Weird problem at my scenery

[Hornet]

Hi Fellows.
I'd would like some help here if it's possible.

I made all objects for the scenery using GMax, they looked all ok.
Used FSSDK 2002 and FSREGEN to make the BGLs and APIs in order to apply them using a FSSC's soil made.
During compilation process, no errors. All runs smooth and nice.

When I start FS2004 the scenery looks great, with everything showing well, all textures, all txws, ramps and all objects done at GMax at their correct places, showing all textures, and with no visible problems at nowhere. Nice frames too. That is: no aparent problem or error.

Now starts the problem: during taxi procedures, no matter what aircraft is being used, and during take-off and climb, everything is ok. Afte some 3 or 4 minutes of flight around the airport region and turning back to face it again, there is allways a 'crash to desktop', as the objects are becoming visible again. Generally happens at some 2000ft distance from the scenery, no matter if using external or cabin views.

Important points:

- all objects are configured at FSSC with 10nm Range, 10.000m V1 and properly configured V2, among individually radius enought to circle each objetc.

- if I compile the scenery without the APIs, that is, only the soil elements, there is no 'crash to desktop': all the test flights run normally, so this is not a FSSC problem.

- during the crashes, that little FS error report windows allways points to 3 .dll's responsable for the fact:
=sometimes d3d9.dll
=sometimes fe.dll
=sometimes G2d.dll.
These dlls are allways responsable for the CTD on a random way.

- the same crash problems show at the computers of another 4 beta-testers, so, this is not a problem with my computer or my FS9.

I am really without options here and very sad about this scenery. I can't figure what is going wrong. How can a scenery made this way show itself nicely when at ground and allways crash when flying at some 2000ft from it?

Could someone help me on this matter? I'm quite giving it up. I've been working on his scenery for almost 3 months.

My best regards, and thanks for being among this comunity.
Hornet.

[arno]

Hi,

Usually such crashes mean that something is wrong in your BGL file, for example missing Return commands for calls, or stuff like that.

So a few questions:

Did you let FsRegen create the API macros or did you create them yourself? Have you tried to figure out which API causes the problem or only that it is the API BGL file that is?
Did you do anything special in your GMax objects?

[Hornet]

Hi Arno, glad to talk to you.

Thanks for your response.
About it:

1) I let FSRegen create the files normally.

2) As my scenery has 11 APIs by now, among buildings, hangars and other structures, I started testing it first without any API, then placing just one API each time on a recorded previous test flight procedure. From my post until now I've tested 9 APIs already, one per flight, and the CTD happened just once. I'm going to start the two last tests right now to separate the API (or APIs) hat seems responsable for the crash. Sorry I didn't figure this kind of test before posting here.

3) there are nothing special on my objects, like effects or things like that. Just the structures and the textures.

By now, I know that the CTD happened when using one of the APIs, after 9 test flights. After the 11th one, I will get all nice APIs together and make another test.
Thanks for your idea about 'missing return commands for calls', I will check it out on the faulty ones.

My best regards,
Hornet.

[Hornet]

Hi Arno, how are you?

Just finished my tests here and got more confused than before :confused:
After 11 flights, each one using just one API each time, there was two crashes.
The first one happened using API#3 alone, that is the bigger one, containing the main terminal buildings.
If there was just this crash, I woud be happy for discovering the cause and be able to exam the objects on it. But it was not the case.
After testing the scenery with the other APIs, I figured that none of the other APIs caused any crashes when used alone, but, the last test that used all 10 "healthy" together ended on a heavy crash.
How can 10 APIs that don't cause any problem when used alone, cause a crash when in group?
For the final test, the problematic one was left apart, of course.

Any ideas about it?

My best regards,
Hornet.

[BrBlazer]

I am having a simular problem in my scenery.

I am beggining to think the texturing is actually the problem for me.

I used to texture clicking on the "red ball" in gMax, select "Standard" and then add texture normally, uvw map, unwrap, edit the points, etc...

Recently here on the forum I took an advice for multi texturing which makes life so much easier (at first glance). I started this new object by going into edit mesh, then polygon and then I select the side of the polygon and on the perspective I add the texture with the mouse, dragging it from the explorer window to the polygon I want to texture.

Then I uvw map that one side, edit the points and do the same for the rest of the sides (this when I want a multi texture otherwise I do the regular red ball texturing way).

This multi texturing way I do now, makes the material list in gMax so much larger. Can this be the problem?

I had a 5mb gMax file, devided that file into three parts and the parts are now 3 4mb big file

Anyway... the point in my question is:

Could the way I texture be the problem?

OBS: Sometimes I get the makemdl not found error in gMax and at one time gMax crashed before reaching the makemdl window.

Thanks all and I hope to have contributed somewhat.

Best wishes,

Blazer

[arno]

This multi texturing way I do now, makes the material list in gMax so much larger. Can this be the problem?

Could the way I texture be the problem?

I doubt that is the problem. MakeMDL will optimize your GMax object when turning it into a MDL file. This will also sort all the textures, so that they only appear once in the texture list in the MDL object. So I don't think the way you texture really matters and it should certainly not give crashes.

The MakeMDL errors you mention I have seen as well. Usually it is enough to restart GMax and try again, don't know why. Other things that seem to help are to collapse your stack and stay away from using groups in your GMax file.

[arno]

Hi,

How can 10 APIs that don't cause any problem when used alone, cause a crash when in group?

It sounds like your problem is not one single object, but either the combination of them or maybe the code with which they are placed. This can indeed be tricky to debug.

The API macros you use, have they been made by FsRegen or have you edited them yourself? If their structure is not correct it could cause problems like this.

Would it maybe be possible for use to try the scenery as well? Maybe that can give some sort of clue, as I am running a little out of ideas here :).

[BrBlazer]

Hi guys,

Solved my problem converting my textures to dxd1 format. Hope it helps others with this problem.

Kindly,

Blazer