Changing Desert Like Textures - problem ?

[nudata 10]

According to the Excel spreadsheet that was listed recently on Avsim Scenery forum the actual file for class #30 is 007B2xxn.bmp . However, when I changed the textures to the FA (fall) series the original desert textures remained. So I moved all series 07b2xxn textures from the world/textures folder. I still had the original textures. I then moved the entire 07xnxxn.bmp series out of the texture folder and the originals remained. I did the same for the 08 and 05 series since they were used in other areas. The originals remained. Next I changed the name of the World/Texture folder and then (finally) the program reverted to a lo-res default texture. The Excel sheet seems to be correct since the textures, as shown in DXTBmp, do appear to be correct. So, I am confused as to what texture (file) actually represents landclass number 30??Dick near 5G8

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,I'm confused by your description of class 30 as "desert". Its name is "Cool Crops and Town" and it shows agricultural areas with a few buildings and patches of forest. The textures look pretty dry during fall but nothing I'd call desert. Are you sure you were working with class 30?There's a spreadsheet I made, which contains hotlinks to screenshots of each class in Region B. Perhaps that'll help with identifying classes: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?t=57245Cheers, Holger

[nudata 10]

Sorry - the "desert" tag was my personal impression of the textures that FSX displays in the Fall season in the northeastern part of the USA. That world is simply not that brown. The appearance in some textures is of sand.Anyhow, the problem re-stated:I want to modify the world/texture files 007b2fa"x".bmp which is the texture series for series landclass #30 . I am using the following proceedure:DXTBmp to get a normal 24 bit BMP from the World/Texture folder.GIMP paint to change the browns to a more green color.DXTBmp to make an extended DXT1 bmp file in the World/Texture folder.No matter how I color a 007b2fax. bmp it never appears as changed in FSX. If I make it red nothing changes when I "fly". I even substituted another texture (ice) for 007b2fa1.bmp and it never appeared. I moved all of the 007 fall textures to a folder on the desktop and FSX continued to display the fall textures for landclass 30. I alaway reload FSX between changes. I also tried reloading XP but no change. I moved all fall, summer, and winter seasons textures to another folder and then I had some odd geometrics. I then restored the summer textures and the fall textures reappeared despite not being in the world/texture folder.There is something odd that I do not understand. Perhaps someone can offer a suggestion as to what I am missing.Dick Near 5G8

[LuisFelizTirado 33]

Hello Dick,There are no guarantees on the spreadsheet that I posted here. It is a theoretically representative table that requires verification. Most of it should be right, but I would not be surprised if a couple of values were not correct. For example, the table lists some regional variants that simply do not exist in the texture folder.Just so you know, I did not take a look at each and every value and check the corresponding ground texture -I am no masochist! The only values that interest me are the ones in my region, R - Tropical Americas - and I have no idea if the rest of the table and the rest of the world are even remotely what is in the spreadsheet.However, according to my sources, it should all be just about as close to accurate as it can get.Good luck.Best regards.Luis

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,I haven't tried changing those particular textures but there are two things I can think of that may go wrong for you: you're not looking at the right land class files in the sim or you're not looking during the correct time.If you're not doing this already, use TMFViewer with the default worldlc.bgl loaded and highlight class 30 to find its location throughout the northeastern U.S. Position your aircraft above a cluster of this class. Then also load the default seasons.bgl and find the month that actually displays fall textures for that location (looks like September is the safest bet). Don't rely on the Time & Season menu in the sim to load the correct season because that's not how the seasonal distribution works in the sim.Another option would be to install the test scenery that comes with my land class table, start the flight included and slew to class 30 to see whether the texture has changed. Again, you'll need to make sure that you're in a month that actually loads the fall textures.Cheers, Holger

[nudata 10]

