Invisible airplane parts

TARPSBird

TARPSBird

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Staff member
Some of my CFS2 planes are missing parts (textures?) on the preview screen (see screenshots) and they show up the same way if I select them. Almost all my FDG2 donationware planes are having this problem. Any suggestions as to what's happened would be appreciated. I'd hate to have to un-install/re-install CFS2 again. :banghead:
 
Hi T-bird,
There's two things,
It could be a texture issue. Open all the texs of an ac that is causing this (make a copy of original texs to another folder for safe keeping) and then re-save the textures as Extended 16 bit 565 or DXT3. This can cure that problem. If it works then do so with the other ac texs. If you alter a tex with an alpha channel, re-import from the saved texs and save as a DXT1 file.

Or it could be a low memory issue. Do you get this when you first fire up CFS2? If not and it's after a while, ie being flying, sorting out CFS2 etc etc and then it happens, then it is a memory issue.
Do you shut your pc down everynight? How much RAM have you? These will lead to low RAM issues and could cause this problem.

Hope this helps!

Cheers Shessi
 
T-bird, Awe quit your complaining. :173go1:

Those are secret weapon aircraft meant to confuse the enemy pilots. :isadizzy:

I mean, how they gonna put rounds on target in 2-3 seconds looking at that aircraft?
:kilroy:
 
Devildog73 said:
T-bird, Awe quit your complaining.:173go1:
Those are secret weapon aircraft meant to confuse the enemy pilots. :isadizzy:
Click to expand...
You may be right DD, they're doing a great job of confusing me. :d
Will try the texture tweaks today and see what happens. Lately I've been getting an error message on exiting CFS2, one of those "CFS2 has caused an error in unknown" boxes. I'm thinking there's a bug of some kind in the sim. Shessi, to answer your questions I have 640MB of RAM and I shut my computer down at night. The invisible texture problem occurs as soon as I fire up CFS2. In the past when I have gotten low on resources the sim has slowed down and sometimes locked up but I never had visual errors like this. Here are two screenshots of my FDG L2D3 Tabby, I took the bare naked shot when the plane first appeared. You can see the plane is all there but then the textures disappear.
 
Well it looks like the textures are at fault, so just a re-save should cure it!

640Mb of RAM and closing down at night means you have intially enough resources, and CFS2 should not slow your computer down unless it is a very low/old spec. I would go through and see what you can stop running on boot-up or shut down uneccessary processes before running CFS2, that would help.

Cheers Shessi
 
Shessi,
I opened the Tabby's default textures with DXTBmp and saved them as 16-bit 565, that solved the problem for that particular paint job. I still don't understand why this has happened, the original textures worked fine in the past. And the CFS2 error message on exiting the sim (every time) has me concerned too.
 
I uninstalled CFS2 and did a complete new install. Then I installed the donationware SBD-3/5 package (CFS2 version) and sure enough, I have the same transparent texture problem as before. Has anybody had the same problem with the SBD package or any of the other d-ware packages in CFS2? If so please let me know so I can determine that CFS2 itself is not causing it.
 
If you are still getting this texture and exiting problem and any slowing down of the sim then it is a pc problem. Low memory also could affect the fact that certain hi-res or bit rate textures are not displayed correctly.

I would have a good clear out of the computer while you're at it. And see what you can stop running on start up, e.g. I run XP SP3 2Gb RAM with cable broadband and have some 27 to 30 processes running.
Also upping the RAM to 1Gb or more would help, memory is still fairly cheap at the moment.


Cheers Shessi
 
Shessi,
You and I once had an e-mail exchange about what I needed to upgrade on my computer. :d In a day or so I'll have my new-build computer up and running and I will see how CFS2 works on it. It's the New Year, I'm not going to aggravate myself further with the texture issue. :) Thanks for your help.
 
There was a thread back before the crash that had a line from M$ CFS2 website that had to do with making a DXT entry into the CFS2.cfg file. With my older PC that Obio took over and then had major problems with, (sorry OBIO), I had to use that entry to keep textures visible.

With my new duo cores, I have never had that problem.
 
Hi T-Bird,
That's great news! Should(?!) have no problems with a new spec machine.

Like DD73 I used to get that occsionally on my old machines and have never had that on the latest one.

Cheers Shessi
 
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