active (EGKA) ORBX Shoreham white squares above lights

[Haw-Boo]

Hi Folks.

 

See attached screenshots.

 

Today I have seen white squares above the lights when at (EGKA) ORBX Shoreham, I use Active Sky 2016 for weather and as you can see from the attached it was poor weather.

 

I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling, fiddling around with various settings as per what I could find on the internet, but no luck.

 

I would like to ask if anyone has any ideas/suggestions why this might be happening please? I have also attached my settings.

 

Regards.

 

David.

[Bullfox]

What happens when you set Filtering to anisotropic?

[Pontiusthepilot]

I get a similar problem.

 

I've checked that I'm using anisotropic filtering both in FSX and in nVidia profile inspector.

 

In the past, if lights rendered badly, they would appear as a translucent square that wasn't too disturbing to look at. But now they become these nasty harsh silver artifacts. I don't know which is worse these, which I get using DX10 preview, or the black squares I get in DX9.

 

Either way, the problem started after an overnight Windows 10 update. So the finger of blame is pointing at Microsoft if you ask me.

 

Regards.

Pontius.

[Haw-Boo]

Hi Folks.

 

I have just done a complete uninstall and reinstall of my FSX-SE install. But it still does it even with nothing else installed, using FSX weather system for fog, and any of the filtering settings applied. see pic "....b.jpg"

 

BUT. If I disable the Shoreham scenery and return to base ORBX England, same conditions, it works - see pic "....c.jpg"

 

Is there a chance this "might" be a scenery issue for the "EGKA Shoreham (Brighton) Airport" scenery?

 

I was going to say Cardiff does not do it, but not sure its got the same runway lighting, so looking for airports to test.

 

David.

 

 

[Haw-Boo]

Hi.

 

I don't have many additional purchased airports, but the ones I have (eg Pago Pago, Telluride) don't do this, so for me its only when using  "EGKA Shoreham (Brighton) Airport".

 

Now I know this, I am going to finish installing the rest of my FSX_SE software.

 

Regards.

 

David.

PS: I would be willing to test other Europe based airports to see if they do the same ;-)

[Triplane]

 

Are the latest Libraries installed?

[petfy]

Win 10 silently updates graphics drivers in its update as well. Could a new graphics driver be the problem. Also, when Win 10 updates a graphics driver it trashes my nVidia profile so I have to import a saved one again.

[Haw-Boo]

Hi.

 

Thanks for your replies. Good questions :-)

 

With regards to the libraries, yes they are installed and the latest. I did a total reinstall of my FSX-SE install yesterday, so when we install FTX Central from new we get a prompt to install/update the libraries just after starting it.

 

I have double checked my graphics drivers, and to be sure last night I "performed a clean install" of the latest nVidia drivers with Win10 updates disabled. I also use specific profile settings for FSX-SE as I get better performance doing them in the nVidia settings than FSX-SE, so I trashed those and tested with and without. But makes no change.

 

After releasing Win10 updates, I have not seen anything other than ones for Defender. Would be great if we could selectively choose what hardware we would like updated.

 

Regards.

 

David.

 

 

[Haw-Boo]

I just ran through all settings in FTX Central and FSX-SE, and cannot see anything they could make a difference.

 

So for the moment the only change I can make is to deselect this scenery in the FSX-SE library when its foggy ;-) (as seen in the screenshot)

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I cannot make the lights at FTX Shoreham come on in daytime foggy weather.

I think that I remember reading that the type of light used does not respond to

low visibility, only to the time of day.

There have been questions before as to why they don't light up when the

weather is poor.

What do yours look like at night?

 

 

 

[Haw-Boo]

Hi Nick.

 

Good question.

 

This might be a little overkill, but I have taken screenshot with and without fsxse fog for dawn, day, dusk, and night, Here are the details and screenshots:

 

- Purely using FSXSE for date, time, and weather.
- Date: 8/2/2017, Time: based on the defaults for dawn, day, dusk, and night.

Weather: 
"Fair Weather" - pics starting with 1
"Fogged In" - pics starting with 2
 

 

With fog enabled, the lights appear with squares?

 

BTW: I am using what comes out of the box for the ORBX products, nothing changed in settings, and no lighting changes made in any way. I did a full rebuild, so its a clean system.

 

I normally use Active Sky 2016, but the test above were taken with this not running.

 

I do not use any other scenery apps that modify anything, its pure ORBX.

 

[Haw-Boo]

FYI: Thinking about petfy's question regarding nvidia drivers, I am going to roll mine back to the previous version to see if that makes a difference

[Haw-Boo]

So I rolled back my graphics driver. First I totally removed nVidia back to "MS Basic Display Adaptor", and then installed nVidia 376.33 which for me was the previous release.

 

This is  "MS Basic Display Adaptor":

 

(image is small due to Windows resolution for that driver :-) Like the old days ;-) )

 

And this is nVidia 376.33:

 

So the drivers make no difference.

 

David

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

Your 2-day picture is the one I cannot replicate.

I don't think you answered the question, what happens if you set anisotropic filtering.

Do you see this with or without the Preview Direct X 10 box ticked, or in both?

 

[Guest]

Hi, also don't forget to delete previous shaders in case of change with CG pilots

[Haw-Boo]

24 minutes ago, Nick Cooper said:

Your 2-day picture is the one I cannot replicate.

I don't think you answered the question, what happens if you set anisotropic filtering.

Do you see this with or without the Preview Direct X 10 box ticked, or in both?

