Barra Airport progress

[DaveB]

No problem Mike. I know someone had a freeware version of Barra done by some little kid but he'd used the default for positioning which as we know is a long way out. I would say miles but Barra isn't that big I saw this scenery too.. v2 is the latest I think.
I couldn't vouch for the accuracy of the buildings at Barra (dimensions e t c) but for me, the thing that sets it off is the tile/s used in the bay for the beach. Its still a nice place to fly even with the default airport buildings and GenX vol4. If you can crack that.. I think any discrepancy in the buildings would be overlooked

BTW.. I was after RAF Portreath over at Simviation when I stumbled on Alf's Barra. I eventually found it on page 90-something and it's complete crud (RAF Portreath that is) A waste of time or what!

ATB
DaveB

[Airspeed]

Tonight, I did some mods to my 1024x1024 texture sheet for this project.
Went into DXTBMP and saved as a DXT1, found all was black in FSX, came back to discover my whole page was now black. Dashed back to FSDS to see everything lime green.
Evidently, some ALPHA gremlin has got me. Anyone know what buttons I must have wrongly pressed? I didn't knowingly request any alpha, just changed the SAVE from a 888 to DXT1.

[GHD]

Load it back into DXTBmp and check the alpha channel. If necessary, make it all white.

[Airspeed]

Thanks George,
Well, the little box top right is black. Tried double-click to edit, changed colour1 to white, saved, still black.
As mentioned a couple of posts back, I still have to learn about alpha. At present I'm totally lost, and feeling pretty simple.

[GHD]

You need to have a white alpha. You can do this in DxtBmp by exporting the alpha to a pain program, setting it white and importing it back into DxtBmp.

[Airspeed]

Thanks for that George.
Sadly, didn't work for me.
In the past I kept multiple copies of textures, but got confused with complex file names and started overwriting instead.
Never had this blackout happen before, but I'm going back to keeping reserve copies in a different folder.

[Airspeed]

Has anyone experienced an _xtomdl error when compiling a model?
Our old friend FSDS3.5.1 has decided that Barra deserves this.
I copied it, renamed it, deleted it part by part and got the same error with only minor wording differences [the red bit changed], right down to the final part. I deleted that, and replaced it with a box under the same model name. The error then stopped.
The error report wording may make sense to someone:
OutputFile: _temp.MDL
Output file after modification: _temp.MDL
Creating output MDL file: _temp.MDL
CRASHTREE no granularity specified
CRASHTREE completed in 00:00:00
(0): error : XToMdl.exe Unhandled Application Exception
(0): error : System.Xml.XmlException: An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 351, position 50. (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityName() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityReference() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReader.Read() (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XmlToMdlLib.MDLProcessor.LoadFile(Stream InputStream, XPartDict PartDictionary) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XmlToMdlLib.XmlToMdlLib.Process(Guid& ModelGuid) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.ProcessInputs() (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.RealMain(String[] args) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.Main(String[] args)
(0): error :
(0): error : An error occurred while parsing EntityName. Line 351, position 50.
(0): error :
(0): error : Stack Trace:
(0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(Exception e) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res, String arg) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Throw(String res) (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityName() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.ParseEntityReference() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReaderImpl.Read() (0): error : at System.Xml.XmlTextReader.Read() (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XmlToMdlLib.MDLProcessor.LoadFile(Stream InputStream, XPartDict PartDictionary) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XmlToMdlLib.XmlToMdlLib.Process(Guid& ModelGuid) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.ProcessInputs() (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.RealMain(String[] args) (0): error : at Microsoft.FlightSimulator.XToMDL.XToMDL.Main(String[] args)

[TSR2]

Hi Mike,

Try saving it as a FSC project. Open MCX, import the FSC project and then export it to MDL or BGL whichever you choose and see if you get the same error. Or if you wish, send me over the FSC project and I can try it for you.

[Airspeed]

Hi Ben,
Sorry it's been a couple of days, but I have been putting it through MCX and thinking that I'd forgotten most of what I once knew.
I triple checked every part and texture, every textured poly, and did various deletions trying to see what caused the error.
I have eliminated everything I can think of, and can now say with confidence that:

...I can see the 3D view of the .fsc in full colour in MCX. A couple of bits are at weird angles, but I think this can be fixed by centering the axis to the compound parts, then resetting the axis.
Then I ask MCX to send off a bgl to FSX. It does something, but when I look in FSX, it's sent an mdl of 0Kb, not a bgl in sight.

That's where I'm at.
I think that Abacus are not replying because it's an _xtomdl error.

I put the facts up on FS Developer forum to see if anyone there has an idea.
As I mentioned there, I had once used a non-square image for texturing, and I got an animation error when no animation was present.
Maybe the MS error report is like their messages that "The device is working properly" when quite obviously, it's ^*#@ not, and that is why I'm asking Windows to check it.

[TSR2]

If you can zip the fsc and textures and mail it over I'll take a look