hjwalter

Hi all ye experts out there, I'm definately an airport scenery enhancement fanatic and extensively use the EZ object placemant program to make my many addon airports/airfields look a lot less "deserted". However, many of the positioned static library objects, especially some trees/forests/apron vehicles, etc. have the nasty habit of popping up at very close and unrealistic distances to my flyable aircraft, while others become correctly visible at far greater and more realistic distances. As a result, flying "low and slow" over such airports/airfields, can sadly not be classified as "eye candy". I've taken a good look at some of the textures involved but as far as I can see they are all "technically" mipped in the same way and have the same (DXT1) sizes. Furthermore, I have as yet no way of checking whether or not all the mipped versions of each texture are actually present and active. Is it possible that some of my "mipped" textures are not actually mipped in the way that they should be and that this is the basic cause of my problem ? Any ideas anyone. Regards Hans

Does your problem concern default aircraft or addon ones ? Did you install your FS2004 strictly according to it's standard install procedure ? If so, I would want to advise you to do a complete un-install followed by a so called "custom install", preferrably into a separate HD partition outside the one which contains your Windows system. Regards Hans

I assume you are referring to a multi jet or turbine engined aircraft. Is it a default plane or an addon one ? Normally the reverse thrusters are activated by the F2 key, combined with engines at idle and in many cases only at landing speeds and not when just parked somewhere. Are you using a programmable reverser button on a separate flight stick, yolk or any other hardware of that nature ? If so, then you will need to re-assign all their functions, especially after a complete FS9 re-installation, which has re-instated all it's default assignments. Good luck. Hans

Peter, Your problem sounds very strange indeed and especially if you didn't touch any of your manual controls during your ILS approach and which could have resulted in your AP automatically switching itself off. Are you sure you didn't get too close to your stalling speed during your approach ? Hans

Ben, Dutch FS9 mag beslist niet in zijn default positie ge-installeerd worden maar liefst via een "custom install" in een andere partitie dan die waarin je Windows woont. Doe je dat niet dan kunnen er onberekenbare problemen ontstaan en daar lijken de door jouw genoemde problemen zeer sterk op. English FS9 should never be installed in it's default position but should be installed via it's "custom install" option, preferrably in a different partition than the one in which your windows lives. Failing to do this will result in unpredictable problems and your's certainly sound typical of this. Hans

Hi Peter, For batch converting DXT3 textures to DXT1 I've been using the freeware CONVIM program, which has many possibilities. Take care though and make sure you've safely backed up the to be converted texture folder contents before letting CONVIM "do it's thing" on them. Also be aware that not all DXT3 textures actually like being converted, most likely as the result of very specific processing methods used by their respective BGLs and that strange color issues can therefore be the result with some of them. E.g. In my FS9 I had also converted my huge main texture folder but afterwards I needed to restore all textures beginning with "sky....." from my backup. Even if no problems are seen directly after conversion, it remains strongly adviseable to keep your backups for a few weeks because of possible "delayed action" problems. Good luck and take care. Hans

Hi there John, After busting my brains for hours, while dreading the prospect of having some kind of structural Windows7 issue, I suddenly remembered my blurry problem from not too long ago and where my "solution" was to systematically convert all my scenery (related) textures to DXT1. Well, my blurries were certainly gone but it turned out later that some textures evidently did not like being converted in this way and needed to be re-set back to their originals. One of these texture series, namely the one used by the SBuilder program itself, now turned out to also dislike being converted and which now caused my "delayed action" and completely unexpected run-time issue. I re-installed it's original textures from my backup and PRESTO !! Problem solved and a huge sigh of relief on my part. Thanks for your reaction, which did in fact did put me on the right track. Hans

Hi all, I've been using SBuilder to create more realistic looking airport/airfield ground polygons for years and without any problems but now suddenly I get "Run Time error 481 invalid picture" messages at the moment that I select the preferred new ground texture itself. I'm (still) using Win7 but when I read about the problem on the internet, it looks as though the problem is related to some kind of internal Windows(7) problem and seems to definately not be a simple one. Does anyone have any experience with this problem ? Regards Hans

