Aeroplane Heaven P-38

[WarHorse47]

Okay, better late than never. I finally got the urge to get the AH P-38, and plunked down a lot of change for the Mega Pack. I heard a lot of good things about this package and my curiosity got the best of me.

The transaction and install went without a hitch. Everything loads without a problem. The exterior looks great, the sounds are what I had hoped for, and the cockpit is terrific. :applause:

Like some other AH aircraft I have, I anticipated some hiccups with texture loading. But I didn't anticipate total lockups. :help: The entire sim locked up twice on me, and I had to do a total reboot to bet back to the operating system.

I suspect that my graphics card is struggling with some of the textures. There appears to be a lot of 32-bit Extended image files for both a/c and V/c textures. I may have to convert to DXT3 format to see if that improves things.

Before I do, I gotta ask... has anyone done the same? In other words, anyone have any words of advice for improving the texture loading of the AH P-38? Or for that matter, any other tweaks whatsoever on this bird?

Thanks in Advance

--WH

[EMatheson]

Yep - do definitly go the DXT3 route. It won't affect texture loading time, but it will improve FPS greatly. I would also suggest opening up the .mdl files in Notepad to find texture lists and deleting any texture files that are not listed in the .mdl. That will decrease RAM useage, even if it won't touch texture load-times. You can do the same thing with the sounds and the panel files.
I would suggest taking this approach for all AH aircraft - OTB, they are system-hogs, but with some little work, you can make them run just fine.

[WarHorse47]

Thanks for the response, EM. :applause:

I've converted most the key texture files to DXT3 format, and that seems to help. The VC still draws a little slow, but its tolerable. I'm not sure how to go about looking for extra file references in the mdl or panel.cfg files yet. Never edited an mdl file before.

Does this bird have any repaints? I found one by Bomber_12th, but that's about it.

Again, thanks for your help. :wave:

--WH

[Wild Bill Kelso]

... the sounds are what I had hoped for

Hmmm - I was quite dissapointed when I found out that they used the (nevertheless incredible juicy) sound set of David C. Copley's various freeware Lightnings. So the anticipated sounds should not be the reason to buy it...

Texture loading time bashes the fun out of flying this model - even turning the textures to DXT3 and a 'no VC' model tweaking didn't solve this issue on my rig (P4 dual core, 3 GHz, ATI HD 3850 AGP, running on 1680*1050) - so when it's time to hear the turbos blowing, Dave's freeware Lightnings are on the run for me!

Regards,
Markus.

[EMatheson]

As far as sleuthing unused textures in the panel and mdl is concerned, you will be doing no editing. To find out what is not used in the model, simply open the mdl in notepad (yes, the default notepad that comes with windows - you don't even need any special settings for it either, although I prefer to leave word-wrap on...)
A large file, mega-bytes in size, may take many minutes to load in notepad - so I would suggest doing other things while it loads... but once it is loaded, simply scroll down until you find a list of textures - every FS2002 and FS2004 model lists the textures used at the beginning of the model data. Because each aircraft model generally consists of two models - an exterior and a VC, there will be two lists of textures in the model, perhaps more if the model is multi-LOD. The primary exterior model - the highest LOD - is ALWAYS the first model compiled in the mdl and the VC ALWAYS the second model compiled.
If scrolling down doesn't help you find a texture list, the model is an FSDS 1 or AircraftFactory model and you probably shouldn't be using it in FS2002 or FS2004 anyway. If you insist on finding the maps anyway, you may use notepads search function to find references to ".bmp" or in FSX ".dds." Because the VC model list is some (great) distance from the exterior model list, you should probably use that search function for to find the VC model anyway.
To determine what isn't used, simply compare what files are in the texture folder to the files listed in the the two texture lists in the mdl. Delete what isn't used - you won't miss it. Your planes will load (slightly!) faster, true, but the primary benefit is that RAM useage will fall and that you will be able to fit more on your disk! A good, thorough defrag after cleaning out your texture folders will perceptibly speed-up FS.

