ANSWERED 65s Bonners Ferry (small DX10 issues, and dont see anyone)

[Argharg]

Hi, Just installed Boneners Ferry.

 

It is nice thanks

There is some anoying flickering on the runway; probably a DX10 glitch, but anoying still.

 

Err on my title: finally seen my first animated folks, was just too impatient

 

Etienne

[Alex Goff]

Hi Etienne,

 

How far out do you see runway flickers? There is some flickering that we have noted. Toward the end of development when the hard winter variant of the ground poly a couple compromises had to be made and one was that the ground poly flickers at a distance. The alternative was either to remove the hard winter or live with some more extreme errors.

 

Regards,

 

Alex

[manta]

Hi there,

 

I'm in DX9 and got the same runway flickering once airborne. It's like the flickering you get looking at many addon airports (it often happens to FSDT's) through Top-Down view, though this time I'm looking at the runway inside the cockpit.

Cheers

Fabio

[Jim Robinson]

Hi guys, to elaborate a bit on what Alex said, In the final hour while adding the last 7 winter textures, the ground poly went absolutely berserk. After a few dozen attempts to modify it's configuration and get everything back on track I finally found a semi-solution in splitting the GP into two parts. A side effect of that was a new flicker in the runway markings but it only seemed to be a problem once you were a good distance from the airport. I felt pretty lucky just to see the ground poly back to normal for the most part and I did make a few further attempts to eliminate the flickering by separating the GP components further, but everything I tried resulted in something much worse (massive autogen suppression, green planes extending thousands of feet into the sky, textures missing or showing up where they weren't supposed to be, etc.). I don't think it actually has anything to do with DX10 but rather hitting some kind of limitation in the scasm compiler that turns the gmax model into a ground poly. There are about 280 individual textures that make up the GP at 65S which is what it takes to cover an area that size at 2cm - I'm not saying it's never been done before but we are absolutely doing things with that old compiler that it was never intended to do.

In the final round of testing a possible solution was pointed out to me (thanks Tim), but it involves modifying some textures and a complete re-map of a number of polygons which would have put 65S back under the knife for a considerable length of time. We decided to go with it the way it was as the flickering didn't seem to be a problem from normal traffic pattern distances. I currently have the GP opened back up in gmax and am partially through the aforementioned changes, I should know in a day or so if the result will indeed cure the flickering or not. If so the new GP configuration will become part of a service pack down the road a ways. Otherwise it may come down to a choice between living with the flicker or dropping back to a lesser resolution in order to reduce the texture count somewhat.

Thanks,
Jim

[manta]

Thank you Jim & Alex, your reply is much appreciated  .

F.

[Argharg]

Thanks alot; looking forward the update. Etienne

[Argharg]

Oh, while we are at listing "features" of this great airport, still in dx10, the rotating beam (white/green) is fine when seen from close, but looks strange at a distance (like a grey cone). No biggy, maybe a feature of the default fsx one.

 

Etienne

[Griphos]

Has the fix for this compromise been accomplished and scheduled for a release?  I'm interested in 65S, but don't want to have to live with the compromise of flickering or lower resolution.  Thanks.

[Jim Robinson]

No, not yet

[Ron Attwood]

Jim, when/if you manage to fix this runway thing, would you pass your finding over to whoever (forget who) made Bella Coola. That is 10 times worse than yours. Yours I can live with, Bella Coola I wont go back to.

 

BTW, Bonner's Ferry is truly impressive.

[Jim Robinson]

Thanks Ron

After four days of re-mapping and finally getting to the point of exporting a new ground poly I had a worse mess than I started with, working on revision #2 at the moment, in my favor the textures themselves are done so it's a matter of getting them applied to the ground poly in a way that doesn't cause problems. What sucks is the problem never rears it's ugly head until you have the last texture in place which means winter and night textures, et all. You do a lot of work in anticipation of it coming out right, then at the last minute it blows up in your face (nothing new in scenery development really, lol). I'll win eventually though.

[Ron Attwood]

Jim, you're trying, and that all you can ask of a man.

[Ron Attwood]

Hi, Just installed Boneners Ferry.

 

Boneners Ferry?   Are you allowed to say that?

[Griphos]

Well, since you're working on it hard and aren't going to give up, I think I'll go ahead and get this one and PAJN too. Both seem like very good additions.