MGS

Very helpful! I'll try your suggestions regarding POV. Thanks much.

This may be a dumb question, but, I purchased ver 1.20 and would like the new version. How do I get the upgrade without purchasing again? I only see an option to checkout. Also, is there a way to lower the pilot point of view to see out the side window in order to turn base to final and land? I assigned joystick buttons for this in x-plane, but it doesn't work with the 172SP. Thanks

I rate it a 5 out of 10. I've been trying to transition into XP10. The chief hindrances are the unrealistic, squirrely flight models for the default C-172 and Columbia 400, which detract. The barren airports and lack of any landmarks in major cities (US)don't help. Simply adjusting radio and nav frequencies is awkward. Pluses: OSM/autogen are excellent. Outstanding framerates at high scenery settings-I'm impressed. Night flying is just great. Maybe some payware GA will improve on the flight models? The sim has potential, so I tend to look past other minuses that come to mind.

Thanks Pascal. That helps a lot. I'm surprised I missed this when searching. I'll read more of this when I get home from work. Mark

Ok, Thanks for the info. Mark

I'd like to obtain photoreal scenery. I've seen g2xpl mentioned in various threads. However, it's not obvious where to get the program. Does it exist? Thanks Mark

I'm a newbie X-plane. I unzipped the .rar file. Where does the resulting folder go in X-plane? I'm guessing custom scenery? This thread has been a big help. Mark

Richard, your initial "Can't load texture.." has been a common problem with podded globe tiles--I assume you podded. It can very likely be solved by simply expanding the load boundaries for the lower left and upper right of the globe tile. You edit these in the scf file with notepad. Use the example below, which has load parameters which expand the bounds by one additional degree latitude and longitude. As for the second problem you describe concerning bad texture length, my guess is that this is probably unrelated to the first problem. I vaguely recall having that message when something was wrong with the tga file in the output directory of TS. I would start over and regenerate the tga. To be safe, I would make sure nothing from the first attempt at generating the globe time is present in the data directory or scenery directory of Fly2. Sample scf: ==== BEGIN SCENERY FILE ==== ---- scenery set name ---- erie TerraScene Scenery version x.x ---- coverage area lower left ---- 41 07 08.4 N 80 09 58.3 W ---- coverage area upper right ---- 42 11 53.5 N 78 44 24.0 W ---- load lower left ---- 39 07 08.4 N 82 09 58.3 W ---- load upper right ---- 44 11 53.5 N 76 44 24.0 W ---- pod file ---- erie.pod ==== END SCENERY FILE ====

Count me in!

A couple more suggestions:1. Turn off Fastwrites2. Set AGP speed to 4XYou may need to do this in the bios settings, then double check under the ati smartgart tab. I doubt the lower settings will affect the preceived speed. I don't know if the 9600 supports 8x agp.

I don't know if you are using winxp with dx9. I assume so. I also assume you did some routine things, such as check the video card in device manager and run dxdiag from the command line.Maybe I need not mention this, but I am unsure of the answer. I have the tri .dll's dated 4/19 and 5/2 in the system directory, and I think these are the ones in use by Fly2, because I remember not wanting to change them during the updates long ago. I have the 3/19 and 6/18 .dlls in the Fly2 main directory, which I don't believe are being used. Maybe you replaced the wrong .dlls? Someone will need to refresh my memory as to whether the ones in the system directory are the ones Fly2 is actually using.Here are some ideas. At least, I would try them if it were me. You might update the drivers if you are using the ones that came with the card. Maybe the old ones are incompatible with dx9. I don't know anything about this, just a guess.If you already upgraded the video drivers, you might rollback or reinstall the old ones, then reinstall the new ones. This seemed to have worked for me with my ati 9700 pro, but I had reason to believe I botched the update after installing dx9. My problem was an occasional blue-screen followed by an automatic reboot during some long flights. I had no video problems whatsoever until I started messing with dx9 and the driver upgrade.You could download and install the Omega drivers for the ati card. Go to http://www.omegacorner.com for links to these. I haven't tried them, so I can't vouch for them. You should know that these drivers are not supported by ati. I noticed that there were quite a variety of versions of the factory ati drivers also available via this website and its links.

