DX10 wrong ground textures (and DX9 doesn't work at all)

[tripecac]

Today I started up FSX for the first time in months. I flew the standard route that I always do when getting back into FSX, which is around Wanaka Airport. I am using 2 sets of add-on scenery in that area: ORBX's New Zealand South Island, and RealNZ Wanaka, which appears at the top of the scenery list.

After flying for about 3 minutes I noticed some black textures on nearby mountains. And then I noticed water textures in the middle of the town. As I flew closer, the water textures changed to other textures quickly, as if it were cycling through different textures looking for the correct one. Weird. Clearly a glitch.

I checked my settings and noticed that FSX was using the DirectX 10 preview, so I switched to DirectX 9 and restarted FSX. This time, no textures loaded at all: the image of the plane on the Free Flight page was completely black, and when the actual game started, it just flashed "Loading 100%" over and over, with black in the background. I switched back to DX10. The Free Flight image was there, and I could start flying. But again, some of the nearby ground textures were corrupt.

So, DX10 has corrupt ground textures, and DX9 has no textures.

My video card is an ATI Radeon HD 5850. I'm running the latest driver (13.12). I usually use DX9 but a few months ago, a driver update (13.9) "broke" FSX for me; it would not run at all in DX9. The standard advice was to roll back to a previous driver (13.4), but since I play other games I did not want to do that. I found that switching to DX10 enabled FSX to run, but I didn't have time to do much testing of DX10 at the time.

I don't know if today's texture glitches were also present back on 13.9; I didn't fly around enough back then to notice them. I also don't know if the texture glitches have always been present in DX10, since I have mostly flown with DX9. So I don't know for sure whether they are DX10-specific.

I am, however, 100% sure that these texture glitches did not exist back when I was running FSX in DX9 before the 13.9 update. My scenery add-ons (and their order) have not changed since then, so I suspect there is a problem between the driver and the add-on scenery.

Now here's the kicker:

If I disable RealNZ Wanaka, the glitches go away, but then I lose the detail that RealNZ Wanaka provides; without RealNZ, the Wanaka airport is at the wrong elevation, making that airport unsuable. As soon as I re-enable RealNZ Wanaka, the glitches come back. So there seems to be a conflict between RealNZ Wanaka and either the driver (13.12) or DirectX 10.

I have not flown around enough to find out if there are glitches in other areas with RealNZ Wanaka disabled (so, either ORBX by itself or just the base FSX scenery).

Here are my questions:

1) Are the ground texture glitches a known problem for DirectX 10? If so, is there a fix?

2) Is there a way to get DirectX 9 working on current Radeon drivers? Or is rolling back to 13.4 the only known fix?

Thanks!

[Ian Warren]

I have seen this before, its not the photo-real causing the issue - I had this problem with NZNI just when working on Foxpine, re-install your ORBX SI, may take a couple of times, another one off those silly things with FSX and ORBX and switch,s.

[toprob]

I am not aware of any issues with Southern Lakes, with DX9 or DX10. However there is a NZSI patch for Southern Lakes, this is included in the scenery if you purchased it after 15 March 2012, if you purchased it before you will have to download the patch from my website.

However what you are describing looks like a very simple scenery order conflict -- have you set the FTX Scenery Library Insertion Point as explained in the Southern Lakes manual (or the patch manual)? You screenshot above doesn't show Southern Lakes photo scenery. There is in fact a way to disable the photo scenery leaving just the airport for those who prefer FTX textures over the always-summer photo textures, but you will need to use the switcher tool which is included with Southern Lakes.

So, first, please confirm that you have a patched Southern Lakes, and that you have set the FTX Insertion Point correctly.

[tripecac]

So, do you think the texture glitches have nothing to do with the driver changes, and are rather a library issue? That seems strange, since I haven't touched the main ORBX or Godzone scenery in over a year. Also, the texture glitches are not stable; as I fly, the textures change (from black to water to roads to coast to fields, etc.). Could a library issue cause textures to change as your aeroplane's position changes?

My ORBX and Godzone scenery are fully patched. I have been running RealNZ Wanaka with the aerial photo scenery disabled since 2012. I disabled the photo scenery because I wanted the higher res ORBX scenery for close-to-the-ground flying. However, I still use RealNZ's Wanaka Airport, because without it the airport runway is at the wrong altitude. See http://nzff.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18108 for details.

