Black/disappearing textures? Some bizarre news ...

[Guest jaskanFactor]

It could, if you're updating your navdata.If the real-world ILS service outage is long-term, the frequency change could be transmitted to the Navdata or procedure files that you install on your aircraft.-kyle

I get your point kyle, but i seriously hope that PMDG and FSX are not simulating reality that muchhhhhhhhhhhhhh.Jaskan

[jaybird1nyc 24]

Thanks Jay, I just did this and everything went smooth so far. I will test with more flights and see. Jackie

If we can get past all this JaskanFool nonsense...Thanks for the feedback Jackie. So, you were able to lower your audio quality settings? Do you have the same audio setup I described, or is it it different? Just curious because if it's defferent from mine, maybe you could share your settings in case anyone has a setup similar to yours.Anyone having these issues please refer to Post #52 above and try it out. Please post your results so we can provide feedback as to whether this is really an audio issue.I can't speak for anyone else, but the only reason I have spent all these hours testing out all the various suggestions, tips, hints, etc. etc. etc. is because of one simple fact; PMDG MAKES THE FINEST ADD-ON AIRCRAFT FOR MSFS-PERIOD. If they weren't, I wouldn't be putting this much time and effort into finding a solution. I would just fly something else. I don't want to, I want to fly my PMDG a/c, and we will find the answer. Thank you Mr. Randazzo and everyone at PMDG for your interest. You are truly a Class Act.Jay

[JET 1 0]

I get your point kyle, but i seriously hope that PMDG and FSX are not simulating reality that muchhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Nothing to do with PMDG and FSX. Long term or permanent changes to REAL WORLD DATA is reflected to the navdata updates that Navigraph offers to various simulator aircraft, such as the PMDG offerings.I'm not saying you should expect the ILS be out in the sim if your local airport's ILS is undergoing maintenance for a day. Talk about known changes lasting more than a month or so.-kyle

[tfm 169]

Jay: Good news: I'll try this when I'm back home. I fiddled with the sound quality settings a while back, but it didn't seem to make a difference. I'll have another go but from memory my lowest quality setting was 16,000-somethings.Ryan @ PMDG: I think you are "off the hook" because I have found another product that produces these symptoms on my PC: version 4.3 of the CaptainSim 757-200 Pro. The LevelD 767X still works OK (so far!) Perhaps it's only a problem with the more up-to-date products: perhaps some particular technique which is too new for the 767X?Generally: I have spent a long time working as systematically as I can through this problem, without reaching any firm conclusions. Sometimes it seems to be working OK with one particular "fix", only for the problem to recur out of the blue some days later. I am left with two theories. My pessimistic theory is that this is an intractable resource exhaustion problem: the randomness of the occurrences would be consistent with FSX and/or sophisticated add-ons not being able to co-ordinate memory operations adequately when the system is under heavy stress. This would be a pity because presumably it's too late for any kind of fix.My optimistic theory is that this problem has something to do with the graphics drivers. I'll try to explain my reason for saying this. I have found that various things SEEM to affect the probability of this problem occurring. It sometimes happens with high memory useage; but not always. It sometimes happens when there is latency in the system as measured by the DPC Latency tool; but not always. It sometimes happens when sounds are on; but not always. It can sometimes be reduced by increasing BufferPools massively; but not eliminated. And so on. But the SINGLE biggest influence seems (on my PC) to be anti-aliasing. Here's a recent example: on a fresh Win7RC installation, FSX SP2 with the MD-11 ran fine for several days with various scenery add-ons using the default Nvidia control panel settings under driver 185.85. I got confident and thought I'd turn on the "override application" setting in the Nvidia control panel (so that I don't lose AA when I open the FSInn control panel). I could do this in the Nvidia "global" settings tab. But the change was not "sticking" for FSX: having turned off AA in the FSX Display options, I just got jagged edges. So I loaded up nHancer 2.5.1. At this stage, I noticed something I've never seen before: it gave me a specific warning that the default FSX profile had "disabled" the override option. I proceeded anyway and typed in my override settings (more or less as per NickN). This worked, in the sense that FSX now allowed the GPU to override the application settings. But the disappearing textures problem came back. Worse that this, I have not been able to get back to a pre-nHancer state. Uninstalling nHancer, uninstalling the Nvidia driver, running Driver Sweeper etc, makes no difference: it's almost as if having ONCE tried to override the application settings, some "switch" got set which has broken things.The 185.85 driver seems to be different from earlier releases, in restricting the default anti-aliasing options available for FSX on a fresh install. I speculate that this restriction might not apply if you update to 185.85 on an existing installation where you've already chosen to "override" the application settings, which is perhaps why this point hasn't cropped up before in the forums. Perhaps Nvidia have stumbled on some fundamental incompatibility between their AA and FSX. I know there are some ATI users with this problem too, which might suggest that the graphics driver is not to blame. But if this problem is a subtle one then it might well have escaped BOTH Nvidia and ATI.Anyway, "theory" is too grand a name for either of my conjectures: they are really just guesses. Sorry for the long post, but I don't plan to do any more testing of this for a while: a man's gotta know his limitations, as they say. So here's hoping that Jay's sound tip works. Tim

