St. Barthelemy Scenery Texture Problem

[arcueil]

A couple of years ago, I installed stbart04.zip by Francesco Romeo. This file fixes the terrain on the island in order to make approaches possible (MS screwed up the original).

I also installed st-barth.zip by Delblond Christian. This file is to make the airport attractive. The only thing I modified in this file was the soccer field texture in order to make the colors more realistic. (That mod was made by the developer and it is available in the second version of the add-on, which simplifies the airport surroundings a bit. That file is stbarth2.zip.)

In sum, I have used the Romeo fix with the original Christian scenery for over two years without a glitch.

About a week ago, I installed Zinertek's Ultimate Water Advanced. Today, I decided to fly from Cocoa Point, Antigua (COCO) to St. Barths (TFFJ), and lo and behold, I found the ferries that come with the Christian package to be devoid of texture! The ships are fine, but not the ferries, as you can see from the screen shots.

I removed the scenery from the simulator via the program, exited the sim, removed all the pertinent files (including the AFCAD and effects) and even the main Addon Scenery SCENERY.DAT file. I restarted the sim to let it rebuild the SCENERY.DAT file. I re-downloaded the Christian zip and re-installed it. I went to the sim and added the scenery in the usual way. I restarted the sim to let it update the database. I went to check out the ferries only to find that they still have no texture.

Obviously, something is preventing the sim from rendering these textures. ZUWA, perhaps? I'm at a loss... Please help. Thanx.

[opaplano]

A couple of years ago, I installed stbart04.zip by Francesco Romeo. This file fixes the terrain on the island in order to make approaches possible (MS screwed up the original).

I also installed st-barth.zip by Delblond Christian. This file is to make the airport attractive. The only thing I modified in this file was the soccer field texture in order to make the colors more realistic. (That mod was made by the developer and it is available in the second version of the add-on, which simplifies the airport surroundings a bit. That file is stbarth2.zip.)

In sum, I have used the Romeo fix with the original Christian scenery for over two years without a glitch.

About a week ago, I installed Zinertek's Ultimate Water Advanced. Today, I decided to fly from Cocoa Point, Antigua (COCO) to St. Barths (TFFJ), and lo and behold, I found the ferries that come with the Christian package to be devoid of texture! The ships are fine, but not the ferries, as you can see from the screen shots.

I removed the scenery from the simulator via the program, exited the sim, removed all the pertinent files (including the AFCAD and effects) and even the main Addon Scenery SCENERY.DAT file. I restarted the sim to let it rebuild the SCENERY.DAT file. I re-downloaded the Christian zip and re-installed it. I went to the sim and added the scenery in the usual way. I restarted the sim to let it update the database. I went to check out the ferries only to find that they still have no texture.

Obviously, something is preventing the sim from rendering these textures. ZUWA, perhaps? I'm at a loss... Please help. Thanx.

Did you back up your texture folders before installing ZUMA?

Does ZUWA come with an option to revert to all of the original textures it replaces? If so, I would try that and see if the ferries now have textures.

Then I would try installing ZUWA to a temporary or dummy FS folder on your desktop so you can see exactly what textures are replaced etc. and compare that with the default. You should be able to track down the texture which is different and/or required.

If worst comes to worst, once you see what textures ZUMA replaced, you can always restore just what you need from the install disks or from your backup if you made one.

That is how I would go about it - Hope that helps.

[Avechelice]

Hello,

I used ZUWA and use actually ZUW (question of taste)
It will be strange if the fact to install the Zinertek textures will change some of the object textures.
The Zinertek textures concern water textures.
I never had such problems using the Zinertek water products.
Maybe your addon objects (ferries.. etc ..) use a modified water texture ? (It's weird anyways)
Nota:
ZUWA don't make a textures backup.

a temporary or dummy FS folder

If you want make a dummy install of ZUWA you will need to make temporary folder
Nota:
Zinertek installer search in the registry for FS2004 entries !
So for that .. you can use the famous "registry tweak" software available in the flightsim library and indicate as new path for FS2004 who will be your temporary folder


FS2004 TweakFS Path Utility

[ Download | View ]

Name: fs9pathu.zip Size: 593,179 Date: 08-10-2005 Downloads: 1,514
FS2004 TweakFS Path Utility, v1.1. Features Repairs the FS2004 path in the Windows Registry; Checks the registry path for the FS9.exe file; Warns if the registry path is missing; Sets the registry path for the FS9.exe file; Warns if the FS9.exe is not in folder on clicking the "Set" button; Avoids the need to reinstall FS2004 in the event of registry corruption; Searches for the FS9 Reg key in the Windows RegEdit program.

Direct link:
http://www.flightsim.com/kdl.php?fid=91879

After the install in the dummy folder you can run again the registry tweak software for restablish the legit path of FS2004

Regards.

[arcueil]

Thanx for the responses, fellars.

I installed ZUWA to a dummy folder but I found nothing odd. I also checked to see if High Definition Environment (HDE) or Airland had anything to do with the problem; I removed both and went back to default. Still the same...

In order to recreate the problem, I installed on another computer both St. Barth addons, along with ZUWA, HDE and Airland, in that order. The ferries showed up fine, which makes sense because I could have sworn that these ferries looked normal when I flew above the island a day before I noticed the problem on the other computer.

It seems that something has been corrupted or changed in the sim. Now I'm paranoid that there are issues elsewhere in the sim world and I'm not keen on re-installing, to say the least. My last backup is a few months old...

I need help on this one. What do I do?

