specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 http:// I bought and installed Monterey Regional Airport, and there is a problem here with all these craters all around and in the airport. I don't have any addon mesh, I'm only using FTX Global, Vector, and Northern California. I've run the FTX Vector Configuration AEC. Help from the staff is appreciated, please. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 G'day Johnny, Could you reinstall (only) Northern California and see if that resolves the issue for you? Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Thanks Jarrad, reinstalling Northern California fixed the mesh problem, but now I've noticed another problem. Parked my Citation X next to this plane here, and is all black. I guess missing texture. ">http://href='http://s90.photobucket.com/user/specialist/media/blackplane_zpsecaf3609.jpg.html'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 G'day Johnny, That's an issue with the AI aircraft - are you using our freeware AI traffic program? If so, make sure you have all NA AI updates installed, and if you are using DX10 make sure Steve's fixer is up to date. Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Not using DX10, so that is not the issue. I am using ICE AI, so I'm going to check those files. By the way, I thought the elevation problem was fixed, but as I'm taxing to the runway, the blue lights on the side of the taxiway are floating. You can see them here. ">http://href='http://s90.photobucket.com/user/specialist/media/floating_zps8c417755.jpg.html'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 No worries at all - to get the taxi lights lined up properly, just make sure your mesh setting is set to 5m. See this earlier post on the same matter for more info. Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Well, I did change my mesh setting to 5m, but these sets of taxi lights along the right side by the hill as I'm taxing towards 28L continues to float. The rest of blue taxi lights are fine. ">http://href='http://s90.photobucket.com/user/specialist/media/floating2_zpsa91996db.jpg.html'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 Are you using any other addon mesh aside from ORBX? If you refresh your scenery library at that spot is it still there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Like I said in the beginning, I have no other addon mesh. What ever FSX came with out of the box is all there is. Other than that, what I have installed is FTX Global Base, FTX Vector, FTX Northern California, and of course, FTX Monterey Regional Airport. Of course, I do have other 3rd party airports around California, such as FSDT KLAX, FLIGHTBEAM KSFO, and LatinVFR KSAN. By the way, I did refresh the scenery library while at the airport, within FSX by going to world/scenery and that didn't do anything for this airport. I see you tagged this topic resolved, but it's not resolved. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 20, 2014 Share Posted December 20, 2014 Thanks Johnny, this one is quite odd indeed. Next thing to try, could you please temporarily disable your FTX Vector folders and see if that solves the issue for you? PS - I marked this resolved after we resolved your original problem earlier this afternoon (post#4) - no sinister motives were intended Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Okay, understood on the reason to mark resolved. I'll go ahead and try to temporarily disable my FTX Vector Folders. The funny thing is that no where else around other airports that I've flown so far, not even the entire KMRY airport am I having this issue with floating lights, except along the side of the hill as I'm taxing towards runway 28L. All the other lights and objects are grounded as they should be, no matter the terrain height, which is one reason I was so attracted to this airport. Reminds me of the terrain levels landing at Madeira. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Unfortunately disabling FTX Vector didn't do anything to change those taxi lights by the side of the hill. I've tried all that I could think of, but still the same. Ironically the whole airport is fine, except for that group of lights. I have all three airports made to work with Northern California, Redding, Lake Tahoe, and Monterey. Monterey seems to be the only one with the problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 20, 2014 Author Share Posted December 20, 2014 Ha! I'm glad I'm not going crazy here. I'm not the only one who is having this problem with the lights at this airport. I was browsing YouTube, and I came across this video of someone testing out the ASA Piper Cherokee, flying out of Monterey. I snapped this screenshot of the video as it was passing by the same location I'm having problems with, and lord and behold, there it is. The lights are floating for this guy too. ">http://href='http://s90.photobucket.com/user/specialist/media/piper_zpscbcb1c0b.jpg.html'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 G'day Johnny, Just following this one up - I should warn first of all the youtube user has quite likely set their mesh settings higher than 5m - there are a few telltale signs in the mesh hill smoothness that point to this. You can also do a quick search of the forums here and find a few others have had the same issue too - though you are the first who hasn't been able to solve it by setting your mesh to 5m. As mentioned in your other topic, the dodgy AI points to a potential clue... you mentioned that you use other AI software, and a common cause of weird AI behaviour is a duplicate APX/ADE/Afcad file. Many AI programs include APX files as part of their packages, and these often cause visual anomalies if they clash with our airports - such as the floating reference point for those taxi lights. I'm not familiar with ICE AI, so it would be worth asking their developers if they ship APX files (and specifically for KMRY) with their software - same goes for any other AI package you might have. In the meantime, you can also find a likely culprit by doing a search a of your FSX folder for "KMRY" or "Monterey", and noting any .bgl files with either of these two terms in the file name. You will need to ignore all ORBX KMRY files (specifically, all that reside in your Flight Simulator X/ORBX folder, as well as the individual files Flight Simulator X/scenery/world/sceneryWestsim_KMRY_APX_Alt.bgl and Flight Simulator X/scenery/world/scenery/ADE_FTX_NCA_KMRY_Elevation_Adjustment.bgl) - any others may give a clue to a clash. Be aware though, that such a search may not find all results - they may be situated outside your FSX folder too (in which case it's good to ask the AI developers). Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 23, 2014 Author Share Posted December 23, 2014 I understand that people may set up their mesh higher than 5m, but when I watched that particular video on YouTube, I was trying to see if there was other issues at this airport as he was taxing, and there wasn't. The only issue I saw on the video was the same one I'm having, which is those lights at the side of that hill. As for ICE AI, they don't make APX files for the airports, all they make is pure AI liveries with time schedules. Just like Ultimate Traffic or Traffic X does. I double checked just to make sure, and they didn't duplicate any of my addon airports APX. I haven't added any other addons, whether freeware or payware that covers KMRY, so there are no other APX present other than what has come with FTX for KMRY. I'm ignorant to understand the various logic behind turning off BLG files, so I don't understand when I see all those FTX files that are duplicated, but one is off and the other one isn't. Perhaps you can shed some light on what is the reason for having two similar file names, except one is off and the other one keeps the extension .BGL at the end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarrad Marshall Posted December 23, 2014 Share Posted December 23, 2014 G'day Johnny, As far as I'm aware of, this is the most obvious issue that is present at Monterey due to not having 5m set - there might be others too but this particular issue was picked up during beta testing with wrong settings so we are aware of it. Without getting into too much boring details, the reason that you see the floating taxiways is because they are all part of a single large model of a row of lights, and that single model has a reference point where it is "placed" in the scenery (a set of co-ordinates and an altitude). The reference point for this particular taxilight row model, when everything is working fine, is the same altitude as the runway. If something changes the elevation of that particular spot in FSX, then the object using that co-ordinate and elevation is also going to be effected - either by raising it higher than expected (in your case), or sinking it below the surface. This comes as a result of the mesh for that given spot not behaving as expected - and the two most likely causes are going to be a different resolution or sourced mesh (or by defacto, the mesh resolution slider being something different to what we expected), or some kind of manual terrain edit, which is pretty common around airports in particular. Manual terrain edits will override any mesh settings, so in your case once we figured out early on that once the mesh was behaving correctly (ie the slider is setat 5m and you don't have any conflicting mesh addons outside of FTX NCA and Monterey), there must be something unknown that has caused an unexpected terrain edit. Which brings me back to the APX.. this is a type of bgl (which also goes by the name of an ADE or Afcad file) that contains all the "behind the scenes" information for the airport - runway names/types, radio frequencies, navaid/ILS info. In addition to this, and most importantly - it includes the "plumbing" - the layout of taxiways, aprons, parking spots (including size and type), runway lengths. This plumbing is used both by you (when ATC gives you the taxiway instructions to your rwy or parking, and also when you ask for directions in the ATC menu), and just as importantly, it is used to guide AI aircraft into the airport and to their parking spots. For default and lower-complexity addon airports, the APX will be visible - it's the generic runway and taxiway textures you are used to, but for more complex addon airports it will be invisible as it sits underneath the photoreal custom textures on top. Another benefit of the APX is that it will automatically flatten the terrain that a taxiway or runway is plumbed on top of - this is handy as it negates the need to manually flatten the terrain immediately underneath an airport. Now if we have more than one version of an APX file for any given airport, there is the possibility of a clash - with ORBX scenery, whilst we may have duplicate APX files (for example the one that comes with Monterey, and the version that comes with Northern California), our FTX Central program makes sure that they are layered correctly in your scenery library so that they don't clash. Lastly, whilst it may seem odd for an AI program (which you correctly point out adds traffic and schedules etc to your sim) to include a scenery component, it is not uncommon at all. In fact one of the two other examples you offered (MyTraffic) does include APX files for many airports, and has caused clashes with many of our airports (including KMRY). So, with that information in mind, this is my current theory based on the information you have given me; there is a clashing APX file somewhere in your setup for KMRY that is causing your AI aircraft to follow unexpected paths (because this clashing APX plumbing doesn't line up with the photoreal ground textures), and is also causing the floating taxilight model by having a slightly re-aligned taxiway path (which changes the mesh because of the "terrain flatten override" feature of an APX taxiway). We shouldn't dismiss ICE AI as a possible cause - it wouldn't be unlikely for them to ship with APX files (like MyTraffic does) and if so, this would be a probably cause. Lastly, in answer to your question, don't stress about any ORBX bgl's with an .off attached to the end - it means they are temporarily disabled, and always for a reason. This can either be through FTX Central or Vector AEC, and/or it can also be because a feature is switched off in the airport control panel options (also accessible via FTX Central). Cheers, Jarrad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 23, 2014 Author Share Posted December 23, 2014 Thanks Jarrad for the extensive explanation. I will definitely not overlook at the possibility that ICE AI might be a possible cause. I will post at ICE forum and see if I can get an answer to the possibility of them shipping a file with an APX file. I'm not even from California, but I have to say that KMRY has become one of my favorite destinations ever since it came out for FTX. If after trying all I can to correct the issue, I can't figure what else could be wrong, then I will do what I most hate to do, and that is to start with a fresh install of my entire FSX, and take it one step at a time. Mainly start by installing just all my FTX sceneries one by one and checking each site before adding the next. Maybe then I will resolve my issue, and by continuing to add other addons not related to FTX, I might find the culprit file. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
specialist Posted December 25, 2014 Author Share Posted December 25, 2014 Well, not sure what or how I fixed the problem. I'm sure it has nothing to do with ICE AI, since I haven't changed anything with their files. Couldn't find any APX files made by them. I added FTX Portland City Freeware, and I defrag my "C" drive, where my FSX files are at. That's all I've done, and the results shows KMRY normal now. The taxi lights along the hill are now grounded, as you can see in this new screenshot. What ever I did, I hope I won't have to go through it again, but I'm good to go now. ">http://href='http://s90.photobucket.com/user/specialist/media/fixed2_zps6bd2ffcd.jpg.html'> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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