[tfm 169]

Oh OhTfm are you saying that your post refrenced on hardware forum about using1 - compatability mode in NVIDIA2 - xp2 compatabiity mode for FSX shortcutTfm are you having issues still with these changes

I've tried so many things over the last weeks that I cannot remember off the top of my head. I've kept notes, which I'll check when I get home, but I have a feeling that I did the fresh OS installation because I found that the compatibility "fix" was not 100%.Tim

[rsrandazzo 6,353]

Tim-Thanks for the detailed information- that does help, actually.We are currently suspecting a resource issue as well- related to the complexity of models. What we are trying to zero out is what external triggers might be a factor here.If FSX has some here-to-for unknown internal limitation that can cause this problem to trigger randomly if that limit is crossed- we'd like ot know where that limitation is...Could be polygon counts, could be vertex counts, could be global texture sizes... Could be any of a myriad of things...As usual- i'm sure we'll find it eventually- so data like yours is abundantly helpful.

[Tabs 2,790]

And you keep saying only a small set have this problem, but you are sure to find atleast one post of the same issue on every page of the forum.Give credit where credit is due, the PMDG planes have best cockpit FSX world, but PMDG cant be trusted to be forth coming with infromation relevant to custormers regarding issues with bugs in the product. This may slow down sales, but improves trust in your products, and services in the long term.

Again, this is massively overstating the problem. We would have a ton of people complaining about this if it were as pervasive an issue as you seem to think - this thread is 2 pages long, it would be 20+ if this were a widespread bug in our code. Everyone would see it, not just a handful of users. We have a VERY good handle on what the major issues are right after a product release because everyone sees them. Reread Robert's reply above - we can't solve things that we can't reproduce ourselves. What possible reason would we have to sit here and not solve an issue that's producing bad publicity for us in this thread? All I can tell you with the utmost truthfulness is that this isn't a widespread issue that is causing anyone who buys the 747 or MD-11 to have an unflyable aircraft. It's happening to a very small percentage of our total user base. We're trying to figure it out, but it's very very difficult when we can't see it happen ourselves in the debugger.A poster above reported that he saw the issue occur with the Captain Sim 757 4.3 now as well. This is VERY strong evidence that we're not looking at a code problem here, but rather (like most of these types of issues) an FSX bug that didn't become apparent until really complicated visual models such as ours and Captain Sim's started appearing on the market. If that's the case, there's not going to be anything we can do about it unless you have a magic way of resurrecting ACES Studios and getting them to patch it...

I get your point kyle, but i seriously hope that PMDG and FSX are not simulating reality that muchhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Actually, we are and have been for a very long time. Our aircraft do not use the default FS navdata as it is out of date by 5+ years or something like that and it doesn't include DPs, STARs and a host of other terminal procedures you need to operate the aircraft realistically. Our navdata comes from www.navigraph.com and reflects the current real world AIRAC navigation data cycle. It needs to be this way because people use our aircraft on VATSIM and the like where people simulate real life operations, including revisions to the navdata.

[tfm 169]

Tim-Thanks for the detailed information- that does help, actually.We are currently suspecting a resource issue as well- related to the complexity of models. What we are trying to zero out is what external triggers might be a factor here.If FSX has some here-to-for unknown internal limitation that can cause this problem to trigger randomly if that limit is crossed- we'd like ot know where that limitation is...Could be polygon counts, could be vertex counts, could be global texture sizes... Could be any of a myriad of things...As usual- i'm sure we'll find it eventually- so data like yours is abundantly helpful.

Tim-Thanks for the detailed information- that does help, actually.We are currently suspecting a resource issue as well- related to the complexity of models. What we are trying to zero out is what external triggers might be a factor here.If FSX has some here-to-for unknown internal limitation that can cause this problem to trigger randomly if that limit is crossed- we'd like ot know where that limitation is...Could be polygon counts, could be vertex counts, could be global texture sizes... Could be any of a myriad of things...As usual- i'm sure we'll find it eventually- so data like yours is abundantly helpful.