It's strange that the game is acting up when nothing in my library setup has changed since 2012... except the installation of ORBX's Queenstown Airport back in September 2013. Could installing an ORBX airport have broken the layering of NZSI and Southern Lakes Adventure?

[tripecac]

I have done some more investigation, and have noticed a couple things.

My post about disabling the aerial photo scenery was in July 2012. I was very focused on Wanaka at the time, and would have noticed any glitches immediately, so I'm 100% sure that RealNZ, ORBX, and my video drivers were all cooperating by the time I finished that post in July 2012.

According to ORBX's web site, their second patch for New Zealand South Island (NZSI.002) came out in December 2012: http://www.fullterrain.com/support.html#nzsi -- I still have those installation files on my pc, and can verify a date of December 2012. I also see that I purchased and installed ORBX's Milford Sound airport in December 2012.

This means that I installed the second NZSI patch (and the two ORBX airports: Milford Sound and Queenstown) after I fixed my Wanaka problems by disabling RealNZ Wanaka's photo scenery.

There is a fair chance that any "serious" flying I did in December 2012 was focused on the Milford Sound area, since that's the airport I had just bought. Similarly, when I bought the Queenstown airport in September 2013, any flying I did then was probably focused on Queenstown.

So, I am not 100% sure that I flew enough in the Wanaka area after installing the ORBX updates (NZSI.002, Milford Sound airport, and Queenstown airport) to notice changes to the Wanaka scenery. So, there is a chance that installation of the ORBX updates could have caused the glitches, but I didn't notice it.


So, what is known is this:

1) In July 2012 I got Wanaka looking good by disabling RealNZ Wanaka's photo scenery. No glitches at that time.

2) In December 2012 I installed ORBX's NZSI.002 and Milford Sound airport. It's unknown whether this caused glitches w/ RealNZ Wanaka.

3) In December 2012 I installed ORBX's Milford Sound airport. It's unknown whether this caused glitches w/ RealNZ Wanaka.

4) In September 2013 I installed ORBX's Queenstown airport. It's unknown whether this caused glitches w/ RealNZ Wanaka.

5) In October 2013 I observed that FSX DX9 does not work with my 13.9 driver. DX10 looked good, but I did not test Wanaka thoroughly. It's unknown whether there were glitches around Wanaka at the time.

6) In January 2014 I observed that FSX DX9 still does not work (completely black images), but DX10 works. However, there are texture glitches in Wanaka unless I disabled RealNZ Wanaka.



So here are my new questions:

1) Is there a chance that installing either NZSI.002, the Milford Sound airport, or the Queenstown airport "broke" the RealNZ installation? I would think that the patch (NZSI.002) has the greatest chance of messing things up, since it covered the entire South Island.

2) Is there a chance that this is a driver (or DX10) issue? Or does my screen grab (and description of cycling textures) not sound like a driver or DX10 issues?

3) If this is a RealNZ-vs-ORBX issue, what steps should I take to fix things? (Ideally, what are the minimal things I can try, like changing settings, and if those don't work, what is the cleanest way for me to install RealNZ and/or ORBX)?


Thanks a bunch!

[toprob]

Thanks for the info, that makes a lot more sense now. It looks like you might have a messed up Southern Lakes install, but that should be easy enough to fix.

The glitching textures are probably caused by the Region fix which changes the local Region at Wanaka to work with NZSI. This file needs to be disabled when you disable the Wanaka photo. However as you are having other problems with elevations etc, I think there is some more tidying up to do. The Real NZ Wanaka/FTX patch is tricky, and it is easy to mess it up. When it gets messed up, you end up with both FTX and VLC elevation files active, which conflict with each other.

There are two ways to tidy this up.

First, you can uninstall Southern Lakes, make sure that NZSI is put back the way it was, and then reinstall Southern Lakes. However since this a complicated, you might want to just tidy the RealNZwanaka files yourself.

The trouble with Real NZ Wanaka and NZSI is that a lot of files have two versions, one for NZSI and one without. These are set by the installer, but there are few things which can mess it up. The most common is reinstalling without uninstalling first. It sounds like you have ended up with both versions active. Another problem is the NZSI patch, which duplicates some files.

