Is your FSX acting strangely lately (graphics issues)?

[sightseer]

Do you

a) Have an older system

b - take long flights (2-3 hours)

c) have an increased in strange graphic problems?

Im trying to track down whats going on on my system. It started about a month ago. I cant tell if its Microsoft or Orbx related. I dont think its hardware becasue its only FSX that has problems.

Im not extremely software or computer knowledgeable but it appears to be some kind of memory leak. I say that becasue it ony seems to happen if I fly along time.

What happens is that Ill take along flight and all will appear to be fine but sometimes when I change airplanes or date/time, my graphics will go haywire. Ive had black sky with normal foreground and mountains and hills that were out of horizontal sync. Ive had black sky with all ground out of horizontal sync. (and by that I mean that it appears that the mountains and ground are at a different hrizontal frequency than my monitor). Ive also had completely black everything.

It first happened at Fall City after I installed KBVS, 74S and did a windows update. I wish I had only done one thing at a time but i didnt.

I tried uninstalling KBVS and 74S and although I didnt have aproblem with those two uninstalled, the problem is rare enough that I feel it may not be connected.

I feel its either something in the latest lib or something Microsoft did to directX. I don't know.

Its quite possible that this would only affect people with older systems who fly a lot. My system is DDR2 with a 9800GT. Its been good enough but the way my problem started about a month ago and has hit me now with four issues, I dont think its my hardware.

Todays issue was after flying a lot and landing at YCDR. the graphics were fine but I had no menus. The <Alt> key brought up a white bar with no text. I placed my mouse over the bar and I got green boxes with no text. I pressed <F> and the there was no File menu but you could see where it should be. I hit the <;> (semicolon - save flight) in the hopes that it would reset itself but when it came back, all I had was foreground and basic sky. no clouds, trees, airplanes, buildings or objects of any kind. I hit alt - f - x - y. My FSX sluggishly shut down.

Thats one thing Ive been noticing a lot of lately. extreme sluggishness. sometimes it says "This program has stopped working, etc" and on one occassion I checked and saw that ai_player.dll was receiving the blame. I dont know if it has anything to do with anything though.

If youre still reading, have you had an uptick in graphics problems after flying a long time? Im going to uninstall KBVS and 74S again and possibly fall City and try and take my libs back to august or whichever I have saved.

I just dont know where my problem lies. My FSX.cfg is fairly basic right now. It has disable preload=1. It has the SamllPartRejectRadius=4. It has buildings set to 800 (TERRAIN MAX AUTOGEN BUILDINGS) and trees are set to 1800 I think. no other tweaks. I was using Bufferpools (300million) and TBM that was about twice my framerate but Im not using those right now.

My autogen slider is at very dense. Mesh at 10meter. texture at 7cm.

its always worked fine (good enough for me) but if anyone else is having graphics issues that started recently then I think it would be helpful to know.

If its Microsoft then theres nothing we can do about it but if its Orbx related, I think theyd want to know. I think you guys would want to know.

I just want my system as stable as it was again.

If it was KBVS or 74S related, wouldnt the problem not exist in Australia at all? Since the problem did exist for me in Australia at both an addon airport and a fairly small default airport, doesnt that suggest its either Microsoft or the latest library?

Did MS just update DirectX? anyone know? Id really appreciate the help.

[renault]

Hi

I have a very low end system (acer dual core 2.2 ghz, 3G ram , with a 9800 GT video card) running Vista 32 bit. I do not use a tweaked fsx.cfg file. Autogen density is set at normal and scenery complexity at very dense.

A few months ago I was encountering somewhat similar problems to what you describe. I found the following link http://www.simforums.com/forums/topic29041.html helpful. If you scroll down to the section on virtual address space, you will find a section on vista 32 bit and instructions on how to increase virtual memory. Please note that the virtual memory is not the same as installed ram or graphics card memory. This slight change so far restored stability to my machine and strange graphics artifacts and CTD's appear to now be a thing of the past. Hope this may be of some help .....

Sincerely

Renault

[Alex Goff]

Perhaps I missed it when reading but what OS did you use? There's a bug in Windows 7 related to the menu that can cause graphics errors and crashes. The fix for that is here:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/273341-heres-the-apparent-fix-to-fsx-crashing-win-7-x64/

[sightseer]

Im using Vista 64 (Home premium).

This problem is new to me and the only changes to my system are Windows updates and Orbx updates. I wanted to find out if anyone else was having issues but was trying to figure it out on their own before they said anything.

I hate to uninstall airports that I like but i dont know what else to do. I have to investigate more thoroughly.

Note that Im not receiving 'out of memory' errors and Im not seeing the graphics spikes that we all know about. On three of these four occassions, I wouldnt have noticed anything at all if I hadnt tried to switch aircraft after a long flight. The most recent time was just weird.

