Texture problem, all buildings black mirroring *SOLVED*

[KampfHase]

Hej guys,

I am new to this forum and have registered, because I have a texture problem with FSX and KJFK. Does anyone has an idea how I can change this to normal?

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/6263/jf7k.jpg

Thank you - Oli

[virtuali]

Either some files have been corrupted on your hard disk, and in this case uninstalling and reinstalling JFK should fix it, or it's a problem with your video drivers, like a wrong setting. But if it happens at JFK only, it's more likely a problem of corrupted files.

[KampfHase]

I have the same problem at KORD. Those are the only 2 sceneries I own. So I guess its a graphics driver problem. But I am afraid of updating my driver, because now everything works with nHancer and AA.
I use Win7 64bit with an nVidia 8800GTS and drivers 8.17.11.9562.

[virtuali]

But I am afraid of updating my driver, because now everything works with nHancer and AA.

nHancer itself might be the problem. Most probably, a wrong setting. Or, a setting that is allowed to be modified, but not really supported by your video card or your drivers.

[KampfHase]

None of those helped. I asked in the nHancer and in the nVidia support forum, and they were not able to recognize this problem as a driver issue. 

[virtuali]

I can only confirm, what you are seeing is clearly a video driver problem. Are you running FSX into XP or Vista compatibility mode ? This creates textures issues, if the driver is not fully Win7 compliant, see this other thread:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php?topic=2921.0

However, under FSX our products don't work very well under XP or Vista compatibility mode (they ARE Win7 compatible) so, even that would fix the texture problem, it will create bigger problems on some systems, the scenery doesn't work. This means, the real solution would be solving the video driver problem, without resorting to any of the compatibility modes.

[KampfHase]

Thanks for your reply Umberto. I am not running FSX in any compatibility mode. I use Win7 64bit, and am running FSx with normal specs. I must admit that I don't have these issues with other sceneries. I also own EDDP from Aerosoft, and it looks fine there.

Maybe this helps, as you know best how you did the scenery: When starting at KORD at the default starting point, I am looking towards the AA hangars. They are textured fine without issues. The baggage cars in from of them are not. They are black, as well as the whole terminal. Maybe there is something different with the AA hangars and the terminals?

[virtuali]

I must admit that I don't have these issues with other sceneries.

That doesn't mean much: not all sceneries use all the advanced material/shaders capabilities FSX, like specular, bump mapping, complex alpha channels, etc. Any of this can be affected by a video driver bug so, of course, a scenery that doesn't use them, is not affected.

They are textured fine without issues. The baggage cars in from of them are not. They are black, as well as the whole terminal. Maybe there is something different with the AA hangars and the terminals?

It seems your video driver has a problem with textures with Alpha channel. Which is not normal at all, and it should work.

I assuming you already uninstalled and reinstalled the scenery, just to be sure nothing has been corrupted on your hard drive.

[KampfHase]

Yes I tried reinstalling of the scenery, doesn't work. And now I installed the 3rd different version of my video driver, and the problems appear on each of them. 

I will now take a look at PHNL and LSGG, will install the demos and have a look there. If nothing works, I will delete the alpha channel from the textures... Looks like I have no other choice.

[virtuali]

Yes I tried reinstalling of the scenery, doesn't work. And now I installed the 3rd different version of my video driver, and the problems appear on each of them. 

The issue is, if there's a registry setting related to video drivers that creates the problem, just installing a different version of the driver won't fix it.

Try with a driver cleaner first, then reinstall the last WHQL-compliant version of your driver. You can try this one:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/Guru3D---Driver-Sweeper-%28Setup%29_d1655.html

[KampfHase]

Thanks for the link. I uninstalled the driver again, restarted, ran the driver cleaner tool. Installed the new driver and started FSX.

No change at KJFK and KORD. Still black terminals. I installed the demo versions of KFLL and PHNL, no issues there. All buildings look fine.

[KampfHase]

I finally found the solution!

Because I want to have all my sceneries central in the Addon Scenery directory, I moved the JFK and ORD folders there. Somehow, when I do this, the texture problem appears. When I let the folders stay in the default install directory, everything is fine.

I don't know why this happens, maybe to prevent someone to steal the scenery. Anyway, thanks for all the ideas, no I can enjoy my 2 sceneries

[virtuali]

Yes, sorry I didn't thought about it: if you move the scenery folder from the default location, some textures will not be found because many buildings are in the Simobjects folders, and they have a fallback .cfg file, that looks in the default location.

Apart for the texture problem, it's not a good idea to move the scenery folder, because when the Addon Manager gets updated, it sometimes updates scenery files, if it found a scenery that needs to be updated so, if you move it from the default location, you might miss the update.

[KampfHase]

Ah okay, that sounds logical. No Problem Umberto, it was a nice challenge to find out what caused the issue. I now just created some Links in the Addon Scenery folder to the default FSDT folder, and everything is fine