The simplest way to fix this is to have a look at the files in RealNZwanaka\scenery, and make sure they are sorted by filename. Look for files which have the same filename, just different extensions. If you have both, you need to delete one, shown by this list:

NZWF_ADE_ALT.bgl
NZWF_ADE_ALT.off ***delete this one***

NZWF_ADE_ALT_CVX.bgl
NZWF_ADE_ALT_CVX.OFF ***delete this one***

NZWF_ADE_GZ.bgl ***delete this one***
NZWF_ADE_GZ.OFF

NZWF_ADE_GZ_CVX.bgl ***delete this one***
NZWF_ADE_GZ_CVX.OFF

The next bit depends on whether or not you have the photo scenery active:

WanakaRegionAlt.bgl *** delete if you disabled the photo scenery ***
WanakaRegionAlt.off *** delete if you have enabled the photo scenery ***

WanakaSeasons.bgl *** delete if you disabled the photo scenery ***
WanakaSeasons.OFF *** delete if you have enabled the photo scenery ***



In Scenery\World\Scenery:


ADE_FTX_NZSI_NZWF_elevation_adjustment.bgl ***delete this one***
ADE_FTX_NZSI_NZWF_elevation_adjustment.bak

NZWF_ADE_ALT.bgl
NZWF_ADE_ALT.OFF ***delete this one***

[tripecac]

Thanks for the info.

These are the files in RealNZwanaka/scenery:

Code: Select all

04/29/2008  03:30 PM               228 cvxNZWFEXCLFL.Bgl
02/12/2012  03:26 PM               852 cvxNZWF_ALT_EXCL.BGL
02/17/2012  02:25 PM             3,966 NZWF_ADE_ALT.bgl
02/13/2012  02:17 PM             1,423 NZWF_ADE_ALT_CVX.bgl
03/12/2012  12:59 PM             3,998 NZWF_ADE_GZ.OFF
03/12/2012  12:59 PM             1,015 NZWF_ADE_GZ_CVX.OFF
02/03/2012  01:32 PM             1,884 NZWF_VLC_Objects.bgl
02/13/2012  06:01 PM         6,059,837 WanakaAerial1.bgl
08/26/2008  09:24 PM       277,101,949 WanakaAerial2.OFF
02/14/2012  03:55 PM            12,572 WanakaAirport.bgl
08/13/2008  05:12 PM           262,170 WanakaAirshowLib.bgl
03/05/2012  05:49 PM               327 WanakaBoats.bgl
03/08/2012  01:46 PM            43,868 WanakaFences.bgl
02/13/2012  12:08 PM         1,520,748 wanakalib.bgl
03/05/2012  05:28 PM               321 WanakaRegionAlt.bgl
02/12/2012  03:31 PM            33,798 WanakaRunway.bgl
02/21/2012  01:01 PM             3,298 WanakaSeasons.OFF

As you can see, there are duplicates in terms of .bgl vs .OFF.

Since I have photo realism disabled, should I delete WanakRegionAlt.bgl ? Do I need to get WanakaSeason.bgl from somewhere, or does it not matter that it's missing?

In Scenery/World/Scenery I have ADE_FTX_NZSI_NZWF_elevation_adjustment.bak but not ADE_FTX_NZSI_NZWF_elevation_adjustment.bgl, so I should already be set there, right? I also have NZWF_ADE_ALT.bgl but not NZWF_ADE_ALT.OFF.

I don't mind re-installing RealNZ if you think it will help. I could even re-install ORBX, though that takes a lot longer.



Side question: I also have some non-NZ scenery installed. Since I am only interested in flying in NZ, will it speed up load times for me to uninstall all non-NZ add-on scenery?

[toprob]

You don't have any duplicates, by the look of it. The only issue is the WanakaRegionAlt.bgl, which should be WanakaRegionAlt.off.

You don't need WanakaSeasons.bgl if you don't use the aerial image.

So apart form the Region file, you look set to go. If you still have trouble with elevations, when a screenshot would help.

[tripecac]

QUOTE (toprob @ Jan 26 2014,3:04 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You don't have any duplicates, by the look of it. The only issue is the WanakaRegionAlt.bgl, which should be WanakaRegionAlt.off.

And that indeed fixed it!!!

All I did was rename that file, and now the corrupt textures are gone. And the airport is still lined up correctly. Yay!

Thanks a bunch!