JF P-38 Lightning problems continuing

[SSI01]

I've been in touch with JustFlight about a problem I'm experiencing with their P-38 - the one I posted about on this forum a short time ago, regarding the new prop textures.

I mentioned this to JF via email at their support site. They very kindly offered a second prop texture I could use and in fact recommended its installation. Now since doing so everything works properly and views are excellent, which is nice. My problem arises upon touchdown after a flight, when the sim freezes with the external view or instrument panel, depending on the view, a solid grey (gauges are black circles on the grey panel). Prior to contacting JF I could exit the flight normally, but a dialog box would show immediately afterward saying my computer system was low on memory and FS would now exit. Not sure what the new prop texture did to cause the plain old shutdown, but I've sent an email to JF describing the situation. Let's see what they come back with.

Prior to taking this last flight I have conducted deep sweeps for viruses and malware - both came back negative. System files have been cleaned as well using CCleaner.

[pfflyers]

This must be really frustrating to you, after all you've been thru to try and get it working right.

It's a mystery to me as to why this plane would cause you so much trouble, on my far from cutting edge system it behaves just like any other plane. My only "issue" is the slow loading of the vc textures first time I visit the vc.

I looked in my 'texture' folder and see I have an "AH_P38_3propblur" and an "AH_P38_3propblur_t" installed. When I replaced my propblur texture I installed two copies of the same bitmap and assigned those names to them. Not really sure why or if you need both, one might be lowspeed and one might be highspeed? Anyway my props seem to look ok to me even though the two textures are identical. The textures I'm currently using are replacement propblurs that were intended for the MAAM Briefing Time model.

[kikas]

I dont have Aeroplane Heaven's P-38, but my guess would be to check if there is any dxt1 texture and convert them to dxt3.

[SSI01]

Well, upon examination I can state not all the texture folders are in DXT3 format - those showing interior parts of the aircraft are in 32-bit, and there is an alpha channel for the center fuselage on the "K" model - which I can see through at night, BTW, meaning there are alpha channel problems with that section of the bird. Of real note are the prop textures - here's a rundown:

AH_propblur_t.bmp - 16-bit 4444 format
AH_propblur_00.bmp - 16-bit 4444 format
AH_propblur.bmp - 32-bit format

I'm still learning about these textures. Does this mean these textures are somehow in conflict, causing the problem? I wonder what would happen if I installed the proper alpha channel on the center fuselage, and converted all prop textures to DXT-3 format.

[kikas]

Well, upon examination I can state not all the texture folders are in DXT3 format - those showing interior parts of the aircraft are in 32-bit, and there is an alpha channel for the center fuselage on the "K" model - which I can see through at night, BTW, meaning there are alpha channel problems with that section of the bird. Of real note are the prop textures - here's a rundown:

AH_propblur_t.bmp - 16-bit 4444 format
AH_propblur_00.bmp - 16-bit 4444 format
AH_propblur.bmp - 32-bit format

I'm still learning about these textures. Does this mean these textures are somehow in conflict, causing the problem? I wonder what would happen if I installed the proper alpha channel on the center fuselage, and converted all prop textures to DXT-3 format.

Only thing i know is that my cheap old video card dont like dxt1 textures. Do backup before you change anything and maybe try to resave all prop texture files to 32-bit format with dxtbmp (in dxt3 they will really look ugly)

[pfflyers]

I did a little more poking around in my folders and I think I've found that the only propblur texture that seems to display on my P-38 is the "AH_propblur" bitmap. I tried replacing each in turn and that is the only one that showed the change, no matter what speed the prop was turning. So at this time I have a copy of my favorite "AH_propblur" bitmap in each of my P-38 texture folders and everything seems to be working fine. I don't know where those "AH_P38_3propblur" textures came from but they don't seem to show up on my system. I have several AH/JF planes in my GW3 installation and I think some share 'AH_propblur' and 'AH_propblur_t' textures so I didn't overwrite the ones that are in the main texture folder.

I have two textures that I've used, a Banana Bob version which is a little too light for me and another that is just a tad dark, but I'm using it because for some reason that I can't remember now I didn't like the stock AH/JF one.

I changed all the P-38 textures to DXT3 including those that went in the main texture folder (like the vc tex's) to try and speed up loading times, not sure if it helped much, but it probably didn't hurt.

On my system DXT1 textures seem to display ok, I think some of my AI planes are painted with them, and that new Rafale was painted with them and it worked on my computer ok.

[SSI01]

Well, the latest in this saga is that I have changed all prop textures to DXT3 and now I can get all the way through the flight, save the hours flown, and even exit the sim normally before I get a dialog box saying FS9 had to shut down. To be fair that may have happened because I ejected the CD before the flight ended. Next time I fly another P-38 I'll see about deleting all but one of those prop textures and using the one you suggested but saved in DXT3 format.

