I was wondering if a few of you out there could try a test on their copy of FS9. Using a Bombadier Lear Jet 25, go to KCPR (Natrona Co Intl) and the active runway (should be runway 30) then fly straight out until you see a couple of streams/rivers and put your plane between them. Now let the lear jet go with no auto-pilot, full throttle, etc and it should start doing loops. The thing I'm looking for is if anyone else sees a darker texture being drawn on the ground underneath the plane. The interesting thing is when I go to FSX and repeat the test the exact same phenomenon appears so it appears not to be related to any "bad" textures since it repeats in both versions. I have default textures (no PICNIC etc) in either versions. Any ideas/input?kcps: in FS9 if I set scenery display setting to TERRAIN DETAIL to none, the dark textures disappear. Of course I get no grass.pps: Here's my TERRAIN setting in FS9;TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=90.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=20TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=2TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.900000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=8system:Q6600B3 @ 2.8BFG 8800GTS @ 5502 gig memoryXP PRO SP2

Well DUH to me. The problem (for anyone interested) had to do with the detail1.bmp. I originally thought this was located in the texture folder (which I backed up and replaced) but it is actually located in the scenery/world/texture folder. So the dark textures in the desert I was describing had to do with the PICNIC program after all. Learn something new every day.kcps: I am NOT dumping on the PICNIC program, I was just noticing the dark texture and was confused as to where it was coming from.