Finally, in my own experiences with the AH P-38, I have found that it is true that the VC texture loading will never be fast! However, if you bully your machine by cycling views rapidly, pausing at the VC view to let the textures load, after a while, it will seem to realize that it needs to retain those textures and loading time will decrease. Perhaps this is just my machine being wierd.
If that doesn't work, assign a key to "Reload Scenery" in the assignments menu. Reloading the scenery will dump the scenery data stored in the RAM, basically reserveing space for what was already assigned. When using stock planes, reloading the scenery will sharpen the scenery, get rid of blurries. With the AH P-38, being RAM intensive as it is, reloading the scenery for me, perhaps because of my limited RAM capacity, will actually make the scenery more blurry - but it will also force the VC textures to load when they are reluctant to. (Strangly enough, "Reload User Aircraft" does not work to refresh VC textures on my machine - but I beleive I have explained my notions on the reason for this above.)

[WarHorse47]

Hmmm - I was quite dissapointed when I found out that they used the (nevertheless incredible juicy) sound set of David C. Copley's various freeware Lightnings. So the anticipated sounds should not be the reason to buy it...

Regards,
Markus.Actually, I do have DCC and the SkyUnlimited P-38's. Both sound sets sounded the same to me. The AH P-38's also use David's sounds, but for some reason they seem more robust and complete. If I ever reload my other P-38's, I'll likely alias the AH sounds.

--WH

[WarHorse47]

EM, thanks for the additional info. I'll likely give it a whirl, but will wait for the weekend when I have more time.

One thought that occured to me... did you ever think of looking at the gauge files? The various gauges are in the AH P-38.cab, and I was wondering if these bitmaps could be reduced as well to increase load times. Just like my Corsair and Mosquito packs, the gauges seem to be affect the VC load times. Just wondering.

--WH

[EMatheson]

EM, thanks for the additional info. I'll likely give it a whirl, but will wait for the weekend when I have more time.

One thought that occured to me... did you ever think of looking at the gauge files? The various gauges are in the AH P-38.cab, and I was wondering if these bitmaps could be reduced as well to increase load times. Just like my Corsair and Mosquito packs, the gauges seem to be affect the VC load times. Just wondering.

--WH
yes, the same does apply for the gauges!
However, that is something I do not do often - I never did get the hang of using cabdir to recompress the gauges afterwards...
so I only "weed-out" already-uncompressed gauge folders.

[dcc]

Actually, I do have DCC and the SkyUnlimited P-38's. Both sound sets sounded the same to me. The AH P-38's also use David's sounds, but for some reason they seem more robust and complete. If I ever reload my other P-38's, I'll likely alias the AH sounds.

--WH

hint: to 'upgrade' the SU or AH sounds, alias to my last model (P-38M ver 2.2). I made some adjustments to the sound set after I gave permission to SU and AH to use my sounds, so I think they've still got the older set.

- dcc

[WarHorse47]

hint: to 'upgrade' the SU or AH sounds, alias to my last model (P-38M ver 2.2). I made some adjustments to the sound set after I gave permission to SU and AH to use my sounds, so I think they've still got the older set.

- dccAhhh, ha. The truth be known. My hearing is not as bad as I thought. :woot:Thanks, dcc.

--WH

[Wild Bill Kelso]

@ DCC:
You are here?
Well - once more I'm impressed who joines this SOH community.
It's very nice to have contact to another great designer 'in person' and not just as an abstract name in the readme file...

May I humbly add my heartily thanks (better late than never...) for your outstanding 38'ers? :applause:


Concerning the texture loading time of the VC gauges, I have to add that they don't seem to be the major problem of the AH P-38:
As I wrote above, I altered the mdl file (using Clive Ryan's tutorial and a hex editor to change the '0022003900' string) to make the VC dissapear. The VC gauges were erased too.
It's the external textures that take some time to load when changing into spot view. It's quite not a 'lock' and the scenery textures are not concerned at all (no 'blurries'). Having 2 Gigs of RAM, I also do not believe it's a RAM issue...
Think I'm gonna give EMatheson's method of eliminating unused texture files a try.

Anyway - the AH Lightning is nice for screenshots, but Dave's is definately more fun to fly!
Just my two cents.

Cheers,
Markus.

[WarHorse47]

Thanks, Markus. But I think I'll keep this one as well.. :applause:

--WH

[WarHorse47]

Has anyone released any new skins for this bird? :gossip:

I found one by Bomber, :medals: but none others.

Since Just Flight also released their P-38, are their any skins for that one and would they work for the AH P-38? :mixedsmi:

Thanks

--WH

[Motormouse]

@ DCC:
You are here?
Well - once more I'm impressed who joines this SOH community.
Cheers,
Markus.

Think you'll find DCC's been here since way back in 2005-ish

ttfn

Pete

[WarHorse47]

:focus: Pleeze

--WH