Robert: You're welcome. Good luck in tracking down the underlying problem.Jay: Your sound quality fix seems to hit the nail on the head - on my PC, tonight, anyway! At "16 bit, 8000Hz (Telephone quality)" all is fine, but everything sounds rather tinny. At "16 bit, 11025Hz (Dictation quality)" all is fine and the sound is a little better. But at the next notch up, "16 bit, 16000Hz (CD quality)", the problem recurs - although it is harder to trigger. At the default quality setting of "16 bit, 48000Hz (DVD quality)", I can reliably trigger the problem pretty quickly.Does this imply a sound driver problem? Possibly - and I see that we both have Asus boards with Soundmax (Analog Devices) sound chips. On the other hand, I have also tried with a Creative Labs X-Fi card, with the same problem. On the other hand (I always need more than two hands for my lists) perhaps Creative just re-package Analog Devices chips: the industry is so opaque that this could well be the case.So while sound card drivers are a possibility, I still rather incline to the view that there's something basically wrong with the video drivers / architecture: possibly in the handling of DirectX 9.0c.Jaskan: Having read my notes, the "compatibility" fix worked but it did not allow me to override the application settings. I think it was (otherwise) an OK fix, but the sound quality fix seems to give the best of both worlds for the time being.TimPS: I have just found that with the CaptainSim 757 v4.3 - tonight, anyway! - I can only avoid this problem by using the lowest possible sound quality setting of "16 bit, 8000Hz (Telephone quality)".

[jaybird1nyc 24]

Robert: You're welcome. Good luck in tracking down the underlying problem.Jay: Your sound quality fix seems to hit the nail on the head - on my PC, tonight, anyway! At "16 bit, 8000Hz (Telephone quality)" all is fine, but everything sounds rather tinny. At "16 bit, 11025Hz (Dictation quality)" all is fine and the sound is a little better. But at the next notch up, "16 bit, 16000Hz (CD quality)", the problem recurs - although it is harder to trigger. At the default quality setting of "16 bit, 48000Hz (DVD quality)", I can reliably trigger the problem pretty quickly.Does this imply a sound driver problem? Possibly - and I see that we both have Asus boards with Soundmax (Analog Devices) sound chips. On the other hand, I have also tried with a Creative Labs X-Fi card, with the same problem. On the other hand (I always need more than two hands for my lists) perhaps Creative just re-package Analog Devices chips: the industry is so opaque that this could well be the case.So while sound card drivers are a possibility, I still rather incline to the view that there's something basically wrong with the video drivers / architecture: possibly in the handling of DirectX 9.0c.Jaskan: Having read my notes, the "compatibility" fix worked but it did not allow me to override the application settings. I think it was (otherwise) an OK fix, but the sound quality fix seems to give the best of both worlds for the time being.Tim

Tim,That's geat news! And it's great to hear from you again! I didn't notice any appreciable difference in sound quality when I was at 16 bit, 8000 Hz, but I can't verify that there is NO difference at all. I have also tried it at higher settings, and like you, I found that the problem is harder to trigger. But, at 8000 Hz and 11025 Hz I can't trigger the problem at all, and believe me I tried ;-)I appears we are on EXACTLY the same page at this point. This seems to indicate that it is an audio driver issue, if I'm not mistaken, because I have NEVER had ANY success with any video-related fix thus far, and this time I have had 100% success. Also, earlier today Jackie reported having the same success with this fix.Let me know if you have anything further, TimJay

[tfm 169]

Tim,That's geat news! And it's great to hear from you again! I didn't notice any appreciable difference in sound quality when I was at 16 bit, 8000 Hz, but I can't verify that there is NO difference at all. I have also tried it at higher settings, and like you, I found that the problem is harder to trigger. But, at 8000 Hz and 11025 Hz I can't trigger the problem at all, and believe me I tried ;-)I appears we are on EXACTLY the same page at this point. This seems to indicate that it is an audio driver issue, if I'm not mistaken, because I have NEVER had ANY success with any video-related fix thus far, and this time I have had 100% success. Also, earlier today Jackie reported having the same success with this fix.Let me know if you have anything further, TimJay

Hello Jay - Yes, isn't it nice to have Avsim back again?I agree that the outlook is good in our rather unpopulated neck of the woods - but did you see my PS? I need to use the 8000Hz setting to get the 757 v4.3 working reliably (tonight, anyway: but who knows what tomorrow holds with this quirky problem...)Tim

[jaybird1nyc 24]

Hello Jay - Yes, isn't it nice to have Avsim back again?I agree that the outlook is good in our rather unpopulated neck of the woods - but did you see my PS? I need to use the 8000Hz setting to get the 757 v4.3 working reliably (tonight, anyway: but who knows what tomorrow holds with this quirky problem...)Tim

Tim,Sorry, I must've missed the PS...In any event, we still appear to be 100% OK on all a/c using the 8000 Hz setting if I understand you correctly. Funny, I just did another test and I still can't perceive any loss of audio quality. Must be all those years of blasting rock music thru my headphones finally taking it's toll. Guess Mom was right again :)Anyway, keep at it and I'm hoping others will try this out to see if we really nailed it. Looks good so far tho... :( Jay

