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Heh heh.....first day of release, and Circuit City has it on sale for $17.99.....called ahead and reserved the last copy they had on the shelf at 3:00 today, half an hour later I was there pickin' it up.

Install is smooth, activation no problems, and so far have just taken a quick look but the Air Racing tutorial is a BLAST and I think this is gonna be a winner!

Really adds on a LOT.......damn, between the active moving carrier operations, new helo with a hoist and operable attachment for picking up and dropping off loads, the racing, the new planes, new sceneries, the missions, and then the SP2 performance enhancements, this is looking like a total WINNER.

Rock-steady smooth 25 FPS (locked at that rate) in the air racing the whole time too......and gorgeous!

Great News Stoopy !

I'll gonna scoot over to the shop here tomorow and see if I can pick one up


fled

First release in the USA, then released for Europe 2nd November... Can't wait.

OH BOY!! Thanks for the heads up Stoopy!

Well here's more to the heads-up.....with the SP2 changes and performance improvements, seems to be some changes with backward compatibility. I'm noticing that Alpha textures are behaving differently on FS9 aircraft I had already pulled into the sim.

I'm going to try to find out what it is and what the fix is....

F'rinstance, the beloved Junkers Ju-52......a clear day over KLAX reveals that a whole BUNCH of Windex is gonna be needed to clean the fargin' windows of the VC now.....before there was a just a tiny little bit of dirt and grime, but this may call for a whole tub of that Oxy-Clean stuff that Billy Mays yells about in his TV commercials....

looks like the grime layer got exaggerated, maybe when you tone that one down it's fine again ?? maybe to simply tought from me..
on the other hand, a build in M$ modification to make the "old" addons history ??

I think some things may have been expected. In following the whole development history for the last year, there were changes to rendering to improve performance, and in general the community feedback to the developers has been to drop backwards-compatibility in favor of moving forward with better performance and new features.

I believe you're right and when I get time I'll experiment. I believe it can be overcome and I do have other FS9 aircraft that don't have this issue so I can't help but believe it's fixable.

thats just normal "LA Air" you collected on the windscreen there mate LOL

Maybe you should get rid of that cleaning person that 'doesn't do windows!"

Are all the FS9 imported aircraft that way or just this Junkers?

- Shadow_Bshwackr

Maybe you should get rid of that cleaning person that 'doesn't do windows!"

Maybe it's about time you started to pay some decent wages around here rotflmao

I've ordered my copy today, it will be available as from November 2nd so till then I'll have to drool over your reports Stoopy !


fled

LOL Fled. If you want to do windows, I'll give you twice what you make now...

I have to wonder if the glass transparency effects file should be explored?

So far it's just this Junkers. My beloved Airhead Super Decathlon from FS9 doesn't have the issue. You hit the nail on the head Bushy, that it's due to alpha transparencies on only certain window textures that have dirt or reflection added to them (i.e., are "partically transparent").

Also it seems to be tied to the technique used. I posed the question over at AvSim and got a very helpful reply to convert the said window textures to 32-bit (888-8) format in DXTBMP but that hasn't fixed it yet. But, this particular aircraft uses a nAlpha layer that is non-uniform (i.e., also has the dirt and grim ine the alpha layer) which I've not seen done a lot before. So tonight I will try changing the alpha layer to just a consistent pure-black layer and that OUGHT to fix it. Then I'll reduce the blackness slightly to make it semi-transparent as intended.

SEE HERE...

May sound complicated but the whole thing will take less time than it did to type that I think. So I'm optimistic, and will let y know how it goes. If it works out I'd be happy to make the same mods to any other aircraft that may have this problem for others.

Problemo solved!

The above suggestion didn't work so I took another stab at it and did it my way...or I should say, the way I see it normally being done (the alpha layers on this bird were done in a way I've never seen before and I still can't understand how they worked in FS9). So I just replaced the alpha layer with a normal dark-gray bitmap and voila.....windows are transparent and also have just a fine layer of grime if you look closely.

Using what my wifey says is my "german method ("if it don't fit, FORCE IT!") worked wonders on this german bird!

- JG300-Stoopy

Problemo solved!
Using what my wifey says is my "german method ("if it don't fit, FORCE IT!") worked wonders on this german bird!

APPLAUSE !!

Give that man a BARREL OF BEER !!!

Great job Stoopy !!

Much appreciated !!


fled

You heard it here first folks!...lol

Thanks Stoopy! You 'da man!