Has anyone else ever had this problem or could anyone tell me a solution:If you see the areas I've circled in red, there's a very noticeable crack running through the fuselage texture. This is not specific to the Project Fokker model or this paint, it happens on some other models and paints as well. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!P.S. I'm running a nVidia GeForce 9600GT 512MB with all the latest drivers, updating them didn't help.

It's not a problem with your system, not at all. It's an issue with the add on that can't really be fixed.

Hello,Too much glue when they assembled the two parts of the fuselage ?Regards.Gus.

Replace the aircraft with one that has less hours on the airframe or this might happen...http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...nesdisaster.jpghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243Mark

Haha! So there's nothing that can fix it huh? Oh well. Thanks anyway for your help!

USAir sure knew how to break 'em. *http://www.airliners.net/photo/USAir/Douglas-DC-9-31/1317931/L/&sid=ec3829edeb58cf82c56323ac800516cd*

Hi,There is a way to fix this with certain aircraft.The reason the line shows up is that the plane is apparently texture mapped using every pixel of that color on the bitmap (i.e. the mapping goes right up to the color break). When FS mip maps this object, to allow the smoothing to take place it takes one pixel from each side of a given pixel and blends the 3 together to make a new color. It does this for every pixel, blending the image together.So what happens if a texture is mapped right to the edge of a color block? FS will use the pixels just outside the color block to blend with the pixels on the edge of that same block. If these extra pixels are a very different color from the ones in the color block (yours appear to be white or some light color), you will see this "line" on the edge of a texture separation. (I'm assuming the forward and aft fuselage textures meet at this "joint" line.)"Wait", you say, "There is no color block - the texture extends right to the edge of the bitmap!" How can FS blend these textures? It takes a pixel from the other side of the texture. If the mapping uses the pixels at the very right edge of the bitmap, then FS will take pixels from the very *left* edge of the bitmap to blend with them. This is usually not a problem for many fuselage textures where the right edge looks much like the left edge (i.e. a texture for the middle of the fuselage barrel), but is *often* a problem for the back end of the fuselage, since the colors on the edge that is within the fuselage barrel will be quite different from the colors at the very end of the fuselage (i.e. behind the tail cone) - usually it's some "background" color the author has chosen arbitrarily. Again, in your case it looks like some very light color.Now for many liveries this would have been a good choice, since most have white or light top fuselage surfaces. But your American livery has dark bare metal there instead. Thus, you see the line.What can you do? If there are color blocks, try extending them out by one or two pixels (using copy and paste); hopefully they won't intrude into another object's texture mapping. If so, there's nothing you can do.If it is the left/right edge problem (which I suspect here), try copying a few pixels (in a vertical column) from the edge of the fuselage barrel and paste them onto the opposite edge, behind the tail cone. If the tail cone extends to the very edge of the texture, avoid covering the tail cone itself, but concentrate on covering the rest of that edge. With pixels on the opposite side of the texture displaying almost identical colors to the fuselage's edge, the line should pretty much disappear.Note that this can be equally true for textures of the far forward fuselage, due to the nose edge being a different color. Same fix for that too.BTW, often you can just change the "background" color (used to fill the empty spots in the bitmap) to a color very similar to your livery, and this will fix it well enough.If you are an aircraft builder, this is the reason that you should leave a few extra pixels around your texture mapping blocks, to allow the user to repaint these extra pixels with an identical color to the fuselage itself.Hope this helps,

Tom, thank you!I have provided me with a solution to one of the most annoying issues I've had with FS! I always tried extending the textures by copying and pasting a little more onto the end, but would have never thought to past on the opposite side!

Hi,Glad to help. :)

If you are an aircraft builder, this is the reason that you should leave a few extra pixels around your texture mapping blocks, to allow the user to repaint these extra pixels with an identical color to the fuselage itself.Hope this helps,

This is precisely why whenever I UVW Map a mesh to the edge (such as a spanned fuselage mesh across two or more bitmaps), I always drag the last row of UVW vertices at least 2 pixels from the edge. This provides a total of 4 pixels of overlapped bitmap pixels so that proper blending will be possible.It's so easy to do (takes about five seconds!) that I simply don't understand why all modelers don't pay attention to this detail... :(

whenever I UVW Map a mesh to the edge (such as a spanned fuselage mesh across two or more bitmaps), I always drag the last row of UVW vertices at least 2 pixels from the edge.

For those of us that don't design aircraft, can you explain what this/these are?thanks,Joe

For those of us that don't design aircraft, can you explain what this/these are?

I'm not sure any in-depth explanation would be useful, since there's nothing in the process that an end user can affect with such knowledge... :( However, perhaps a brief analogy might help in a more general sense, or at least satisfy the curiosity genes... :( A 3d model is created by defining a whole bunch of triangles. A triangle of course has three vertex points that may be mathematically described by a set of three coordinates on a Cartesian grid: x, y, z. When the sim engine sees these coordinate sets, it will draw a triangle in the sim's viewscreen. Unless otherwise specified, the triangle has only one visible side (called a face).Now we need a way to instruct the sim to "paint the visible face of the triangle" with some part of a texture bitmap (image) that we've assigned to this particular triangle.This is accomplished via a UVW Map. It is useful to think of a UVW Map as if it were a photograph of the 3d model's triangle(s), or at least a selected set of triangles. Since the triangles are defined by three sets of vertex points, the UVW Map creates three sets of vertex points (referred to as u,v,w) that essentially tell the sim engine to apply the specific pixels of the bitmap contained within the area defined by these uvw vertices to the specific triangle of the model's mesh defined by these xyz vertices.Perhaps an image will make this more clear. Fortunately for modelers, the 3d software allows us to accomplish all of this visually, unlike the "bad old days" where modelers had to manually create a list of vertex points! :(In the illustration below, I've cropped out part of the "master UVW Map" for an aircraft's fuselage that has been designed to span two bitmaps. This image shows the right edge of the FuseA bitmap and the left edge of the FuseB bitmap. As you can see, I've dragged the last vertical set of FuseA UVW vertices slightly to the left. Likewise I've dragged the first vertical set of FuseB UVW vertices slightly to the right. This creates a four pixel "gap" between the two halves of the left fuselage's mesh.For practical purposes, the "painter" will simply "paint across the gap," effectively removing the problem that's been previously described... <Whew!> :(

