Mutant Twotter

[PPanPan 0]

Just installed 1.10 and the Lukla missions and clearly something has gone very wrong.

1. In FSX, only the rescue missions are showing, not the land/take-off mission

2. Re the Twotter itself, I now only have 4 versions available (all modern wheels) and the models have gone haywire. See the attached screenshot taken from the aircraft selection page. If I click "Fly Now", that is also how the aircraft is. All internal VC graphics have gone too.

Help please?! (Would it be possible to release 1.00 and 1.10 as self installing files? This would avoid user error in installation, assuming that's what it is in my case).

Thanks

PPanPan

[Shaun Fletcher 571]

Hello PPanPan,

The missions are a known issue and being looked into.

As for the Twin, ouch I think you may have done something wrong, it looks like my first Airfix model I made before I could read the instructions :shock:

You may want to try to un-install it then remove any remnants form the Simobject Aircraft folder.

Then redownload the file again from your account at the online shop and it should include the update, then just re-install.

[PPanPan 0]

OK, will give that a try. Thanks Shaun.

(Just to be clear, is the download version in the shop now 1.10, so it will be a one stage install process?)

Cheers

PPanPan

PS Did you receive my email re your email address?

[Shaun Fletcher 571]

Hello PPanPan,

Sorry I just checked and they haven't updated the installer yet. No worries though.

Un-install as before then do the clean up by removing any remnants in the Simobject/Aircrafts folder.

Download and unzip the V1.10 update to a temporary location but not in FSX.

You will see inside the newly unarchived folder 2 more folders, 1 named Aerosoft and the other Simobject. Just copy and paste these 2 folders into the main FSX folder and allow to overwrite. Hopefully then it should be fine.

You will also need the hotfix, its in a post at the top of this forum but its only one file.

[azflyboy 1]

In regard to the "mutant" Twin Otter, I'm also running into that problem. In my case, the aircraft loads normally, but will suddenly transform into the "mutated" form randomly in flight.

I've uninstalled the Otter, made sure there are no remaining bits in the Simobjects/Aircraft folder, and reinstalled it, but the mutations still occur. What is puzzling about this is that there is no consistency to when the bug will strike, as it seems to occur randomly and doesn't even happen some times.

I'm running an Nvidia Geforce 7900GT, but given that this problem only seems to happen to the Twin Otter and doesn't even occur consistently, I have no idea what might be the root cause of this.

[Finn 873]

Weird, we didn´t see this one single time during beta testing !

I have seen this on a helicopter addon for FSX, where the lights where the culprit.

I really don´t know what could cause it - DX10 preview ?

Finn

[PPanPan 0]

I really don´t know what could cause it - DX10 preview ?

Finn

Not for me. I'm fairly certain my problem was human installer error (mine!). I think I replaced all existing folders and their contents with just those in the 1.10 update. Guess that would really muck things up. I am on XP/DX9, FSX SP1, no Acceleration.

Doesn't help Azflyboy though, I guess?

[Brian S. 0]

This problem is sometimes caused by missing textures. FSX doesn't like looking for a texture that isn't there. Are you sure all textures are in the proper folders and that your fallback texture folder is in the right place? Check the texture.cfg of each plane and see where it's looking for the fallback textures, then check to make sure those folders are where the .cfg thinks they are. I don't know if that's it, but it's worth a try.

[Finn 873]

Does this occur on all twotter versions ?

Maybe one particular version or livery ?

Finn

[ChrisB 11]

This is not a new problem. It has been reported quite often on several aircraft. Damn. Sorry, but I can't remember where I saw the cure, but it was something silly and easy to fix. But for the life of me....

I had some other planes that were "FSX" playing "Transformers". Somehow the mdl collapses in on itself, and moves all the animated parts to the mdl's "zero" position.

Anyway, it's something simple and annoying I am sure. Come on folks, rack your brains - it was only a few months ago.

[Finn 873]

Going to Avsim forum looking....

[Finn 873]

Try to add the red marked lines to Your FSX.cfg file in the [scenery] (YES Scenery) folder:

[sCENERY]

// Alert missing objects

MissingLibraryAlert=1

ShowMissingTextureAlert=1

Load the twotter and You will get warnings if some textures are missing (please report back here in the forums if You found some textures missing)

Also try to reduce Yor scenery complexity (also mentioned as a possible culprit on Avsim)

Finn

[PPanPan 0]

Also try to reduce Yor scenery complexity (also mentioned as a possible culprit on Avsim)

Finn

That's interesting, because I had increased the scenery complexity to max just prior to selecting the Twotter. Wanted to see how many more default buildings there were on the Scillies. Maybe that was it, or at least compounded the issue. Having said that, I have never seen this before on any aircraft, no matter what the display settings are. (I have also never had the propblem of lock-ups before which I get with the Twotter if the display settings are too high - see my ealier posts elsewhere).

