more file not found errors

[Guest]

As I've been trying to make some longer flights in the Hawker, I'm having a rash of "File not found" errors that bump me out to the desktop. I've always had these, but mostly on the "FULLTEX*" files, which I "solved" by un-podding those fulltex* files into the data directories. That makes the problem go away for those files, but every once in a while I get the same error on some other file from a scenery pod. Here's an example from my GTFO.txt file:Msg: Can't load texture DATAd16716163A2C16D4.RAW: File not foundFile: texture.cpp line 1376The file is of course actually present in the POD. This happens just enough to be really annoying. The last 4 times I've tried a 300+ mile flight in the hawker, I've gotten this message and crashed out to the desktop in mid flight.I don't consider extracting the entire POD to the data directory to be a very viable solution, but short of that I don't know how to solve this. It'd sure be nice if texture.cpp was at least a little more robust against "missing" textures, but the larger issue is why are they missing when they are present in the POD file?Unfortunately I think I have to put my use of Fly on hold until I have a solution for this, because it's just too frustrating to do all the flight planning and preparation for a flight, starting the plane, tunning of radios, etc etc only to crash to the desktop at random times in the middle of the flight.I don't know if this is related, but I still have intermittent problems with podded scenery going missing. It seems something is just fubar with pods. I'm probably stressing the program quite a bit, because I have currently some 22 Gb of podded globe tile terrain. But I think my system itself is solid, because I have around 14 other games installed that run flawlessly, and it runs the folding@home client 24/7 with months of uptime.Sigh...John/madmax

[Guest]

I too have had this happen to me on local flights. I spend time planning a flight and turning final to just get bumped out to the desktop. I have forgotten my particular error though. I recently changed my graphics card ATI 7000 Raedeon but I'm not sure that's the problem though.Steve GatesSoCal

[MGS 0]

John, that was the typical error message I would get, which I could always eliminate by expanding the load boundaries by 1 degree in the scf files of the globe tiles. More often than not this error message pointed to a Fulltex* file, just as in your case. I remember you expanded the load boundaries some time ago. So I am puzzled why you are getting the error. Maybe some globe tiles were overlooked? Another thought, maybe the Fulltex* files should be included in the pod along with the rest of the files for the globe tile, rather than placed in the Data directory. I know that once I expanded the load boundaries, the message went away, and never returned to haunt me, even when Fly!ing the Hawker, but in my case I kept all the files of each globe tile podded, including the Fulltex* files. Good luck.

[Guest]

I'll double check my .scf files to make sure they all got the expanded boundaries, and perhaps I'll expand them some more as well, just for giggles.I'll try removing the fulltex files from the data dirs too, but I seem to get far more desktop crashes that way.I feel I should really try to figure something out here, if for no other reason than to honor all the work Richard put into this sim. I just don't know what to do though. It's frustrating because I'm fairly certain that armed with the source code and a debugger, I could solve the problem - but without, I feel like I'm working blind.Thanks for you reply,John/madmax

[Guest]

Here's a screenshot of one tile I'm having a lot of troubles with - it is 167,161. The render below is what happens if I render the default in Terrascene with no water mask. You can see some strange blocky areas near the coast - these show up very similarly if I do render a water mask.Also, this tile seems more far prone than others to crashes out to the desktop with the "file not found" errors on various .RAW files in the POD. I wonder if the strange blocks could be related.There's also some strange rectangular "land" offshore that shouldn't be there, but I can edit that out with the GIMP before slicing the bitmaps I guess.John/madmax

[MGS 0]

John, that looks similar to a problem slicing offshore Terrascene tga's with an early version of the Fly2 editor. Someone with a better memory than I may be able to help. At any rate, that problem was cured with the 230 patch, so I don't know what happened in your case. However, you could try the old fix, which was to edit the fulltex*.opa files, first by copying them to a new directory, changing the extension to fulltex*.raw, then editing them in Paintshop Pro, which can read *.raw files (I don't know if GIMP can read these). You then rename them back to fulltex*.opa files. However, I am wondering if the problem you see relates to your keeping the fulltex files separate in the data directory rather than podded with the others, in which case unpodding everything and placing the files in the data directory would provide a test. If you still see the problem, then maybe something can be learned by editing the opa files,as above?I don't know.

[Guest]

Hi Mark,That screenshot above was with no more fulltex* files in the data dir (I deleted them all for all tiles).The other weird thing is that sometimes that area shows up OK. If I just enter the sim, teleport over to (say) MFR, and slew over there, it looks perfectly fine. Go figure.The tip about an old slicer is a good one. As soon as I find my original Fly2 disk again (I just moved, so it's packed away somewhere), I will reinstall and repatch up to 240 and see if this helps me any. Thanks very much for that info; I'm desparate for any tips I can get at this point!John/madmax

[Guest]

Ok, I just checked my fly2slice.exe, and it claims itself to be version 230. Hmm.John/madmax

[Guest Colins2]

JohnJust an idea here that might be worth checking.The 'offshore' land blocks obviously don't exist in reality but as far as Fly! is concerned, they may do.You are covering them up with en edited watermask, but to Fly! they still exist.Fly! maps the whole (Fly!)world with a 1 byte value for each ground tile. It is either a land texture, or a water texture. This is where the 'sinking taxiways' come from.You could try getting Elrond & Jim Kanold's Ground Tile Transform from the library and changing these offshore blocks of land to water.You would need to slew over the blocks in turn and note the ground tile numbers in the editor, before using the transformer.I have no idea if this will solve your problem but it seems logical. All the above assumes that there is an error in the Fly! data. If the error is in the d/l USGS data then 'painting' out the errors is the only way.You can check this by temporarily moving the pod somewhere else and slewing/flying over the area just with generic scenery.Colin