Black AI aircraft at some airports only in FSX

[pms707]

Hi All:

At some default FSX airports, (SFO and LAX namely), the NAAI 707 is showing up as black. Yes -- I realize this is an FS9 model. However -- when initially installed, it was running fine everywhere -- even with 32 bit dds textures on it (looks absolutely amazing). The weird thing is -- all the airlines' NAAI 707s are perfectly fine at ORD. Textures look great, sim runs smoothly even with a fair amount of traffic. I have a good machine with a GTX1660 Super. Not sure if this is a memory issue, or what. The flight plans are all correctly formatted, as well as the aircraft.cfg files. One thing I did notice at SFO was that initially some would appear correct, and then with a second look, were suddenly black. Have tried rebooting, removing the model from Simobjects and replacing it, etc. Nothing, except ORD where everything is rosy. 

Cheers,

Alex

[FSMuseum]

Do you have DX10 preview turned on? If so turn it off and see what happens. DX10 preview is probably the single buggiest and incomplete feature of FSX.

[pms707]

Yes -- I have turned that off. I have noticed this improves with some slider reduction. That said, every now and then a random NAAI 707 texture fails to load. It has gotten better, but still annoying. I have reduced most of my textures to DTX5 resolution, save for a few that simply demand a no-dither full 32 bit texture (at about 5.3mb). But the vast majority are DXT5. All of my flight plans are from here, or other retro forum resources. I am not using any traffic manager -- wondering if this is a good thing to do (UT Live). But since I have no intention of using modern traffic ever, really, and want to curate my own retro environments, not sure how useful it would be to install, unless it's a tool that somehow helps manage volume in a way I can't by simply plucking out a few plans from busier airlines here and there. I compiled the plans using AIFP and instructed it to distribute/limit traffic accordingly, so the traffic slider does indeed reduce AI quite a bit when taken down below 80% -- to just a handful of AI planes at some airports. One thing I cannot part with is the ground shadows -- I do realize that in some add-on airports (FSDT KLAX, which has an excellent rendition of a classic LAX terminal at T2) require shadows off for the FS9 NAAI 707s to be visible at all. But for what I need this sim for (screen shots for a short film and aerial sequences capture) the ground shadows are kind of a critical detail.

Trying to figure this all out -- struggling with the typical FSX issues of FPS/decent traffic/addons, etc. There is just so much info out there -- one can read thread after thread endlessly and be left to consider a new add-on to manage AI, an FSX.cfg entry, etc. It just goes on and on...

I am ready to fly to Seattle, Uber to Bill Gates house and make a citizens arrest. It was bad enough having to return to Windows for this hobby after being a MAC user for the last 15 years...

BTW everyone -- I have made about 250 custom textures from 1968 -- they are really stellar. Once I have the time, I plan to upload then to a drive for everyone to enjoy. I thing people will really appreciate some of them -- many have never been done, and others that were done in the past I have kind of perfected, even if I do say so myself. For me, painting is the best part of this hobby!

Cheers,

Alex