Section 8 F-86 Sabre

[Dewey 0]

Downloaded and installed the section 8 f-86. Great plane! I also read the manual, but may have missed the answer to this question:Why is the virtual cockpit just a black silhouette with some instruments on it?Anyone have a fix for this?Thanks!Dewey

[A36 Apache 0]

I don't think you installed it right. I wrote another member about this earlier today:First you have to make a folder under SimObjects called 'Aircraft' and inside of the installation zip file 'sf86ef_install' there will be an aircraft folder also. Copy the contents of that folder into the 'flightsimulatorxsimobjectsaircraft' folder. There are three other folders named 'effects,' 'sound' and 'texture' which should be copied to the 'flightsimulatoreffects,' 'flightsimulatorsound' and 'flightsimulatortexture' folders accordingly. Making the canopy transparent requires a lot more effort. You have to have a paint program like PaintShopPro or Photoshop and a free utility called DXTBmp (which you can find in several locations online). Mostly you just change settings like brightness and contrast, but there is some painting with the bucket and airbrush required to make it look better. If you think you're up to it I will talk you through it, or I can post a word document on how to do it or maybe even the textures I came up with as a stand-alone unofficial patch if AVSim will allow it.I'm using FSX SP2 Acceleration if that makes a difference.

[Dewey 0]

Ok, Apache. Thanks for the response. Everything else seems to work just fine. It's just the VC that has no detail.If you can post what you did to fix that I'd surely appreciate it. Or, just post the document that talks me through it and I'll attempt to pull a fix out of it.Yes, I do have the graphics editing tools, so I'll take a crack at editing the canopy, if necessary. However, it appears to be transparent already, so maybe I don't have the problem you are alluding to.Thanks again.Dewey

[A36 Apache 0]

If, you already followed the procedure I outlined in the previous post, then you need to go over the cockpit textures one by one and save the ones that appear to be alpha maps as 'extended bitmaps' type: DXT3 instead of DXT1 no alpha (backup stuff if you get nervous).I never did have a black VC though, so maybe you have a different issue I haven't run into. Are you also running SP2 Acceleration?(Wish AVSim forum admin would step in and say if it is okay to upload outside mods for this package)

[Bob Familton 14]

Hi. Send me an e-mail with a pic of what you have in your VC. I have it installed in FSX and it's GREAT. Do you have SP2 and/or Accelleration? I have only SP1 and it works fine. Regards, Bob.