defaid

It's not something that's frustrating me so much as constantly scratching at my curiosity nerve: I don't like having no explanation for such things. chris_eve, I felt a little excitement yesterday on reading your change of format suggestion. I hadn't considered it at all. Ahh... 24-bit bmp, DXT1, DXT3, 888-8, mips, no mips, fresh alpha, no alpha... Stranger still, more letters, fewer letters red sign, yellow sign: And it's still only a few of them, seemingly random, with that dodgy transparency usually only seen on badly rendered chickenwire fences. CRJ_simpilot, the Nvidia settings in your screenies are the global defaults that I used when I deleted the Nvidia and the NI profiles -- I hadn't changed my global profile. I'd reinstated Nvidia control panel settings one by one, and made a fresh NI profile, also from scratch. I've just tried uninstalling NI as you suggested and that makes no difference either. It's a strange effect, quite infrequent and very definitely only affected by the Ground Scenery Casts Shadows option. It looks as though the entire sign is rendered as a shadow, transparent for the ground but still opaque to some objects, like the stock C172. D

Hi. Thanks for replying. The hashes are an exact match: 6222406F6FC77755D3408F408D7760BE26E110A3834AE562DDBF1CAD4259B3E5 6222406F6FC77755D3408F408D7760BE26E110A3834AE562DDBF1CAD4259B3E5 That's a long checksum, especially in hex... I don't believe it's a driver issue: the problem was identified in 2012. I suppose though that it may be a broad-based Nvidia problem but I don't know what make of card the other chap was using. The thread is here at FSDeveloper. I rebuilt FS9.cfg with no effect. I worked twice through each custom setting, starting from a clean config file: once in FS9's panel and a second time directly in notepad. A mind-numbing series of reloads. Nvidia's control panel 3d settings has no effect. Neither does my Nvidia Inspector profile. The only thing that affects the taxi signs is FS9's ground objects' shadows setting and it only shows up at certain distances and angles. I even thought it might be related to looking through the windscreen but with the appropriate view-angle it happens in every view. I've installed nothing more than some AI textures for some months, and since storage hasn't been a constraint for about a decade, I invariably convert them from DXT3 to 888-8 before I use them. Recently I've been modding some stock airfields, but disabling all of that lot makes no difference. I try to avoid using installers and much prefer manual installation from zips. That way uninstalling is simple and I can be pretty sure that addons haven't changed stuff in the background. Stranger still, it doesn't seem to affect every taxi sign so there's some other parameter that I've missed. Orientation of the sign perhaps, either by the compass or relative to the sun. Just a dark closing thought... I suppose it could be an indication that my graphics card is dying. D

Hi. This inability to render taxi signs correctly is something I don't recall seeing before. It doesn't happen to all taxi signs but content, stock/addon, orientation et c. don't matter. Also, it only happens in daylight so presumably only when the signs are not illuminated and I've only seen it on the yellow taxiway signs. I found (while rebuilding fs9.cfg, scenery layers & nvidia profiles) that I can turn the bug on and off by selecting or deselecting Ground Scenery Casts Shadows in the display settings. An online search returned only one relevant result: an inconclusive thread in fsdeveloper from 2012 that suggested it was a driver issue. Has anyone else ever noticed it and found a solution? Sunny airports look strange with no shadows. First, with shadows turned off: And with shadows enabled:

Hi. It sort of works: the click spot for the bottom button is only on the upper & lower edges. There's nothing clickable in the middle of the button. (Sorry about the rubbish quality. Print Screen doesn't show mouse pointers.) D

I thought that might be the case. There must be some range around the player beyond which scenery isn't loaded, something that is quite apparent in a zoomed-out top-down view. I guess that scenery has an effective 'spawn range' just like AI. Yours a good simple solution for the test flights too, better than my cut-down test scenery.cfg. D

FS9 will just ignore the layers that you've unchecked and skip to the next one that has a tick. You don't have to move anything, you don't have to renumber anything and you don't have to delete anything. If you just want to shave a quarter second off your load time, try having several different scenery.cfg files, each with only whatever specific scenery interests you at that time. Unnecessary aircraft slow things down much more and having a cutdown Aircraft folder is much more effective. Incidentally, if you do decide to rearrange scenery from within FS9, click once on the Move Down button then you can just hold the D key on your keyboard. Same goes for Move Up and U. D

