resolved Objects problem

[marc2140]

I have reported this issue already in another topic, but got no answers that solved my problem. There is something wrong with my Orbx objects library. Especially in the UK and Ireland I nearly always get houses that have a roof, but where the walls are missing. See picture. I also saw that the (red) lights next to the rwys sometimes for a second show up as a black square before they actually turn into a light.

Library in Central X shows "up to date", no direct X preview. What can be done?

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hi Marc

 

Go to your C:\Users\Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX\Shaders  save a copy and delete the Shaders folder and let FSX build a new one.

[marc2140]

Hi Doug

I did what you told me to do, but that does not seem to change anything. See pictures.

Any other idea?

Thank you.

[Doug Sawatzky]

Hi Marc

 

The only other thing I can think of and would be doing if I were in your predicament, would be to fully and thoroughly uninstall FSX and ORBX and do a clean fresh build, and do not install FSX to the default Program Files (x86) location, rather create a new folder in a separate location either on your C:\ drive or preferably on a separate drive. Below is a good guide to uninstall and reinstall FSX.

 

http://support.precisionmanuals.com/kb/a87/how-to-uninstall-and-reinstall-fsx.aspx

[marc2140]

Dear Doug

The point is that this is a complete rebuild of my whole system already. Starting with a clean windows install. The reinstalling of FSX, the way it has been running for years. And the complete installing and reinstalling of the whole Orbx sceneries after the migration + everything I bought at the X-mas discount action. The whole process took place around Jan. 20th 2017 and even now is not completely finished yet. Whenever I had a probliem I asked Nick for help which he always has been giving. FSX seemed to be running quite smoothly. Only now when I start flying again I come across these weird things. In a previous post I have been sending my scenery config file, but nothing seemed to be wrong with that. Maybe we should ask Nick again for help?

Cheers

[marc2140]

I have been looking further into this problem.

I have installed:

Orbx Vector (including AEC), OpenLC_zbase, OpenLC_NAmerica,  OpenLC_Europe, FTX SAK, FTX PNW, FTX PFJ, FTX NRM, FTX NCA, FTX CRM, FTX !OLC Lights, FTX EU WLS, FTX EU SCO, FTX EU NOR, FTX EU NIR, FTX EU IRL, FTX EU ENG.

Vector is of course OK; All LC sceneries are OK, All US FTX sceneries are OK. In all the european FTX sceneries, without exception, I have the same problem: the buildings only show up with roofs and no walls. Have a look at the pictures joined. So there must be something fundamentally wrong with my objects or textures of the FTX EU sceneries. 

I do not know what more info I have to give you, but pls help me.

 

 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi there,

 

these "objects" are actually autogen buildings that aren't fixed models but rather generated "on the fly" from the building footprint data in the autogen placement files. In short, it's not an object libraries issue because they aren't pre-existing objects. It's also not a texture issue because missing textures would just display as black facades instead of not being displayed at all. The roofs are generated separately and display fine so it appears to be an issue with the code or files responsible for drawing autogen building facades.

 

When you installed FSX, what version did you use? FSX Deluxe plus service packs 1 and 2, or Gold (which includes SP1/2), or FSX plus Acceleration?

 

Also, could you post a screenshot of your main \Autogen folder, in View > Details mode, so that we can check file names, sizes and dates. 

 

Cheers, Holger

[marc2140]

Thanks for yr reaction Holger.

I have installed FSX De Luxe + FSX Acceleration.

I have the picture of my autogen directory, but I get a message that I have not enough space left to upload it. And I don't find a way to get rid of the earlier pictures. Can you remove them or what should I do?

Cheers, Marcel

 

[Doug Sawatzky]

Marcel

 

You will need to use an image host to post more pictures and then there is no limit, the below link shows how.

 

 

 

[marc2140]

OK Doug and Holmer

I hope this works:

Looking forward to how we solve this issue.

Marcel

[Jethro VH-JET]

Hi Marcel,

 

While you are waiting for Holger's thoughts on your issue and your current Autogen description.spb's,  perhaps Holger has some advice as to what is causing the buildings to display with no walls (only Roofs). Hold off on any reinstalls/repairs or changes until Holger responds.

 

Your secondary issue: regarding VASI lights to display momentarily as "black squares" is quite common, where System Resources are being overtaxed, you will find this phenomenon occurs mostly in densely populated autogen and scenery areas if your Graphics card is struggling or CPU are not Overclocked @ or above the magic 4.2Ghz or your scenery and AI levels, Texture Resolutions have been set too high for your hardware capacity. Please also do not use the BufferPools tweak in your FSX.cfg if you have it (it can cause graphic anomalies).  

