"Black Bus" / "Black Textures"

[sjain882]

It should be noted that the incorrect texture format problem extends further than described in your Twitter/X thread. It is possible for .dds textures to have the wrong alpha format.

They should have a separate alpha channel & should be in texconv's "dx9" format. After export from editing softare, they can be converted as follows:

texconv *.dds -alpha -sepalpha -dx9 -y -ft dds

The wrongly formatted textures show up as black as OMSI mis-interprets the non-existent alpha channel as a mipmap channel.

All of the above was explained by Anonim17PL a while back in this video.

Additionally, some users had luck by ticking (or unticking?) the "Generate Mip Maps" in Paint.NET, but this is likely a worse solution as it removes mipmaps entirely from textures, rather than formatting them correctly.

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Personally, despite never converting any textures, since I started using DXVK I have not experienced this problem once. It has been around 2 years since I've seen black textures, whereas before installing DXVK, I would see the problem quite often.

In addition, I play a large selection of mostly medium-heavy content. Even in some of the most intense situations (e.g, Westcountry 3 + SP Renown DLC) it has not happened to me.

I believe this can be attributed to a combination of DXVK and setting a reasonable memory limit. Here are my configuration details:

• GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060M Max-Q (6GB VRAM)
• 4GB Patch / Large Address Aware in Omsi.exe
• OMSI 2 Settings > Graphics (Advanced) - "Use Low Res Textures" is off (!) whereas previously, I would have to keep it on without DXVK to avoid getting black textures almost instantly.
• OMSI 2 Settings > Graphics (Advanced) > "Max tex mem..." set to 6144.0 (I found that using something reasonable like 3072.0 or above works great, but 0.0 / no limit consistently made black textures re-appear)
• DXVK v1.8 or above (currently using v2.3 / latest)
• in dxvk.conf: d3d9.maxAvailableMemory = 6144
• Omsi.exe > Properties > Compatibility > "Run this program in compatibility mode for" > Windows 7 (this massively reduced D3D9ERR_INVALIDCALL crashes when the graphics device was lost (e.g, when running Task Manager, CTRL ALT DELETE, UAC), and helped with black textures, however I'm unsure of its effect with DXVK).

Here's a quick guide I created a while back, that allows less tehcnically advanced users to replicate this setup. Feel free to use it as you wish.

Spoiler

# **Solving white/black texture issues & out of memory errors** *Please note: this still requires a decently capable system and is not guaranteed to solve every error* ‎ ### __First, apply the 4GB Patch:__ 1. Download the .zip archive from https://ntcore.com/files/4gb_patch.zip 2. Extract the archive somewhere on your computer and open executable / Application file inside. 3. In the file picker dialog that appears, locate your OMSI 2 executable file (guidance below) and open it. 4. You should see a window detailing "Executable successfully patched". 5. Right click on your OMSI 2 executable file in File Explorer (guidance below). 6. Click ***Properties***. 7. Ensure the ***Read-only*** box is checked. 8. Click OK. ### __Next, set the video memory limits correctly:__ *If you are unsure of how to follow these steps, please refer to the image guide below.* 1. Launch OMSI 2. 2. In the main menu, click on ***Options***. 3. Click on the ***Graphics (advanced)*** tab. 4. In the the ***Max. Tex. Mem...*** box, enter either of the below values: For graphics card with >=3GB VRAM: `3072.0` For graphics cards with <3GB VRAM: the maximum amount of VRAM available to your graphics card, in MiB (e.g, `1024.0` for a 1GB VRAM card) 5. Click OK. ### __**Locating your OMSI 2 executable file**__ 1. Open Steam. 2. Hover your cursor over the ***Library*** tab in the top left, then click on Home. 3. Right click on the ***OMSI 2*** entry in the games list on the left. 4. Click on ***Properties....*** 5. Click on the ***Local Files*** option on the left. 6. Click on ***Browse...***. A File Explorer / Windows Explorer window will appear. 7. Look for the file named ***Omsi*** with type ***Application*** or file extension `.exe`. ### __**Why 3072.0 MiB?**__ In my experience, using a reasonable VRAM limit makes OMSI much more stable vs `0.0` / no limit. I no longer get `D3DERR_INVALIDCALL` errors, no longer see any white/black textures (its been around a year), and have never seen OMSI use >3GB VRAM anyway, without this limit. My graphics card: RTX 3060M Max-Q, with 6144MiB of VRAM. ‎ 

[brokenphilip]

I was under the impression that the "Maximum Texture Memory for high-res Texture load" option only controlled the threshold at which point it should switch to using "#low.xxx" textures, similarly to what the "Use Only Low-Res Textures" option does. When I'm able to I'll have to check the exe myself to confirm this though.

Either way, I have already tried setting this value to my GPU's VRAM (2GB) and it didn't seem to make a difference. It might be too low for the game, but I'm much rather willing to bet DXVK handles mipmap generation much better. It's interesting to note that OMSI 2 is not the only game with the fading black texture bug once the 4GB patch is applied (I don't remember which other games are affected in specific, but I do recall them having this same issue).

Slightly off-topic but, one of the methods of fixing this that I had in mind was dynamically saving game-generated textures as DDS files as a "cache" of some sort, though given that texture loading can be pretty sluggish already (and that I have no clue how I'd even implement a working cache that won't fetch potentially outdated textures lol) I feel this kind of job in particular is best left for a static method (I completely forgot texconv exists, thank you for reminding me).

I'll check out the video, and I'll also check out your tutorial for setting up DXVK for OMSI 2 when I have time. Thank you for your contribution, I will add the appropriate info to the MD soon!