Terminal Building at KSLC Fades into Nothingness

[Guest nd55b]

I came across an unusual issue this evening in FSX while flying into KSLC. When I pulled up to the terminal, the building was completely transparent! Only the gate signs and jetways were visible. Upon investigating further, it appears that that parts of the terminal walls are environment mapped (i.e. they reflect their surroundings). During the day, the walls are opaque. At dusk, however, the walls become progressively more transparent until night, they simple vanish.Has anyone else encountered this at KSLC (or other airport)?I have an ATI 3870HD, DX9.0C, and Catalyst 8.6. I have tried changing drivers and resetting my display options in FSX to no avail.J

[Art_P 6]

Same here, except the transition occurs rather suddenly at the dusk to night switch.ArtBiostar TF560-A2+, Athlon 64X2-6000+, 4GB RAM, Geforce 8800GTS-320MB, 500W PSU, 250GB HD, FSX (SP1-SP2), Vista Home Premium 32 bit, CH Yoke & Pedals, 22" WS LCD monitor

[Guest nd55b]

Does this happen just at KSLC for you or does it happen at other airports also?

[klemay 0]

Same here, and it appears out of the dozen or so airports I fly into, this is the only one that this happens to...and only at dusk to night....see-thru blds!

[Guest nd55b]

Alas. I was hoping it was a configuration issue, but it appears to be a bug in the scenery. Perhaps there is a scenery wizard that can decompile this BGL and figure out what is wrong with it.

[Guest singletracker]

I have the Same problem also, I a have KSLC AFCAD over the top and thought that was what was causing it. Are you guys getting it with the default scenery?

[Guest nd55b]

Yup. Sure am.

[Guest singletracker]

Interesting! Seems to be the only airport doing it that i've found so far.

[Guest EdrickV]

I know this is old, but I happened to encounter a similar issue with an object I was trying to add to an airport (cabin log 3) and happened to find a thread talking about the same thing happening at KSLC. Well I've figured out what the problem is. And it's fixable.The problem is that the night textures are messed up, the stuff that you can see (in the case of KSLC the gate signs) is all that's really in the texture, the rest is black which becomes transparent thanks to the alpha. I figure that the alpha messed things up when the files were saved. (The editor erased all the areas that the Alpha said should be transparent.) I made a replacement file by overlaying the night texture on top of a copy of the regular texture, at 75% opacity, which gives me a working night texture. (Though I suppose the lighted stuff might look better if I split the black area from the night texture into a different layer and left the gate numbers fully opaque, but this was basically proof of concept.)I used DXTBMP to export the textures into Paint for copy/pasting to and from GIMP which is where I did the actual editing. Was really easy to do. Select all in Paint, Copy to clipboard, File->Accquire->Paste as New in GIMP. Open the layers dialog box via Ctrl+L, create a new layer, (which will be selected for editing automatically) then copy/paste the night texture and set the opacity to 75%. Right click, choose Edit|Copy Visible, paste into the Paint window that has the old LM bitmap, save, reload from edit in DXTBMP. You also need to reset the alpha channel to white. (Black might work too, but I used white 'cause thats what I've seen some other LM textures using.) The easy way is to use DXTBMP's "Create Alpha Channel (Green)" option in the Alpha menu. Since that color green shouldn't be on those images, you get a white alpha channel. After that, just backup your original texture, save the new one in place of the old texture, and restart FSX.If you've still got the stock KSLC and want to try this out, save a flight in a spot where you can see the missing walls. (any of the A, B, C, or D gates should work. Quit FSX. Extract the attached zip file to:Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Scenery\NAMC\texture(You can backup your original textures, but I included backups of the original textures in the zip file with the word Original added onto the beginning. Even if you don't need this fix for KSLC, this info may be useful if you encounter the problem somewhere else. (Like I said above, I first encountered the issue using the "cabin log 3" library object, while editing an airport with ADE.)

[Art_P 6]

Thanks for sharing that EdrickV. DTXBMP is such an important tool. If you want the terminal lit up, try these textures.Art

[jport1 10]

Thanks for sharing that EdrickV. DTXBMP is such an important tool. If you want the terminal lit up, try these textures.Art

The download link is broken, does anyone have a link where I can download this fix. I fly KSLC every day and the invisible terminals is annoying . . .Joe

[Art_P 6]

The download link is broken, does anyone have a link where I can download this fix. I fly KSLC every day and the invisible terminals is annoying . . .Joe

Send me an email message within the forum and I will email you the textures.