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Post by cgold on Jun 14, 2021 22:01:00 GMT -5
Anyone ever have everything running in FS9 and then add on scenery and AI start going all white? My sim has started doing this and it eventually ends in a CTD, when I try to change the airport or time of day.
I know this much: It’s AI related. I yanked it all and the sim works fine. I’ve pulled the AI planes I’ve worked on most recently and it’s working fine. But I’ll add in one at a time, to see which one is the problem child, and the sim goes back to blanking out and crashing. I’ve looked though these aircraft for ill-formatted textures, wrong alpha channels, or anything else that may be off. What am I missing?
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Post by sunking on Jun 15, 2021 8:49:07 GMT -5
Could it be the hardware/graphics card/ram getting an overload, as it basically is a 32b program and/or only can cope with a certain amount of sceneries/ai in a given area? Have you checked the entries in the aircraft.cfg file and if all matches, including the sequence number, model, aircraft entries? (Rarely it's also a texture set used for a different model) Is it a freeware scenery which may be poorly designed?
That were the main causes for such incidents on my system back then.
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Post by cgold on Jun 15, 2021 15:36:12 GMT -5
Good news is I have OwlAI's AI preview tool/interface - whatever you want to call it. It picks up on errors like model names being wrong, aircraft.cfg's being off-number, etc. My FS9 was running fine up until recently - it's definitely a recent AI aircraft texture addition that's throwing the sim off but finding it has been difficult. The OwlAI tool does show what bit the textures are saved in and I've confirmed all of my problem aircraft have 16-bit (DXT3) or 32-bit textures - either with or w/o alpha channels. I may have to run through the aircraft that have been giving this error and see if a texture got saved incorrectly.
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Post by cgold on Jun 15, 2021 17:46:28 GMT -5
I may have found the issue: If an alpha channel is on a texture that it shouldn't be, even if the alpha channel is blank, it will cause this to happen. I found that my most recent additions on the AIG DC-9's and AIA 727's had alpha channels where as the other previous textures did not. I struck the alpha from them all and the sim worked fine. I'll keep testing and report back what I find.
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Post by cgold on Jun 16, 2021 22:16:10 GMT -5
I’ve run through all of my AIA 727’s and AIG DC-9’s (correcting any texture/formatting issues) and I’m still having problems. chrisP: I’ve run through all of the Convair and L-188 textures I’ve done of recent too. Do they need to be saved in any particular format? I’ve saved all of my work recently as 32bit with no alpha. (Unless some metal engines are present, and then there’s a corresponding alpha channel to suit - sometimes). What’s odd is that it’s a problem at YIP but not ATL, for example. Sim ran fine when I checked out Delta. DTW even works good with NKS, NWA, and so on. But when I tried getting near YIP, things go south from there. FWA has been hit or miss too. I’ve had issues with the CV-600’s being there - other times, not so.
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Post by chrisP on Jun 17, 2021 20:29:52 GMT -5
I’ve run through all of my AIA 727’s and AIG DC-9’s (correcting any texture/formatting issues) and I’m still having problems. chrisP: I’ve run through all of the Convair and L-188 textures I’ve done of recent too. Do they need to be saved in any particular format? I’ve saved all of my work recently as 32bit with no alpha. (Unless some metal engines are present, and then there’s a corresponding alpha channel to suit - sometimes). What’s odd is that it’s a problem at YIP but not ATL, for example. Sim ran fine when I checked out Delta. DTW even works good with NKS, NWA, and so on. But when I tried getting near YIP, things go south from there. FWA has been hit or miss too. I’ve had issues with the CV-600’s being there - other times, not so. I've had bad experiences with 32-bit textures. I always force everything to DXT3, including a blank alpha if needed. Whatever you do, do NOT mix different texture formats for the same aircraft - my FS9 doesn't like that at all. Exit runway when able Christian
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Post by cgold on Jun 18, 2021 14:24:24 GMT -5
chrisP: I've had great success with 32-bit textures, oddly. I saved all of my work on your models in 32-bit with no issue. What would cause no issues then complete texture loss? I have everything as 32-bit in the various CV-600 & CV-640 texture folders. They all worked like a charm before but now, they won't load at all and the whole sim follows suit shortly after.
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Post by chrisP on Jun 18, 2021 15:26:07 GMT -5
Silly question I got to ask: any video driver update recently? If so, you might want to revert.
other debugging option would be to turn off traffic bgl files one by one until the bug disappears, then giving a real hard look at whatever aircraft models it uses.
btw, you may also want to preview the aircraft liveries (create a flight where/when you don't have traffic and try to change your aircraft. If it's a texture issue, it'll show up in the aircraft selection preview window)
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Post by cgold on Jun 18, 2021 22:23:44 GMT -5
Some graphics drivers may have been updated but the sim has been working since I’ve pulled some recent aircraft edits. I’ve narrowed it down to a handful of aircraft. I’ve yanked a ton of lightmaps too. Previewing the textures hasn’t worked, sadly. I use the OwlAI AI Previewer and everything “shows” correctly.
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Post by funk on Jun 19, 2021 19:23:39 GMT -5
Are you sure that all your textures are dxt3 format. It sound more like an overload of texture loading. I can remember when I had accidentally loaded some textures in DTX5 format it gave me kind of similar results.
Alex
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Post by cgold on Jun 19, 2021 21:43:38 GMT -5
I’ve been going through and making sure textures are either DXT3 or 32bit. Haven’t seen any that are in DXT5 yet. Is there a limit to how many AI aircraft there are in the sim? I’ve got about 8-15 aircraft that I can’t put in the sim w/o it doing this failure. What’s odd is that if I’m at DTW, there’s no issue. It’s a plane at YIP. OPF has had hit or miss success too.
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Post by chrisP on Jun 20, 2021 6:33:46 GMT -5
I’ve been going through and making sure textures are either DXT3 or 32bit. Haven’t seen any that are in DXT5 yet. Is there a limit to how many AI aircraft there are in the sim? I’ve got about 8-15 aircraft that I can’t put in the sim w/o it doing this failure. What’s odd is that if I’m at DTW, there’s no issue. It’s a plane at YIP. OPF has had hit or miss success too. Try "inverting" your AI: move all of your traffic bgls to another folder and create a small fake traffic.bgl with just those 8-15 aircraft; if it's the number of aircraft, it will run fine. If it's something within the aircraft, the problem is will be back
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Post by cgold on Jun 20, 2021 20:56:51 GMT -5
chrisP: I did what you described above and I'm getting the same error. I've gone through each texture/aircraft I'm using and everything looks good. Is there something else I may be missing? Would missing effects cause a "crash" like this? I know aliased files could - Found some sound and panel files in the Lear 24 that weren't necessary. I know your models, Chris, use shockwave effects. Would they being missing cause these issues?
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Post by cgold on Jun 21, 2021 0:10:24 GMT -5
chrisP: I think I have cracked it: I traded out the shockwave effects for normal ones on your models but I also changed the kinds of light effects there are on the models. I eliminated the 6th kind (taxi lights) from the Convair's and the SGAI Falcons. Things are working normal again - so far... (Side question: Can AI models have more than 5 kinds of lights?)
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Post by chrisP on Jun 21, 2021 11:34:14 GMT -5
hmm... Do you see that issue if you replace the sandard effects with shockwave for, say, the default 737?
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