Not too long ago I have developed a situation where when changing views either in the VC or in spot and pan to a view of an aiport in the distance or near by that I get black boxes where the VASI lights are. The black boxes do disappear after a second or two, but I never had this before. I went thru a spell where I had installed a lot of airport sceneries in my sig below and am wondering if somehow the halo.bmp was overwritten by one that causes this. Pehaps by an airport that was originally for FS9 then updated to FSX? Hard to say.I do notice that I have halo.bmp's in these folders:halo.bmp Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Texture halo.bmp Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects\texturehalo2.bmp Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Effects\textureHALO.BMP Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Flight One Software\UTUsaFsx\TEXTURE\HALO\FSXhalo.bmp Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\Flight One Software\UTUsaFsx\TEXTURE\HALO\UTAs you can see I have a lot of halo's. Could this be causing my problem? Unfortuantely after installing all of my addon airports I can't pinpoint which one could have caused this. The only ones that I think could be suspect is the BluePrint KDAL or the Aerosoft German Airports 2 collection or ImagineSim airports. I think the Blue Print scenery and ImaginSim sceneries were originally created for FS9 then fixed to work in FSX, but I am not sure if they installed an older halo that maybe causing this.Anyway, I appreciate any help.Regards,Sean

I get this boxes around the landing gear etc.I have not messesd around with any Halo stuff.it does not bother me too much, cause it appears for about a second when swithing views

Yeah mine goes away quickly also, but it has kind of been bothering me. When I had a fresh install of FSX I never had that. Now, after a bunch of addons airports I get the boxes. I haven't directly messed with the halos either, but I am thinking the one that displays the VASI lights has been replaced during one of my addon installs. Maybe one of the guys here has an idea of how to fix this?

I also have this effect when an approaching aircraft switches its landing lights on prior to landing. I see this when I am waiting to take off and have an ATC hold for the arriving aircraft. I just assumed that it was a texture loading/display issue. As the black boxes only appear for a split second it hasn't really worried me. I have a similar effect when on finals and the runway markings are loaded, they appear for a split second on the runway and then switch off re-appearing when I am closer.

I get it to when on final or just switching views and airports in the distance have the black boxes for a second. I wonder what is causing this. Like I mentioned before I don't recall ever having this happen with my default install, just after I bought and installed a bunch of payware airports. I never get it on AI though.I wounder if there is a halo mod that could fix this. Also I am wondering why I have so many helo. When I use picture viewer to look at them they are all slightly different.

I get these too. I first noticed it on the VASI lights and then also on AI aircraft lights. Since all these lights looked too big on my system (I use a front projection system) I tried reducing the size of them as per this link:TH2Go Lights ReductionThe SCALAR changes worked really well, and seemed to reduce the incidence of black blocks on VASI. But changing the halo.bmp file seemed (seemed) to give me CTDs for some reason. Still verifying that one.I'm on my 3rd FSX system now, and I believe I've seen this anomaly on all of them (different OS. different Nvidia GPU's/Drivers) although I didn't make the connection with VASI/AI lights at the time.

That Dick, glad to know that I am not the only one. I wonder if it has something to with the nVidia drivers?

That Dick, glad to know that I am not the only one. I wonder if it has something to with the nVidia drivers?

It would certainly be interesting to know if anyone with an ATI GPU sees this problem.

I have this after installing the 'Shockwave' lights, but like others, I just ignore it

It's simply the texture being loaded. Nothing is wrong. Regular defragging of your HD should either minimize the occurrences or completely eliminate them.

It is lag on the texture loading. The black box is the actual size of the texture before the pixels which make up the image of the light (and alpha channel which describes the transparent area around the light) have written to your computer's memory. When that info is in your computer's memory, the graphics card can then draw on that the data and get to work so the sim can display your light.The lag is caused by either your graphics card running out of steam (memory), or your RAM being too full and delaying the loading of that new texture because it has to dump something else to make room for the new texture (this is why it might take a second or two for your cockpit to draw the textures when you see it happen to your aircraft nav lights on an external view). It can also be caused by your RAM overheating and dropping data (but that would be in fairly rare cases, so don't panic, as that's not likely to be the cause).You can stop it happening by dropping your settings and putting less strain on your system, or, defragging your hard drive if you are making use of virtual memory, since that will enable your hard drive's seeker head to get to the data quicker.And yes, it does happen with ATI cards too, or any other graphics card in the same situation.Al

Thanks for the replies guys. I guess there is no need for concern. I will not let this keep getting under my skin since its not really a big deal. I guess that's the problem when we try to seek absolute perfection from the sim and let little things like that bother us.Regards

That's really interesting stuff, and makes perfect sense. But I'm curious - why should this particular texture be the one to lag behind ? If the problem was down to GPU memory/processing power or an undefragged disk, then it would seem to me that any texture, particularly those drawn 'on top' of base textures, could generate this problem. Is there some kind of priority system ? Or does this texture have some unique attributes or processing requirements ?

Good question. You would think that the small size of this texture compared to others would load faster than most.

Yes indeed. I am guessing that because it has some degree of transparency it is drawn last and just maybe there aren't that many other textures in the same category. But I'm sure someone will be able to enlighten us !