Vanishing Tracers

[Flamingskull5000]

So.......got my PTO EXE. file sorted out, but now there are no tracers for any A/C. I get muzzle flashes, buts that it. What did i do?

[Flamingskull5000]

Really? No one has a fix for this?

[mongoose]

I don't use PTO but having had square tracers i normally find out it is to do with the wrong or missing dds files associated with the gun and round being used. If your other installs work, try changing the tracer dds files (BACK UP the previous!) from one of your other installs. You may have to dig into the xdp files and see what effects are being used. Do you have Daiwilletti's all in one effects.xml file?

[Flamingskull5000]

I wouldn't have the all in one package unless it was part of an install. I have the square tracer issue with some British AC in ETO. Last weapons pack I would have installed would have been the AV History pack many moons ago.......

[mongoose]

It's not that you have all in one install but Daiwilletti's and Majormagee's all in one effects xml covers all installs so if it is a missing effect this effects.xml should cover it.
Re tracers
You have to look at the gun/cannon xdp and the weapon (shell or whatever) that it refers to and the effects called for that weapon. Then check you have the dds files related to the effects called for by that weapon xdp. It's a pain in the butt to do all that so otherwise change out the cannon and shell for one that works. There should be some threads around here on sqare cannon tracers which may help. Also you could post the parts of the aircraft xdp relating to <GunStations> and someone may work out the problem.

[Flamingskull5000]

I found Daiwilletti's pack. Gonna try just loading that into PTO/ETO. Thanks for the help Mongoose!

[Daiwilletti]

Hi Flamingskull, i threw in a lot of fxtextures just in case people were missing some. in my readme, I advise not to ovewrite duplicate textures if you install the ones provided in the combined effects package. The textures i provide simply to fill in any "gaps" you might have - especially tracer textures.

Now a trap for young players is if you adopt some of the settings associated with "newer" aircraft (latest typhoon , fw190, spitfire VIIIs etc) some of the tracer effects are incompatible with older textures. So when installing newer aircraft with Gecko's new tracer effects, I recommend tweaking the new tracer effects line to rename the tracer texture used before writing into the effects.xml, and accordingly rename the provided tracer textures, to avoid conflicts.

[Flamingskull5000]

Thanks for the heads up . Just installed new MB and CPU this weekend. It will be a while till I have everything up and running properly, but fixing the tracer issue is on the list!

[mongoose]

Hi Flamingskull, i threw in a lot of fxtextures just in case people were missing some. in my readme, I advise not to ovewrite duplicate textures if you install the ones provided in the combined effects package. The textures i provide simply to fill in any "gaps" you might have - especially tracer textures.

Now a trap for young players is if you adopt some of the settings associated with "newer" aircraft (latest typhoon , fw190, spitfire VIIIs etc) some of the tracer effects are incompatible with older textures. So when installing newer aircraft with Gecko's new tracer effects, I recommend tweaking the new tracer effects line to rename the tracer texture used before writing into the effects.xml, and accordingly rename the provided tracer textures, to avoid conflicts.

So you are saying that the newer aircraft tracer effects call up old fxtextures and not newly added fxtexture tracer dds files? It's been a while since I installed Dan's stuff so I forget if it came with new dds effects files or just used old textures with new effects in xml?

[Daiwilletti]

So you are saying that the newer aircraft tracer effects call up old fxtextures and not newly added fxtexture tracer dds files? It's been a while since I installed Dan's stuff so I forget if it came with new dds effects files or just used old textures with new effects in xml?

Look, I'm struggling to remember much of anything at the moment. My brain is fried with a sh** load of chemo...... there are at least three threads here at SOH which discuss the situation.
Try to find the threads, they hopefully will shed some light.

[mongoose]

Not to worry David; it's no biggie at the moment, so take it easy while you're under chemo.. I did trace down several threads including this but I don't seem to have found any answer from those who did "new" tracer effects. I guess I'll look back at the downloads for Dan's stuff and see what was what.