NAAI 707 in FSX

[pms707]

Hi All:

Has anyone successfully converted the NAAI 707 to FSX? I am trying using MCX however it messes up the #4 engine completely. Most other FS9 models have made it through relatively unscathed. Does this model work OK as AI in FSX without conversion? This is kind of a critical piece of the whole environment for me and I would love to find a workaround. Any advice is appreciated. 

Cheers,

Alex

[John Hinson]

I have about 40 different paints of these in my 1967 era, and I am not aware of any issues with them straight out of the box. Unless they don't work at all, in which case I would never have seen one! :o) Seriously, I think I would have notices their absence, but I don't scrutinise AI at a two-metre distance so could easily miss small issues.

Surely your solution is to try one, and create about 20 temporary FPs with them standing for 23 hours at some obscure airport.

John

[pms707]

Hey John -- in FSX, do your NAAI 707s show up black? Even with my sliders turned way down and my GeForce 1660 Super graphics card optimized, my FSX seems only able to handle so many of these NAAI 707 textures at a time. If there are more than 3 liveries at any given airport -- sometimes fewer -- the textures do not load, of they are there briefly and then disappear leaving the 707 black. This is with all add on environments turned off. I keep wondering what I'm doing wrong here. For example, at the default FRA in FSX-SE, Only LH, BA and my flyable Captain Sim 707 are spawned. There are 2 NAAI 707s in AI traffic in the area, and a handful of AIA 727s and FAIB 737s (FSX conversions). The 707s will load with textures, and then on a second pass, suddenly be black with no texture loaded.

I do not have this issue with any other texture/model combination. I can have as many 727s etc. at ORD with the traffic slider at 100% and be perfectly fine. It's confined totally to the NAAI 707. Wondering -- would using DXT3 .bmp be a solution, since the NAAI 707 in FS9 and naturally would "want" those textures instead? All of my paints are my own -- and saved to .dds format via the NVIDIA tool in Photoshop -- they work great on all the other models. 

So, my textures are all correct (.dds DXT5), and the configs all look fine. This issue seems confined to some airports -- I notice it at LHR and FRA mostly. The sliders are all way down and the traffic is at 75% (not many other flightplans loaded yet that have FRA traffic in them so far).

Any advice would be helpful...

Alex

[John Hinson]

Hi Alex,

I just checked my files and all of my textures are BMPs rather than DXT. Thinking about it, I just transferred most of my AI aircraft directly from FS2004. Maybe this is why I haven't noticed the issues you are experiencing.

I'm not sure whether using BMP textures has a negative effect. Heathrow is one of about five major airports where the quantity of traffic significantly affects my frame rate - whether the use of DXT textures in general would make that better or worse I don't know.

Best regards,

John

Update - for DXT above read DDS. Mine are BMP files (DXT3+mipmaps). Really must put brain in gear before typing

[pms707]

Hmm. Well, I would think that in my scenario with only 7 AI aircraft spawned at all at LHR with the default scenery and sliders set to minimums, there would not be any issues if this were a memory problem. I could see that if, say, BOAC and BEA were at 100% traffic and all the US and European majors had a full AI schedule set up, which they do not yet. It would have to be some sort of a texture related blip. So I am going to convert the .dds DXT5 textures on the 707s to .bmp DXT3 and see what happens. I need to solve this problem. The NAAI 707 is pretty much the centerpiece of the 1968 FSX environment I am creating...

[pms707]

BTW this is happening at all major US airports as well -- not just LHR. I only used LHR as the most extreme example, because there I have about the least amount of traffic (currently), and I'd think that because of that, the .dds 707 textures would be "free" to load up as many as they wish. FRA also with the LH 707 fleet. I have three separate LH 707 textures (for variation) and two BOAC. It's not as if I am asking FSX to load the 707 textures of 20 major airlines (although that eventually is the plan). And this is all happening with traffic set to about 65% -- plus my traffic BGLs adjusted for traffic ratio to be minimized when creating them in AIFP...

[mikeblaze]

I've already got them converted to P3Dv4/5-native, and they will be in my drive by tomorrow. The FS9 models will work through all versions of FSX and P3Dv1-3.

:{)

[pms707]

Hey Mikeblaze -- I have tried converting them to FSX via MCX and engine #4 comes out with no exhaust each time. Is there a trick to this I don't know about? My issue is definitely not related to DDS vs BMP. The same issue happens to me with either texture format. Once there are over 6 or so NAAI 707s spawned at any given airport, the textures fail to load, or go black. I would love to have access to a fully capable FSX/P3D version of this model. I am building a 1968 environment, have about 50 amazing paints from that year that either nobody has done, of I have done better. Eventually I will post them but I am too busy to now. Basically, without the NAAI 707 fully present, I am screwed. I am forced to run the sim with basically no autogen, and I can pretty much forget about using any airport scenery other than FSX default. None of the other FS9 models in the sim do this. Even the DM VC10/Trident/1-11 work perfectly fine. All the AIA models and AIG models I have been able to convert, and they sit fine along with the DM FS9s and other native FSX aircraft. I will try converting your P3D 707 to FSX in MCX and see what happens. If it fails, I may have to just move up to P3D, which I have been considering doing anyway...