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FSX One solution found to disappearing objects placed with IS2

T

Thomas32

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138
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france
Hello there!

Here is a small hint that could be useful to developpers struggling to find a solution to this problem: Objects disappearing and appearing again, depending of the user's point of view.

For my current LFML scenery, I wanted to place custom made ULD3 containers and container dollies, as usual with Instant Scenery 2. When I launched FSX again, those objects kept appearing and disappearing depending of my point of view, as you can see in these shots:


0f5MWvQ.jpg


AIJ76h5.jpg



One thing helped me a lot: you can see black areas where the objects are supposed to be. Those are the static shadows placed under each vehicle, and they use a different bitmap than the disappearing vehicles. That led me to think the culprit was only the bitmap. So I changed the bitmap name from "LFML_container2.bmp" to "LFML_container_2.bmp" and told one of the ULD3 container model to look after that new texture. Here is the result:


JKg4h3H.jpg



I did the same for the other objects:


yKEErGx.jpg



So, if you happen to have that kind of problem, you might want to try to change the bitmap's name. I don't know why, but this worked in my case. Maybe FSX doesn't like when a number is coupled with a name wihthout an underscore. That had nothing to do with the texture properties: I changed the alpha settings, converted from .dds to .bmp. That led to nothing.

Hope my explanation was clear enough ;);)

Best regards,
 
If I am to understand correctly, you have more than one model-type using this texture?

Did you change the texture reference for just one of these models and leave the others referencing the old texture name?

The usual cause of the objects appearing and disappearing seems to be related to large numbers of polygons using the same material (drawcall)

Splitting off one of the materials to use a different texture-name will divide the work across two drawcalls, and may explain what you have observed -- if indeed this is what you did here.

dds is probably a better format to use for FSX, not so much for this problem (as you observed, it has no impact) .. The theoretical cumulative benefit when using lots of textures is performance.
 
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Hi hcornea,

Yes, all the ULD containers and containers dollies use the same texture (now LFML_container_2.dds). Before that switch, I had the "disapearing objects" problem. So in this case I don't think it was due to the issue you mention with many objects sharing the same material (but that information is very interesting and i take a good note about it :) ).
All the textures I use are converted to DDS, but i wanted to see if switching back to BMP would solve the problem (you never know). It didn't :D . What I don't understand is why changing the name of the texture would solve the problem.
 
Do you have other objects in your scenery besides the containers and container dollies that use "LFML_container2.bmp" in an identical material? If the sum of all those object's triangles exceed 43690 you will start to see them disappear from different angles like this assuming they are all batched models using the same material (as Ian suggested).

Check this thread for more info:

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=426085

Jim
 
Thanks a lot for your answers Jim and Ian. Well, now I feel dumb :D
You were both absolutely right about the problem. I launched FSX again and found the problem again. So I made a new test by splitting the objects on two materials (and thus creating a new drawcall), and it worked again. Very interesting point, because that shows how effective the Drawcall batching is: many single objects are used dozens of times in the scenery, and performance is still very good.
Don't know why it showed right before the last FSX start though...

Thanks again for your input :)
 
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