Flickering Aircraft textures.

[Guest airhead]

Hey Don,Sorry this likely won't be of much help, but I have been experiencing some of the same issues with one of my project aircraft I'm porting to FS9. It happens to certain parts in the VC and exterior model. In the exterior model, it happens when viewing from a near vertical (from above or below) viewpoint relative to the model. In the VC it happens when the aircraft is in a near vertical attitude (nose up or down). It is a bit random in occurence and I am having a hard time figuring out what is causing it. The strange thing is that these parts were in no way modified in the transition from FS8 to FS9, and it doesn't happen in FS8. The only similarity the affected parts have is that they all have materials with no bitmap textures applied, in other words, the materials are just colors with some level of specular highlighting. I may try incorporating a texture into the materials to see if it fixes the problem. If not I may try rebuilding the parts as a last resort. I get the strange feeling the real root of the problem isn't the parts but something different with FS9. Speculation, of course, but as they were fine in FS8 it is my best guess. Well, at least you are not alone in your experiences...

[Guest odog]

I see this all the time with untextured parts. Last year we could assign dummy textures in the design programs, but this year they will vanish intermitently.slap a bmp texture on it and it will go away.Im hoping a new MakeMDL will make this quit. I like to use the power of the gmax Material Editor to make textures for little parts that require no detail. joeEDIT: sorry don, i thought you were building a plane. Looks like you can keep going crazy. There may be some kind of settings tweak that im unaware of, but Im willing to bet those vanishing parts are not in the texture maps.

[Guest airhead]

Hey Joe, (why do I feel like Jimi Hendrix every time I say that :()Thanks for the added insight, you just saved me a bunch of time experimenting with the prob. I'm with you in using materials without bitmaps for those small parts too. Guess I will need to change my ways.Speaking of the new MakeMDL, I think I read somewhere that double sided materials (with ds_ prefix) will no longer work with it. This assumes, of course, that we will actually ever see the new version from MS. Maybe they will release it by the time FS10 is about to ship. Doh!Oh yeah, hope you've gotten that "beaver fever" under control...sounds serious.... :DDon, maybe you could send of a nice email to the author of the offending aircraft and see if he/she is aware of it and if they have plans to fix it. If not, I can get you a good deal on a slightly used straight jacket. One size fits all...... :)Happy New Year guys

[Donmo 6]

Hi all! Quick question time again. I have an aircraft that is acting a little strange. I can fly it for awhile and all is fine. THEN...it will loose some of it's textures. The ones it looses are the engine inlets and some exhaust parts. The gear will also disappear when lowered, but will come and go (flicker), making landings very interesting!! BUT...I can swing the view around (all this is in spotview) and they will come back when I am in a certain location. If I move somemore, they will flicker or disappear. It's driving me NUTS!I have noticed something else. I can pull back the view, and the parts reappear. When I zoom in to return to normal viewing, they are gone again. I also noticed when I go and adjust the weather it changes back to being normal. I can either change the visability or cloud heights and it fixes it, but only temporary. What in the he*ll is causing all this? I have another plane that does something similar, but it only affects the antennas. The fix for that was to never run the visability in unlimited. It's beating me to pieces. Any suggestions would be appreciated. BTW...these are the only two planes out of hundreds that are acting like this.Thanks for any help!! :)Don

[Guest jlwoodward]

I agree Joe. I have been using part colors for lots of little bits, but lately I noticed that they show up as almost the default color, even though they look good in the model (FSDS). Applying a texture fixes it.Another problem I came upon was overlapping polygons or points. When making all the cutouts or joining separate parts, it is easy to miss overlaying points and polygons while rebuilding the model. FSDS now allows one to delete any unused points.Like Airhead says, if the problem shows up on one of my planes I should be able to fix it.John Woodward

[Guest Milton]

I too can confirm that use of gmax materials without mapping and textures will cause this. I have started texturing all parts as a result.Don, if this is happening on your AC500, I'll fix it.Milton

[Guest airhead]

Mornin' guys,Just a quick update to let you know that my latest baby has been cured of her material probs. Thanks for confirming my suspicions on the bitmaps and for saving me a bunch of time trying to hammer it out solo, I appreciate the assistance. :)