Don't get me wrong, Joe. But as long as with any problem I am able to fix two or more others appear I am not sure If I am able to reach a final version that works well with F/A-18 in a near future.

The unexpected crash to desktop are very frustrating. But as this even happens with the untweaked game I am start to believe that this is a part of the game. Maybe there are some wild pointers left in this game. Windows 95 based OS version was more tolerantly in such things. The Windows NT line send you very fast back to desktop.

I have a new idea to let Direct3D 9.0 and the GDI share the front buffer. Maybe this will fix the speed issue that my current solution have in the menus.

But the map in the mission planer is still a big mess.

AFAIK Ralf is spending company time on this. In my mind that means the company gets the money.

No need to worry about this. As I am one of the owner it is even hard for me to make a clear difference between my private time and company time. It is all right if the company gets the money.

Fantastic Stuff here !

I have not flown F-18 since going to XP due to the problems being addressed here.
If this app does in deed go public, I will be MOST pleased.

Best of luck.... and THANK YOU for your efforts !

Budds..............

I'm sure Ralf is making it first of all on his own and far beyond any interest or the involvement of his corporation.

I'll need to figure out yet how to open a PayPal account in the terrtory that it does not serve. I have a couple of ideas that I'll need to check out. Ralf, if you could give me another donation option, like a bank account, or c/c payment I could make it straight away.

Consider me a happy customer already, the game works almost perfect for me, except for the very rare occasions when it crashes to desktop from the GUI if I press too hard and CARELESSLY on the weapons selection only. Other than that the Planning Map is a mess of course, but I've got used to it, lol. Many thanks for what you've done, I repeat I'm happy and ready for donation, lol.

Joe, talking about the Planning Map and its interface, any chance to make an external converter program for it? I'm afraid it wont be fixed graphics wise in the game. Planning Map with decent scalable fonts would be the next milestone in F-18 development to my opinion.

Menu UI is now in full sync with all the GDI stuff the game is doing and it is fast like before. This should prevent elements from suddenly disappear or not show at all. No more need to press ESC to recover. I am better tell nobody about this dirty trick I am used for this because it is not recommended. But in this case I have to fight fire with fire.

OK we still miss some text elements but this is a result of the GDI hook for the water. I need only to find the right of ~200 GDI functions that need to be hooked too. At the latest the text will be back after I have hooked all GDI functions. The mission planing even miss some lines as a result of this. Same solution will bring them back too.

The only real problems that I can that I can see at the moment is the map in the mission planing if you zoom in or out. Looks like a strange sync problem. The game renders the map with the 3d part of the GFX using the same textures it use in the game and then copy it in a buffer and later on the screen. It seems that this copy from 3d memory to 2d memory is to early or to late.

The other problems are the CTD but as I say before I think I am not caused this.

I am still need to reactivate the Index Texture emulation to improve the color resolution of some textures and an other optimisation that prevent to rendering of MFD content if the MFD is not showed. The last beta have this two things but I have temporarily removed them for testing.

This all summed up that I am very optimistic about a new version for this week.

This is fine with the game, Ralf. Gimme the payment option now.

it occurs to me to ask.....where is our old friend "iam" who was one of the 2 guys (along with "thrawn" who FOUND the tweaker) who got this ball rolling, and got us all mad enough to contact Ralf?

"iam" was steaming mad with his new nvidia card many months ago and was desperate to find a fix but has never posted here again....are you watching and waiting bud? moved on to LOMAC? hee hee....

anyways, Ralf is just going "above and beyond" anything anyone here had hoped was possible with these few specific problems at this point....he was a king as soon as he fixed the banding, as far as i am concerned!

(but please don't give up on us yet!)

thanks Ralf.....

The errors in the mission planer are very strange. The game itself starts to send wrong commands to the API if a wrapper is active. I am not sure what caused this problem. Maybe it is a error in the game or it is a part of a anti copy/cheating protection system that is still active.