Hi. I also have a Black Widow Flightstick, and its surface is a rubber coating that softens as time and oils from your hand go to work on it. The Intellimouse Explorer 3 had the same coating, and used to come in for the same criticism. I haven't cleaned the Flightstick yet but I did successfully remove all the coating from the Intellimouse (still in use and smooth as a baby's backside). I tried WD40, meths, petrol, a chlorocarbon-based carburettor cleaner, all with no luck. I finally found that Rain-X water repellent for windscreens dissolved it very easily. According to Wikipedia the product's solvent is a mixture of acetone and water. I'm not certain that is correct as I'd have thought that acetone would have damaged the plastic of the mouse (the plastic is unharmed). Also, it doesn't smell like my high-school memory of acetone. It worked, anyway. D edit: I'd better add the detail that I have a small $5 bottle of Rain-X, not a pump-action nor an aerosol. I think I should also add that my daughter refers to the Flightstick as 'that rubber-coated Ann Summers thing'.

Simpler still. :)

This is usually absolutely correct, but it does depend on the scenery layer order. What really happens is that the AI routine works from the lowest priority and scans until it finds an appropriate AFD file. Then it stops looking. Ordinarily, stock airports have a very low priority so what Hans wrote is nearly always true. However, you don't need to edit the AP****.bgl or add a flatten. All you need to do is make a very low priority scenery layer and puit a copy of your preferred AFD file into it. If that layer is lower than the stock layers then AI will use that AFD instead. Do something like this: [General] Title=FS9 World Scenery Description=FS9 Scenery Data Clean_on_Exit=TRUE [Area.001] Title=Default Terrain Local=Scenery\World Remote= Active=TRUE Required=TRUE Layer=1 Texture_ID=1 [Area.002] Title=Default Scenery Local=Scenery\BASE Remote= Active=TRUE Required=TRUE Layer=2 [Area.003] Title=AFD file duplicates for AI Local=Scenery\AI_Duplicates Remote= Default and other AFDs will be in Area.004 or further away. If your duplicates are in Area.003 then AI will sit at the correct elevation (or at least the elevation of the AFD file...) The fact that there's a duplicate won't affect things at all (because it's an identical copy) and if you give the scenery layer an appropriate name then you can spot it easily an ignore it should you ever use a duplicate airport scanner. D

I did the same thing with P3d: gave up after eighteen months of free and payware addons, trying to turn it into something I liked. P3d works very well for a lot of people -- I just wasn't one of them. Though I'm not following its trajectory, I guess a lot are very pleased with MSFS too. GK has no filters. At the risk of provocation, it's definitely a popcorn situation when I'm not on the receiving end ;)

You're very fond of CAPITALS and OMG!!!!!!! FS9 is a game: "Flies good" can only mean that the player is happy with the handling, in which case there's no need for further tweaking.

And I meant that if you'd corrected the hover & crash by using modified Mosquito contact points and if otherwise it 'flies good' then there was no need to alter anything in the air file...

If it flies in a way that you enjoy then it doesn't need fixing ;)

One of my grandfathers just made it, born in 1899 and five years after my house was built. I'm not sure what he did during the great war but he told me once of being flown over Basingstoke in a biplane by one of his friends in the Royal Flying Corps. I imagine it was quite a 'compact' experience. I don't think he ever flew again...

"What's the best car -- a Suzuki Swift or Chrysler Crossfire?" The answer is likely to depend on whether or not you're a widowed retiree who only drives to fetch groceries once a week. If it ticks all the boxes (including economy and ease of parking)... As for old tech, consider the Lockheed C-130, first flight 1954. It's probably older than your grandparents. Denigrating investment? What payback will there be from the exploration of uninhabitable planets? Finally... are PC based simulators anything like the real thing? I have one whole RW hour under my belt and I'm confident that they all, even in VR, bear about as much resemblance to the real thing as playing Dirt Rally on a laptop in your bedroom does to doing a ton fifty through a snowy forest at night. Best keep quiet until you have more experience. ;)

Having fun now, repainting for my tiny Air Hauler fleet. (logo light... I know, but what's the point in having a shiny new logo if you can't see it? :) )

Are you disabling the original texture folder and replacing it with another of the same name, or are you just copying replacement textures into the existing folder? There must be specific textures associated with the AB****.bgl polygons and maybe the replacement folder doesn't contain all the required textures. I'm pretty sure you know this already -- I'm not patronising, just trying to understand what's happening -- but dragging a /Texture/ folder into /Scenery/World/ will just add or overwrite contents and leave unique files in place. On the other hand, if you are renaming /Scenery/World/Texture/ to Scenery/World/Old/ and then dragging a new /Texture/ folder into place then there may be missing files. D

@ussmidway You're a saint. Thank you! @ColR1948 Not repainting much, I'd never looked into it. But then, having continually to reload a flight to see what I'd made was the only thing keeping me from repainting. I may be opening an imageshack account before long...

