Facility not working when Ankor/Greko shader 30 mod is on...

[htpcorsica]

Hi all,
I have spent the last month fixing my pc, new graphics card, upgraded to win 7 x64 then upgrading to eto1.5 and in the end installed from scratch.


So eto 1.5 and then added the Ankor Greko shader 30 mod. all works well toggling num pad 0 to turn on and off at different airfields.


I then installed my airfield to get it finished! It works ok if AC shader30 mod is off i.e scenery looks brighter shades and reflection not looking so good.


Then soon as I press num pad 0 the sim freezes and then crashes to the desk top. When ACS30 is off I can fly around without any probs but press 0 near the airfield and its gone again.


So please if someone could try it and let me know. I need to tidy a few things up as you will see and hope to upload it with others soon.


The ACC airfields file contains shared and the airfield file


The buildings file contains 2 items from the BoB buildings file


The global layer contains a global layer csv and gsl lib files


The objects file contains the runway xmls


and then there is the qclocations xml


Most people here should know what they are doing but MAKE SURE you backup global_layer/global_layer.csv and gsl.lib files and your qclocations.xml file so you can revert back.


I haven't edited the cutscenes file as yet, I don't think this is the problem but it may be.


Install, un zip 7z file and install contents into your eto 5 folder.


Then it might be a good idea to start in era 1 and choose qc free flight. Thats it, thanks for helping. If you need the other global layer and qclocations files please let me know.

[Pat Pattle]

Hi Tony,

Very nice work indeed! I've taken off and flown around for 10 minutes (no shaders files) and have had no problems at all. Lots of eye candy and little scenes that make up an immersive airfield .

I take it the group of buildings off to the side were to aid in selection? There's a smiley face on the ground there so one of the model names is iffy but that won't cause any issues.

I'll try again later with the shaders installed.

[htpcorsica]

Thanks Clive, yes at the bottom there should be one of everything for selection. Thanks for pointing out the smiles I never knew the work like that! It was working well in eto4h but some buildings have changed or been deleted in the update so a couple of days ago I did try and clean up the facility file but there is still more sorting out to do. There is some inaccuracy in the buildings selection in a few places and the dds needs looking at.

The problem could be an alpha dds not compatible or may be the large hanger that is quite complexed inside causing it to overload or one of the miskin hangers is unfinished. For me it works with no facilities just the runway present. So it has to be a facility that's causing it.

I flew around one of your largest airfields and that didn't cause any problems. Anyway thanks looking into it and I might send the files to Ankor to have a look. By the way are you using win7 64 now?

[gecko]

What are your PC specs? I suspect you either have a model that for reason is causing a crash, or it is too much for your system - possibly all those trees? What happens if you remove about half the trees?

[gecko]

That formost blast pen in Clive's picture looks a bit odd too, looks like half of it has disappeared.

[Pat Pattle]

Have just installed the shaders mod again Tony and i get a CTD over the airfield.

It's got a very busy facility file, it may be worth taking out the buckets, oil drums, ladders and trees etc (the numerous repeated items) one type at a time to see if that helps. It may be overloading the shaders files.

I'm still on XP by the way, P4 3.2 ghz, Nvidia 8400GS card and 3gb ram.

[Frosty]

I have found that the ACC_Scaffold_1 and _2 (the rectangular green, wiry things with two wheels and a wooden platform used for aircraft maintenance) cause a CTD with these shaders. Until the reason can be determined, I would recommend not to use these objects on your airfield. I might redo the models somewhere in the future in the hope that this solves the problem.

Clive could be right in trying to reduce the workload for your PC by reducing the amount of objects on your airfield. But if a certain model is the culprit and not the amount of objects, this will not help. To find such a model, open the models that are in your facility .xml one by one in the modelviewer, rotate the view and try zooming in/out. It has been noticed that with these shaders some models disappear shortly when viewed directly from above/below and re-appear as a tangle of polys until CFS3 crashes. If you repeat this with the shaders disabled (press '0'), this does not happen and you can view them from any angle you want.
If you find such models, please remove them from your airfield facility .xml and you 'll probably be okay. That is to say, it works for the airfields I am currently working on...
It seems to occur mostly with open structures with a lot of thin, smal parts like scaffolds, ladders - those sort of things. 'Solid' models like drums, crates etc. don't seem to be affected. Some of these models are quite old, before I learned to tidy them up during the modelling process. So the cause could well be bad modelling (intersecting polys and such) on my part.

BTW, if you find more ACC models with this problem, please let me know which ones. Oh, and the airfield does look good!

[htpcorsica]

Thanks very much for all your replies, I've been testing it now for about 8 hours and it would appear that if the facility file is 45kb to 50kb+ then it causes CTD and I dont think the cause is bad modeling at the moment because I have randomly removed entries. So I think It's the amount of objects on the airfield. Another factor could be that it is near the sea.

