Textured Poly Problem

General discussion about Scenery Design. Questions about SBuilder for Flight Simulator FS2004.
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Larry
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Textured Poly Problem

Post by Larry » Sun Nov 04, 2007 5:51 pm

Hi All,

I am having trouble with SBuilderX and FSX getting textures to show in textured polys. I draw the poly, declare it as a textured poly, set the altitude, and select a texture from the default FSX texture folder. I get a solid black poly as if FSX can not access the texture. I have tried different textures, tried putting them in other texture folders and have searched the forums for a clue but nothing has helped. All other SBuilderX functions work perfectly. Anybody have any ideas?

Thanks,

Larry B.

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:03 pm

Hello Larry,

May be you could make a TEST PROJECT with a simple polygon with a default texture assigned to it. Then you could paste here the SCASM intermediate file that is created in the Work folder. That file is very informative.

Kind Regards,

Luis

Larry
Posts: 17
Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:31 am
Location: USA

Post by Larry » Mon Nov 05, 2007 3:50 pm

Hello Luis,

Thank you very much for your reply. I created a temporary project as you suggested. I placed a textured poly in a familiar location in the central US and assigned the texture "arid.bmp". I checked it in FSX and got the usual black square. I am unable to copy and paste the temp_Project_TEXP.scm file into this message. Can you tell me how to send you the file?

Thanks again for your help.

Larry

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Mon Nov 05, 2007 7:36 pm

Hello,

Please send to "ptsim at ptsim dot com" a ZIP with the SBP file and the SCM file.

Regards,

Luis

Larry
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Location: USA

Post by Larry » Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:28 pm

Hi Luis,

I have sent the two files you requested via e-mail. I hope you can use them to find a solution to my problem. Thanks very much for your efforts.

Larry

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Tue Nov 06, 2007 11:04 pm

Hi

I received your files and I added another simple polygon on the left side of yours. Your texture was arid.bmp. Mine was coral_reef01.bmp. Yours is in the folder:

C:\Programas\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Texture

and mine is in:

C:\Programas\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Scenery\World\Texture

I entered an altitude of 140 meters for my polygon and I compiled. SBuilderX created a folder that did not existed on my system:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Addon Scenery\Temp Project\scenery


and copied the BGL into it. Note that no sister Texture folder exists for this BGL. So the 2 referred to textures in the BGL produce this result:

Image

Then I copied the coral_reef01.bmp into the default texture folder:

C:\Programas\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Texture

and after reseting FSX I got this:

Image

Which is correct. I hope that you can follow my experiments. Do not forget to check your scenery library menu to see what are the active (and non active) scenery folders.

Kind Regards,

Luis

Larry
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:31 am
Location: USA

Post by Larry » Wed Nov 07, 2007 12:50 am

Hello Luis,

First of all I want to thank you again for taking the time to analyze my situation. You are very kind.

I see in your screen shot that my arid.bmp texture shows correctly on your computer, and that the coral reef texture that you used also shows correctly after you copied that texture to the main FSX texture folder. On my computer I have only a black square where the Arid texture should be. From the results of your tests, I believe that my problem lies not with SBuilderX but some where else in my computer. It is strange though that the textures are missing only in textured polys. I have never had any problem with vector polys or class scenery.

Anyway, thanks very much for trying to help, and I will continue to watch for clues as to why my graphics card can't seem to display those textured polygons. The card is an Nvidea 8800 and it also is causing trouble with my Abacus FSDS program. In that case it doesn't properly display the solid 3D view for models.

Thanks again Luis,

Larry

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Wed Nov 07, 2007 10:22 am

Hi,

Please check the type of those 2 textures with Image Tool. Arid should be a 8-bit format image (??? ... I am away of home and I can not check). I will compare with mine.

Did you look the scenery library menu?

Luis

Larry
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Location: USA

Post by Larry » Wed Nov 07, 2007 4:10 pm

Hi Luis,

I do not have "Image Tool". Adobe photoshop reports Arid.bmp as an 8 bit indexed color image. I looked at the FSX library menu and the problem scenery folder is at the top of the list and active. I believe the problem lies not with the polygon but with the inability of FSX to locate and display the texture. I have tried several different texture files, some normal and some extended, and I always get a black poly in FSX. This would imply that FSX sees the poly but not the texture file. In my experience with FSX thus far, any time it does not have the required texture, it displays the object, poly, etc. as solid black. Am I correct in this? I am convinced that there is no problem with SBuilderX, but there is something about my computer set up that prevents FSX from finding a texture file in FSX that is used with a textured polygon.

Thanks,

Larry

Larry
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:31 am
Location: USA

Post by Larry » Wed Nov 07, 2007 6:44 pm

Hello again Luis,

I just now was able to get the Arid.bmp texture to show up in FSX. I copied Arid.bmp to FSX\addon scenery\Temp project\texture which is the one texture folder where I had not previously placed it and I now see the texture in place of the black square. I still do not know why FSX does not find the texture file in the main FSX texture folder because that is where the SBuilderX ini says it is supposed to be and that is also where you placed it in your computer.
At any rate, if I always copy textures to the specific texture folder for the particular scenery i'm working on, I should now be able to use the textured poly function in SBuilderX.

Thank you for all of your work on this thing and if you wish to analyze further why my textures are not found from the main FSX texture folder I would be happy to help in any way that I can.

Best regards,

Larry

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Luis Sa
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Post by Luis Sa » Wed Nov 07, 2007 11:04 pm

Hello,

Image tool is part of the SDK. SBuilderX uses it! You can see it in the Tools folder ...


... but it looks to me that your installlation of FSX is not 100%. When a texture is not found on the sister texture folder (the one that sits side by side to the scenery folder that contains the calling BGL) it is searched for in the default texture folder!!! Why this is not your case?

Kind Regards,

Luis

Larry
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 5:31 am
Location: USA

Post by Larry » Thu Nov 08, 2007 4:26 am

Hi Luis

I found the image tool - I wasn't aware that it was in SBuilderX. As you can probably tell I am only semi-computer literate!

I have no idea what might be wrong with my FSX installation. The program runs just fine, never crashes and I have excellent frame rate, image quality, etc.

All I know is that as long as I place a texture file for a textured poly in the "sister folder" as you called it, my textured polys are working out just fine.

Thanks so much for your help. You have spent much time and effort on my behalf. SBuilderX is a fantastic program and I absolutely love using it. All of us in the flight sim community owe you a lot for writing it.

My best to you,

Larry

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