Hi Col. Photoshop 7. Somewhat elderly but I've grown used to it. I do occasionally use Paintshop Pro too, though I forget which version. I bought that because, after I moved to Win 10, Photoshop wouldn't handle text layers. A few weeks later I discovered that Photoshop wasn't the problem: only that in Win 10 I'd set text size to 125% as the OS fonts are all so small. I reset to 100% and installed WinAero to change the fonts rather than the zoom (hence the retro image in another thread)... and found I no longer needed PSP except for some work involving transparency. And occasionally late in the evening because, unlike Photoshop, it has a dark background. I guess I'll have to find a reasonably plain & light repaint. D

More or less what it says in the title... I'm having difficulty accessing Dave Maltby's site and am wondering if there's a paintkit available for his BAC 1-11 500 for FS9. I don't even need a full kit: all I really need is a plain white repaint onto which I can layer a tail logo & registration. Cheers, D

Good to know it's sorted. :) I was beginning to suspect from the text colour that TVB was controlling the Shift+Z display and that while it was getting good data from FS9, it was failing to send it back correctly to Shift+Z.

Uhh... altitude's right, airspeed's wrong. Also, I was unaware that it's possible to change the colour of the Shift+Z text. Just to confirm that the text relates entirely to the AI, can you set the following: In fs9.cfg and under the section [AContain], ShowLabels=1 ShowLabelAltitude=1 ShowLabelAirlineAndFlightNumber=1 ShowLabelAirspeed=1 Setting any other labels to 0 will clean things up a bit LabelDelay=1000 will give 1 second per item They may or may not already be there. That ought to turn floating labels on for the AI and cycle between the 3 data. I think the altitude label is the only one that can be toggled from within FS2004, the others have to be done in fs9.cfg On a tangent, what's the A400 and is that your own repaint? I'm trying to fill my FS9 with more cargo flights and don't have a good A400. I just thought of something else: do you still see 0 kias if you disable TVB and just use Ctrl+W to cycle the popup chase view to a cruising AI?

No -- they're both AI, hence the orange info at the top of either window. I don't have Traffic View Board but it looks as though it just reports what's in FS9's own environment. That's what had me wondering if there's some obscure variable that causes Shift+Z to show the player's speed even when the camera is showing AI. I thought perhaps if Traffic View Board is reporting correct info from FS9 then there must be something suppressing it in the Shift+Z information. For AI, the Shift+Z text should be a different colour (orange in my case) to player information (red for me). If the invisible chase plane was at 0 kias then you'd see the AI do a fly by, like a tower view. If it's following then it should have the same speed as the AI. Has your Shift+Z always shown 0 kias for AI in cruise? Here's me doing 96 kias in the Cessna (red text for Shift+Z) and then the focus switched to the AI Piper in the popup view doing 88 kias (orange text).

I'm sure I've noticed the same thing but when I tried to recreate it, I got AI airspeed in Shift+Z. It shows correctly with Ctrl+W and through a double-click in Traffic Tools Explorer. I'm certain though... Is there a setting that causes Shift+Z to show the user plane's speed rather than AI? For AI does Shift+Z still show cruise altitude? If you're cruising, do you see a speed if you Ctrl+W to en route AI?

Hi. It's not something I've ever considered -- the required amount of labour being well beyond the limit for me. I don't think there's a simple way of converting, say, a 2d drawing into a detailed 3d model so if you're as new to the world of 3d modelling as you are to FS9, you might first learn about GMax: it seems to be the favourite 3d modelling package. After that, you'll need a good working knowledge of the .air and .cfg files for FS2004 aircraft and then learn how to convert real world flight dynamics into suitable variables & values. At least the repainting is straightforward, provided you are comfortable working with layered artwork... When that's all done and you've uploaded the plane to the library here, I'll take the easy job of downloading it, though as the CL-1201 has a 1100 foot wingspan I might struggle to find a suitable airfield... D