Darrington (1S2) is there . . . and then it isn't

[macwino]

Today, with PNW installed, the Orbx versions of KORS and 1S2 installed, the latest Orbxlibes installed, and FTX Central set to North America, I flew from Orcas Island to Darrington - and when I got to Darrington it wasn't there. Where the airport should have been was just an old strip of macadam - no buildings, none of the surrounding scenery, no power lines, no nothing. I had this happen to me once before on the same flight, about a month ago, and I wrote it off as a one-off. But now that it's happened again, I thought I'd post about it. Something very strange is going on.

 

I fly this route frequently because I use it to try out different scenery settings and their affect on my frame rates and my VAS usage. But for some reason the 1S2 airport is sometimes not there. I tried resetting the airport location to 1S2 while still sitting there at the barren airport, and all the Orbx 1S2 goodies appeared. Similarly, I closed P3D and relaunched it at 1S2 with no changes to FTX Central or any of my other settings and the airport and its surroundings were there in all their splendor. 

 

I then relaunched P3D and tried the flight again, having confirmed that the airport and surrounding scenery were there as described above. And the exact same thing happened. When I got to Darrington nothing was there. I again tried to reload the plane at Darrington as I’d done before, but this time the Orbx scenery didn’t load. There’s simply no rhyme or reason about what’s going on.

 

So why, on 3 separate flights from Orcas Island, which is fully populated, is there nothing at Darrington when I get there? And on other flights the 1S2 airport and surroundings are there.

 

On my second flight today I paid careful attention to airports along the way, such as Orbx’s Concrete, to see whether they were there, and indeed they were. I also confirmed that the power lines that I usually follow on the downwind leg at 1S2 were missing, along with all the other surrounding scenery that accompanies the airport.

 

Thanks for your assistance in figuring this out.

Robert

 

[HeH]

Hi Robert,

 

I have the same issue. There is a thread from me here about it, do a search for 1S2 and You should find it. I actual never got a final answer from the ORBS Team. I changed the Name of the file ORBX_1S2_ground_poly.bgl inside the FTX_AA_1S2 Folder to ORBX_1S2_ground_poly.bgl.off That should give You about 90% of the scenery back but then the runway has no concrete it`s more like gras-Strip. But all houses and air-port buldings are back.

 

Regards

 

Helmut

[macwino]

Helmut, thanks for your input. Here's the link to your earlier post, which I found before posting but didn't read because I didn't see this as simply an autogen issue:

 

http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/90779-autogen-issue-flight-from-3w5-to-1s2-in-p3s-v24/?hl=darrington

 

In any event, your situation sounds very similar to mine. It would be nice if Orbx could chime in on this. When this happens I'm not able to get the airport back for an approach, and I'm really going to miss it. I'll try your work around and see how it goes. 

 

Thanks again,

Robert

[Alex Goff]

Hi Robert,

 

A couple troubleshooting things, first could you post a screenshot? Also, are the objects persistently gone or do they reappear from different viewing angles? There are some instances where Prepar3D will suddenly offload scenery items, if it's models disappearing that is fairly easy to rectify.

 

If it is autogen disappearing, I've never encountered that but it could definitely be related to previous cases of objects disappearing and probably resolve-able.

 

Cheers,

 

Alex

[macwino]

Alex, here's a screenshot of what I find at Darrington.

 

 

All the objects are gone, and I can't get them back by changing my view, angle, what have you. One time I was able to get the airport back by reloading the plane at the airport while sitting there in the state pictured above. I tried reloading at the airport on another flight but this time it didn't work and I was left with the barren landscape.

 

I'll have to let you decide whether the missing items are autogen. What I can tell you is that the buildings are missing as are the trees. Also, as I mentioned above, the power lines that run parallel to the runway and that I follow for a downwind leg are also missing.

 

FWIW, here’s another screenshot that I am 99% certain was also taken when approaching 1S2 the other day.

 

url=http://fsfiles.org/flightsimshotsv2/image/zUB]

 

Alex, thanks for looking into this.

 

Robert

[Alex Goff]

Interesting, I suspect the case may be that the very large amount of autogen around Darrington combined with all of the library objects is causing it to unload. I can't seem to get my system to reproduce it but several users are having issues so we can surely get to the bottom of it. My first suspicion is large amounts of autogen are unloading it all. Could you navigate to the Prepar3D v2\ORBX\FTX_NA\FTX_AA_1S2\Texture and move all the files with the .agn extension to a temporary directory? 

 

That will remove all of the autogen for the time being so we can see if other buildings reappear. If that's the case then I can begin pruning the autogen to be sparser and not cause an unloading.

[Holger Sandmann]

Hi guys,

 

just a comment on those screenshots: I don't see any evidence of PNW being active, certainly not its landclass. For example, the mountain landclass on both screenshots is completely wrong. Even if heavy PC loads may cause autogen/object display to be impacted the landclass ground textures are the first to be loaded so they should be correct.

 

Were these screenshots taken with PNW installed and FTX Central set to North America?

 

Cheers, Holger

[macwino]

First, in response to Holger, PNW and North America were indeed active. In fact, I checked this and then redid the flight and the airport wasn't there. Moreover, I just did the flight again this afternoon and the airport was missing. I took a lot more photos if that will be of any assistance. Also, remember that one time I landed at Darrington and then reloaded the airport and it loaded with all its buildings, etc. So I think this ought to confirm that PNW and 1S2 were active and that North America was loaded.

