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interesting issue with FS9

jyarddog

jyarddog

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us-washington
If anyone has any ideas I would be most greatfull. If anyone can point me to any pertinent websites this also would be appreciated.

FS9 installed years ago, no appreciable problems. ATI Radeon 9600 video card, 128 mem. 1.5 gig mother board, Intel W845DN (old by now), front bus speed is 400 if I remember correctly. Settings in FS9 are fairly conservative, scenery – all sliders are at normal, clouds- simple. Frames locked at 20. Display- 1024x728x32 (think those are the numbers). 1.4 memory, Windows XP with SP2.

When in flight, regardless of aircraft flown, no third party scenery in view or even out of view default trees, mtns, etc slowly go blurry- takes about a minute or so. I do a refresh screen and all comes back. The redraw seems to be in quick successions rather than all at once. At this point I’m fine for another minute or so when this all repeats. During all this frame rates show right around 17.5 or so.

Any slight third party scenery seems to drop my frames like a rock. Some objects may show up grey then correct themselves as if FS9 is looking for the applicable bmps. Default beacon towers at night may show grey cones instead of the lights. Screen refresh corrects this.

All this occurs regardless of where I fly. If on the ground I don’t believe I get the blurry problem until I get aloft. I can’t really say when this all started. All seemed to be fine about a year ago, I believe. About that time or earlier I started to do my own designing, then purchased FSDS to do my own objects.

Uploaded much of my work under Robert Lacy at Avsim and Flightsim.com. during this time I did very little flying, if any. Recently started flying with friends again and noticed this problem. The sceneries developed for our flying region are all mip mapped and dxt1 bmps. There are a few objects that are frame rate heavy, which I personally took out for my own benefit.

I have tried to reinstall FS9. This did not solve the issue. My power supply is only 250, but as I stated I had no problems a few years ago. Could the power supply be getting tired?

Could the video card be getting tired. I believe I have the latest driver for the video card. Could it be dust in the machine? I cleaned out all the dust, unplugged the video card and rubbed an eraser on the contacts and reinstalled.

Hard drive is only an older 60 gig. Hard drive getting tired?

Took out all the XP security patches which sped up my machine but did nothing for FS9 problem. I have the FS9 update patch. During reinstall of FS9 I did uninstall the patch first then FS9 itself. Before adding back many sceneries (I have about 80) I tested for the problem. It was still there.

For scenery arrangement I have addon scenery\lens easy scenery\scenery with all pertinent bgls. And \texture with all pertinent bmps for my objects. For sceneries- example… addon scenery\kgtf\scenery, with no texture sub folder. Addon scenery\scenery has very little in it. Once in a great while some bmps might not show. I move those to fs9 texture which solves the problem.

I have followed tips from David (Opa) Marshal and have beta tested some of his work, and he has helped me greatly on a number of items. So that’s the basic story.

Also- a different issue- at Lewisaire.com we have a very nice kneeboard to fly with, which is connected to the website. It is done in html except for one item (hdg\dist calculator) which is done in htm. Everything works on that kneeboard except for this one calculator. This happened a couple of months ago. I run IE 7. Used to have IE 6 and upgraded. I think this is my fault. I was cleaning out some old files and noticed some of IE 6 still hanging around. I got rid of it. Since then I cannot run that htm calculator. This is my best guess as to cause and effect. There may have been some file in IE 6 which Is not in IE 7 which I now do not have.

If you have any ideas on all this your expertise would be most appreciate.

Robert Lacy (Bob)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi,

First I made your post a little bit easier to read :).

For the blurries, that is usually caused by overloading the grpaphics card. I would try to run FS2004 without any addon stuff active and see if it then also happens. Often this kind of trouble is caused by texture problems in addon (scenery or aircraft). By testing with only default stuff, you might be able to see if it is hardware related or not.
 
Arno- I disabled addon scenery which effectively takes out all 3rd party items and also my bgl's and bmp's (ez scenery\scenery & \texture.

I thought I saw an improvement. Further testing proved this was not so. Before I saw this was not so I re-enabled addon scenery and disabled a few sceneries in it at a time and tested. I re-enabled those and disabled others a few at a time, and so on. No change.

I adjusted my video driver disabling fast write fast read and so on. Did not see much change. Default Ac like a small Cessna helped some. The planes we use - flying with friends do take their toll, but no one else seems to have the problems I have.

ATI Radeon 9600 with the latest drivers. Can video cards "get tired"? Anyway- so far it seems as though the video card might be the culprit. I only have about 80 add on sceneries. Bob
 
When you say blurry do you mean the textures out a few miles or
textures directly below and around you?

The "blurries" all around you and right below you is the same
problem I've had with an nVidia 7800GT and it's caused by
mixing DXT1 & 3 textures and mips. I now have a general idea
what Instant Scenery libraries I can't use now but it will take
much more detective work to figure out exactly which is to
blame.

However....removing all Add on Scenery and rebooting gets me
back to normal again.

CK
 
Another thing to check is that the video card is cooling itself properly. Make sure the fan is not clogged with dirt and that the fan is actually working.

If the card has a heatsink it might be worth dismantling it and putting fresh conductive paste on it.

My last card was an ATI 9600 Pro and it ran FS9 superbly well and FSX adequately. In fact it runs FSX faster than my 7800GT, presumably becasue it's not even trying to do any of the Shader 2 stuff. (Not that I can detect any significant visual difference.)

Si
 
Lance- Yes- Oroville- that was John and me. he did the airports and I did the golf course. I almost wanted to play that course after I made it, but with my slice that comes and goes... I'm not so sure! hahaha.

John B. Loney makes some great stuff. I was honored to do the golf course for his scenery. He's a great guy. If you e-mail him with questions or help, he will respond asap. He and I are good friends with David (Opa) Marshall) a true master who has thrashed me many a time to get my ducks in line doing sceneries and many tricks and ideas. Now and then I'd run to them for help... David writes back- ok Bob- what did you do this time? ! bwahahaha!

Power supply- That be worth looking into. I heard that if it's getting tired, the video card, having less power to deal with compensates and just does the best it can. Will check this out.

It seems that the trouble was still there even after I disabled all my sceneries. I'll double check on this. The card I have is an AGP, plugged into and slot. I dno't think I had any problem with dxt1 or 3 mixing. 3 is for multiple colors as I understand. Both deal with drawing order.

All is fine on the ground. In the air it takes about a minute or so and things get worse and worse. Soon, everything in the world is nothing but a blur, and I mean blur!!! It's like the card can't keep up. I do a refresh screen and voila! everything is good again... for a minute or so. And so it goes! Bob
 
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