GenericBuilding preview not working

[PlaneMad]

Arno, i havent been able to get the preview to work yet. I have reinstalled the dll's and switched buffering modes, but i dont see anything.
Could it be possible that it hasnt recognized my FS texture folder which is f:/fs9/texture ?
Just for your info i use an onboard 810 intel graphic chipset.

[arno]

Hi,

If you open the file config.xml you should be able to see a tag named FsPath in there. That should show your FS folder. But I think you would get an error if it could not be found correct.

Are you sure you have placed a new GenericBuilding as well? Otherwise no dynamic preview is shown.

[PlaneMad]

The Fspath is ok. I also have a generic building object in the xml, but the preview doesnt show.
Is there anyother files that may be needed like .net framework etc. ?

[arno]

Hi,

No, this tool has been made with VB6, so no .NET stuff is needed. And all other runtime files that are needed are included in the installer.

So I guess it must be something else that goes wrong. When you look in the ObPlacer XML root, do you see a file called temp.bmp after starting ObPlacer XML?

[PlaneMad]

Arno, i have the bmp file. 11 files in total, i dont think anything is missing.
Maybe its because most textures in my FS tex folder are in DXT?
Anyway Arno, i can live without the preview, so dont worry about it too much.
Id love to see some upgrades to your other tools :)

[arno]

The temp.bmp texture is due to the conversion of DXT to normal BMP (that is why the graphic DLL files by Martin Wright are needed). So it seems the process is going fine until there.

I'll have to think about this, as I have no clear idea what is going wrong. I assume your graphical card supports OpenGL (and your video drivers do)? As almost any cards does nowadays this should be a stupid question :).

[delaa]

Hi !
First TNX for the great tool :)
But I got the problem with prev. of gen. build. also (lack of it!)
haaa! but the strange thing happens when I try to resize the prev. window
the image apearing for a while - (appearing and blinking) only when i'm moving a mouse (fot resizing prev. window) when window is not resized - no prev. at all ..

any ideas (all dll's isntaled I hope and set to single buffering)

gratz.from.poland. ;-)

DeLaa

[arno]

Hi,

Does this happen with both single and double buffering?

[delaa]

Hi !
Not in double buff. mode !no trace of prev! :banghead: only on single buff. mode i had something (blinking to white) in prev. window but as I said only while resizing window.

Gretz.

[arno]

OK, thanks. I will have to think a bit about this. Obviously it is something with the drawing in OpenGL. What kind of graphical card are you using?

[delaa]

--------------------
GF6600GT Pine XFX
--------------------

[PlaneMad]

Not a stupid questions as i dont think mine supports opengl. Intel 810 graphic chipset for my celeron 633Mhz, maybe time for a new PC :scratchch
I cant run gmax with opengl, only Heidi. So i guess that explains it, i use a prehistoric PC :tapedshut

[arno]

Thanks for the info. I will try and see if I can find some answers with this information. Maybe I can make my OpenGL code more general or something like that.

[PlaneMad]

Arno, dont bother. Im sure im the only one without an AGP card.
But it would be great if you could explain how the 'textureindex' atribbutes work?

[arno]

Hi,

I still would like to know why it does not work. Maybe I can easily make the code more general :).

The textureindex sets the mapping of your texture. A value of 256 means that the texture is displayed once. Setting it to 512 means the texture is repeated twice in that direction, etc.

[Stranger]

Hello Arno,

I have same problem. No preview of generic building is shown in either double or single buffering mode. FSPath in config.xml is correct, temp.bmp is present. Graphic card - NVidia GeForce 2 MX400.

If you are interested, I've discovered that some library objects have unusual reference point placement which is located on top of the object rather than bottom. Therefore if you place such an object at 0m/0ft AGL it will just stick of the ground a little or wont be shown at all, although in fact it is very tall.
Some of such objects are:

gen_stack01 - 72f14e2949f92b313c5a069a57dfdd28
Constructcrane_large - 6fc40cc0437304cf159f0ea368735810
Constructcrane_med - 1fc7d750435b3281291917b546c81e2b
Constructcrane_small - 74a775694ad2a6a8777307a6687c933e

Probably it is done to allow designer to place stacks and cranes of different heights using same library objects. Cranes can be used in conjunction with
SCO_noaa_cranebase - d1c0b5a34d8769afbda0c78a8f546d21
placed at ground level.

Hope you find this interesting.

[arno]

Could one or two of you, who have trouble with the preview, drop me an email? I might have found something in the source. But I can only test it by sending you a beta version, as I can not reproduce the problem here.

[Stranger]

I'm ready for a test. Address is sent.
Thanks

[PlaneMad]

Id love to help too, but unfortunatly my PCs software registry got corrupted :banghead:

[delaa]

ready for testing email in PM
TNX

[arno]

Hi all,

This evening I found out that I could reproduce the problem on my old PC (which has a GF2 card). So that made it a lot easier for me to debug. Thanks to everybody who responded to help testing, but I hope it is no longer needed.

I played a bit with the initialization of the OpenGL picturebox and I think it is working now. It even worked in double buffering mode where it did not do so before, so if you are using single buffering now you might want to test it as well.

I have attached a new EXE to this post. Please note that this is no official release yet. It is just a test EXE to see if the problem has been solved for other users as well. There are a few more bugs to be solved, before I will release an official 0.81 version.

But I still hope this solves the preview problem :).

EDIT: Attachment removed, as new version is available for download by now.

[Stranger]

At least for me it's working now.
Thank you Arno!

There is additional small problem though. When viewing library object preview after any generic building, area unoccupied by picture is not cleared from previous image. See below:

[JonPatch]

Hi Arno,

In the latest version (81.11) I know get flickering in the preview with single-buffering, but double-buffering now works. I think this may be a good thing.

The dual monitor problem is still there though, I must start on my primary, move the window to my secondary, maximize, close the program, then restart it on my primary to get the preview on my primary. From then on it works.

Jon