Hi Guys, I'm slowly beginning to realise that I have finally solved the blurry problem at my addon (TAPA) airport, which in my FS9 was notorious for blurries. I firstly followed Tom Gibson's advised method for determining the direction at which my blurries kept occurring, then slewing in that direction for about half a mile and again determining the direction at which the blurries occurred. I repeated this process until I was about 5 miles from the airport and where it became obvious that the blurries had nothing to do with the airport's textures themselves but must be a general, default or an autogen texture, somehwere far away. The first thing I then did was to mip all the textures in my huge main texture folder via the Mipmap Manager program, which took about an hour. However, the texture names beginning with "sky..." evidently did not like being mipped and which resulted in very strange colour effects throughout my whole FS9. I restored all of these "sky..." textures from the backup, which at least solved the colour problems .... but .... not my blurries. I then did the same for my also huge EZ and RWY12 static library object texture folder, after which I did my best to re-create the blurries at the above airport but whatever I tried, no blurries and almost normal frame rates during my most drastic slewing (test) operations. Blurry problem solved, at least in my FS9 setup !! A huge sigh of relief, even although I was not able to find which culprit texture it actually was. A very happy.... Hans

Peter, If blurries are temporary it almost always means that your graphics card (or system} is initially being overwhelmed and needs to catch up after any of your view changes, (= "texture swapping"}. You in fact need a more powerfull (and more expensive) graphics card. Aircraft having one or more blank textures is very strange indeed and especially if the related textures then sowly begin to appear. Regards Hans

3Green, After having been involved in this very interesting thread, more or less from it's very beginning, it seems that blurries can be caused by many things, as you correctly point out.....BUT..... I've always ben lead to believe that ALL objects which can be viewed from varying distances, e.g. ground scenery objects, airports, trees, etc. must have mipped textures and this should therefore also be true for AI plane textures. Only flyable planes are exempt from mip-mapping because thay are normally never viewed from varying (and greater) distances. This is the way I've always understood it: The human eye can only see maximum details of any object at close quarters but as the distance increases these details become less and less visible, untill finally the object itself disappears from view. However, with PC graphics systems this is quite different because at great distances the texture details will still be rendered (= worked on) by the graphics card, even although the object itself is no longer visible to the viewer. Hence the mip-mapping concept, whereby each (primary) texture has a number of linked copies behind it, each getting less and less detailed, until the last one is (almost) blank. The technology behind this is to releave the PC graphics (card) system of unnecessary work, all for the good of the highest possible frame rates. My PC specs: CPU Intel i7 3930, 6 core Memory 32 Gb. 2 SSDs in RAID-0 setup for my Win7 Proffessional 64bit. Original from the DVD(s). Never been updated. 1 larger SSD for my FS9 and other data. Graphics card: AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series. 3072Mb GDDR5 memory. Core Clock 900Mhz. Memory clock 1250Mhz. Memory bandwidth 240Gb My PC has never had an internt connection and consquently no Windows7 updates. Comments please, anyone ? Regards Hans

Hey Guys, I ran up against a hefty blurry problem at one of my Mexican airports but after structurally adding mipmaps to all of it's textures via a freeware utility named "Mipmap Manager", the blurry problem, at least at this particular airport, was solved. Hans

Yes, I found the three Sydney Schwartz's texture update files and have in the meantime, downloaded them. During a day of hard work I searched my whole FS9 system for each of Sydney's replacement textures but found only a few of them actually active in some of my (very much dated SCASM-type) sceneries, the rest just sitting in my main texture folder as ballast and which will all be deleted shortly, together with the mostly RWY12 BGLs, which call for them. I checked the active textures by opening them one by one and re-saving them, while at the same time making sure that at least their alpha channels and/or mips were correctly replaced. However, no problematic textures were found and my whole day's work did therefore not help my blurry problem in any way. No problems were afterwards seen in their related sceneries either. Blurries being hardware related ? It's now become my opinion that especially the temporary blurries, are (also) caused by graphics cards being overwhelmed by very strong texture swapping, in turn being caused by, e.g. slewing around too quickly and/or by zooming out too quickly in complex scenery combinations. As soon as the graphics card is able to catch up, those blurries quite suddenly disappear, at least in my own FS9. However, I must also confirm that under normal flying conditions I've never (yet) seen blurries, but only when "messing around" in complex airport sceneries, in combination with mesh, LC and other enhancements, e.g. extra added EZ statics, etc. Hans

The AI plane which seemingly caused my blurries was a Shorts SD3-60 turbo-prop and the model was made by Dee Waldon. However, I must repeat that I could not really find anything wrong with the 5 different AI paints I have of this model and which were all of the correct looking sizes. Just to be sure and as a kind of last resort, I'm now going through the massive copy of my World texture folder, in order to standardise it's contents to DXT1 format and to structurally add or replace all their mips. If that has no effect on my blurries then I can always go back to the backup of this folder. Regards Hans