 

Second, Alex, tomorrow I will remove the autogen files and report back. In the meantime, FWIW, the display settings I use in PNW with GA planes are:

 

Scenery Complexity - Very Dense

Autogen Vegetation Density - Very Dense

Autogen Building Density - Normal

 

I think that the only other relevant aspect of my setup is that I'm running at 4K resolution.

 

Depending on weather, I generally have between 500 and 900 free VAS when arriving at Darrington from KORS after flying at 2000 feet up the river valleys so I can enjoy the wonderful Orbx scenery.

 

Thanks,

Robert

[jabble]

Looks like Holger has a point - here's a screenie I just took over Darrington, in P3D 2.5.

 

Note the forest covered hills in the background, compared to in the earlier one which look far more barren, perhaps like default.  I'm on dense veg autogen, BTW.

 

Could it be that although PNW is installed, that's also not showing up correctly?  In which case the problem isn't specific to the airport.

 

Edit: Here's a shot over those background hills, showing the valley between Jumbo and Whitehorse mountains.  Note they're fairly solidly covered in green, while your shot shows them as bare rock (and snow).

[HeH]

I my case I could Change this by renaming this one ground poly as mentioned above. Maybe somebody could try it and confirm. It Looks like one big tile of the landclass and the scenery is gone when the groundpoly is active. As the autogen is gone at a straight line and it is a big tile with all four sides straight without the 1S2 scenery and autogen.

[Alex Goff]

If a chunk of autogen is disappearing and reappears when the ground polygon is disabled, it is a separate issue. However the ground polygon cannot exclude models and library objects.

Please check the timestamp for the ground polygon file and report back. It's possible you may have the FSX version which could exclude autogen.

[macwino]

Alex, I just made 2 flights from KORS to 1S2 with the 1S2 .agn files removed as you directed. In neither case was 1S2 there at all, except for the runway and taxiway. I did, however, see the power lines on the left when entering the area. I've attached 3 screenshots depicting what I saw:

 

1. Powerlines on arrival in the 1S2 environs.

2. 1S2 environs

3. 1S2 runway

 

Let me know if you need any further information.

 

Thanks,

Robert

 

 

 

[Alex Goff]

Alright, so something is causing only files within the 1S2 airport folder to unload. The powerlines are a part of PNW and the PNW autogen is displaying. This pretty much disproves my theory on autogen overloading the sim, but do the airport objects still appear when a flight is started at the airport versus done from another airport?

 

Also, if you start a flight from another airport and do a mid-air scenery library reload does 1S2 show up?

[HeH]

I checked the timestamp from the groundpoly and it seems OK as it fits to the others. But I can tell You that I had the same as shown in the screenshots and it was solved be Setting the ground_poly to off.

I could get the scenery back when I did a scenery-reload during the flight inside the unshown scenery

[macwino]

Alex, in response to your questions:

 

1. do the airport objects still appear when a flight is started at the airport versus done from another airport?

2. if you start a flight from another airport and do a mid-air scenery library reload does 1S2 show up?

 

1. If I load the plane at 1S2 I have the airport scenery. If I load the plane at Concrete and fly to 1S2 I also have the scenery. However, if I load the plane at KORS and fly to 1S2 I don't have the 1S2 scenery, but do have the Concrete scenery on the way up the valley. So it appears that time and distance of the flight to 1S2 may be a factor.

 

2. If I load the plane at KORS and fly to 1S2, as I said above, there's no airport scenery when I arrive at 1S2. However, if I do a mid-air Scenery Library rebuild, as you suggested, the airport appears and I'm able to fly a circuit and land.

 

The Scenery Library rebuild is a fix I can live with if you don't find the source of this problem. I've not yet tried Helmut's suggestion but will give it a try. Right now, however, I'm kind of bored with this flight, having done it about 15 times over the past few days. But I will get to it.

 

Alex, let me know if there's any more testing I can do to help you figure this out.

 

Thanks,

Robert

[HeH]

Robert,

just take the flight from my first thread for Your testing. It's just about 5 Min to reach the border where the missing scenery starts and maybe 10 Min til You are at 1S2

[Alex Goff]

Hi guys,

I'm stumped on it, I can't seem to produce missing scenery. I will post it to Lockheed's developer feedback and see if they have more knowledge. All the scenery components are compiled with the P3D BGL compiler and autogen annotator which is the most confusing part, typically models will disappear more if it is an FSX model. But I have never before seen a whole folder (minus PR and mesh) unload.

[macwino]

Helmut, I posted this erroneously in your original thread, so here it is again:

 

Helmut, as noted in my above post, I have flown from Concrete to Darrington, and there is no scenery problem with this flight. The problem only occurs when doing a longer flight, such as from KORS to 1S2.

 

Robert

Alex, thanks for the effort, and be assured that reloading the Scenery Library when in range of the airport is a workaround I can live with.

 

Robert

[Demious]

I've been having the same problem. I started my flight from Israel's Farm, so not to far away. I've got PNW active in Global hybred mode, high scenery settings and round 1.4GB free VAS and around 30-35FPS.

I turned the ground_poly off and I can load a flight at 1S2 and I do get the buildings back, but I'm on a grass strip, but it looks like it has been burned, like there is sooth spread over the grass.

The mountains look different then on Robert's pictures, so I guess the mesh is loaded properly.

When flying over 1S2 the building disappear and reappear when changing the view angle.

 

Pictures can be found in this post: http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/101407-cant-load-1s2-airport/