P3Dv5 strange behavior...

[jonmkj]

Ricardo check this out! It's wild! I'm testing all of my scenery as I install it back into v5, and I'm noticing some really strange behavior.

After a test flight, I noticed some strange anomalies around the south runway at FLL. Upon poking around, I am seeing the models seemingly vanish slowly from the ground up. It's leaving a giant shadow behind on the south runway, but all of the terminals and structures are doing it too. It's almost like they're sinking into the ground but... not really? So I loaded up at MSY and that's doing it too. But it's not only there, also FlyTampa's KBOS, and a handful of others, including one of my own projects. What could be causing this?

[RicardoLVFR]

Ricardo check this out! It's wild! I'm testing all of my scenery as I install it back into v5, and I'm noticing some really strange behavior.

After a test flight, I noticed some strange anomalies around the south runway at FLL. Upon poking around, I am seeing the models seemingly vanish slowly from the ground up. It's leaving a giant shadow behind on the south runway, but all of the terminals and structures are doing it too. It's almost like they're sinking into the ground but... not really? So I loaded up at MSY and that's doing it too. But it's not only there, also FlyTampa's KBOS, and a handful of others, including one of my own projects. What could be causing this?

I can't see the image, but if its all scenery I suggest you uninstall P3dv5 and re-install when able. Then before installing scenery test the sim and see if you get the same problem. If you don't, install each scenery one at a time testing each other after installing the next.

[jonmkj]

It isn't all scenery... RDU was unaffected, FT's KLAS was unaffected, and several others are unaffected. But the problem has been found and the fix is known, thanks to Bill at IblueYonder and Orbx.

This is a problem with some airports' ground polygons, due to the Z-bias layering, and a change that was made for v5. Apparently now, you don't have to have wide gaps in the numbering for the polygon layers, you can offset each layer by -1.

When formatted this way and compiled with the Prepar3D v5 bglcomp.exe it not only fixes the issue in v5, but retains FULL COMPATIBILITY when ported backwards to v4! So the problem wasn't with the scenery, nor was it with the simulator, it was with the dev tools.

[RicardoLVFR]

It isn't all scenery... RDU was unaffected, FT's KLAS was unaffected, and several others are unaffected. But the problem has been found and the fix is known, thanks to Bill at IblueYonder and Orbx.

This is a problem with some airports' ground polygons, due to the Z-bias layering, and a change that was made for v5. Apparently now, you don't have to have wide gaps in the numbering for the polygon layers, you can offset each layer by -1.

When formatted this way and compiled with the Prepar3D v5 bglcomp.exe it not only fixes the issue in v5, but retains FULL COMPATIBILITY when ported backwards to v4! So the problem wasn't with the scenery, nor was it with the simulator, it was with the dev tools.

So how was this fixed?

[jonmkj]

To quote Bill:

"they finally fixed the z-bias draw order so that you can just start at -1, and go up in increments of 1. So for KRND, I think my topmost layer was like -7 or something. When I did that, it magically fixed that problem of the poly appearing to swallow the buildings whole as the camera moves away."

He had the same issue with RND (the new default v5 scenery). Re-labeling the layers and compiling with the P3Dv5 SDK bglcomp.exe appears to have alleviated the issue.