On your kind advice and a possible solution for blurries I found and downloaded Sydney Schwartz's textures but before actually installing them I did a check to see if I actually already had any of them hidden somewhere in my FS9 system. I found none, so my blurries are still winning. Hans

Hi Guys, While doing something else "constructively" I waited for hours in a stationary slew position at my (ex-)blurry airport and saw many AIs land/take off normally and which included the AI of which I had had re-saved it's textures, now most probably with mips. The only conclusion I can therefore now come to is that it was the absence of an AI plane's texture mipmaps, which had caused the sudden blurries. Moreover, all the airport's textures were mipped correctly and when suddenly a non-mipped AI aircraft appears, it could cause a graphics system rendering problem (= blurries), at least that sounds logical to me. Completely separate from the above I also found that zooming out too quickly in "top-down view", is a definite cause of (tempory) blurries, especially when complex (addon airport) sceneries are concerned, as JGF points out when slewing around too fast. Now then, back to my other "blurry" airport TAPA, where I will try Tom Gibson's procedure. Hans

Sounds very logical indeed but maybe one of you can also comment on the following: 1. During any first slew such blurries can appear quite often but if I just wait a few minutes they suddenly disappear, leaving everything crisp and clear again. In this situation I can, in spot plane view, now slew aroud at maximum speed, at different altitudes and zoom settings, without any blurry problems ??? 2. I was watching the active runway from a stationary slew position when an AI aircraft suddenly came into view as it was landing. Bang !! The blurries were immediately there again and without me slewing. A possible bad AI texture or model ?? I shut down my FS9, opened the AI plane's aircraft file, changed it's aircraft type so that it became selectable and checked it's visible appearance from close up. No problem, it was perfect as far as "perfect" goes for AI aircraft and that included it's contact points. I opened it's textures, saw nothing out of the ordinary and re-saved them in their standard DXT3 format, as they were previously. I did the same for the other paints. I re-opened the previously saved "flight" at the same airport and slewed back to the same position, waiting for the "culprit" AI aircraft to (re-)appear and land. Well, it did appear and even landed normally, only this time without the blurries !!! Blurry problem solved ?? I just cannot believe it because nothing has really changed, except that this AI aircraft's textures have been opened and re-saved ?? Only now possibly including mips ?? What if this AI aircraft would be parked normally in it's original form somewhere on this airport, while one of us would be making a normal approach for landing ?? Would it also cause the blurries as soon as it came into view, even if it was not (yet) actually visible ?? I'm testing further. Hans

Hi Guys, Well, I really thought that a dicey looking "Trees.bmp" file was the cause of my blurries at one of my addon airports but unfortunatly the blurries are back again, although it now takes longer for them to appear, especially when slewing around on the ground. A second bad texture somewhere, maybe ? Could also be a bad texture somewhere outside the direct airport texture folder itself or simply that my graphics card is somehow being overwhelmed. Anyway, I'm testing further. Regards Hans

Oops !! I must have touched a wrong button somewhere on my laptop because my post above was not yet completed before it was actually posted. Sorry for that. Anyway, the wire mesh of the fence in this DXT1 BMP file was barely visible and quality-wise very bad, while the black (alpha channel) areas displayed white blotches here and there, making it possible, at least in my mind, that rendering such a texture would almost certainly cause problems of some sort somewhere along the line. I did a file name search through my whole system and found quite a few with the "Trees.bmp" name, some of which even had different contents. I then simply (test-)deleted this texture file from the airport's texture folder, while now expecting some non textured objects to appear in the scenery concerned but this was not the case .... and .... no blurries either !! It therefore seems that the BGL concerned had found the same texture file but of a better quality somewhere in my main FS9 texture folder. Problem seemingly solved but I'm testing further. Regards Hans

Hi Guys, I've been having this blurry problem at one of my tropical airports for years as well and have lately been doing much testing with the textures, more or less like John suggests. It now seems and I repeat "it seems" that a texture named "Trees.bmp" is my personal culprit. When opening this rather low quality DXT1 texture it shows some tropical (cocont type) palm trees, part of a fence and a seemingly bad quality alpha channel black area. E.g. The wire mesh fance

