anthony31

Ummm . Never heard of that problem before but I'm thinking there is a bit of a problem with FSX generating the Z buffer rather than something wrong with the scenery in particular. Now, the Z buffer is a copy of the next frame to be drawn that every 3D program uses to store the depth of each pixel. As the program is generating the next frame it goes through the list of objects it needs to draw, works out all the angles and then it checks each pixel to be drawn against what is already in the Z buffer to see if the new pixel is before or behind whatever is already there. I do know that FSX does have some slight bugs with Z buffering particularly when you have set the visibility to less than unlimited. The fog that FSX creates can create anomalies at times. In particular, with things like the Lotussim style landing lights.

Sometimes it matters sometimes it doesn't. Here's a list of some things that need to go into default folders (and the folder they go into): effects files (Effects) autogen building textures (Texture) airport stubs to reset airport altitudes (must be read by FSX first to avoid a bug so these can end up in Scenery/World/Scenery) landclass tiles (these can go into addon scenery folders or replace the existing textures, like FTX Global does. When FSX comes across a landclass bgl it searches the texture folder associated with the scenery folder first and then falls back to the Texture folder)

My point was that sometimes that is the whole post (not just the title). So, the first question inevitably is "what download is it?"

I don't know if I could say they bother me. But I do know that I never reply to any of those posts. If someone can't be bothered writing a simple heading then I am not going to bother wasting time replying to them. I know what does bother me though, posts like this: "I've just downloaded a plane and the engines won't start. HELP!!!!". See if you can find the problem with the above question. Special thumbs ups for all those who get it right .

Just one other suggestion. If you have changed the airport altitude did you also create a new airport flatten with the new altitude (and excluded the previous one). The stock airport will have the airport polygon (ie the grassy area) and that will contain information about flattening the terrain. If you change the airport altitude you need to ensure that you exclude that polygon and create a new with the correct altitude.

Bill seems to have the answer I just put a reply into this thread which had 0 views and 0 replies: http://forum.avsim.net/topic/428043-twin-otter-x-extended-inspiration/#entry2869415 And it immediately went to 1 reply and 33 views.

Just a test of the 0 replies 0 views thing

Shader cache problem. This guy had the exact same problem (the distortion of the model is even just like your screenshots) http://www.simforums.com/forums/graphic-corruption_topic40066.html

One thing I would test is resetting the altitude to the same as the stock altitude and seeing if that fixes the problem. It could be the altitude bug with airports is causing the problem. The altitude bug works like this: The first airport file that is read by FSX (which is usually a stock airport) sets the airport altitude and makes it difficult for subsequent airport files (ie those higher in the scenery order) to overwrite the initial altitude setting. The way to overcome this bug is to create a stub airport with the correct altitude and put that into the default scenery files so that it is read first by FSX. If the problem only happens with the direct down view (and not in any other view) and it goes away when you set your airport altitude to the same as the stock airport I think it may be a bug you will have to live with. Unless, someone else can come up with the solution. Either way you will have narrowed down the cause of the problem.

Sorry, but my copy of ADE version 1.55.4860.23619 won't load the ad3 file you posted. You say you are trying to adjust the altitude of the airport? Are you aware of the FSX airport altitude bug? Did you read an follow the instructions in the ADE manual about "Change Airport Altitude".

Download link is not working. Why not try placing a small rectangle of airport ground polygon (ie the grassy bit) over the patch?

Thanks Bill I usually try to include an open hangar or two in my sceneries but it is never as good as it could be when parking inside the hangars due to the lack of shadows in FSX. As for the rain... well we can't have everything can we?

Sorry, couldn't be bothered watching the whole video to see if this was covered. But what would be cool is if, when you pull into an open hangar, shadows were cast over the aircraft and VC. I haven't got P3D V2 yet (will probably do so next month) so it would be cool to know if this happens.

I know how to do it and it's not that complicated if you know a bit of C programming. I don't need to do it though. Do you want to know how to do it? You need to write an exe simconnect program to read the appropriate aircraft.cfg to determine what payload stations there are in the aircraft. Then write an interface that will display those stations and allow the user to mod them. Then using simconnect one simply writes the new payload values directly into FSX. Doug Dawson has written a dsd fuel dump example which with considerable modification will achieve the desired results: http://www.douglassdawson.ca/

Apparently Google are working on a bot to trawl the PMDG forums for user names. :lol:

FSX will look in the following folders for aircraft objects (this is defined in the FSX.cfg, if you add some AI packages they may create a new SimObjectPaths folder pointer) [Main] User Objects=Airplane, Helicopter SimObjectPaths.0=SimObjects\Airplanes SimObjectPaths.1=SimObjects\Rotorcraft SimObjectPaths.2=SimObjects\GroundVehicles SimObjectPaths.3=SimObjects\Boats SimObjectPaths.4=SimObjects\Animals SimObjectPaths.5=SimObjects\Misc It is possible you have accidentally copied your Maule folder into one of these folders so a quick search of your SimObjects folder may be all that is necessary. If you have copied it somewhere else then FSX will not recognise the folder and you wouldn't be getting the error message. If you want to get your Maule back and can't be bothered searching for the duplicate Maule you could just edit the aircraft.cfg and change all the titles to something unique eg: "title= Maule M7 260C paint1" to "title= Maule M7 260C paint1new" remember there is one title for each [fltsim] entry and each [fltsim] entry represents one repaint. Also worthwhile would be looking through the whole of the aircraft.cfg for duplicate titles. Most [fltsim] entries are at the top of the file but they can appear anywhere in the aircraft.cfg. I have seen [fltsim] entries added to the end of an aircraft.cfg and they still work fine. AI traffic files reference aircraft by the title so normally you shouldn't do this for any default aircraft as it would mean they would disappear from your AI traffic plans but as you already have a duplicate of this aircraft.cfg somewhere it would mean the AI traffic files would still be able to find this mysterious duplicate.

Give it a chance I say. After a month or two the novelty may have worn off and people may be more constructive with their voting. Especially if Tom and the mods start smacking people for abusing the system. If, after that time, people are still abusing the system then I'm sure the mods will get together and re-evaluate it's effectiveness.

Don't laugh. I was reading through the Illustrated Parts manual of the T-28 when I was making it and when I saw the relief tube I thought "Should I model that as well? Nah, it's beneath the seat so no-one will miss it".

Some areas where drones may be used in commercial civilian operations: How about cargo planes? No need to risk pilots flying in the middle of the night and no passengers to worry about. Just the poor suckers who live near airports. Search and rescue? Well, maybe just the search part. Smaller cheaper drones means more drones and therefore wider coverage. Firefighting? This comes to mind after a fire fighting aircraft crashed last month in Australia killing the pilot. Any of these things will probably happen well before passenger flights become unmanned.

That is entirely possible. The developer could make one placement bgl file (ie scenery file) that places static jetways and another that places moving jetways. The user could then run a small utility that switches between the two bgl files. In fact, ORBX sometimes had a utility program with some airports which would switch on or off certain scenery elements using the technique of just changing the .bgl extension on some scenery files to .off. The issue of course is the extra development time making the moving jetways which are a fair bit more complex than static jetways.

Apparently I'd just be wasting my time.

Here is a quote from the jetways section which you may like to read: "The screen shot shows the default jetway. This one design is used throughout the simulated world. There is a performance cost in rendering animated jetways, so they only appear when the Scenery Setting is set to the maximum." So, the question is why are animated jetways more framerate intensive than non animated? Well, a simple non animated jetway can be one single part and will only make one drawcall (if the texture is mapped properly). In addition, again if the scenery is made properly, adding additional jetways will not increase the number of drawcalls due to the FSX texture batching. Drawcalls are important because these really kill framerates, far more than increasing polygons. If you can draw 50 jetways with only 1 drawcall you are doing really well. Animated jetways use bones animation and in the example in the SDK there are 8 bones in a single jetway. Animated parts do not use FSX texture batching. Having 8 animated parts means there will be at least 8 drawcalls (each animated part creates at least one new drawcall). Multiply by 50 jetways and you could have 400 drawcalls for animated jetways versus just 1 for non animated. And drawcalls have a very big impact on performance. Reducing drawcalls to the minimum possible should be the objective of all good scenery designers. It is also one of the things that all scenery designers have to consider. Performance vs appearance.

That's hilarious. Double thumbs up. Although you should know that reading that post while using P3D V2 would indeed be a breach of EULA (ie having too much fun).

Awesome!!! When's the release date? :lol:

This can be a pain. The computer name/AppData/Roaming/Microsoft/FSX/Controls/standard.xml is the correct file but I've never been able to just copy that file from one system to another. I think it is due to the joystick assignments within the standard.xml. ie these lines: <Name>Saitek Pro Flight Rudder Pedals{016BA200-07F1-11E2-8002-444553540000}</Name> The numbers and letters are a GUID and I think FSX assigns a new GUID with a new install and if they are not matching then you can get all sorts of problems. The best I've been able to do is to take the new standard.xml from FSX and then manually copy and paste the key commands from the old to the new without touching the joystick specific commands. Then all I have to do is assign those joystick controls in FSX.