BTW in DXT3 my props look fine (see enclosed screenie)

[pfflyers]

When I looked at your screenshot I thought your props looked good, made me wonder what made me want to change mine in the first place. I'm thinking I must have been looking for something that would look better (more visible) in my own screenshots.

I went ahead and deleted the bitmaps I had added to my texture folders, thereby going back to what I think is the original in the main texture folder (unless I changed that at some point). Anyway they look like yours and everything seems to be working, I flew around for a few minutes, landed, selected another saved flight and it loaded ok, exitted the sim with no crash or error message.

If you keep having problems I could try to PM you the propblur that's in my texture folder, to me it seems to look like yours, appearance-wise. You could try it out to see if it makes any difference.

[SSI01]

pf & kikas - I think I may have nailed this down. What I did was take pf's suggestion re: the AH_propblur.bmp and make that the default prop texture for my "K" texture. Next step was to change it to DXT3 format, as I may have mentioned. I tried this once like that; when I hit "load real-world weather - OK" the sim CTD'd on me. I went to the main "Texture" folder in the sim and changed the AH_propblur.bmp there to DXT3 format as well. I just finished a local hop around Travis AFB, screenie included, in another F-5; everything on the sim worked OK, no dialog boxes this time. I think I'm going to change all the prop textures to what I've got for the F-5s and leave it at that. Hope you like the screenie. pf- thanks for the offer of the textures!

[pfflyers]

I'm happy to hear that everything seems to be working.

I'm also glad you got me to take another look at my own P-38 installation. I think mine looks better now that I've gone back to the original prop textures.

[OBIO]

and there is an alpha channel for the center fuselage on the "K" model - which I can see through at night, BTW, meaning there are alpha channel problems with that section of the bird.

Could be a problem with the MDL file not having the night texture model properly coded to work with alpha channels. The freeware FSD T-38 had this problem....the plane looked great during the day (nice and reflective) but at night it became partially translucent. The MDL contained a daytime model and a night time model...and the night time model was not coded for reflective textures....therefor FS9 used the alpha channel to set transparency instead of reflectivity.

There are two ways to go about fixing the K model.....remove the alpha channel (make it 100% white...aka 255,255,255 on the RGB color scale) and lose the reflectiveness on the skin during the day and the transparency of the skin at night....or follow JDTinball's tutorial on using MDLC 117 and a hex editor to assign reflectivity to the night model.

OBIO

[pfflyers]

SS, I think you should go back to JF support and see if they'll send you an updated model. I just took my "K" varient and all my other bare-skinned versions out for a midnight flight and they all look fine. If your "K" varient is transparent at night your "F-5" model must be defective. If you fix the problem by altering the textures you'll lose the reflectivety as OBIO said.

You might try assigning the texture for the "K" (texture.P38F-5) varient to the "F-5F" model and see if that works for you.

[SSI01]

Will do. I think a lash-up w/the transplanted model will work until I receive a reply from JF.

EDIT - changed the model in the config file to F-5F. With the inst panel lights out, everything looks fine. Turn the lights on and it's a see-through center section. Time to let JF support know.

FURTHER EDIT - email sent this morning. Let's see what they say.

[SSI01]

It may seem like an obsession I have for this aircraft, and in fact it may be - but it's associated with two stories Dad mentioned to me years ago. Both had to do with his peacetime Army service prior to WWII.

His first duty assignment was to San Francisco, California. Getting off post in those days was far more restrictive than it is today, so I suppose one would tend to remember what happened on those passes as they were so infrequent. On one of these passes he found himself at the bar of the Mark Hopkins hotel, which provided a fine view of the city and Marin County. Dad told me he recalled P-38s buzzing the bar, close enough to read the serial numbers on the tail. Due to the time frame (January 1941 - November 1942) it's quite likely one of those high-spirited young men doing the buzzing was Richard I. Bong, who was stationed at Hamilton Field, north of San Francisco, at that time. If Bong were capable of doing a loop around the center span of the Golden Gate bridge, and "dragging" Market Street below office building level (both of which he in fact did do), he was quite capable of buzzing the Top of the Mark. Dad was seeing America's Ace of Aces without knowing it.

He also mentioned being at the same bar one night when he thought he heard a familiar voice, and turned around to come face-to-face with Walter Winchell, who was entertaining some friends. Winchell was at that time a well-known syndicated radio announcer and commentator widely heard in the U.S. For those of you who may be younger, and are not familiar with '30s and '40s radio personalities, if your cable channel airs reruns of the old "Untouchables" television series with Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, Winchell does the descriptive voice-overs at the beginning and end of the episodes.

Those were the days . . .