VFR France scenery - Black autogen buildings

[blue2 1]

Have recently migrated some VFR France photoscenery into P3dv2.4 but have found that the majority of the autogen buildings have black wall textures although the roofs  are normal. Trees are fine.

My UK VFR Photoscenery autogen is OK but this only appears within the VFR France volumes, I've scoured the forums for a fix for this or to find the cause but can't find any clues.

 

My computer specs are:-

Intel i5-2500K @ 3.30GHz
MSI 277A-G45 M/B
8GB Ram
Nvidea GeForce GTX550TI
500GB Hybrid SSD Hard drive (main), secondary 500GB HDD,  third backup 320 GB HDD and external SDD of 500GB
OCZ 750 watt PSU
Coolmaster DM-690 case
Logitech Mk260 wireless keyboard and mouse
Windows 7 Home 64bit

 

I've got a suspicion that the VFR France volumes are not Win 7 64bit compatable.

 

Nige

[AviatorMan 253]

You might want to check the VFR France web site, where several months ago they said that they were in the process of converting all of their products to P3D2. There seems to be nothing more recent to update their progress.

 

http://www.vfrnetwork.com/forums/index.php?/topic/12097-produits-france-vfr-pour-p3dv2/

 

Comme annoncé nos plateformes P3D sont en production et nous avons pu commencer les travaux de compatibilité avec P3DV2. Comme vous pouvez le voir la scène de Montpellier est déjà disponible, et nous allons réaliser progressivement et en arrière plan des versions P3DV2 pour l'ensemble des gammes, y compris les produits Simulation DATA !

Chaque produit sera donc compatible P3DV2 et disposera de son propre installeur incluant la déclaration automatique de la scène dans P3DV2.

[Ripcord 12]

 

I have the same problem, since I installed P3D v2.3 and began moving my FSX addon scenery over. I was able to use ModelConverterX to convert the model libraries for the main buildings/objects at each airport but the autogen buildings being black is one that I'm not able to solve. See no other choice but to just sit and wait for the dev to get around to it, sadly.

[kevinfirth 1,393]

I think this could be a just a compatibility issue. FranceVFR and other devs (inc OrbX) had a bit of a spat last year about how to create and maintain autogen compatibility across different developers addons. This is due to FSX (and P3D) being only able to reference one set of autogen files.

 

Earth Sims created a set of autogen files that allowed lots of addons to play nicely together.

 

You could try downloading and using them here ===> https://earthsims.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/235619-i-need-the-autogen-compatibility-files and see if that fixes your problem.

 

cheers K

[Ripcord 12]

Pretty sure it is not a compatibility issue as I never had any such anamolies in FSX, and I used all the same ORBX products.

 

However I'm not sure enough, Kevin, that it isn't worth trying your suggested course of action. It might clear up some issues elsewhere, if nothing else, and I can always restore the files if it goes wrong. Good suggestion, thanks.

[blue2 1]

Hi and thanks for your input. I've just checked my Autogen folder to see if its altered since I updated from P3Dv2.3 to v2.4 and the EarthSim autogen files are still there.

Did another test flight starting at Calais LFAC and the majority of the autogen buildings are still black, roofs are OK and airport buildings plus hangars and trees are OK as well!

 

Can't understand why its only VFR France scenery thats affected and not any other VFR Photoscenery autogen. I'm also using the Estonia Migration tool to move anything into P3D and have had no problems,

 

Apart from this, changing to P3D is the best move I've done.

[Ripcord 12]

 

I concur, it is just some bad textures that FranceVFR is going to need to update. Because they are autogen objects I am not really sure where to find them in the file structure.

[blue2 1]

Looking into the Texture folder for Nord-Par de Calais, there are hundreds of .agn fliles such as:-

 

011222100233333an.agn

 

and also alot of ACDSee BMP images eg. a002xp. Now I've read somewhere that P3D does'nt read bmp files and that they need converting but to what format?

 

I have a bmp to dds converter tool and also a DXTbmp Texture Manipulator but what format do I convert them to?

[Ripcord 12]

Looking into the Texture folder for Nord-Par de Calais, there are hundreds of .agn fliles such as:-

 

011222100233333an.agn

 

and also alot of ACDSee BMP images eg. a002xp. Now I've read somewhere that P3D does'nt read bmp files and that they need converting but to what format?

 

I have a bmp to dds converter tool and also a DXTbmp Texture Manipulator but what format do I convert them to?

You would use .dds format, certainly.

 

When I look in the FranceVFR\LFMT - Montpellier Mediterranee\Texture folder I see all .dds files (be sure to back up the folder, of course). Note that LFMT scenery is P3D compatible, to your point above, and there are no .bmp files at all in that folder. So yes I think you are on the right track here.

 

I might do a bit of experimenting with this and see what I can come up with.

[GSalden 4,656]

Please, keep us informed.

[Ripcord 12]

 

So far I have not been successful, trying to convert the bmp textures to dds. I don't really know what in the hell I am doing, so it could be that this is the right track, but I've not been able to make it work.

[blue2 1]

I've downloaded the ModelConverterX from FSDeveloper but am having trouble getting it to load into Win 7 64bit!! The designer is away on extended leave at the moment so will have to be patient, will let you know of any results.

[blue2 1]

Got MCXv1.4 up and running as a result of upgrading my motherboard drivers,  I don't know the reason for that but at least I can have a stab at converting .bmp texture tiles to .dds format and see if it improves things, if it does then I've got my MAIW Scenery Libraries to sort out!

[blue2 1]

Just read a letter in PC Pilot Issue 95 about Black Buildings and it seems it is because the scenery is not designed for DirectX 11that P3D operates in.

 

If you have DX10 enabled within FSX in the "Settings - Display" menu then black objects will appear so it seems this VFR France scenery will not work with DX11.

 

I'm going to download "SteveFX - DX10 Scenery Fixer" (http://stevesfsxanalysis.wordpress.com/ ) the aim of the product is to resolve any issues caused by some add-on scenery when in 'DX10 Preview' mode.

[GSalden 4,656]

@blue2 : what do you want with a DX10 scenery fixer, designed for FSX, in P3D with DX11 ?

 

I was beta tester for Steve and also have earlier versions were I had to compile scenery manually to DX10 instead of automatically.

Those compiled scenery do not work in P3D at all. No loading , bleedthrough etc.