[tfm 169]

Tim,Sorry, I must've missed the PS...In any event, we still appear to be 100% OK on all a/c using the 8000 Hz setting if I understand you correctly. Funny, I just did another test and I still can't perceive any loss of audio quality. Must be all those years of blasting rock music thru my headphones finally taking it's toll. Guess Mom was right again :)Anyway, keep at it and I'm hoping others will try this out to see if we really nailed it. Looks good so far tho... :( Jay

JayI can't find the PM tool (maybe it's not working yet) or I wouldn't have posted this on the forum. I mainly wanted to say thanks for getting to the bottom of this one. Now I think about it, you could be right about this being an audio driver issue. I tried the reduced quality settings myself many weeks ago, but for some reason my version of the audio driver didn't go below 16,000 Hz. Since then, with the OS re-install, I've started using a driver version published by Asus for one of their newer motherboards. But having updated the driver as part-and-parcel of the re-installation, I didn't go back to try the reduced sound quality settings again. Using your tip, I've discovered that the new driver has opened-up the 8000 Hz option and - hey presto - your solution still seems to be working. Slightly tinny sound is a compromise I'm happy to make to get consistent use of the excellent MD-11. PMDG really have done a terrific job. And "looking good" is exactly right: now that I can use my preferred settings, the MD-11 is a very pleasing sight, whether in 15 layers of ASA + FEX clouds or banking gently just to the south of Hyde Park to line up with Heathrow at dusk with the UTX night lighting on or ... whatever. My 2 year old daughter likes to sit on my lap and gawp at it with me (to the appalled horror of my wife, as you can imagine). So for the sake of all the children, whether 2 or 40 or 80 years old, let's hope it's now fixed :( Tim

[jaybird1nyc 24]

JayI can't find the PM tool (maybe it's not working yet) or I wouldn't have posted this on the forum. I mainly wanted to say thanks for getting to the bottom of this one. Now I think about it, you could be right about this being an audio driver issue. I tried the reduced quality settings myself many weeks ago, but for some reason my version of the audio driver didn't go below 16,000 Hz. Since then, with the OS re-install, I've started using a driver version published by Asus for one of their newer motherboards. But having updated the driver as part-and-parcel of the re-installation, I didn't go back to try the reduced sound quality settings again. Using your tip, I've discovered that the new driver has opened-up the 8000 Hz option and - hey presto - your solution still seems to be working. Slightly tinny sound is a compromise I'm happy to make to get consistent use of the excellent MD-11. PMDG really have done a terrific job. And "looking good" is exactly right: now that I can use my preferred settings, the MD-11 is a very pleasing sight, whether in 15 layers of ASA + FEX clouds or banking gently just to the south of Hyde Park to line up with Heathrow at dusk with the UTX night lighting on or ... whatever. My 2 year old daughter likes to sit on my lap and gawp at it with me (to the appalled horror of my wife, as you can imagine). So for the sake of all the children, whether 2 or 40 or 80 years old, let's hope it's now fixed :( Tim

Tim,Funny that you mention about not being able to select any setting below 16,000 Hz previously. I was over a friend's house this past weekend, he has an Alienware Area 51, and I checked his audio settings just to see if it would be similar to mine. It had the same menu structure, however, there wasn't any selection below 16,000 Hz! Exactly as you described. I don't know if it's a different, or newer driver, but on my system Everest is reporting the audio driver as: Driver Version-6.0.6002.16659, Driver Date-6/21/2006, Driver Provider-Microsoft."So for the sake of all the children, whether 2 or 40 or 80 years old, let's hope it's now fixed" *IF* this is it, what are we going to do with all that spare time??? Just kidding, let's hope for the best. So far it has been 'unbreakable' on my system, and I'm *really* trying to break it :( Still waiting for more feedback before I can exhale though :(Regards,Jay

[Jackie 0]

Hey Jay, I have the same setup as you so per your instructions I was able to locate my audio settings and change them. I have also lowered my cloud setting in FEX from the 4096 to 1024 and so far so good. I am still to do a long flight and leave the sim on overnight as then try to access the menu or land and then try to replay as this is when I get my black screen or video corruption. Will provide more information after a KLAX-YSSY runJackie

[jaybird1nyc 24]

Hey Jay, I have the same setup as you so per your instructions I was able to locate my audio settings and change them. I have also lowered my cloud setting in FEX from the 4096 to 1024 and so far so good. I am still to do a long flight and leave the sim on overnight as then try to access the menu or land and then try to replay as this is when I get my black screen or video corruption. Will provide more information after a KLAX-YSSY runJackie

Sounds good Jackie, thanks for posting your results so far. Let us know how your test flight goes. I've been trying everything I can think of to trigger the problem, but so far, well let me not jinx it...Good Luck!Jay