 

As Doug suggested earlier.........

I would also agree that at least in part your problem stems from your chosen installation path. The C:\Program Files (x86) is a protected OS folder location, as such it can prevent read/write permissions to and from this location, where "Full Administrative Permissions" would be necessary. It is also advisable to permanently disable "UAC" (User Account Control) prior to install of any Flight Simulator or addon scenery, FS utility or aircraft.
 

While FSX is an older 32bit MS Program in the days before UAC & Protected OS folder locations in a 64bit OS, where it was feasible if not recommended to install to the default location in a 32bit WinXP  or WinXP/64bit. It has become distinctly apparent that the Default location in the Program Files & Program Files (x86) Protected folders of Operating Systems from WinVista onwards will create such Administrative permission errors. 

 

The recommendation therefore is that if you only have one Drive, then you should create a sim folder location in for example:  C:\FSX  or C:\FlightSim where you can then "Custom" install the sim along with other addon scenery and FS utilities (providing there is enough freespace on that drive to contain your Sim, Addons, FS Utilities, and other OS, Office suite, programs, Utilities & file saves and system logs.

 

The preferred "Custom" install location (unobstructed - Full Administrative control) for your Flight Simulator would be on a dedicated drive internal HDD or SSD with enough freespace for expansion of your Addons. 500GB is plenty for most users with HDD's but SSD's will require a greater proportion of the drive excluded from the total used capacity.  It is true that some simulator configuration folders will still be installed to the C: drive but their size is minimal and must be installed to the OS drive by default.
For example  D:\FSX or D:\FlightSimulator  installing the sim "as administrator" then selecting with right mouse click FSX.exe from the root installation folder properties dialog > "Compatibility Tab" placing a check in the "Privelage Level" checkbox then click OK.

 

To give your Flight Simulator installation folders unobstructed read/write access (Full Admin Permissions) Right click on your newly installed  D:\FSX or D:\FlightSim folder select properties > "General Tab" uncheck the  "Attribute" remove the blue bullit from "Read Only" > Click Apply > then select For all Folders Subfolders and Files > click Ok to run . when finished it will bring you back to the General tab where you can exit the dialog selecting OK. 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi again,

 

thanks for posting the folder content. File dates and sizes check out so you're using the correct autogen content files.

 

In the meantime I realized that I was talking nonsense about the consequence of missing autogen building textures. In fact, since autogen textures aren't placed on pre-existing models but rather just onto an (invisible) wire-frame it is indeed an indication of missing facade textures if you don't see anything below those roofs. For a quick test I removed my facade texture set and ended up with the floating roofs as well.

 

The EU FTX Regions mostly use custom autogen textures and those appear to be missing in your installation. Please check that you have ~30 files named "FTXEUBLD(...}.dds" in your main \Texture folder. If not, use FTX Central's option to uninstall the UK Regions and then re-install them. You could start with just one region, e.g., EU England, and then check a couple of location within its coverage area to make sure this does the trick.

 

Not sure why those textures would be missing in the first place. How did you install the EU Regions when you re-installed your sim?

 

Cheers, Holger

[spud]

My only comment is that your still installing FSX in the Program Files (x86) folder and that has been known for years as causing problems with the sim.  Although it may be that:

 

"Dear Doug

The point is that this is a complete rebuild of my whole system already. Starting with a clean windows install. The reinstalling of FSX, the way it has been running for years."

 

it doesn't alter the fact that its not reccommended as the best place for installing the sim.

 

According to the ORBX Definitive Guide Pg. 45 the reccommended order is:

 

(Click to enlarge)

[marc2140]

Dear All

I appreciate very much all your comments and help, but I think we should try to analyse and solve the problems 1 by 1.

First my computer and the (re)installing of fsx. I had this computer custom built in July 2015 100% to "beat" FSX . This is the configuration:

Intel i7-4790k @ 4.8 GHz-MBO Asus MaxVii Hero-Corsair 780T-Corsair PSU 1000w-Corsair H100i GTX cooling-G Skill 16gb 2400/CL 10 (2x8gb)-Geforce GTX980 4gb ddr5-SSD 850 pro 512gb-2Tb HDD WD black 7200rpm-LG Blu Ray-Wifi pci-exp N900 (dual freq 2.4+5ghz)-Win7 Ult OS 64bit-FSX+Accelerator

I am flightsimming for over 20 years now and may I say, gathered quite some experience both on the hardware and on the software side. My hardware being always first class, I never had any problems with installing fsx under the microsoft games directory. And this installation has run flawlessly until the end of last year.

