My obsession with the Il-76.

[unclegreg]

Some time ago I posted a question regarding the missing textures in the VC of the fs2004" Il-76 Cargo.zip" when viewed in FSX Sp2.The bitmaps are in the Texture folder but show up black.I opened the .mdl file with Notepad and right near the beginning are listed every bitmap in the texture folder except the ones in question-p1-t.bmp thru p6-t.bmp.Now I'm sure Notepad isn't the best program to use to open this file type but since I'm not a programmer it's all I got.Does anyone know what's going on with this and can it be ported over to FSX?By the way,to access the VC open the Aircraft.cfg and change the eyepoint to:
[Views]
eyepoint=53.52, -2.10, 13.21
I couldn't even begin to work with an mdl file,is anyone up for the challenge?
Thank you,
unclegreg

[mikecooling]

Don't worry about using Notepad... it's one of the most useful hack-aids in existence! That said, make sure you don't save any changes to the MDL file if you're not sure what you're doing with it.

The usual thing I'd suggest with all-black textures is that the texture IS being loaded but isn't of the expected type. However, if you're sure those VC textures aren't in the MDL then that's probably not the problem here.

Who's the publisher of the IL-76 you're using? It may be that you can find an updated model file with the VC stuff fixed (maybe even one that's rated as a proper FSX conversion).

[fxsttcb]

Some FS9 portovers to FSX exhibit the black VC. Hacking the model to "insert" the proper bitmap won't help.
It is still going to be a mapping issue with a MDL8MDLH compilation.
It is possible to cheat on some. In the panel.cfg [VcockpitXX] section you can try adding a bitmap that resides in the panel folder.

To see if that will work, make a bitmap that corresponds to the [VcockpitXX] section's size_mm= and pixel_size= entries.
I use bright red so there is no mistaking it.
Name it whatever, and put it in the panel folder, add this as the first line to the [VcockpitXX]: file=RedBitmapName.bmp.

If it shows up, then the real work starts! Finding the boundary limits, using contrasting colors, takes a long time.
Once the boundaries are found, you then create the visuals for the background.
Anything outside the limits needs to be pure Black(0,0,0) so that area will be transaparent.
FS9 models can also exhibit transparency issues with; time of day, and Nav/Panel Lights. Good Luck...Don

[edit] If you point us to a download, we can help see if there is a solution...

[mikecooling]

fsxttcb, thanks for that - I learnt something today

[unclegreg]

Thanx everyone for your advice.The base model can be found out there under: Il-76aircraft-62.zip,Il-76Cargo.zip,il-76td_2k4.zip and
35716-Il-76td-aeroflot-pack-CCCP-76467.zip.The last one I just got last night however it crashes everytime I choose it in FSX.I found it at
Avsim r us and it's supposed to be updated for FSX.The creators are-
Visual model Varnavskiy Sergey
simflight@narod.ru
Dynamic model Shevtsev Sergey
shevtsev@mail.ru
I haven't seen any other updates to this plane and I haven't tried to contact the creators.Thanx again for your help and good luck.
unclegreg