Col, AI aircraft not landing at their flight VFR planned destination airfields but instead flying off into the blue yonder, is caused by high ground getting in the way of their "straight in" approaches, something which I can confirm after intensive testing a few years ago. I was able to see such approaches taking place by parking a radar equipted jet fighter next to the runways at such airfields and then waiting untill I could see the approaching AIs from 40 Nm away. The radar image also included their altitudes, speeds and flight numbers. The AIs all made their initial approaches correctly every time but after clearing the high ground, they were evidently no longer able to descend steep enough for correct landings, which were consequently aborted. Such aborts were followed by (partial) new approachs but in the end they all just flew away untill disappearing off the radar screen, My solution for most of these irregularities was to change the wind direction at these airfields and in such a way that the AIs approached the opposite ends of the runways ...... if ...... there was no high ground getting in the way there as well. In one case my last resort was even to install flattens to reduce the offending high grounds, e.g. in Nepal and in Switzerland. AIs flying IFR do not have this problem but instead they just fly straight through any high ground getting in their way. Regards Hans

Bernard, Addon AI aircraft are normally not selectable from the "Select aircraft" drop down menu, simply because they are not meant to be flyable or even be viewed from very close up by FS9 pilots. However, they MUST all be present in the standard FS9 aircraft folder, together with all the rest, flyable or not. Being selectable or not depends on an "aircraft type" entry in each and every aircraft's AIR file, whereby 2 = AI and 0 (zero) = flyable and is therefore selectable. Addon AI aircraft normally have very simple (= basic) textures, no panels or specific sound folders, otherwise they could cause frame rate issues when many of them become active or come into view at the same time at or around any of your airports. In the initial default FS9 setup all default aircraft are both AI and flyable, all having panels and sound files but because there are not so many of them flying around as AIs and are more or less evenly spread out all over the world, they do not cause frame rate issues. However, in my own FS9 setup I have created separate and simplified AI versions of them anyway. Getting your addon AI aircraft to actually become active, is normally done manually via a separate program, e.g. in my case, the trusty freeware "TTools" program, which has it's own list of AI aircraft, directly linked to those in the standard FS9 aircraft folder. It also has a list of all (FS9 default) airports/airfields and finally also the main list containing all the active "Flight plans". After having added any e.g. new flightplans via this TTools program, the edited or new files are compiled directly to the "Traffic030528.BGL" file in the FS9 default Scenery/World folder and it's this file which takes care of most of the AI activity within FS9, even although separate traffic files, e.g. as part of addon sceneries, can also exist. I have no experience with extra downloaded addon flight plans but I must assume that these are installed directly into the above mentioned "Traffic030528.BGL" file. However, I must also assume that by doing so the danger will emerge that the new flight plans, although having been installed correctly, are still missing the now also necessary new AI aircraft models or any of their new paints in the standard FS9 aircraft folder. This makes it necessary to search for, download and install these separately as well. Well Bernard, the above has become a rather general story but I hope some of my explanations will help you to resolve whatever problems you have. Good luck. Hans

The EZ-scenery program can create a list of all so called "library (BGL) files" found during each FS9 startup scan, no matter if such library objects originate from feerware or payware sceneries. However, there are two main types of such BGL library files: 1. Those which only make the scenery objects concerned visible and which can then be positioned in any geographical position within your FS9, a.i. are Non-Geo locked or non-fixed. 2: Those which make the scenery objects visible, while at the same time locking them into geographical position(s), a.i. are in fact "pre-fixed in position" and can therefore not be used as in 1. Quite some scenery developers purposely use this method as one of their defenses against piracy. The GeoLock utility can therefore only be successful for unlocking possibly locked scenery objects as in 1. For those mentioned in 2. it remains necessary to disassemble the BGLs concerned into XML code, to seperate the scenery object building up parts and the positioning parts. The final step is to then re-compile both the resulting XML files into separate BGLs. Quite a tedious and lengthy process AND only for PRIVATE use within one's own FS9 !! Good luck. Hans

The first thing I would want to suggest is that you disable all your addon sceneries, including their related Afcads and/or ADEs, in your problem part of the world, to see if that makes any difference. If your problem has now disappeared you can then re-enable your sceneries one by one until your problem re-appears. In this way you can at the very least single out the problem scenery and be able to check it's textures for anomalies. A very tedious method but I can think of no other way. When you've disabled all such addon sceneries and your problem persists, then you may need to uninstall your FS9 and re-install it, taking care that you do a so called "custom install" preferrably in a HD partition different to the one in which your Windows lives. Good luck and I hope the above does not get classified as one of your "smart remarks". Hans

Camil's very well made AGS dynamic objects remain strongly aircraft specific and are programmed into each individual aircraft's model file, which also contains the directly related and specific texture handling. This automatically means that his AGS can never be distilled from those model files, so as to be used with other and differently textured aircraft. Pity though because even I would love to have such high quality AGS with some of my AI aircraft. Regards Hans