An obvious question - I assume you have already thought of it: What level are you using for your scenery complexity in ADE and what scenery level do you have selected in FSX?
If you set your scenery objects to "Very Sparse" in ADE, they will always show up, no matter FSX level you have set…you have probably already tried that
- I made the textures in ms paint and saved it as a bmp file --- is there a better program to make these in?
- Then when I went to apply the textures in FSDS, I had an "INVALID SIZE" message when I tried to select it, so I went on FS Developer and posted a thread about it and someone replied and said to resize my texture image to a certain size (I don't remember what that size was exactly).
- I resized the image, and it was a little stretched/smashed, but when I applied it to the FSDS object, it stretched/smashed itself and it looked fine in the preview view in the upper right corner of FSDS, but it never showed up in FSX.
By the numbers, as it were
1 - Yes, there are better programs. I prefer PaintShop Pro by Corel it is $99 but they have sales all the time (
Corel PaintShop Pro page) It will use the DXT plug in so you can save textures in DXT format. I also use PhotoShop essentials for Mac and Pixelmator for Mac - but then save the textures in something PaintShop Pro will read. If you have a Mac, Pixelmator is fairly inexpensive…PhotoShop Essentials is not in expensive unless you catch a sale.
2 - Texture must be in some combination of a "powers of 2" in pixels. 64, 128, 256, 512, 1042. The height and width can be different as long as they are one of those sizes. So 512 x512 works. So does 512 x 1042. I have never gone above 1024 or lower than 256 in any dimension.
3 - Regarding stretching and squashing. The key is to start with a blank texture in a correct size. If using a photo that doesn't exactly match that size, you have some cropping to do.
In your first post you said:
When I make an FSDS object and then compile it as a .bgl file and then insert it into an ADE project, then when I compile the ADE project and run it in my simulator the object does not appear at all.
If it were a missing texture issue, the scenery object would show up as a completely black object…kind of like the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey" - you wouldn't see the textures but you would see the object. That leads me to think that this is a BGL problem…unless it is a Scenery Complexity mismatch. Your Library Object Manager screen looked good and when you place the object in ADE , I assume you see you see it. In ADE 1.7 it should take on the rough shape the object placed. So if the Scenery Complexity isn't the culprit…I'm baffled.
Hope some of this helps.