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FS2004 Odd Background image showing through airport runway even with exclusions

Hi Jon,
let me first start by saying thanks for looking into this. I think based on your reply, I need to clear up a few things in this post.
  1. TFFG and TQPF use the same AP931250.bgl file for the default airport in FS9.
  2. I looked at TQPF to see if it had the same issues as TFFG with some unknown polygons showing up and not being able to be deleted.
  3. I have NO addon scenery for the Caribbean Area. The only addons I use are Ultimate Traffic and Ultimate Terrain for FS9, and the Lukla and Chourcheval pay ware addons to give those airports sloped runways.
  4. The reference to my OLD FS9 files was to eliminate the possibility that during copying, the AP913250.bgl file had somehow become corrupted.
  5. Following Tom's earlier suggestion, I deactivated all addon scenery and still ended up with the same issue at TFFG.
  6. I presume that regardless of the settings in FS9, if the stock airport is in the FS9 regular scenery file locations, that ADE would decompile that airport if it is not corrupted somehow.
  7. I have been using ADE for years to make small modifications to airports, but just recently (for my own enjoyment) began reworking airports and adding traffic files.
I hope this clears things up a bit. Being a novice at airport construction, and how polygons work in FS9, I thought this was a weird problem. I did copy and past a new AP913250.bgl file from my old XP drive version of FS9 and got the same results...ie...TFFG still has the weird polygons, and ADE will not decompile TQPF saying it is not found. Not sure what would cause this, and I am quite sure that on Jon's or anyone else's system, TQPF decompiles just fine. Still wondering if there is a way to look at the underlying terrain polygons for that region to see if that is the problem. Any other advice is welcome, and I thank everyone in advance again for all their help.

Just in case this matters, my system is an AMD 2950X 16 core Threadripper with 128GB DDR4 Ram, RadeonVii 16GB Graphics Card, and my main drive is the EVO850pro 2TB SSD.
Thanks again,
Jeff
 
Hi all,
Just thought I would include a couple of screen shots for further analysis of what is going on. Screenshot 146 is the files associated with TFFG and 147 is the settings I have for ADE.
Thanks again,
Jeff
Jeff
Screenshot (146).png
Screenshot (147).png
 
So I decided to run the BGL Analyzer to check and see if any of the files associated with either TFFG of TQPF were some type of scenery files, and according to the BGL Analyzer, the only files other then the stock airport of the Ultimate Traffic files, the only other files are stock terrain files. Can someone please tell me if a terrain file can contain some type of scenery objects or some types of polygons that would not allow for exclusion? Also, is there a way to decompile a Stock FS9 AP*******.bgl file to figure out what airports or other objects are in that file? It seems odd to me that FS9 connected so many airports into 1 file in some cases....AP931250.bgl as an example contains the 2 aforementioned airports for sure and may contain others. As I said in the previous posts, I am new to designing an entire airport, but a long time user of ADE to augment airports that I have/do fly to in real life. (Certified Commercial Pilot) I would love to find a way to solve this issue.
Thanks again in advance for all the help.
Jeff

PS. I have tried all the steps outlined in the previous posts by both Jon and Tom...Thanks to both of them for their help!!!
 
These are the airports in AP931250.bgl

1591248902166.png


You mention Ulitmate Traffic - have you disabled that - it may well contain airport data

AP9 files are geographical so contain one to many airports in an area. They can contain items other than just airports.
1591249106386.png


This file contains six scenery object placements and 73 waypoints. Others can contain far more which is why we should never remove or modify these files.
 
The simple way to test if the AP file contains those polygons is to rename it by adding .BAK to the end of the file name and starting FS. If they are still there then that is not your problem. If they are gone then it might be, subject to any terrain elevation changes that might now be burying them.

BTW, all the other files with the same number cover the same area - FL are flatten files, etc.
 
Does it change anything if you disable the St. Maarten Aerial Photo area in the scenery library? There does appear to be a tile under that airport, specifically 003311320121111**.bmp. I don't know why that would show through your runway but there does appear to be some runway markings that could possibly coencide with the odd background polys you're seeing. Is it possible that you have some addon runway textures that are partially transparent (with an alpha channel) allowing the photoreal tile to show through?
 
