I think all FSniners should d/l this gem. It's about missing alphas and how this causes stuttering. 

 

Once found it can fix them all if you wish at the touch of a ..mouse click

 

Run it on your FS9 root folder and see how many faults it finds( So it will check all sceneries, Flyable aircraft, AI aircraft …the lot) . I think you will be shocked.

 

http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=187538&CatID=genutils

 

I think this file should be called "U_thought_ur_ FS9.5 was smooth b4"

 

Thankyou Peter Nyman. :Applause:

Thanks Peter for this helpul tool!

 

Regards, Harald

Thanks Ed

 

I knew it would be good, as you had made the 'post'

 

Best  John

Thank you guys, I'm glad you've found it useful.

This texture bug really has an impact on smoothness, especially noticable when panning around a lot (TrackIR) and textures get re-loaded every now and then.

Everyone really should scan through their installation and enjoy a smoother sim.

 

Funny that even a fresh installation of FS9 and FSX have a few faulty textures  ^_^

This really is a great utility and Peter is right, fixing faulty alpha channels will result in a major improvement in the smoothness of the sim. But just one caution. When using the automatic fix feature, it will "fix" some textures that shouldn't be changed. The most obvious of these will be your payware aircraft with complex VCs. I would recommend either removing these from the aircraft folder or making a backup outside the sim before running the fix. But be warned, some addons also place some of their textures in the main texture folder so you may need to fully reinstall these after doing the fix. 

 

 In most cases the fix is a great thing but some high quality addons should not have their textures altered. In those cases the old adage applies - "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

 

I'm not discouraging anyone from doing this - it can result in the most dramatic improvement in smoothness imaginable. But there is a downside to altering ALL the textures that are identified as lacking an alpha channel and you will want to be prepared to deal with that.

 

Pete - thank you for a great utility

Cheers

Ian

 

 

But there is a downside to altering ALL the textures that are identified as lacking an alpha channel and you will want to be prepared to deal with that.

 

Ian, could you specify what might go wrong? I'd like to run this again, didn't have any problems with the old version, but don't want to cause problems with my setup just to try v2 as I am mostly satisfied with performance anyway.

 

Cheers,
Sascha

Ian, how would the payware VC textures differ in any way?

There is NO situation where a dxt3/dxt5 texture should have an unreadable alpha channel, even if the alpha is 100% white.

I think Ian means mipmaps, not alpha. I once added mips to all the bmp's in main texture folder and got psychedelic sky colours instead of blue - what a nightmare!

Sorry for any confusion I caused. I used "payware" as a catchall expression for the aircraft that I had to reinstall the first time I ran the utility and changed all the textures. I no longer remember exactly which ones they were but the Dream Fleet 727 was one. Likewise with some high definition sceneries like the new Aerosoft Heathrow X.

 

And yes to the above post, I probably did mean mipmaps. As I said, it was a long time ago and I just remembered that I had to reinstall some products while others were significantly improved.

 

Once again, sorry for the confusion. When you reach my age confusion seems to be the new normal... ^_^

Ian

No worries Ian,

DXTfixerX does not mess up any mipmaps or anything else for that matter. It only changes one tiny little byte in .bmp files and no re-compression or such is taking place so quality is preserved.

That's why it's safe to run on all your textures.

Those problems you had before must have been caused by something else.

Peter I had an issue with this: when I tried opening the log an error popped up to the effect that the file was in use by another programme?

 

 

Once again, sorry for the confusion. When you reach my age confusion seems to be the new normal...

 

Ain't that the truth.  

Great utility. Thanks Peter.

Steve

Peter I had an issue with this: when I tried opening the log an error popped up to the effect that the file was in use by another programme?

You mean double clicking the log.txt file gave you that message?

Well, as it says, the log file must have been opened by some other program, but I don't know... that message usually comes when closing a file that is currently in use.

Maybe a virus scan was happening just then.

Hi Peter

A good night's sleep and several cups of coffee may have revived some of the almost dead brain cells. I think (not sure but...) that what I tried doing was either adding mip maps or even converting textures to DXT3. Either way it obviously involved a different program and was definitely not a good idea except in the case of AI traffic. It was a couple of years ago and so it's all pretty hazy - come to think of it, breakfast was a couple of hours ago and that's pretty hazy too! On the other hand, I still remember the phone number of the house I lived in when I was 5 yrs old. Ah the joys of senior citizenship! LOL
BTW, since yesterday I ran the program and have seen absolutely NO problems as a result....

Cheers

Ian (At least I think that's my name - I'd check by looking at my drivers license except I can't remember where I left my wallet....)