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Guest JoeW

FSDSv2 of Abacus

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Guest JoeW

I'm having a lot of problems with this program. First it was animation used with scenery. Doesn't work. Even if the help files that come with it describes how to do it with hanger doors.Second problem has to do with Textures, Night textures, They don't show in the program nor in the scenery. Third problem... Seems that because I spoke out about the first problem.... I'm person non gratus... I can't get thru to Tech support. Seems that I'm blocked from sending them mail. I would like to get a refund on this but.... Looks like it's not gonna happen.BUYER BEWAREJoe Watson

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The first problem - it has been mentioned before that the animation doesn't work with the scenery. The old 1.6 version did have some basic animation that scenery could use, and I think that have mentioned that they will "try" to provide this in a future release. No guarantees, though. To tell the truth, they coul have been more specific on thier website. "New! Built-in support for animation"They should have mentioned that the "built-in support" was only for the aircraft. I looked through the help files, and I couldn't find the scenery animation tutorial that you mentioned, but I might have missed it somewhere. However, I have noticed that there is still a lot of v1.6 specific information in the help file that doesn't apply to the current version. They could have cleaned this up a bit.The second problem - night textures. I haven't had any problems, so maybe we can make this work for you. In the "texture definition" dialog box, where you select the texture to be used, there are 5 little switch boxes where you can select if the texture is reflective, a light map, or a night texture. I think the light map selections are used for aircraft mostly, so the one you want to select is the "Night" box. Now when you see your texture refered to in FSDS, it will look like "whatever.bmp,N". It is important to understand that the "N" is not an extention of any kind, it is just a tag to let FSDS know there is a Night texture associated with that texture. Now, when you make your regular "Day" texture, make sure you make a night texture, but give it an extension of "_LM" like this: whatever.bmp whatever_lm.bmpThis might even work if you don't bother telling FSDS about the night texture, and just make one anyway - this is the way it used to work. Anyway, if you follow these steps it should work - let me know.- Martin

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Guest sapper42

Gday Joe,ref FSDS V2 , dont throw it in the bin just yet, its a fine program but sometimes you need to work a few things out yourself ( school of hard knocks )and the night textures do work.took me a little while re reading and experimenting but now i have them working fine. just makesure you add the texture to the models texture list and ensure you have the N switch ticked in the little box, then make a copy of your texture, tint it and rename it *_LM.bmp.regarding the animation, ive not bothered with that so i cant comment but i think you will find that you will work it out.regarding Abacus, i found thier tech support to be very reliable and fast but remeber its only a publishing house/supplier not the software developer.ive yet to find any product that has a decent tutorial but there are plenty online written by other users. look for www.daviator.com by Dave Eckert and you will find some very handy tips for FSDS that apply to Scenery design even tho Dave made them for AirCraft design. Dave is allso helpfull if you approach him pleasantly with requests for help.dont giveup on FSDS yet, its worth persisting with, if you want a fast learning curve FSDS will work for you or you could try Gmax and really tear your hair out. I use both Gmax and FSDS and i found that FSDS gave me a grounding for Gmax but i prefer FSDS.keep your models simple untill your settled with it and you will find that things will fall into place.rgds Jeff

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Guest JoeW

Tech support..... How can you find that when your email gets bounced, Rejected. I can't email them. School of hard knocks...... Ha... Yea right..... I found out allright.I had the textures in the folder, both of them. had it showing on the part.... Night?......Nada doesn't show either in FSDS v2 or Flight sim and I followed the some what lacking instructions to the letter. Didn't work....I bought this program based on the advertising just to do animation on scenery. Then after I have it bought..... I find it doesn't do them. I have been looking for the animation help file with the Hanger door example... Can't find it.... but it's there...I think If I ever get in touch with them I'll try to get a refund... It's not what it's cracked up to be. The original FSDS program is the only thing that Abacus has going for it.... This new update doesn't work worth a diddly.Joe W.

