I have no idea what caused this, it just happened one day.All I can confirm, First, it has nothing to do with aircraft, no matter default, add-on, payware or freeware I will get the black smoke.Second, I check the effects folder, the fx smoke files are all ok, I also ask my friends to send me the smoke related files, cover, and still have this black smoke.Third, should have nothing to do with Driver, no Driver changing or setting changing these days.Can anyone give me a hand on this? Really hate to reinstall the FSX, I'd rather format my hard drive and do a reinstall of whole system...Thanks and regardsYufeng

Well the attachment is not displaying, but taking from what you wrote, I'm gonna guess you saved a flight with some sort of emergency happening (i.e. engine fire?). Try and load another flight at the free flight screen or rename your fsx.cfg to fsx.cfg.bak and see if it goes away.

sorry for the pictureshere is the screen shot.The problem come with the smoke system I think, everything related to the smoke goes to black, no matter the fire simulation or the aerobatic smoke, or high altitude engine cloud.Maybe a .cfg was modified by something, but I have no place to look intoThanks for the reply anyway. Hope someone can help.

REX contrails have been known to cause this problem for many users. Did you happen to install them?

REX contrails have been known to cause this problem for many users. Did you happen to install them?

Yes, REX installed.

Yes, REX installed.

I had the exact same issue a couple of monthe ago. Did not do anything to the system and one day... boom it was there.I asked around for help and what helped me, is to just copy the original .fx files back! That did it. BUT, I also happen to have a Laptop. I installed FSX on it and then copied the files over, avoiding the reinstall or "repair" function since I guessed it would mess other installed add ons up. Hope I could help.13

I had the exact same issue a couple of monthe ago. Did not do anything to the system and one day... boom it was there.I asked around for help and what helped me, is to just copy the original .fx files back! That did it. BUT, I also happen to have a Laptop. I installed FSX on it and then copied the files over, avoiding the reinstall or "repair" function since I guessed it would mess other installed add ons up. Hope I could help.13

Thanks for your reply. I got a second computer here. So I assume just copy a fresh effects folder and over-write everything in my current one?

Thanks for your reply. I got a second computer here. So I assume just copy a fresh effects folder and over-write everything in my current one?

Yep, that should fix things up.

OK, many thanks, everything went back to normal.Thanks again for both of you.Now I can sit back and enjoy.Regards

Just for clarification... the REX program does not contain the contrails. They are available on our forum as a free package. They have caused a problem for a handful of users, and we can't pinpoint why this happens for some and not others. It looks as if it might have to do with which version of FSX is installed.