RESOLVED A few double buildings in downtown Seattle with SP 003a

[GordonGekko]

Hi guys, I have a few quick questions.

1. I just noticed a few days ago that in downtown Seattle there are a few double buildings being drawn even with SP 003a installed. I attached a few screen shots showing the buildings in question. In one of the shots its very easy to see the double buiilding, but in the other shot the other building being drawn twice is a little hard to make out, but none the less is being rendered twice.

2. Second question, in and around KSEA I seem to be having a harder time getting the ground textures to stay in focus. I have tried the settings mentioned in the set up guide and have gone as far as to back my Scenery Complexity to Normal and Autogen to Normal as well, but it seems that the ground textures just dont want to stay in focus. FPS however dont seem bad, usually around 25 FPS.

In contrast, in the same area around KSEA with PNW turned off and running GEX and Ultimate Terrain, I have no problem getting the ground textures to stay in focus.

What I am wondering is even with both of those settings Scenery and Autogen both set at Normal, why are the ORBX textures having a harder time keeping up vs. the GEX textures? I opened the textures in DXTBmp and see that both the GEX and ORBX ground textures are both the same size and same compression (DXT1) so I cant see why one is having a harder time over the other.

I am also completely defragged so I know that isn't an issue. I haven't taken a comparison screen shot to show the difference but can if needed.

Lastly, I was noticing that with PNW turned on downtown Seattle has a lot more buildings being rendered than it does with PNW turned off. Is there a way to get the amount of downtown Seattle buildings to be rendered to match up with what FSX does by default using Normal, Dense, Very Dense, or Extremely Dense, that way those of us with slightly older rigs can get the same performance as default in that area?

Thanks in advance.

[Tim Harris]

Hi Gordon,

I can assure you that there are no doubled up buildings with PNW RTM + PNW.003 service pack + PNW.003a mini patch installed

How we ended up with doubled buildings may also be the cause of yours: when we updated a few seaplane bases around Seattle we inadvertently missed in our testing that one of the seaplane bases also included another copy of the default placement of buildings in the CBD of Seattle, this is due to how ADE (Airport design editor) works, this was fixed in the PNW.003a mini patch

The issue is most likely:

- Incorrect installation of the patches, easy to fix, set FTXCentral to [North America], run the PNW.003 servicepack, check FTXCentral is set to [North America] again and run the PNW.003a mini patch followed by the latest ORBXlibs patch

- An added third party scenery item that also fell in the same trap as we did, a bit harder to pin down, and is something only you would know, try unticking scenery library entries of scenery that may be in the area

As for performance increasing options in Seattle

- Scenery complexity slider at Very dense or below loses the dock cranes and some other high impact items, and lowering it further will start to reduce the objects at the many large airports in the area

- Autogen,Water, Road traffic/AI and Special effect sliders all play an important part also

- If your scraping the barrel still another thing you can do is remove the 3d traffic lights, browse to:

FSX\ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_NA_PNW05_SCENERY\scenery\0000_FTX_PNW_objects_Seattle_CBD_Traffic_Lights_PLC.bgl

Rename it to 0000_FTX_PNW_objects_Seattle_CBD_Traffic_Lights_PLC.off

Cheers

Tim

[GordonGekko]

- Incorrect installation of the patches, easy to fix, set FTXCentral to [North America], run the PNW.003 servicepack, check FTXCentral is set to [North America] again and run the PNW.003a mini patch followed by the latest ORBXlibs patch

- An added third party scenery item that also fell in the same trap as we did, a bit harder to pin down, and is something only you would know, try unticking scenery library entries of scenery that may be in the area

Hi Tim,

I will re-run the patches again in the order you listed and see what happens and report back.

I don't have any other scenery in the area installed, in fact the closest thing installed to that area outside of ORBX KORS is Mega Scenery SoCal.

As for performance increasing options in Seattle

- Scenery complexity slider at Very dense or below loses the dock cranes and some other high impact items, and lowering it further will start to reduce the objects at the many large airports in the area

- Autogen,Water, Road traffic/AI and Special effect sliders all play an important part also

- If your scraping the barrel still another thing you can do is remove the 3d traffic lights, browse to:

FSX\ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_NA_PNW05_SCENERY\scenery\0000_FTX_PNW_objects_Seattle_CBD_Traffic_Lights_PLC.bgl

Rename it to 0000_FTX_PNW_objects_Seattle_CBD_Traffic_Lights_PLC.off

Cheers

Tim

I forgot in my post to mention that was with all AI turned off including a/c, cars, boats, ships, etc.

Are those traffic lights you mentioned the ones in downtown that are the red and green stop lights?

What do the special effects sliders control, beside the waves and ORBX street lights or vector lights as I think I have seen them refered to.

The reason I was asking specifically about the Seattle area was because I dont have any issues with blurred textures in any of the other ORBX areas I own. Even flying around Cairns with all those buildings and other stuff is no problem, but for some reason Seattle even at Scenery/Autogen levels both set to normal and all AI off, the textures struggle.