Thanks for the guidance and Luiz I think the landclass #30 is correct. The textures certainly look correct but unless Microsoft were to release actual pictures or an "approved" table we remain with tiny doubts.Yes, I used TMVIEWER to view the specific lat/lon where the textures were applied. To insure that I would not be looking at a small sample, and possibly miss the textures, I used Lwmviewer with the FS9 worldlc.bgl, the FSGenesis uslc.bgl and the bgl produced by LWMVIEWER in that order from low priority to high. I trust the use of LWMVIEWER to create the BGL since I have placed unique textures such as golf courses and more common textures such as #117 small cities that are wet as well as #30 cool crops and towns in FSX. I placed several #30 textures around a local airport and indeed they appeared in all seasons. November is within Bill Gates' range of the Fall season for the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. I also used only the FSX worldlc.bgl alone. and focused on a small cluster with the same result. I was fiddling with this most of the day and was a bit "unfocused" I did note that for some regions Landclass 008 series is used to show #30. Also, FS9 used 008. So, that needs further investigation but not a lot of hope since pulling all of the 007 seasonal textures except winter showed just geometric shapes where the #30 should be. But I will revisit that.Right now while a lot of evidence has appeared there is no clear reason why I cannot repaint a texture, save it in DXT1 format and then see it in FSX. Is there a secret cache? I could not find one. Is there a linkage to a similar texture set if only one season is missing? Probably a paranoid guess. Am I the only one who has tried, and failed, to change the coloring on an FSX texture? For the truly paranoid these are copyrighted products and when a checksum does not add up the change is blocked. But since the original texture is now on the desktop how does it appear untouched in FSX? Hercule Poirot where are you?Dick Boley

[nudata 10]

Just and added note --- The picture shows New Orleans in the Fall season. A parched desert like landscape. Totally wrong! Something strange here. Microsoft could not have gotten this that wrong since New Orleans is in the light blue special South USA region. I checked my regions.bgl in TMFviewer and it is correct. That is the color pattern matched the SDK illustration. I verifed by lat/lon that New Orleans is within this region. I also checked Cuba and it appears a victim of severe global warming as well. Manaus Brazil is in its spring so the jungle remains lush. Frankly I have no idea why the Fall landclass is totally wrong and how to fix it.Dick Boley - waiting for Bill Gates to declare Winter.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161351.jpg

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,here's a quick check of mine into your LC 30 "mystery".The area is north of Keystone, 9PA7, which has a large block of uninterrupted LC 30 classes in the default worldlc.bgl file.First shot shows fall textures, taken September 17.Second shot shows winter textures, taken November 17.Third shot shows fall textures replaced with class 142 (rock&ice) hard winter textures (067b2hw* series), taken September 17.Seems like it all looks and works as intended for me.Sorry, don't know about your re-painting issues but I have made custom textures (for FS9) that show up in FSX. Maybe you're still looking during the wrong time of year?What I find very interesting is that FSX doesn't crash when land class textures are missing, which is what FS9 would invariably do. My last screenshot is of the same area with the 007bfa* textures removed from SceneryWorldtexture. It seems that FSX picks a substitute for that class and it appears to be class 24, which is the class FSX displays whereever class 30 encounters steeper terrain slopes. Note, however, how the vector data on top of the textures gets "messed up".Cheers, Holgerhttp://holger.fs-shipyards.net/images/FSX/...%20-%20fall.jpghttp://holger.fs-shipyards.net/images/FSX/...0-%20winter.jpghttp://holger.fs-shipyards.net/images/FSX/...%20replaced.jpghttp://holger.fs-shipyards.net/images/FSX/...l%20deleted.jpg

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,see my response in your duplicate post: http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=373620&page=Cheers, Holger

[Guest player1]

Its great see you trying to fix this!I love FSX but am very puzzled as to how bad some of the graphic issues are, has anyone noticed that the transparent texture masks are not high-res like the textures so that you see large pixelated spots all over the place when landclass textures are rendomly masked? eew! Take a look at grand canyon, it looks like someone draped the horizontal areas with fried peatmoss or vandals got at it with a very large bag of flour!Very dissapointed to see this, even fs98 had better representation of correct color. Sorry but its the truth. Something must have got mixed up somewhere, or else not enough beta tester switched to different seasons.Hope you can get to the bottom of it, or Aces give us a patch sonner than later.

