Blue Shadowing

kroswynd · Post by **kroswynd** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 7:01 am

George,

Awesome job on yet another Masterpiece!! This scenery brings back soo many memories for me as a cargo pilot growing up in the Caribbean during my early years flying N100GT (BeechCraft Baron) based out of Anguilla TQPF, for a family business. I have racked up well over 400hrs in my short time of flying the Caribbean Airways, and enjoyed every bit of it, until I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Then to add insult to injury, my cousin suffered a fatal crash of the end of TNCM's RWY09 in 1992 in the same Baron N100GT, may he RIP. So this scenery has alot of sentimental value for me. Once again Thanks to the entire team at FlyTampa!!!!!

Anyway, I am experiencing a minor problem with a blue shadow around the tree lines. Any idea what may be causing this abnormality. I am using a NVidia 7800GS OC AGP card. I have attached a picture to illustrate the problem.

Thanks for your assistance.

Simeon

RobdeVries · Post by **RobdeVries** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 8:22 am

Hi Simeon,

The manual states that abnormal rendering of autogen is due to some third party autogen replacement textures not in DXT1 format.

You have to use either the default autogen textures or convert the textures to DXT1 format with a tool like DXTBmp from http://fly.to/mwgfx/

All the best,
Rob

PS I'm a bit hesitant to ask, and I'm really sorry for the loss of your cousin is that tragic accident. However as a real life recreational pilot I often read accident reports for the lessons learned. What went wrong in your cousins flight. Please accept my apology if I'm out of line here.

kroswynd · Post by **kroswynd** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 9:38 am

Hi Rob,

Thank you for the condolenses, they are much appreciated. I also appreciate the assitance regard the autogen. I have not read the release notes in its entirety, so I am partly to blame on this one.....LOL

I can speak of the crash since it's been a few years and most of the pain has subsided. N100GT had made several cargo runs that day for one of the Hotels in Anguilla. The Captain (my cousin) had called me the night before and asked if I was interested in doing a couple of runs with him that day and I refused due to other obligations that I had committed to, especially since I lived in Antigua.

Anyway long story short, on the final trip from St. Martin to Anguilla with approxiomately 800LBS of produce on board, during climb out there was a surge in Engine no.2. Unsure of the problem, the cpt requested permission to return to the field, but "did not" declare an emergency. He proceeded to shut Eng. 2 down . Juliana tower requested that he circle the field a few times since KLM had already taken the active for take off. Single engine ops is something we have done in the past on at least two occasions for high oil temp and loss of prop rpm in flight, and never had a problem.

Unfortunately, things went wrong really quickly, after circling the field twice he finally got a clearance to land, and it seems as though he got too low and slow while turning base to final he entered a stall then into a spin. The aircraft went down approximately 600' from the end of RWY09.

The sad thing is if he had declared an EMERGENCY initially upon encountering problems with the engine surge, the outcome may not have been catasrophic.

Regards

Simeon (Kroswynd)

RobdeVries · Post by **RobdeVries** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 2:18 pm

Hi Simeon,

Thanks for sharing. It's a sad story. It's so often that you read, if the pilot had done this or that than...and even so often I always seem to forget basic stuff in the cockpit. Hoew ironic that you were offered to do some hauls and refused. Life is often a chain of many (un)lucky moments in which we have to find our way by hopefully looking up to right signposts..

I'm glad to hear that Juliana (in the virtual world) gives you happy flying moments. I had a perfect landing today at St Barth after a short flight from Juliana airport. In the FSD Skymaster C-337 coming with slight gusting winds 170-180 rwy10 doing full flaps 70 knots. Great if you manage to do a greaser...

All the best!
Rob

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Tue Apr 17, 2007 5:20 pm

Sorry about your loss but glad you are enjoying the scenery. About the "corona" effect you are seeing on trees and vegetation. It should render perfectly as long as the treessu.bmp file in the fs9/texture/ folder is the one that came with FS9 or a replacement in DXT1 format. If you want I can make you a auto-script that will convert the texture.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 12:57 am

martin[flytampa] wrote:Sorry about your loss but glad you are enjoying the scenery. About the "corona" effect you are seeing on trees and vegetation. It should render perfectly as long as the treessu.bmp file in the fs9/texture/ folder is the one that came with FS9 or a replacement in DXT1 format. If you want I can make you a auto-script that will convert the texture.

Please do. I'm having the same problem.

I really love this scenery, great detail and yet no performance hit. One of the best addons I have ever bought.

Who said FS2004 was dead?

Cheers, Frank.

RobdeVries · Post by **RobdeVries** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:16 am

If you want I can make you a auto-script that will convert the texture

That would be much appreciated!

Rob

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:49 am

Updated

FS9 Autogen Trees-to-DXT1 Script

Extract the ZIP into your FS2004/texture/ folder. It contains 2 files, imagetool.exe and _trees2dxt1.bat. Double-click the file _trees2dxt1.bat.

What the script will do:

1. Backup your current autogen tree textures to FS2004/texture/_trees_backup/
In case something looks worse then before, copy the backup files from this location into to the FS2004/texture folder.

2. Converts treessu.bmp, treessp.bmp, treesfa.bmp, treeswi.bmp, treeshw.bmp to DXT1 format. Note that your tree replacement textures are often in DXT3 format and they can look funky after the conversion. DXT1 is however the original FS9 tree format and is the only format in which FS9 trees should be to avoid any rendering problems.

This is a run at your own risk script, read above in case you need to restore the previous state.

Updated file: www.flytampa.org/dwl/trees2dxt1.zip

kroswynd · Post by **kroswynd** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:58 am

Martin,

Thank you for your condolenses. I appreciate your assistance, especially in providing a quick fix to the problem. I will be sure to give it a crack as soon as I get in from the office. All I need now is a repaint of our Baron N100GT and it should bring back all of the sweet spot memories....LOL

Simeon

Post by **martin[flytampa]** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 4:00 am

Ok, let me know if the converting helps. I know for sure that in most cases it will, but there may also be some specific gfx-card driver setting that can affect those trees.

Stalker · Post by **Stalker** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:25 pm

Hey Martin, I just converted the files you mentioned to DXT1 with DXTBmp and voila, problem solved. No more funky trees.

For some reason they were DXT3 files.

Thank you very much for your help, your product support is excellent, as is your scenery.

Cheers, Frank

Robin.B · Post by **Robin.B** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:48 am

I think the issue people are having might be because of the fantastic Real-Environment Pro package, which also provides replacement tree textures. (which are probably DXT3).

RobdeVries · Post by **RobdeVries** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:26 am

I had the same problem with blue shadowing on the package called TreeGen. However I did the conversion with Martin's tool and indeed it did backup the intended files however it did not replace the files with DXT1 converted files, so I had with squares all over the place. I reinstalled the original FS9 textures, but they are larger in size

kroswynd · Post by **kroswynd** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 7:59 am

Martin....

Thanks a million, your suggestions have proved to be spot on. The blue shadowing has been solved.

Keep up the great work..... Next time you guys decide to do some Caribbean scenery, let me know. I may be of some use to you...LOL

Simeon