Tailoring FSX to ones liking

[jandjfrench]

Hi,

Whenever I add an aircraft one of the first things I do is to modify it according to my wishes. For me this generally consists of eliminating popup windows that don't emulate a handheld device and replacing them with "cameras" that are close to what one would actually see from the pilot's position. For something like a handheld GPS, I like it brought up by the same button regardless of aircraft and similarly with the Apchart gauge which displays the airport layout with additional info such as frequencies and altitude. I don't care for prop strobing, heavily tinted windows, and unnatural zoom views and address each of these accordingly.

Now for the "why" of this post. Today, I was adapting an old FS9 Carenado C182RG for use in FSX and ran into several problems modifying it and thought it would be helpful to share the info and couldn't find a suitable location. Rather than a separate post dealing with each of the problems it seems like a central location dealing solely with modification problems and their solutions would be a good idea. Any ideas?

To cite a specific example: the prop strobing effect was minimal and I decided to leave it alone but after converting the bmp textures to dds I noticed a strange "looping" effect related to the prop rotation. I restored the bmp and all was fine. On a previous occasion I noticed this looping and never found out what was causing it. So I thought it worthwhile to post this in case anyone else ran into this.

Jim F.

[napamule2]

Here is a post at fsdeveloper that might help you:

 

by 'Mike JG'

'' .....using prop animation ratio, in this case using a value of 1.05.

 

The picture on the right (bottom) is the same exact thing, with one exception, the actual prop texture file used in the picture on the right (bottom) DOES NOT have an alpha channel applied to it in its DXT3 format. What you get is the standard FS9 semi-transparent prop disk that wobbles a little to give the look of the rotating motion.

 

So it seems that the key to using the prop animation ratio is that you also have to have an alpha channel applied to your actual prop texture. In this case, this texture was created by Graham King and the actual alpha layer is a negative of the actual prop, that has been blurred on each side to look like a fuzzy prop. Combine that with the prop animation ratio, and an alpha layer in the prop material and you get a very nice result (top pic) indeed.''

 

A 'prop_anim_ratio= -1.73' ,for example, reverses the prop rotation.

Chuck B

Napamule

[jandjfrench]

Hey Chuck,

Having been around real aircraft I don't care for what I see in either of the pictures. It's very hard to see any hint of a rotating prop. It seems like what the designers are trying to simulate is what a camera might see and not what a human sees. But to clarify what I saw after converting the bmp was something like a fine wire loop whose speed of rotation varied with engine speed. Hard to describe and rather weird looking. In most cases where i find the strobing offensive I just create a near black alpha channel and that makes it close to invisible. The strobing was so minor in this case I didn't even bother to do it here.

I did have another problem when I tried to lighten the window tint. After darkening that alpha channel and refreshing it in DXTBmp, when I saved the file the alpha channel wasn't saved. I solved this by after darkening saving the alpha to the desktop and then imported it as a new alpha and saved and all was well. Not sure why simply refreshing after edit didn't work. Not a big problem but just odd.

Jim

[il88pp]

I noticed the same thing with saving. Saving the alpha to desktop inbetween works great.

(it may have to do with having the alpha open in the editor (Gimp or Paint for example) while also saving in dxtbmp. Closing Gimp/Paint first, then saving with dxtbmp, may help.

 

 

You get a similar thing with editing the image itself. Looks great in editor, reload after edit and still looks great, but save in dxtbmp and all colours are shifted.

 

Save image on desktop first, and then use 'import new image' to load the saved file, does work.

[jandjfrench]

Hi il,

I'm pretty sure that just importing after editing used to work. I was afraid that I was just doing something wrong. As I'm not alone in this it seems likely that there has been some change in the OS. I'm using Win 7 now and perhaps it was in XP that there was no problem.

Jim