I started at Caloundra and flew down to YBBN (slideshow but very pretty) and then back to YRED for a touch and go and then back to Caloundra.

I did this after having flown across Australia for a long time but I wasnt done flying. when I landed, i had no menus. I often just hit altf-x-y real quick to end my flying time so its hard to say when the menu thing started but the other issues are all new. My systems been stable for years now.

I just have to investigate more and I was hoping someone else might be quietly investigating the same thing.

Do addon airport .dll files stay active even when you uninstall that airport? Are they active if you switch active regions? Does the KBVS dynamic link library get loaded if Australia is the active region?

I need knowledge more than anything else right now.

thanks for the help, guys.

[Tobias]

Hi Dave,

I had exactly the same problems that you're describing. Then after a lot of pain and searches I added the following line to my untweaked fsx.cfg in the [GRAPHICS] section . After that my problems were gone. Give it a try!

HIGHMEMFIX=1

Cheers,

Tobias

[Alex Goff]

Do addon airport .dll files stay active even when you uninstall that airport? Are they active if you switch active regions? Does the KBVS dynamic link library get loaded if Australia is the active region?

The only airport .dll files are from ObjectFlow and those are stored in the airports scenery folder and removed when uninstalled. They're only active when the airport is displayed by the user. So for example if you're around KBVS then it's ObjectFlow .dll will load and display the objects affected. Once you leave the area the airport ceases to be rendered and the .dll is inactive. ObjectFlow wouldn't crash FSX though, it's essentially the same as loading a normal scenery placement .bgl. The only difference is your settings such as season, day, hour, determine which objects are loaded.

[Lawman]

Built-up of dust inside your computer (like the fan in your graphics card) can also lead to high temps and all sorts of graphical anomalies. Have you checked that?

[Tobias]

Hey Dave,

Anything solved your problem?

[sightseer]

Hey Dave,

Anything solved your problem?

I dont know yet. Ive uninstalled KBVS and so far so good. If I go a few more weeks without the problem then for me, on my system, KBVS casues some problem.

What I did see yesterday was an issue with blocks instead of textures. I landed at KCOD after running a long time. It was dawn and the city lights all had black boxes around them and the snow effects that would have trailed the plane were all just blocks of grey. I dont have the HIGHMEMFIX in my config file right now. Im trying to keep it very plain and simple for a while. I think thats what caused that.

Im curious to see if I can install another airport (S43 for example) and whether the problem will come back or not. Maybe Ive just reached the limit of addons for my current computer. Id hate to think that. Ive got 4Gig of memory and a 1Gig graphics card. (and Vista 64)

Alex - Thanks for the answer. That helps.

[Blitzer]

I believe what you have described is something I used to suffer from now. I'm not sure which of the following actually cured the problme for me but I have been using the HIMEMFIX thing for a long time now and usually FSX in windowed mode these days for other reasons and I have not suffered such problems in a very long time. I would start with trying the HIMEMFIX, it definately resolves some other issues for me and it that does not work trying running FSX in windowed mode. HTH.

[Cal]

This caught my eye because last evening I was flying for the first time to Hoquiam Washington and Bowerman Field which I just loaded as freeware from FTX. All went well on my flight from KPDX and I was directed to the Boweman airport, I prepared my approach and landed. As I landed, several artifacts including a windsock, and beacon lights floated over the runway. I stopped and prepared to exit when I noticed that the taxiway was a only narrow roadway and on each side the ground dropped down 10-15 feet. I knew that it was an anomoly but I parked and looked around. It was indeed odd . I left Bowerman and returned to KPDX where everything was displayed correctly.

Anyone else see this anomoly at Bowerman? It looks like a pretty neat place but unless I can fix this I won't be flying there. I am so pleased with Orbx products and have many including other freeware which displays well so I think this problem can be fixed. Any help?

Thanks, Cal

[Kwiss]

How is your knee-board looking and the ATC window? Is there any strange anomalies with the appearance and function there? Normally when this happens to me it means a corrupt cfg. file and deletion/rebuild is required, just a though

[sightseer]

I just want to update this real quick...

Short story: My problem is not caused by either KBVS or Anacortes.

Longer story: I deleted KBVS and ran about a week when the problem occurred again and so i went ahead and deleted anacortes and Fall City but I didnt really expect that to help. Shortly after, the problem showed itself again but all i had to do was shut down FSX and restart and I was able to fly for as long as I wanted.

A few days after that, I was flying and my screen went black with nothing but crosshairs (I fly with mouseview on) and then it blinked and paused and then continued on without a problem. I havent seen any problems since and Im really hoping I dont. maybe it was just a misplaced file or something.

but it wasnt KBVS or Anacortes.

PS: Merry Christmas everyone (or Happy Hanukkah or Happy Kwanza or whichever holiday you choose to celebrate -- or not celebrate )