FS2004 Strange Gmax behavior

[Andrea80]

Hi all!

I am experiencing some strange Gmax behavior, I've searched into FsDeveloper forum but seems there is nothing similar.

This is the full scenery file, until yesterday all was fine adding more and more buildings, this evening I was adding some other buildings and something strange happened... now whatever I select the object goes crazy....
Below some screenshots from Gmax:

A couple of buildings that were in place before this evening, that never presented any kind of problem..

This is the building I added:

If I select something and I try to rotate the view this is what happens:

In wireframe view, regardless the color of the object the "crazy" polygons are shown in blue...

Total poly count is 23784, Vertices 29445.

Maybe some Gmax limit? the problem is not linked to the specific added building, because I recovered a previous version of the gmax file without any problem, then I added a trial building and all goes crazy....

Anyone have experienced this issue before?

Thanks Andrea

 

[bob5568]

Gmax is surely buggy (but wonderful for the price). Its been a long time since I used Gmax the way you are. I can't remember that far back in good detail, but I also ran into problems. I determined that Gmax was least likely to corrupt if I kept the number of structures within a single Gmax file down to a small number. I did a fs2004 version of Harvey Field that way, I broke the airport structures up into about 4 or 5 groupings of structures.

It can be a hassle, but since the notion of placing Gmax objects on a Gmax ground poly never matched up perfectly in fs2004, I found it helpful to have these groupings to give me some ability to adjust the locations in the sim.

Good luck!

 

[hairyspin]

The bounding boxes in your third screenshot don't match the objects that I can see. For each object giving trouble, try using Reset Xform from the Tools panel on each object. You should collapse the stack on each object after doing so, leaving editable mesh or editable poly objects.

Be aware this cannot be Undone, so save your work first. You do have a backup strategy and save versions of your work as you go?

 

[bob5568]

why collapse the stack? I never do that, and now and then I'm happy to be able to edit.

 

[n4gix]

why collapse the stack? I never do that, and now and then I'm happy to be able to edit.

Leaving the stack open costs in terms of both memory usage and computational resources. When the stack is collapsed, both of these factors are greatly reduced.

 

[bob5568]

Interesting, but its moot for the bgl, right?

So we're really talking about accepting some inconvenience if you need to because your equipment is being stretched for resources.

Having said that, do we think that gmax is corrupting for the OP because his computer resources are being stretched? I personally doubt that, especially by the looks of what he is designing.

 

[hairyspin]

Hold on a minute

Before writing this off as a Gmax corruption, I notice a custom grid to right of the blue polys in screenshot 4. Are you sure you haven't been messing with these and left a custom grid active when it isn't needed? I know I can get some really screwy results that way.

 

[Andrea80]

Before writing this off as a Gmax corruption, I notice a custom grid to right of the blue polys in screenshot 4. Are you sure you haven't been messing with these and left a custom grid active when it isn't needed? I know I can get some really screwy results that way.

The yellow grid you see is the ground poly, but it is here from the beginning so I think it is not the problem.
I never had this problem with Gmax, it happened only when I added one more building, my suspect is about the number of polygons.

Anyway fortunately I have my working directory on cloud, and fortunately is configured to create backups automatically so I have not lost anything

Now I've split up the scenery into sub-zones, so I hope to not fall back into this kind of errors again...

Just for reference, I expanded the memory of my pc to 8Gb a couple of weeks ago because with 4Gb sometimes I was running out of memory.... now with 8Gb I should not have this problem again.

 

[hesynergy]

Nine years after...

... I determined that Gmax was least likely to corrupt if I kept the number of structures within a single Gmax file down to a small number. I did a fs2004 version of Harvey Field that way, I broke the airport structures up into about 4 or 5 groupings of structures....

I did the same with my farm house grouping....see my wayyyy Belated thanks to you Bob, re incompatibilities in game packs...and

chas, regarding the tree....


Bob

Bob I can't believe that is been almost 10 years since I've viewed this ....I am now getting back in the scenery design and realized I never thanked you!!!

The tree as two "cards" at 90 degree angles with mirrored surfaces worked. It's interesting that there are current talks on the p3d sub forum on Avsim forums, about "rotating clouds" in the P3DV2.

BTW my farm scenery files are on Avsim's Library as Carnes Farm...there IS AN ISSUE of P3DV2's inability to show scenery files that were visible in P3DV1.4...and I understand the difference between the gmax 2004 vs the fsX gamepacks....the same sort of compatibility problem that exists between fs2002 and FS2004 gamepacks???

Some of my objects...namely Escoes Market, the shopping center and Mama Carnes Museum (seen on google earth as a contributed Sketchup contribution)DO NOT SHOW UP IN P3DV2 BUT were visible in P3DV1.4...thus my RE-Researching scenery creation some 9 years after creating the originals, to get my farm scenery I working in P3DV2.

I understand that Arno's ModelConverterX is now able to work with P3DV2 , though I've not tried it yet...

...so that is the update and;

...thank you Bob !!

and to you and Arno and everyone at FSD and simmers everywhere...have a very Merry Christmas this Christmas day 2014.

Chas

 

[bob5568]

Fun...thanks for activating the "way back" machine...good to hear from you.