Author Topic: Disappearing ground textures  (Read 5888 times)

Mike...

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Disappearing ground textures
« on: December 26, 2010, 11:59:41 pm »
Just slewing around in the dark for the first time and I have encountered two areas where the ground textures disappeared once I got closer to them. First couple is of the hangar between 35C and 35R, I'm looking east. Second couple is of terminal A looking south. Captures 5 and 6 are the same locations with slew info and as I took them I noticed I could also turn those textures on and off by just changing my heading. And you may have to try and find a sweet spot to see it, but it's definitely happening. Can't say I've seen it during the day time.

http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/8186/capture002e.jpg
http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6662/capture003j.jpg
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/5579/capture004z.jpg
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/9244/capture005px.jpg
http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/8361/capture006.jpg
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/462/capture007z.jpg

Edit: it happens during the day as well:

http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/2499/capture008.jpg
http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/3351/capture009q.jpg

???

Edit: and I think we're talking about entire ground tiles (but I'm no dev), pretty large areas. And it's visible from cockpit and vc as well. Last two shots, north side terminal B, this is the same problem as the north side of terminal A, it extends that far:

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/6366/capture010q.jpg
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6936/capture011v.jpg

Final edit: in that same spot I switched to top-down view and saw the same issue. Simply moving around and changing headings acts like an on/off switch.

(Sorry for repeated edits.)
« Last Edit: December 27, 2010, 12:30:34 am by Mike... »

virtuali

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Re: Disappearing ground textures
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2010, 07:58:54 am »
I've tried to match your exact positions/heading, and can't reproduce the problem, even if moving ahead/back a little bit or change heading in the area. See attached pictures.

Mike...

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Re: Disappearing ground textures
« Reply #2 on: December 27, 2010, 10:59:22 am »
Hmmm... Only one thing was different yesterday when I encountered the issues, I was testing a new update for AFX. I will remove its dll from the sim and try again, if I see it again, I'll take a top-down shot as well, that may be easier to reproduce.

Mike...

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Re: Disappearing ground textures
« Reply #3 on: December 27, 2010, 04:57:01 pm »
Okay, it has nothing to do with AFX I believe. Start the sim, go to LEVC, about noon local time. Then switch to KDFW (it will be night) and check. That does it for me. If I go straight to KDFW, I don't get the problem.

I tried an addon for LEVC yesterday and then went on to check KDFW and that's why it's LEVC. It still happens with the LEVC addon completely removed though. And it may work with other airports, not even sure if has to go from day to night like that for the issue to appear. But I spent the last two hours restarting the sim and it's time consuming, so I've not looked into it further, I'm just hoping you can reproduce it.

virtuali

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Re: Disappearing ground textures
« Reply #4 on: December 27, 2010, 07:13:59 pm »
I was able to reproduce it and, guess what, it's not a problem of the scenery...

I too tried starting a flight from LEVC, then switching to KDFW, and the ground tiles disappeared, depending on the view distance/angle. Then I've tried other airports randomly, and with some the problem appeared just the same, but not with others, without any obvious logic. Note that it wasn't required to start a flight from LEVC. Even starting at KDFW, switching to LEVC and back to KDFW recreates the problem.

Usually, when strange issues or even crashes happens at certain airports only, it might related to AI traffic so, I've switched off AI traffic, and then I could start from LEVC or any other airport then switch to KDFW without any issues.

NOTE, I've WoAI in FS9. Perhaps there's a problem with a model, so I've removed the WoAI traffic.bgl and restored the default one, so I've got MS models instead, then I put traffic back on at 100% and, as expected, no problems whatsoever, even when starting from any of the airports that used to create issues before, they now allow to switch to KDFW when the MS AI models are used.

There's no even need to remove the traffic.bgl to replicate this, you can leave traffic.bgl for the AI pack you have, and put traffic to 100%, then go to LEVC, go back to KDFW, problem appear. Then, put traffic at 0%, go to LEVC again, go back to KDFW, no problem.

The most likely explanation, one of the AI models that come with WoAI that appears at LEVC has a problem (maybe texture-related, but that's just a guess), which triggers a memory corruption or something like that which affects the scenery.

Mike...

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Re: Disappearing ground textures
« Reply #5 on: December 27, 2010, 08:20:32 pm »
Someone recently made a new texture checking program, it finds anomalous BMP's, perhaps once I run that on my Aircraft folder and fix the problems, this one will go away as well. It's near impossible to figure out the cause with so little time available, so I'll leave it that. Thanks for checking though.

Quote
guess what, it's not a problem of the scenery...

If you want me to post a real problem of the scenery, let me know, there's one I haven't brought up and wasn't really planning to, but I could be persuaded otherwise.

;D