JRobinson, I do not have any Aerial Photo scenery that I am aware of. I will look for it in the stock scenery files but I did not add any photo scenery of any kind. Thanks for looking at this. Thanks Tom for the suggestion of renaming the AP file and then starting FS. I will try that and post the results shortly. Also, thanks Jon for the information. What program did you use to see the information in the AP file? Also, is it possible to break up a Stock AP file so it doesn't contain overlapping airports?
Thanks again to everyone for all their efforts.
 
A quick follow-up. I tried what you suggested Tom and renamed the file and there was no change. Also disabling Ultimate Traffic also had no effect. To JRobinson's point that there are runway markings that coincide with the odd polys, he is correct. If you open just the stock airport, it has the Touchdown Zone markings turned on, which are white. But in my ADE bgl file, I turned them off and that is when the weird polygons showed up. I know it is not an ADE problem, but it is weird that the 2 items coincide. I check my Stock scenery files and my Addon scenery files and do not see any Aerial Photo scenery bgl files.
Thanks,
Jeff
 
JRobinson, could you please tell me what 2 letter follow the numbers in the .bmp file? I found 6 possible files with that beginning set of numbers that end in the following 2 letter combinations...SU, WI, HW, LM,SP,FA. All the letters are in lower case (if that matters), and are in a folder called Scenery.bak. I figured that set of files is inactive in FS9 and that is why I never check in there. Also, I copied that folder over from my old FS9 program on my XP drive and did realize anything was really in there. Is that file and it's contents active in FS9? Can the files located there simply be deleted?
Thanks again to everyone and sorry I seem to be so dumb.
Jeff
 
They're summer, spring, fall and winter variations so 003311320121111su.bmp, 003311320121111sp.bmp, 003311320121111fa.bmp, and 003311320121111wi.bmp respectively. There's also a night variation (003311320121111lm.bmp) and an autogen file associated with it (003311320121111an.agn). They're not in a .bak folder on my installation, they're in Flight Simulator 9\Scenery\Cities\Stmaarten\texture

.bak usually means something's been renamed by an addon installation that changed something, that very well may be the cause of your problems.

If you need to restore AP931250.bgl from disk it's on disk 3 in MSGAME8.CAB (treat it like a .zip file) in the "Name" folder (North America East).

I don't know where St. Maarten Aerial Photo came from, I think it may have been part of the 9.1 update, I'm still looking for my FS9 disks, lol.
 
Thanks for checking. I searched the entire FS9 folder, and the only place they show up on my computer is in the .bak folder. Very strange.
Jeff
 
BTW, I did try reinstalling the AP931250.bgl file from my old XP system, but it of course had the latest SP on it. Would the file be different from the original disks? I do have those, but the EXE file would not run on my windows 10 system so that is why I copied over the files and then used the nodisk file and SP undate file from online.
 
Jellis said:
Would the file be different from the original disks?
Click to expand...
I doubt it, my AP931250.bgl is dated 5/30/2003 @ 11:27 PM and the 9.1 update is dated 9/30/2004 1:45 PM so it must be an original file from the original FS9 disks.
 
Thanks JR for checking. I would still love to know what program Jon uses to see what the file breakdown is for the Stock AP files. Also, I still wonder, is it possible to figure out exactly what bmp is making the strange polys and simply remove it from FS?
Thanks for everyone's help.
Jeff
 
Jellis said:
Also, thanks Jon for the information. What program did you use to see the information in the AP file? Also, is it possible to break up a Stock AP file so it doesn't contain overlapping airports?
Click to expand...

I have internal design tools and this is one of them. There are some other tools to view bgl files. Well you could mess around with a stock file but we absolutely do not advise it.
 
Thanks Jon for the information. And to JR's question, I could not figure out how to disable the Aerial Photo area. Should I just rename it with .bak at the end. If that is all there is to it, I will give it a try and let you know how it turns out.
Thanks again,
Jeff
 
Jellis said:
And to JR's question, I could not figure out how to disable the Aerial Photo area. Should I just rename it with .bak at the end. If that is all there is to it, I will give it a try and let you know how it turns out.
Thanks again,
Jeff
Click to expand...
In the scenery library (if it's there).

fs9_scen_lib.jpg
 
Hi JR, I tried what you suggested and the weird polygons are still there. They do correspond exactly to the touchdown zone polys that would be on a runway. All that disabling the St. Maarten Aerial Photo did was remove the buildings for the airport. I am at a complete loss as to what would cause them to show up and why I can't exclude them using ADE.
Thanks,
Jeff
 
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