answered Prerequisites

[Igbon]

I am in Victoria and wanted to try some local airports. Melbourne, YMML; Essendon, YMEN; and maybe Moorabbin.

So in attempting to buy these items I am informed that they require a prerequisite product Region Australia.

But, that product says 'coming soon' and clicking on it goes the error 404 page not found.

I notice in FTX Central that there is a V2 of the Australia region.

So, the questions are,  why do I have to have to get extra, to get an extra, and why is that requirement is impossible to achieve and would V2 be sufficient?

If so why not say so, if not, why not say so?

 

Many thanks, Michael.

[John Dow]

Sometimes bits of the very complex website are slow to update, and are not noticed until someone points them out.

 

You can use the airports without the AUV2 scenery however there are likely to be problems including mismatched colour, mesh problems and so on.

 

Once you have AUV2 the whole of Australia is much better, and if you check out the OZx forum herte you'll find hundreds of freeware airports to fly to.  So the investment in AUV2 can give you years of great flying for one price.

[Igbon]

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure whether the AUV2 would count as a prerequisite for the pay ware airports but the way you are framing it, it seems as though it will be.

The screenshots look pretty good so i'll give it a try.

 

It will be good  to have the airports that are close by looking realistic, especially Essendon where I learned to fly, going down to Point Cook and back.

 

I suppose a  few glitches here and there,  while frustrating,  are a small price to pay for the amazing stuff we can experience both for free and at reasonable prices these days.

 

I am having trouble with FTX crashing in FSX mode at the moment. I'll reboot and stuff and see how I go. Or maybe I'll just stick P3D.

 

Thanks again, Michael.

[John Dow]

3 hours ago, Igbon said:

Thanks for the reply. I wasn't sure whether the AUV2 would count as a prerequisite for the pay ware airports but the way you are framing it, it seems as though it will be.

The screenshots look pretty good so i'll give it a try.

 

It will be good  to have the airports that are close by looking realistic, especially Essendon where I learned to fly, going down to Point Cook and back.

 

I suppose a  few glitches here and there,  while frustrating,  are a small price to pay for the amazing stuff we can experience both for free and at reasonable prices these days.

 

I am having trouble with FTX crashing in FSX mode at the moment. I'll reboot and stuff and see how I go. Or maybe I'll just stick P3D.

 

Thanks again, Michael.

 

Essendon is still suffering from some mesh issues which result in a few trenches over the airfield, ignore those and you can still enjoy the sceenry and a fix will come eventually when the root cause is worked out... the other airports are fine I believe.

[Igbon]

Thanks again. As I mentioned I was having trouble with FTX Central crashing. It only did it when I selected FSX rather than X plane or P3D.

 

I purchased said scenery and 3 Victorian airports and set them to downloading and installing while I went to bed.

 

 I don't know what happened but now FTX Central won't start at all and crashes with the same error message.

 

I'll add it here but I will also put it elsewhere if here is not appropriate.

 

Also, I made a mistake in initially posting here as I have the steam edition.

 

I tried the registry fix. I checked the for the folder in \ProgramData\Microsoft. I have both \FSX and \FSX-SE. I have tried both, one or the other or none.

No luck.

 

Thanks, Michael.

orbx_ftxcentral_log.txt

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

you had two error messages.

 

The latest one is

 

Quote

[2019-10-08_04-24-50-AM 3.3.9.2] - System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

 

and the probably solution for that is this:

 

The other error was this:

 

Quote

 

[2019-10-07_06-43-57-AM 3.3.9.2] - System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path 'C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX-SE\scenery.cfg'.

 

 

and the solution for that one is this:

 

 

[Igbon]

I see the the Exception now that you mention it.

The reinstall worked fine so I should be good now.

 

Thanks for the help,  Michael.

 

 

[Igbon]

Hello again, I got FTX central working thanks to your help and have Essendon working fine.

 

However there is a problem with Melbourne. It did manifest back when I was speaking to you but I didn't worry about it as I had P3D to play with as well.

The problem is that Melbourne airport tarmac areas are all black. In FSX not in P3D though.

I I zoom out a little in top down view the solid black starts to shimmer, as though it is interacting with a texture underneath.

If I change to DX9 it does get rid of the black but it has different textures at different heights.

I don't want to use DX9 though.

I don't have any other ymml air ports installed as far as I know.

I tried texture  fixing thing from Avsim but it didn't make a difference, unless I didn't install it properly.

 

I have screenshots showing the differences but there isn't enough allowed size so I'll just show one.

Any ideas, regards, Michael

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

this is seen if the freeware fix from the Avsim Library is used in the FSX Preview Direct X 10 mode.

There are only two solutions, either do not use that mode or acquire the payware Direct X 10 Fixer.

[Igbon]

But,

This occurred before I tried the freeware fix. And I don't think the freeware fix installed properly as I couldn't find it to activate.

 

Why does it happen? Why not at other airports like Essendon? 

I don't think it is the problem these fixes address. 

Why are there two separate textures when viewing in DX9. As I mentioned,  in DX9 if I zoom out in top down view it changes texture at about 30 x zoom, I don't know what altitude that is.

Meaning that it is not working correctly in DX9 either.