[nudata 10]

Finally I just reloaded FSX. Then I removed the 007b2FA files. I went to 9pa7 and I saw the same thing that you did in your last picture. I then installed only one 007bsfa texture file and it appeared in a geometric pattern one might expect. Next I added one more and they populated the entire area required by the BGL for 007b2fa. I then colored one of the textures red and restarted the program. It did not appear. I remover the two 007b2fa textures and restarted the program these two textures continued to display but now there were no relevant files in the world/texture directory/folder. With no files from the 007b2fa series in the texture folder I went to various areas and saw a variety of textures some in a wide repeating pattern. I tried substituting an ice texture for one of the 007bsfa textures but it did not appear. At this time I had all 7 of the textures in the world/texture folder. So I thought that the cache that is shown as emptying or not on the Scenery Library page might be the source of the textures that "were not there". Unchecking the selection made no change. However that cache might be stuck in the "do not empty" state. I went to several areas in an effort to force an overwrite of the possibly not emptying cache with no change. There have been no changes to the cfg etc. The only slider that is not at minimum is the terrain resolution which is at 1M. There is a mysterious cache for the textures. So I reasoned that some clever person would prevent cache over-writes for textures from the default area. No, that was also wrong.I have no more ideas. Microsoft would have the answer. Dick near 5G8

[scott967 62]

Dick, I'm a little confused;What you are calling "fall" (at least in New Orleans) seems to be "winter" according to FSX seasons.bgl. It appears "fall" is 1 Sep - 31 Oct. Winter starts 1 Nov.I agree that the concept of "winter" implemented in the LC textures is lacking. You just don't see such brown winter in the US south (at least anywhere I've been including as far north as Maryland). True there are going to be corn stubble fields in ag areas, but not nearly so much brown. scott s..

[nudata 10]

Scott,I was really looking for an extreme example of the overly brown western like color selections by Microsoft. I just picked New Orleans since it is known world-wide. It seems that other than Spring or Summer you get a quite brown rendition on the area. My underlying concern was to actually verify that what I was seeing was true and not some anomoly on my system. I have been struggling to try to color the textures involved in my "flying area" (Pittsburgh, PA) but no luck as per the message series. You just cannot seem to dump new textures into World/Texture and make it work. More fiddling to do.Regards,Dick

[Holger 0]

Hi Dick,I should point out that FS does indeed have some sort of texture cache that includes the local land class ground textures. At least FS9 used this method and I assume FSX does too. Thus, you'll always have to shut down and re-start the sim to reliably have changes applied to the texture set, default or custom.The texture cache became obvious to me when I experimented with dynamic changes to the ground textures: I had started a flight and then, while the sim was running, replaced the entire default FS9 SceneryWorldtexture folder with a folder that contained BEV textures. Sure enough after a few minutes the default textures got slowly replaced by BEV textures until it was BEV textures only. That worked well but then I tried to reverse the process while the flight continued and FS9 refused to fully revert back to the default textures, even after a forced scenery refresh.The same phenomenon can bee seen when flying through a snow storm, which forces the sim to change all ground textures to "hard winter". Those hard winter textures will remain even if you then load a flight in a different season with good weather. You'll have to re-start the sim to get rid of the snow.Cheers, Holger

[nudata 10]

Holger,I have tried to always reload the program to "un-cache" things. Well, I finally tried to put the now red painted seven Fall textures in FS9 to see what would happen. Well they showed up nice and red as shown.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161414.jpgThses textures were copied from the FSX world/texture folder. I then loaded FSX at the same airport and that picture follows:http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/161415.jpgI have looked around my system for a cache since Microsoft has spread FSX files into several places. I could not find it. It has to be a cache that is other than the one mentioned in the Scenery Library window. Checked and unchecked that with no change. Because of the very significant increase in the size of the ground textures an "agressive" cache seems to be used. Maybe there is a clue inone of the CFG files.Regards,Dick near 5G8 (in the picture)