alpha channel textures on planes not showing properly

i have found some lovely silver plane textures that when i look at the bitmap with DXTbmp have a second dark picture displayed as well as the main artwork for the plane. for example http://www.gjsmith.net/Textures/a26-intruder.htm
unfortunately these paint schemes only show up as the basic single layer once i am in flight simulator 2004 and the silver effect is missing. does anyone have any experience of this problem and a solution?

Is your FX card up to the job of showing metalic textures?

i dont know i will have to ask the person that built my computer. i think the graphics is on the motherboard and if ive looked up the right one it says Integrated GeForce4 MX Graphics on the specifications. do i need a separate graphics card?

Onboard GFX are not normally up to rendering metalic textures(or much else in fs9)
Try the latest drivers from

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp

Or try "tweaked" drivers from

http://www.omegadrivers.net/

Fs9 is a very hungry in the GFX dept (and CPU and menory)

I fear that the only way to enjoy the sim with onboard GFX is with most of the settings on minimum

Tell us about your PC,and if you have a AGP slot?

as far as i am aware these are the bits that make my pc.
motherboard Abit NF7-M nForce 2, ATX, DDDR400, 10/100 Lan, USB 2.0, 6Ch Audio, IDE, GF4 MX VGA http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=56087
processor AMD Sempron 2500+ (Socket A) (1.750ghz)
1024 mb (2x512) ram
200gb hard disc 7200/8mb
windows xp professional

what is a AGP slot?

AGP slot is for a dedicated GFX card
Nice mobo,Im a little confused about

"motherboard Abit NF7-M nForce 2, ATX, DDDR400, 10/100 Lan, USB 2.0, 6Ch Audio, IDE"
As the link supplied states that the onboard GFX are Not compatable with PC3200 ( which is DDR400)
Also check the Q&A on the page

Check that the memory you have is compatable with the GFX chip

You have a AGP slot so you could add a GFX card

thankyou for your advice
for some unknown reason that i cannot explain when i started up the simulator this afternoon the shiny textures are now working fine.