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>Tech support..... How can you find that when your email gets>bounced, Rejected. I can't email them. School of hard>knocks...... Ha... Yea right..... I found out allright.If they have truly "tagged" your email address for rejection, simply get another "Hotmail" address. I know it's a pain, but if you are serious about contacting them then this may be your only alternative. Of course, you were in contact with Adam from tech support already. What did you say to him to get yourself "blocked"?>I had the textures in the folder, both of them. had it showing>on the part.... Night?......Nada doesn't show either in FSDS>v2 or Flight sim and I followed the some what lacking>instructions to the letter. Didn't work....All I can tell you is that it worked for me, and I never even read the directions. Two of us have posted here exactly how to do it, so there might be a different problem. One strange quirk is that FSDS2 can display 16/32 bit standard BMP files, but FS2002 won't UNLESS they are first converted to DXT1/3 or 8-bit (umm, pretty sure...). So, you might want to check to see if your "_LM" textures are in fact correct for FS2002. I've made this mistake a dozen times.>I bought this program based on the advertising just to do>animation on scenery. Then after I have it bought..... I find>it doesn't do them. I have been looking for the animation help>file with the Hanger door example... Can't find it.... but>it's there...It's been brought up already that they didn't specifically say you could use animation with scenery - they just never said you couldn't do it either. Yes I agree that they should have been more forthcoming, but you are obviously happy with at least part of the program since you were using the old FSDS for awhile and had become fairly proficient at it. Surely you must apreciate the extra features and (generally) better features of the updated version?>I think If I ever get in touch with them I'll try to get a>refund... It's not what it's cracked up to be. The original>FSDS program is the only thing that Abacus has going for>it.... This new update doesn't work worth a diddly.You were in touch with them and they did offer you a refund - you had asked for 50% since "it only does 50% of what it advertises.". Adam from Tech support told you that he could only do "all or nothing". If you wanted a refund, why didn't you take the "all" when it was offered?... more ranting here: http://forums.avsim.com/dcboard.php?az=sho...ing_type=search- Martin

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Martin, be careful with this guy. I pasted below an earlier exchange between me and Joe. This took place on simflight. This was in a period in which Joe was prooving to the world that GMAX was no good. I tried to be sensitive to his issue, but the evidence pointed to the problem being local to his machine. In a later message, he got pretty mean...to me, in public. Luckily the mods wiped out the mean part he'd written after only about 15 minutes. Bob Bernstein______________________________________________________ << (pasted from SIMFLIGHT "Emma Field Flying Club forum")And finally, Joe...very sad to hear you've given up configuring gmax...how strange. I can tell you (without a doubt) that GMAX 1.2 is a stable as a rock on my box. That's after I learned one bug (naming of new materials before applying them crashes the program) and the workaround (just always apply the new material before naming). It has to be something with your computer. While that may not be comforting, I have too many friends equally pleased with gmax for the problem to be inherent to gmax. Best to all, Bob Bernstein Edmonds, WA. How can you configure a program that won't instal? I don't get that opportunity, It aborts before the install even starts. Yes .......It's buggy...... Probally more than the one before it. My question again is " Why have so much security on a freeware program? Why not just have it overwrite any files or cookies or whatever it requires NOT to be there?" Bob ...This is a sore point with me. I'm very upset that the next designing program will not install because of a previous installation. And I'm not about to uninsall FS2002 to get this FREEWARE program to install. Is Descreet going to replace all the payware programs that I'm going to loose? Ugh huh..... Yea..... Right. There is about $300 worth on my machine._________________Joe Watson Lake Placid, Florida

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Guest JoeW

"All I can tell you is that it worked for me, and I never even read the directions. Two of us have posted here exactly how to do it, so there might be a different problem. One strange quirk is that FSDS2 can display 16/32 bit standard BMP files, but FS2002 won't UNLESS they are first converted to DXT1/3 or 8-bit (umm, pretty sure...). So, you might want to check to see if your "_LM" textures are in fact correct for FS2002. I've made this mistake a dozen times."My textures are, were 8 bit (256)"You were in touch with them and they did offer you a refund - you had asked for 50% since "it only does 50% of what it advertises.". Adam from Tech support told you that he could only do "all or nothing". If you wanted a refund, why didn't you take the "all" when it was offered?"I dug up Adams reply and sent it back 3 days ago. I want a full refund.Joe W.

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Guest JoeW

Thanks for the nice words, Bob. But ..... I really don't remember asking you for help.Blue SkysJoe W.

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Guest JoeW

I just received an email from a Bridget Kirby of Abacus. Looks like posting here did the trick. I just received a refund of the purchase price. I havent checked the bank yet tho.I live on a limited income of $931 a month. $24 may not seem like much, but when it's from a company that extolls a program to certain things and it doesn't do it, I get upset.If I upset anyone here, I'm sorry. My scenerys that I enjoy doing are free for the download. Nobody sends my any programs that I use for evalueation, I buy them all. Joe W

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