New VSF 2.1.5 released

[Sailorjohn]

FWIW, looks like we're all on the same page. My reply to Ilan:

Thanks for the quick response, and solution, Ilan!

I see the dilemma. Haven't gotten to the VSF thread yet, but Sharpy did email me that the solution worked fine for his Swan_82. He's happy.

You pose a tough question. My gut feeling is it might be better (especially for those not comfortable with manipulation of files) to continue loading boat.x as a hierarchy, like plane.x and body.x...by default, and offer a user option to load mesh first. Most VS boats load fine either way; it's only the few megafiles that are problematic. As VSF matures, hopefully there will be more and more vehicles with effects, doors, etc...and fewer VS imports with megafiles. So hierarchy loading should work maybe 99% of the time. For those who choose to push the envelope, an option to rename the boat.x to (megaboat.x for ex?) allowing mesh-first loading should suffice. Just my take on it.

Cheers,
John

[ChiefEngOff]

John,
With v 2.1.6 the boat.x now loads as before, with full hierarchy, by default. There is now a tick box in the options menu to load a simple mesh, so everything is now okay.
All the best

[Hudizzle]

So this version fixes the problem with ships like my Titanic (and Poseidon... And Lusitania) loading with vanishing parts, eh?
It's a shame I can't try it right now. My motherboard went crazy, and now I'm downgraded to a single core CPU and 32MB video card until I can get a new board. I get 0fps now with the Titanic.

Sailorjohn - In that screenshot you posted of my Titanic in VSF, it looked like the railing textures might not be rendered as transparent. Is that the case? Or maybe that was just how it looked from a distance.

[Sailorjohn]

Hud, I wish I could answer your question about Titanic's railings. But I just installed VSF 2.2.2...and now, even with "simple Mesh" ticked, VSF crashes every time I try to load Titanic. Go figure...two steps forward, one step back...or the other way around!?!

[Jonatan]

Hud,

I've talked to Ilan about the railings as I have the same symptoms on my boats. He says it's because of the way shaders work and that there was no way around it.

[Sailorjohn]

As I recall from when I COULD load Titanic(!?!), onboard in F1 the railings showed correctly. Until you mentioned it, I hadn't noticed their opacity in the F2 screenie. I believe they looked okay close in, even in F2...so it may be a distant rendering issue. Perhaps the shaders act on the whole texture, as Jon indicated. Guess I'll try switching panels to a lower interior level, as I have max interior set up...and it DID work until latest update.

[Dom]

Hud,

I've talked to Ilan about the railings as I have the same symptoms on my boats. He says it's because of the way shaders work and that there was no way around it.

Jonatan, yes there's a way: just uncheck your mip-mapping box into the land tab option (but you will lose a few fps and the sea afar is glistening a bit too much). That's what mip-mapping is made for: reducing the resolution of textures when they're seen from distance, in order to save graphic memory space, and of course the shaders have an influence in rendering the "downgraded" textures.

Dom.

[Jonatan]

I always have mip mapping off, Dom. It still occurs.

[Dom]

Ok Jonatan, that works for me however.
But perhaps you should check your graphic card options (via the driver itself or Nvidia Control Panel or ATI/AMD interface, or via Riva Tuner or similar) and see if your mip-mapping is not set on "forced on". You usually have 3 options there like "always forced on", "always forced off" and "defined by the application". For allowing the in-game mip-mapping setting to be effective, you usually have to set your driver/graphic card options on "defined by the application" (well, that's obvious! sorry ).
Also, in these graphic/driver options, you usually find a setting about mip-mapping quality as well. Several steps from "high performances" to "high quality". Select "high quality" in order to have the mip-mapping effect as reduced as possible and that should help about resolving that railing alpha textures issue.
At least I hope it will work in your case, since it logically works for me regarding my 4 large ships that use alpha textures for railings.

EDIT: I think -perhaps, not 100% sure- you must use at least the shaders version 2.0 in your graphic driver as well (depending on your graphic card if it supports it -but it should since shaders V2.0 are quite old now-) So if the shaders version option exists in your driver, then select it (or 3.0 if available).

If all the above doesn't work, then try to play with the other graphic driver' settings like "transparent texture anisotropy level" and all.

Dom.

[Jonatan]

I don't touch stuff I don't understand, Dom.