[StringBean]

Those ships are from an object library titled shiplib1.bgl

I suspect you have that installed in an active scenery folder that does not have all the needed textures in the associated texture folder.

Search your system for shiplib1.bgl

In each instance of that file you find, there must be all the needed textures in the associated texture folder.

The problem child is not necessarily in the St Barts scenery.

The file is in the library - shipliba.zip

You could also download it and place all the image files in your main FS9 texture folder.

This situation most commonly is caused by scenery developers including an object library in their package, but not including all the textures.

Hope this help.

peace,
the Bean

[arcueil]

Thanx Bean, but I had already checked for that. The textures are in the texture folder of the Christian scenery. In other words, the textures are there, but they won't render (that is, only the ferries won't render). Like I said on my first post, this scenery was working perfectly for two years.

I had also downloaded shipliba.zip yesterday -- it can't hurt to install that anyway. That said, I do not want to install it just yet because since the scenery always worked fine prior to this odd happening, I want to find out what is actually causing the problem. In other words, for two years shipliba.zip was not installed, yet the scenery worked perfectly because the ferry textures were in it to start with. So...

What is causing this blank texture on the ferries?

(I attached two screenies to show that an installation of shipliba.zip is not necessary. These shots were made on my other computer.)

[StringBean]

Did you search for other instances of shiplib1.bgl?

I will bet dollars to donuts you have at least one other instance it, somewhere in an active scenery folder.

A further test for you would be to remove shiplib1.bgl from the St.Barts Scenery folder and test.

It does not matter if the textures are in the St. Barts texture folder if you have another instance of shiplib1.bgl that does not have the textures needed.

As Windows loads files into memory for FS to use it will load the first instance of a file that it finds. It will only load one instance of that file and completely ignore any other instances of the same file.

In the case of an object library it will look in the associated texture folder for that instance of the library, and the main FS texture folder for the bitmaps.

If it does not find them, it will display the model without textures, as you can see.

This is why it is a bad idea for scenery designers to include generic object libraries in their scenery packages.

peace,
the Bean

[arcueil]

Thanx, Bean. That makes sense. My Tortola scenery (by the same developer) uses shiplib1.bgl, but without the ferry textures because it does not use ferries, just one big ship.

Let me see if I really understand (please let me know if this is correct or incorrect):

There are two shiplib1.bgl files, one for St. Barths and one for Tortola. The one for St. Barths uses the ferries and their textures are in the St. Barths scenery folder. The one for Tortola does not use the ferries, therefore, the textures aren't in the Tortola scenery folder. When the sim started in St. Barths, it accessed the shiplib1.bgl for Tortola, but since that scenery does not contain the ferry textures, the sim did not render the ferries in St. Barths (due to the sim sticking to the folder where the bgl was first found).

Is this right?

I'm writing this from work, but I'm about to go home. I'll try your suggestion of removing the St. Barth bgl. I'm not sure why that may fix the problem, based on what you wrote, but I'll give it a shot. (Would it not be better to remove the Tortola shiplib1.bgl instead?)

[arcueil]

Bean, your observation was intimately related to the solution. I was going to do the experiment you suggested, first by removing the St. Barths shiplib1.bgl and then the Tortola (after re-instating the St. Barth one). Before doing that, it occurred to me that since this was indeed almost certainly an issue of scenery priority (as you implied), then the problem may be solved by changing the order of priority. I went to the scenery library in the settings and placed the St. Barths scenery above the Tortola one. That did the trick. Now the sim loads St. Barths first, and since the Tortola scenery does not use the ferries, both render correctly. I guess that the day before I noticed the problem, I had in fact not seen the St. Barth ferries with their full textures. My memory must have been playing tricks on me. BTW, I did not install the Tortola scenery until about three weeks ago, and I did not fly at St. Barths until the day before I noticed the problem, hence me thinking that everything was AOK. Thanx for the help!

[StringBean]

Glad to see you sorted this issue out!

Let me see if I really understand (please let me know if this is correct or incorrect):

There are two shiplib1.bgl files, one for St. Barths and one for Tortola. The one for St. Barths uses the ferries and their textures are in the St. Barths scenery folder. The one for Tortola does not use the ferries, therefore, the textures aren't in the Tortola scenery folder. When the sim started in St. Barths, it accessed the shiplib1.bgl for Tortola, but since that scenery does not contain the ferry textures, the sim did not render the ferries in St. Barths (due to the sim sticking to the folder where the bgl was first found).

Is this right?

Exactly.

I'll try your suggestion of removing the St. Barth bgl. I'm not sure why that may fix the problem, based on what you wrote, but I'll give it a shot. (Would it not be better to remove the Tortola shiplib1.bgl instead?)

Removing the shiplib1.bgl from St. Barts would have changed nothing in the sim, proving that FS was not using that instance of shiplib1.bgl.


When FS finds more than one instance of an object library .bgl it will use the one with highest priority for all sceneries that call on that .bgl.

I like the work of D. Christian, but am not fond of his practice (or anyone else who does the same) of including generic object libraries in their downloads.

In the case of the Tortola scenery he took the time and effort to weed out the textures not needed for that scenery. A noble effort to minimize the file size. Inadvertently his attempts to do a good deed resulted in using both his time, and the time of the end-user to sort out the problems that arose at a different scenery.

A better approach would have been to simply list in the readme what generic object libraries he used and that the end-user is required to have for the sceneries to display properly.

In his defense, these addons have been around for a while now and we know a lot more about how FS works now than we did back then.

And I can't be too critical of anyone who gives their time and efforts freely, so that we can have an enhanced experience.

For that, I am grateful.

peace,
the Bean