The thing that I don't understand is that without the shader package eto has some form of shaders a bit jagged and not as good overall and works ok no matter how many objects are in the airfield. So why is it a problem with the shader30.

My cpu is running at 20 to 30% and ram is 25% loaded so its hardly straining those two. gpu is 25 to 28% usage.

My rig is a bit old but still good intel quad core 2.8ghz x48 board 8G ram 1600ghz GTX970 win7 x64

I shall carry on tomorrow to see what else I find!

[gosd]

Hi,
I tried this airfield in era4 everything works fine but I also get a CTD when using Ankor/Greco shader mod.
I hope you can find a solution because this is great work!
Really like this shot with the groundcreew.

[gosd]

Sorry about the double picture; I dont know how to prevent this.

[htpcorsica]

Hi Frosty, thanks for all the help. I started to look at all the models in model viewer and I will make a list up of ones that do a ctd. Some don't do a ctd but suddenly go all funny with lines and triangles in all directions then right themselves as they carry on revolving around. Is that ok?

gosd, thanks very much I hope it can be fixed if not I will just supply two facilities one for the shader30 and one without!

[Frosty]

... Some don't do a ctd but suddenly go all funny with lines and triangles in all directions then right themselves as they carry on revolving around. Is that ok? ...

That's the effect I meant. And no, it is not okay . On my rig, CFS3 crashes when this happens. Please let me know which ones display this effect.

[gosd]

Afther some experimenting I found that the ACC_Scaffold_01 and ACC_Scaffold_02 in the facility file have a problem with the ACC_Scaffold_01_N.dds required in the .M3D file, a funny thing the ACC_Scaffold_03 requires a different file: ACC_serviceequipment_01_n.dds. So for the present time I removed files 01 and 02 in order to avoid CTD.

One question looking at the Bradwell Bay folder, there are two .xmf files never see them before, what do they do?

[gosd]

Afther more research the ACC_serviceequipment_01_n.dds is no where to be found.
Also removing the ACC_Scaffold_01 and _02 does not prevent CTD when AC shader30 mod is applied, sorry!

[Frosty]

Afther some experimenting I found that the ACC_Scaffold_01 and ACC_Scaffold_02 in the facility file have a problem with the ACC_Scaffold_01_N.dds required in the .M3D file, a funny thing the ACC_Scaffold_03 requires a different file: ACC_serviceequipment_01_n.dds. So for the present time I removed files 01 and 02 in order to avoid CTD. ...
...
Afther more research the ACC_serviceequipment_01_n.dds is no where to be found.
Also removing the ACC_Scaffold_01 and _02 does not prevent CTD when AC shader30 mod is applied, sorry!

Hi gosd,

As indicated before the Scaffold_1 and _2 models are quite old and should make of use of the same texture, ACC_Scaffold_01_N.dds. This has not been problematic in the past, so I suspect the trouble with the new shaders lies somewhere else. That's something I have to investigate. If ETO still crashes after removing the scaffolds from the airfields .xml file, there's got to be another model that's causing this problem. Or you could try removing the models entirely from your install, not just the reference in the airfield's .xml file.

Concerning the different texture files you have found, it is like this: After creating a few of these models I decided that it would perhaps be better to have all the textures of the little airfield models (buckets, ladders, crates etc.) on one texture sheet, hoping that the sim liked loading a bigger single file better than loading a myriad of smaller texture files. Enter 'ACC_ServiceEquipment_01_n.dds'. However, there are models that I did not convert yet to this single texture file (Scaffold_01 and _02 being two of them), so these objects still require their own textures. But it should be enough to have just one instance of 'ACC_Scaffold_01_N.dds' in your install. I would say that it's safe to delete one of them.

ACC_Scaffold_03 is an entirely different model that came to be after this 'single texture file' idea, so it already uses the new texture sheet. To make matters slightly more complex, I began adding the suffix 'Shared' to the single large texture files to signify that they are used by more than one model. These texture files can be found in this folder: 'buildings/ACC_Shared_Textures'. Your missing 'ACC_ServiceEquipment_01_n.dds' is already there, even though I haven't named it 'Shared' yet.

So the progression is from 'individual model texture' to 'ACC_ServiceEquipment_01_n.dds' to 'ACC_ServiceEquipmentShared_01_n.dds'. The first conversion requires a lot of work because all models involved have to be re-textured and nearly all come with multiple LODs. But when it's done, I hope you'll have a leaner, more streamlined ETO install with as much Shared textures as possible in a single folder.

Okay, a lot of text to explain what road I am travelling on. And it didn't even solve the current problem, the crashing of ETO. But I wanted to provide you with a background to your findings.
Thanks for the effort and time you put into this! If you find any more, I 'll be here!!