An excellent description, and with pictures too!!!Thank you for spending your time to post this, to satisfy my curiosity.Joe

I'm not sure any in-depth explanation would be useful, since there's nothing in the process that an end user can affect with such knowledge... :( However, perhaps a brief analogy might help in a more general sense, or at least satisfy the curiosity genes... :( A 3d model is created by defining a whole bunch of triangles. A triangle of course has three vertex points that may be mathematically described by a set of three coordinates on a Cartesian grid: x, y, z. When the sim engine sees these coordinate sets, it will draw a triangle in the sim's viewscreen. Unless otherwise specified, the triangle has only one visible side (called a face).Now we need a way to instruct the sim to "paint the visible face of the triangle" with some part of a texture bitmap (image) that we've assigned to this particular triangle.This is accomplished via a UVW Map. It is useful to think of a UVW Map as if it were a photograph of the 3d model's triangle(s), or at least a selected set of triangles. Since the triangles are defined by three sets of vertex points, the UVW Map creates three sets of vertex points (referred to as u,v,w) that essentially tell the sim engine to apply the specific pixels of the bitmap contained within the area defined by these uvw vertices to the specific triangle of the model's mesh defined by these xyz vertices.Perhaps an image will make this more clear. Fortunately for modelers, the 3d software allows us to accomplish all of this visually, unlike the "bad old days" where modelers had to manually create a list of vertex points! :( In the illustration below, I've cropped out part of the "master UVW Map" for an aircraft's fuselage that has been designed to span two bitmaps. This image shows the right edge of the FuseA bitmap and the left edge of the FuseB bitmap. As you can see, I've dragged the last vertical set of FuseA UVW vertices slightly to the left. Likewise I've dragged the first vertical set of FuseB UVW vertices slightly to the right. This creates a four pixel "gap" between the two halves of the left fuselage's mesh.For practical purposes, the "painter" will simply "paint across the gap," effectively removing the problem that's been previously described... <Whew!> B)

Hey, N4....I remember when I used to write geometry systems, (and build airplanes), for Northrop back in the 70's. We used to call UVW another name...a Ruled Surface Patch with UVW being the Vector to describe it, (the patch of area described by the vector). The smaller the Ruled Surface Patch, the more UVW Vector coordinates to an area, the more accurate an aerodynamic skin. I guess that would equate to resolution. The more pixels, the higher the resolution, except these pixels have direction also.We used vectors because many aerodynamic surfaces, (commonly called "Mold Line" surfaces), have more then one curve, in one plane of view, in a single Ruled Surface Area. So the vectors were the only way to accurately describe a patch of that complex surface area. We clustered the Ruled Surface Patches into UVW vector maps and combined them into the larger Ruled Surface Area. (Just like LOD elevation mesh does).Where ever the Ruled Surface Area was placed on the aircraft skin, the initial coordinates, (or datum if you would), originated from the "Wing", "Water", and "Butt" line of the aircraft, another Cartesian coordinate system. We would then write a transformation matrix to the Ruled Surface Area, (which contained many Ruled Surface Patches), from the datum. With enough RSAs, you've got yourself an aircraft skin...and anything else that requires complex surface evaluations...LOD, Clouds, etc.We did the same thing at TRW when we were making satellite flight hardware for JPL...Does that sound like the system you're working with? What program are you using...it sounds like fun!MarkOh, one more thing...wanna kick...this was before PC's and just around the time the first 5 pound hand held calculators came out. Can anyone say slide rule for me?

We did the same thing at TRW when we were making satellite flight hardware too...Does that sound like the system you're working with? What program are you using...it sounds like fun!MarkOh, one more thing...wanna kick...this was before PC's and just around the time the first 5 pound hand held calculators came out. Can anyone say slide rule for me?

That's a pretty fair description of the same process used for FS modeling, although the nomenclature is just a bit different. I once asked why the texture map vertices were labled u,v,w and was simply told, "...because they are the three letters preceding x,y,z... duh!" :( In FS 3d modeling, the origin (0,0,0) is typically placed at the intersection of the waterline, three-fourths chord of the wingroot, and centerline. All x,y,z vertices are defined as +/-n from the origin.Most commercial FS modeling is done with 3d Studio Max, although the (now free) GMax v1.2 is also used extensively. MS/ACES supplied export tools specifically for use with GMax prior to FSX, when they also added support for Max 7/8/9. Keep in mind that for FS9 there is a limit of 65k triangle-polys for the exterior model and another 65k triangle-polys for the interior model. One can make a very complex object with a fraction of those limits however. It's truly up to the modeler to use only as many as absolutely needed to keep from killing framerates.That's why it's not enough to simply be a "good" 3d modeler. To really be excellent, one must perforce be pretty good at generating base texture bitmaps as well. A lot of the 3d effect in the sim's viewport is illusion anyway, so even a simple planar surface can be made to appear 3d with good graphics! I reserve poly-dense area for things that are more "in your face" or that can be zoomed to extreme closeup. :( I still own several Keuffel & Esser sliderules. They are rather rare these days, and can be a bit "pricy" on eBay...http://www.gizmology.net/images/sliderule_01.gif