 

 

Hi Nick.

 

That is interesting that you do not see the same as me.

 

Changing the filtering to any of the 4 settings makes no difference. I never use DX10 Preview as it does not work with everything I use, but I just enabled it now to test and it makes no change to this issue. 

 

Regards.

 

David.

[Haw-Boo]

31 minutes ago, Richard Bui said:

Hi, also don't forget to delete previous shaders in case of change with CG pilots

 

Hi Richard.

 

Sorry but I am not clear how to do that, I have never done that before? Why is that needed? What situations require this to be done?

 

Regards.

 

David.

[Haw-Boo]

1 hour ago, Richard Bui said:

Hi, also don't forget to delete previous shaders in case of change with CG pilots

 

I think I found out how to do this by deleting the shaders folder, but it made no difference. The shaders folder was rebuilt when FSXSE started, so think it was the right one.

 

 

[Nick Cooper]

The problem is clearly with fog but as I cannot make the lights work at all in daylight

and they look fine in fog at night, I fear I cannot advise you.

I am not using FSX-SE though, rather FSX-DE.

[Haw-Boo]

Ok Nick, thanks for trying though :-)

 

Actually I just took another look in VR (as that's how i fly mainly), I was interested in what happens if i taxi down the runway. Interestingly I can never get closer to the white boxes, and have gone when I reach the end.  Then when i turn round at the end of the runway and look back they are there at the other end. Kind of hard to see on the rubbish VR screenshots, but that's what happens.

 

2017-2-8_17-17-19-310.BMP

2017-2-8_17-19-18-719.BMP

[Haw-Boo]

5 hours ago, Nick Cooper said:

The problem is clearly with fog but as I cannot make the lights work at all in daylight

and they look fine in fog at night, I fear I cannot advise you.

I am not using FSX-SE though, rather FSX-DE.

 

Hi Nick.

 

I would like to ask if you would mind checking to see if you can mach my settings (see pics), and me know how things look for you? I am hoping that you might be able to match my settings, if its not to much trouble please?

 

This is using the Shoreham package, and not the one that comes with England etc. I ran through the Shoreham user guide, and matched the suggested settings. In the tests I always used the FSX Cessna C172SP Skyhawk, just to keep things standard.

 

Would really appreciate one last shot, just to see what your result looks like.

 

Regards.

 

David.

 

 

[Haw-Boo]

Keen to try and get to the bottom if this issue i took a look through the EGKA folders, and found there is a file called "EGKA_Halo_512_LM.dds" that is playing a part in this issue.

 

With this file in place we see:

 

 

with the file temporarily renamed to "EGKA_Halo_512_LM.dds.off", we then see:

 

 

Its obvious that this image is part of the halo effect for the runway lights, but what is it about this DSS that is failing compared to others?

 

Something else I noticed. When doing the outside images (above) the white squares appeared more square, but from inside the aircraft they were not perfect. If we go to an outside view and get close to the ground we can see why, they are creating a form of negative image of background objects. In this case trees, as follows:

 

 

Its like the transparency of the image has become inverted.

 

However I do not understand why these DSS files would cause this, and apparently only on my machine? What on my machine could impact the way the DDS file would display with FSXSE? Sadly I could not find another file like this specific one to test further, so I am starting to run out of ideas.

 

[Haw-Boo]

Wow, I really do not understand why this is happening for this one file "EGKA_Halo_512_LM.dds".

 

Its obviously something do with the way the file and its mip map content is being displayed, but technically do not understand what drives this, and/or what handles things from the OS point of view.

 

So I have run into a dead end, and without more technical knowledge I am stuck. There must be more information somewhere that we can learn about these files, so I could then investigate other directions? Or maybe the scenery could be double checked? Maybe that file needs tweaking some how?

 

Until then, I will have to leave this as it is as there is nothing more I can do.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello,

I am sorry, I missed this.

I have changed my settings to match yours and do indeed see the same unfortunate effect.

I think the lights are in fact off and the ghostly boxes are spurious.

They don't show in Dx10 but that isn't a solution.

I will draw Richard's attention to this and see if anything can be done in the future.

 

[Haw-Boo]

 

Hi Nick.

 

No worries at all, your busy.

 

But................YES, I am not going mad then ;-) PHEW! :-)

 

It really does seem to be down to something around that specific dds file, or the way its handled in the scenery. Only for runways 02 and 20. Interestingly I read a note that mip map 3 might produce some form of square, but was not clear if that's what we see here.

 

I am happy you could reproduce. I cannot let go of fault finding this kind of stuff, was up until 2am today wading through bgl's, dds's, xml's, scenery configs, and the internet.

 

Excellent, thanks for your help and coming back. I can rest now, maybe actually do some flying later ;-)

 

Regards.

 

David.

[Nick Cooper]

Hello David,

 

I have asked Richard.

It seems that the lights are a model but as Richard doesn't have access to the source files,

regrettably a fix is unlikely.

I believe that the UK airports were done by developers who no longer work with FTX.

I have no idea who has the source files.

[Haw-Boo]

Hi Nick.

 

Thanks for letting me know.

 

Regards.

 

David.

[leddy1984]

hi how do i get rid of whites square on fs2004 at night it on the runways and moveing verices and planes light on end wing tips

[leddy1984]

25 minutes ago, leddy1984 said:

hi how do i get rid of whites square on fs2004 at night it on the runways and moveing verices and planes light on end wing tips