Hi Roger. I've been pretty happy with 128 Meg with the ati 9700 pro. For me, probably the only big change in the render.ini has been to up the 256-565 slots to 81. Framerates haven't been much of an issue--about 75-85 fps in the 172 over default with 60 mi vis, med 12 mi, near 3 mi no ai aircraft. The worst case scenerio I have had is the night approach at Miles Carey's KBFI from the south (forget the runway, probably 36), where I get 28 fps with 4x AA and anis filtering at 4. My system is 2.53 GHz (1GB), latest ati drivers and directx9. Maybe someone has another approach which will bring the latest cards to their knees.

Wayne, thanks for KSBM. I've downloaded and installed most of them, but I especially appreciate those in Wisconsin.

I sure hated to uninstall my AVB FFB joystick driver and going back to the Sidewinder stick. On the other hand, I haven't crashed ever since, and its been just over two weeks now. I can now really appreciate that.

David, sorry to hear the logs were of no help. I guess you didn't get a blue screen with a message either, another possibility I mentioned above. From what you said earlier, you crash to the desktop, whereas in my case, I would completely lockup in a blank blue screen with no message, and there was no choice but to completely power off the system (unless I specified an option to reboot automatically, bypassing the blue screen). In your situation, I would probably roll back the video driver to the last version or even consider going back to a previous restore point when the configuration was reliable. I would exercise caution if doing the latter. Good luck.

David, I don't see the stop error code. I am not familiar with XP Home, but if you have three logs, an application log, security log, and system log, choose the system log. Also, the event source should be Save Dump rather than Application Error. At least this is the case in XP Pro. There is an alternative. If you get a BSOD in the next crash, you might notice a symbolic error name displayed at the top of the screen. That symbolic error could be very useful, since I have explanations for some of those, and under Technical information (further down the screen), you should see the STOP: which is followed by the stop error code. I will display a screen shot of where I look for stop errors. I hope it is legible. Of course, I can be wrong, because I knew nothing about XP two months ago.

Dave, you can access the Event Viewer under Control Panel, Performance and Maintainence, Administrative Tools. In Event Viewer click on the System log. You will see a scrolling list of files of the system log. Almost of them will be Information files. In one of the right hand columns under the heading Source, you'll see that one of these information files has the label Save Dump. That's it. It should match a date you crashed. Double click it. A box will open with a window in which there is a description. Here the error code comes after the statement : The bugcheck was:The above is for XP Professional. I don't know whether the above will match the XP Home version, since I don't have it.Good luck.

Dave, a digitally signed driver goes another step beyond WHQL, since the signature confirms the driver hasn't been tampered with by a virus or Trojan horse program. It also undergone the extensive compatibility testing as WHQL drivers. You would have seen a message during installation that the driver has not passed the Windows logo testing to verify its compatibility with Windows XP. The non-WHQL video driver could be your problem. Go ahead and post the stop code error and I'll look to see if I have an explanation for it.

Dave, you may be able to troubleshoot the problem by examining the XP event viewer. I had a similar problem with XP Pro which I eventually pinned down to the recent installation of an unsigned driver for my preferred AVB FFB USB joystick. I uninstalled that and used an old Sidewinder USB joystick, for which XP had a signed driver, and the problem went away. At least I hope forever. If XP Home has an event viewer that can be accessed via control panel's administrative tools folder (like XP Pro), then you can select the system log in the event viewer and scroll down the cryptic list until you find an entry Save Dump listed in the Source column. Double click that to open the Stop error information. In my case I discovered something called a bugcheck (under the description) that listed a stop error code 0x000000d1 plus some parameters. A little over a month ago I was completely clueless about windows XP and therefore bought Ed Bott's Windows XP book. His book explains many of the error codes, and I found that the stop error may have related to my installing some unsigned drivers. You may have a different error code for your situation.