Maybe when I re-run those patches for the double buildings it will clear it up.

I will report back in a little while and let you know.

Thanks

[GordonGekko]

Hi Tim,

Good news and bad news.

I re-ran the patches exactly as you suggested and still had the same two double buildings in Seattle.

The good news is that if I disable Ultimate Terrain and keep PNW turned on, then the double buildings are gone.

I dont know if you own Ultimate Terrain or not, but if you do could you tell me a particular file in UT that I might be able to turn off for the Seattle area, this way I can still have UT turned on while flying into and out of the Seattle or PNW area? If not, I can ask the guys over at UT if there is a file that I can rename that causes this.

Thanks again for the help, at least I know whats causing the problem.

BTW, my ORBX scenery.cfg entries are all above the UT entries.

[Tim Harris]

Interesting indeed, well if turning UTX off stops the doubled buildings, then it could be a UTX airport APX (afcad) file of a nearby airport, or it might be a CBD 'repositioning' PLC file thats active, I don't own UTX so cannot help there sorry

Cheers

Tim

[GordonGekko]

......then it could be a UTX airport APX (afcad) file of a nearby airport, or it might be a CBD 'repositioning' PLC file thats active, I don't own UTX so cannot help there sorry

Cheers

Tim

No problem Tim.

I will post over on the UTX forum. I have a feeling that its a repositioning file that is causing that. Probably they can tell me which one and I can just rename it.

Thanks again.

BTW, nice work on the Portland downtown. I installed it tonight and get no FPS hit at all on my rig.

[Tim Harris]

No worries, if you do find out please let us know and we can add it to our compatibility notes

Cheers

Tim

[GordonGekko]

No worries, if you do find out please let us know and we can add it to our compatibility notes

Cheers

Tim

Will do.

I just posted over there, so as soon as I find out I will add a response to this thread so you can add it to the notes.

Regards

[GordonGekko]

Hi Tim.

Below is what Jeff at Scenery Solutions said.  http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic38253_post224616.html#224616

"As FSX provides extensive tools to allow developers to exclude scenery elements the real solution is to produce an exclusion BGL to remove the double buildings and include it in the scenery which is higher in the FSX Scenery Library.

If we knew which custom buildings you were talking about I could provide the ORBX team the information they would need to exclude the UTX repositioned versions, or even build you an exclusion file myself.

The UTX file in question is QLP1515U.BGL. Note that this file handles over 125 building/bridge/general object exclusions/repositions in the Seattle, Redmond, Kenmore and Portland areas. If the ORBX file does not cover all of them you may end up with different double buildings, missing objects, or objects incorrectly located (as the default FSX object locations will return).

Jeff"

I posted the screen shots over there for him to look at.

In the mean time the QLP1515U.BGL he mentiones covers "125 building/bridge/general object exclusions/repositions in the Seattle, Redmond, Kenmore and Portland areas", so since ORBX PNW already covers that area, would you say that it would probably be safe for me to just rename that file since those areas and objects reside inside what it covered by PNW?

Thanks again.

[Tim Harris]

Hi Gordon,

Yes you can safely turn off that file

We don't build FTX regions with the sole purpose of covering up UTX products, we work with the default FSX base (just like any other developer) 

Thanks for letting us know the file name, we'll add this to our list of files to turn off

Cheers

Tim

[GordonGekko]

Hi Gordon,

Yes you can safely turn off that file

We don't build FTX regions with the sole purpose of covering up UTX products, we work with the default FSX base (just like any other developer) 

Thanks for letting us know the file name, we'll add this to our list of files to turn off

Cheers

Tim

Hi Tim,

I will go ahead and rename that file then.

Sorry if I worded my response wrong as I didn't mean it to sound like I meant that FTX regions were built with the sole purpose of covering up UTX products. What I meant was that if I turn that file off, I shouldn't notice a difference because all the stuff that UTX covers in that area is already covered by ORBX. My apology if I made it sound wrong.

Anyway, thanks again for the help, back to flying 

Regards

[Tim Harris]

No worries,

When I moved the CBD buildings around to fit the photoreal.. I excluded and repositioned some and left others as is, I'm thinking the one or two I left as is are the ones doubling up for you when using UTX, and are not being affected by the blanket exclude Holger does for the whole region

All good!

[B77X]

Where can I find the post for files to turn off, in your compatibility forum?

[Ian Routley]

Hi David,

See Tim's post here:

http://orbxsystems.com/forums/index.php?topic=19057.msg275448

[Eclex]

Oooops...  When I turn off the QLP1515U.BGL file, I noticed that the Husky Stadium disappears. Maybe PNW doesn't include that object- or maybe many others..

Dave Swigert

[Tim Harris]

Hi Dave,

Yes we have already noted that to be fixed, Husky was there before PNW.003 Servicepack

Cheers

Tim