At that time a register cleaning program has wiped away part of my motherboard software and I got strange warnings that obviously pointed to the cooling of my rig. And as it was overclocked to 4.8 GHz, I did not want to take any risk. It was impossible to uninstall and reinstall the software and all parties envolved (ASUS, Reg Clean Pro and my computer builder) only saw 1 solution: a complete clean windows reinstall. So that's what we did.

By the time I was reinstalling my fsx + addons, Orbx had started with the migration and later with the discount action. At that time (around Dec. 19th,) I bought practically all Global, LC and FTX stuff that I did not have before.

How did I install Orbx? Everything through Central 3 (both the migrated stuff + the newly bought programs). It took me a week to download everything. 

I saw how my SSD was rapidly growing full, so I contacted Nick, about what to do in such a case. He suggested putting the Orbx stuff via a symbolic link on my HHD, which I have done. And which is for me still a very correct solution, that I would recommend to everybody.

To make a long story short, I do not think that the problems come from installing FSX in the wrong directory. This hardware can easyly handle whatever FSX needs to perform well. My framerates hardly ever drop below 100 fps. 

I believe more in what Holger says about something being wrong with the textures of FTX EUROPE; and only FTX Europe, because everyting else works without any bugs. That would not be the case if there was something fundamentally wrong with the installation.

However before doing any reinstall of Orbx FTX Europe as Holger suggests, I checked the FTX Europe building textures in the textures directory. The picture is attached. If you still advise me to start reinstalling i.e. FTX England, I will do it; but I wanted you to have a look at the directory first.

Looking forward to your reaction.

Marcel

 

 

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi Marcel,

 

well, all the required EU autogen facade texture sheets appear in place and of the correct format and date. Since removing those textures on my PC replicates your problem the only logical conclusion I can think of is that your sim does not read those files. I'm not sure I quite follow your implementation of a symbolic link but, perhaps, it's the cause for your sim not finding that folder. FSX and P3D use a specific progression of looking for model and autogen texture files -- local to global -- given that autogen placement files are spread across several scenery folders. Interestingly, all default autogen textures are in that same \Texture folder, plus the roof texture sheets, which display fine for you. Still, perhaps the symbolic link prevents the sim from properly following the normal search pattern from linked scenery folders, or your implementation of that link is incorrect.

 

I've never worked with symbolic links so all I can suggest is to look for previous discussions on our forum, such as http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/130057-hard-drive-dilemma/?do=findComment&comment=1158966

 

Cheers, Holger

[marc2140]

Thanks for yr efforts Holger.

The conversation about the symbolic links is about the same as the one I had with Nick. Basically what you do is fooling Windows and  FSX by making them believe that a directory is under the fsx root while in reality you put it somewhere else (with a link to the root). You can do this with sceneries, simobjects, effects, sounds, whatever you like.

If this would affect the functioning of the textures then the other ftx programs (ftx NA) would not work either because they are all under the same Orbx directory + the ftx autogen textures are not in in the "remote" Orbx directory, but in the main texture directory, which is "really" under the root. As an example I disactivated Norway; I probably fell back on EuropeLC or Globalbase, but the autogen buildings showed up without any problem.

However I do not want to give up yet. The 6 FTX sceneries concerned represent a bit too much value for that.

So I am coming back to what you said about fsx following a specific path to look for models and textures (local to global). Would it  be a crazy idea to try and copy the 34 FTX EU building textures to FTX EU directories (I could start with 1 scenery), and see what happens. I have lots of "double" gauges in my fsx and they don't harm...

Every FTX scenery has 4 parts, 3 of them with textures; are there 1 or more parts where my chances would improve. Or do you say upfront, forget about it?

Another track: could it have something to do with the migration and the new Central 3? Or the files in the "scripts" directory?

Just trying Holger, because I am getting desperate. I could also move the Orbx directory back under the root, but in the long run, that would practically mean a new extra SSD + a complete fsx (and addons) reinstall.  Which I would prefer to avoid (I already spent weeks to set things up again).

Looking forward to your reaction.

Cheers.

Marcel

[marc2140]

Just to keep you advised on this matter.

I had put the Orbx directory back under the FSX root (no symbolic link anymore), but that did not change anything.

I had also remarked that the sceneries I had bought from Orbx direct all had the "building" error, but the ones I had migrated from before were ok.

So then I started to uninstall and reinstall the "bug" sceneries via the new updated Central 3. I controlled every time what happened in FSX; and 1 by 1 after their reinstall they worked

back normal again.

So it was definitely something that had to do with the migration and the central 3 start up problems.

Cheers

Marcel