I can't say my system is high powered, I haven't loaded Flightsimulator, and I can't say my framerates are optimized by any means. I just built a 2.53 GHz system paired with 1GB PC2700 ram, ATI 9700 Pro, and XP Pro and the directX8 that came with it. Maybe it is similar to yours. I installed everything straight out of the retail boxes, no tweaks, no driver upgrades, nothing! I don't have your scenery. However, at Scott Cannizzaro's KLGA (pretty demanding scenery) while taxing in the Cessna I get 33 fps and the same 33 fps while approaching Scott's NYC high detailed Manhattan scenery with 60 mi visibility, high detail 3mi, medium 11mi, 0AI aircraft, complex detail, no shadows, at daylight in clear weather; distance hiding radius=4 in fly.ini, 2x AA and a low anisotropy level (forgot) for the video card driver. Approaching JFK from the NW it's 27 fps with Scott's old JFK scenery, very demanding on fps, IMO. I have no idea if any of these fps are normal for the 9700 Pro in this scenery, but, frankly, I am amazed, given the richness and complexity of the scenery. Some venders sell non-Pro versions of the 9700, which has somewhat slower ram. I don't know what the fps hit would be in Fly2, but 10-15 fps seems unreasonable, despite my inexperience with the card. As for the render.ini, everyone has a version they embrace. For the above "stats" (for what they are worth), I used the render.ini below. Probably the most important tweak for me, was to up the 256_565 slots to 65 (mine are 75). The value of 65 accommodates the highest unique hits for this slot when flying from the NW towards Scott's JFK; my 700 MHz machine and Ti/200 card could not deal with this and fps plummeted below 10. The big surprise for me was the fact that I moved my Fly2 directory to the new machine with absolutely no change whatsoever and the program worked just fine, although I did have to delete the default.key and control.txt to avoid resets of my assignments for the keyboard /joystick each time I started Fly2. Big kudo for TRI for making such a migration possible by not having to deal with the registry. I am completely happy with the ATI 9700 Pro. I'm also extremely impressed (and clueless) with XP Pro. Now, if only I knew what to tell you. 10-15 fps seems unreasonable to me, I never saw anything less than 22 in all sorts of aircraft or Metars I've used on my system, if you wish to give any credence for my week's worth of my experience. I would look at the unique hits line when flying your scenery (hit tab twice). I focus on the maxTextures256_565 textures, as you can see below. mipLevelCount=5vertexIndexFormat=0premultiplyColorAndAlpha=0allowAutoMipMapping=0directTextureFlag=0[Textures]maxTextures32=20maxTextures32_565=20maxTextures64=16maxTextures64_565=110maxTextures128=72maxTextures128_565=340maxTextures256=25maxTextures256_565=75maxTextures512=8maxTextures512_565=0maxTextures1024=1mipMapFlag=896[NonAGP]maxTextures256_565=0[AGP]maxTextures256_565=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.

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.

Got smoke, though its behind the P51 some distance away.

David, I'd only be grasping at straws by offering advice, but I'll try anyway. Once I replaced the Atsroute.pod in the Fly!II system directory, as advised above by Didier, everything worked perfectly. I also tested the flightplan in Fly2.Before I replaced the old ATSroute.pod with the new one, I was getting almost the same access violation error message as yours. Apparently the access violation error you get occurs when you launch the program, whereas I was only getting it when I had reopened a saved flightplan I had previously created in Volnav (I was getting the Stream read error upon launch). Under your circumstances, I would go over the installation again as described in VolNaven.doc to be sure I had the directories and the files properly placed. You can check the nav.ini file in Notepad to see if the directory for your Fly!II installation is correctly identified; ditto for Infometar (see my post above, which pertains to my installation). I don't know if it matters, but I also expanded the sidstar samples into the sidstar directory under Fly!II. I wish I could be more help.Good luck.

Didier, your replacement ATSroute.pod did the trick. No errors on loading, I can create, save and reload the flightplan, and the aircraft appear in the listbox. I haven't tried it in Fly2 just yet (I just got home). That's next. I very much appreciate having your flightplanner.