate drive recently to replace the 160G WD drive I currently have all my fltsim stuff installed on! I haven't got around to doing it yet partly because reinstalling everything on my system is such a pain (in the past it's taken a couple of weeks to get everything reinstalled)!Scott

[Scott Miller 12]

Thanks, GlennI'll check the "Render to Texture" thing out...Scott

[gsand 105]

Hi Scott,Yep, I remember that I had to remove my 9.0 version completely, do a fresh install without modifying anything and then install the patch. Apparently if even one .DLL had been changed the patch would fail to install.So yes, unmodified version is needed.Good luck!Best,

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Are you talking about the Floating buildings issue or scenery rebuild?I have Render to Texture on all the time, but haven't had the rebuild problem toggling from full to windowed and back again. Then again, I don't do it that often since I prefer to fly in Full Screen all the time. Anyway, toggling like that shouldn't write over a scenery file and cause a scenery rebuild. Can you point to a thread which discusses this? I haven't had a scenery rebuild since I replaced my HD several weeks ago.One thought I do have is some people still inadvertently enable caching when they add new scenery. There was a lot of humorous debate in the past about what the cache option did in the scenery config menu. It was there in the sim for one purpose only--for those who only did partial installs and loaded some of their scenery from CD. The cache was supposed to take the most often accessed CD files, and move them from the slower CD to a cache folder on the faster HD. I started wondering whether some who consistently see the rebuild have their cache enabled for one or more scenery areas, and whether MSFS maintains an index to the cache folder. If it did, then a rebuild would take place every time the cache folder is changed, which could be after almost every flight.-John

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Interesting Scott--My Seagate also replaced a Western Digital drive. The WD drive never seemed that good, especially with files I frequently accessed. And MSFS has the most frequently accessed set of files on my Hard Drive. Some of my zip backups of MSFS aircrafts which I'd periodically would update also tended to get trashed over time. None of my files or zips have been trashed (knock on wood) by the new Seagate.-John

[Scott Miller 12]

Well, since I'm planning on wiping my hard drives clean and reinstalling everything from scratch, it'll be the prefect time to install the patch in FS2004...Thanks,Scott