I am reluctant to spend more money with out an absolute assurance that it would work, and even then it doesn't wortk properly in DX9

The price for the payware thing is far too high at 36 dollars. Maybe if it was a generalised FSX problem, but it is only this one thing. For me anyway.

 

To me it seems like two textures overlaid on each other somehow. I don't know enough to be able to dig deep though as nothing obvious shows up.

I'll attach the two DX9 pics (now that I compressed them more) and you can see two completely different textures.

The DX10 pic, if you look closely has the solid black starting to break up  and have other textures trying to show through.

 So, considering all that are you  still certain the payware fixer will fix it?

Could it be another addon airport, or the original one conflicting? Is that possible.

 

Sorry to  bother you so much but this is my  local area. I drive past Tullamarine a lot. And use it a lot and I learned to fly (briefly) at Essendon so I have an attachment to them.

 

Thanks again Michael.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

 

 

[Igbon]

Ok. I  just uninstalled the avsim files of that fix. But as I said it was doing it before I installed it so there was no change. Just black.

 

DX9 is still faulty anyway, as I said. The texture changes completely after a certain altitude, as I show in the attached pics. I doubt that is a shader issue.

 

And in DX10 there was the shimmering of another texture underneath the black at a certain altitude.

Nothing like that was covered in the info provided.

 

So, I will do a complete reinstall of FSX and see what happens, as I am convinced that it is more than the DX10 shader issue and am not prepared to spend 36 dollars on only a potential fix, that will not fix the DX9 issue anyway.

 

If you have any thoughts on the two conflicting texture issues please let me know otherwise I'll start clean again, and I will let you know.

 

Michael.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

there are other possible causes but can you elaborate a bit on "DX9 is still faulty anyway" please?

[Igbon]

Hi, yes, if you look at the two pics I attached in the previous post, labelled 'DX9 before 30 zoom' and 'DX9 after 30 zoom' you can see that they are completely different textures. Admittedly it is not a huge issue but it is one if the ground looks so different depending on altitude.

It that there are two textures at play that has me wondering.

 

michael.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

 

indeed in Direct X 9, I do see changes in appearance when zooming out in top down view

and indeed in locked spot view when using the Y key to climb vertically above the airport.

I also see them in Direct X 10 with the Direct X 10 Fixer and with or without Australia version2.

 

I think it has to do with the way that FSX draws textures at different distances.

Repeating the test using only the default airport and default scenery will show that the airport

is reloaded at different stages of the artificial climb.

 

Possibly the reason why this has not been reported so far is that no one has seen fit to make such tests.

 

[Igbon]

I see, so it's a feature. Is that just how it is.

 

Was your last sentence supposed to be I also 'see them' in DX10.

 

So given that maybe the fixer will fix it. I suppose another 36 bucks isn't the end of the world. I'ts really just a few cups of coffee when one is out.

 

Maybe the new MS Flight simulator will fix 'everything' and be glorious and perfect.

 

Thanks for your time. I'll let you know what happens. 

 

Michael

[Nick Cooper]

Hello Michael,

 

while the Fixer will remove the black area in Direct X 10, it has no effect on the changing textures at all.

That said, most people who have gone for it and the cloud shadows addon have been very pleased with the results.

In fact I have not yet seen an adverse review of the Fixer at all.

 

The choice is of course entirely yours.

[Igbon]

Also I only came across that different texture at altitudes by accident as I was just trying to frame a topdown screenshot and happened to notice it as the zoom is really sensitive and shoots up quickly.

In the normal course of events I probably would never have discovered it.

 

Interesting.
 

Regards Michael.

[Igbon]

I'll try the fixer I think. 

The changing textures are trivial and now that I know it is a general feature and not peculiar to me I can proceed.

 

Michael.

[Igbon]

Hi again, I tried the fixer and it did indeed fix the black areas.

 

One irrelevant detail is that zooming out as before in top down results in an indistinct grey texture  without any detail, rather than a different texture as in DX9, but I can't see it ever being an issue.

 

Michael.

[John Dow]

The different textures you are seeing at altitude is due to the way FSX renders the layers in scenery, which are often just a few cm apart, with the desired texture on top but the one underneath still there due to the airport runways retaining their own texture (baked in so to speak).  But at certain distances, the rendering engine is no longer seeing the two layers as separate (to save processing of textures at distances) and in this case it appears to be the default runway texture is displaying rather than the poly texture you see at ground level.

 

 

For normal flying operations into and out of the airport, and even circuits and most operations within the airfield area, you won't encounter this problem.

[Igbon]

Thanks for the explanation John. The runways being baked in makes sense now.

 

Having realised it's just a feature of FS I again realised it wouldn't be a problem unless I was  trying some sort of weird spiralling decent from altitude, but normally on arrival or departure  it won't be seen.

 

It was good to find out a little more about how it all works though.

 

Michael.

[Igbon]

Ha ha, after all this I was having a nice flight from Sydney to Melbourne from cold and dark and just before Melbourne I got an out of memory error.

 

So another hour and a half wasted.

 

Maybe I shouldn't have wasted so much time on FSX after all.

 

Oh well.

[John Dow]

If you have FSUIPC it's a good way to manage FSX, save every 60 seconds and when you get an OOM you just restart the flight, I got used to it when I was FSXing