[Finn 873]

In the Avsim forum, there is mentioned other aircraft that exhibits this behaviour.

Maybe FSX is "stretched" too far to it´s limits when the scenery complexity is too high.

I think I have read somewhere that FSX doesn´t treat aircraft and scenery seperatly like previous FS versions did and that can be the reason why some issues totally elsewhere can do things to Your aircraft. But I don´t know for sure.

I just checked my own install with the affore mentioned lines in the FSX.cfg. No textures seems to be missing in any of the twotters.

For some graphicscards the 32bit textures might be too much to cope with - just an assumption.

Finn

[Ken Stallings 1]

Weird, we didn´t see this one single time during beta testing !

I have seen this on a helicopter addon for FSX, where the lights where the culprit.

I really don´t know what could cause it - DX10 preview ?

Finn

Nope, it has happened to me a few times and I'm using Dx9 and XP.

The two times it has happened I was working with the 2D radio stack popup. But I'm not at all sure that is a cause. It will go away if I pause the flight, select windowed view, and then go right back into full screen view.

Ken

[Finn 873]

One thing You could test:

In the panel.cfg's (resides in the "Aerosoft Twin Otter 300" "panel.org" and "panel.gps" folder) - find all entries for the 2D popup windows ([Window0x] etc) and add this line just before the Gauges00= section:

render_3d_window=1

Like:

[Window01]

size_mm=200,40

window_size= 0.420,0.110

window_pos= 0.582,0.160

BACKGROUND_COLOR=1,0,0

VISIBLE=0

ident=260

render_3d_window=1

gauge04=..panelDME!DME, 0,0,200,40

Remember to do this for the rest of the popup windows.

Actually what I have read is that this could trigger exactly the problem You have, but maybe it will have the reverse effect in the twotter (my last desperate attempt).

I remember a setting in FS2004 named "Render to texture", wich worked wonders for some, but made FS2004 act up wrong for others.

Finn

[PPanPan 0]

Nope, it has happened to me a few times and I'm using Dx9 and XP.

Ken

Hi Ken

Did this happen to you with version 1.00 or 1.10 or both?

I have to say I feel bad opening this can of worms. It seems that my problem (although I have yet to actually test since re-installing) was my fault - I installed 1.10 in completely the wrong way. However, as you guys are saying, there is obviously a problem, albeit rare. If it can be narrowed down to v1.10 as opposed to v1.00, that should help ID the issue?

[shnala 0]

Hi there.

Well, I had the same problems and I post

my problem here at avsim forum and we're

all together solve the both of them ! :idea:

Go check out :

AVsim - MS FSX Forum - topic #438296

(can't give you exact link - they have stange

lookin' forum!!?)

___________________________________

edit:

Actually, here's the complete topic in tex format !

Regards....

[Finn 873]

For the missing textures:

I have checked each and every Twin Otter version and livery (the ones that comes with the installer) with the method outlined further up this thread and found no missing textures.

With the next update, all textures have been converted to DXT3 format, wich means that they only are 1/4 of their present size in Mbytes.

This will take some of the burden of the graphics card without much noticible quality degradation.

The 1.11 update is sheduled for release next week, if all goes well.

Kind regards

Finn

[ChrisB 11]

Incidentally, I did try one paint with 32 bit 888-8 images at 2048 x 2048 pixel.

It works, the detail is fantastic, but hell, 16 MB per texture sheet really hits FPS and load time when you change the 5 main skin sheets from 1 MB to 16...

Definitely a method to paint once we get quad-cores running at at least 5 GHz each core...

[warbird861 0]

This mutating was it happening only on twotter or some other airplanes too?

Cause I had a few months ago similar "mutating" thingy on all of my airplanes and I made it by increasing my setting to max. Eventually I solved it with fsx install disc's 'repair' option.

[Aerosoft Team [Inactive Account] 51558]

Incidentally, I did try one paint with 32 bit 888-8 images at 2048 x 2048 pixel.

It works, the detail is fantastic, but hell, 16 MB per texture sheet really hits FPS and load time when you change the 5 main skin sheets from 1 MB to 16...

Definitely a method to paint once we get quad-cores running at at least 5 GHz each core...

In DX10 we should be able to send highly compressed textures to the GPU and have it decompressed their by the hardware, that might allow those textures.