Having Black or White Screens in FSX?

[Erv Moore 21]

First, thanks to all for information. I have been playing with FSX/Win 7 64 since released with no luck. I do most of my flying on-line and I found Win 7 not acceptable because of unexpected problems i.e. Blue/Black/FSX stop working. So when I fly, the XP 64 drive is installed which works very well with no failures. However, it bugs me that I could not get Win 7 to work so I tried bojote recommendations including poolsize=0. The first test flight was with Flight1 Conquest from KSEA to KOTM for 4.6 hours, real weather, etc. The computer worked great from turn-on, flight, computer turn off with no problems to report. I'm looking forward to more time to see what the long run holds. Thanks again guys.ervThis is FSX system I built Sep 1, 2009.System 1 is Win XP 64 with one HDSystem 2 is Win 7 64 with one HDSystem 3 is Win XP 32 Home EditionTwo Kingwin 3.5

[Guest justinm001]

im not sure if this is the same thing as what you guys are talking about..but since installed the PMDG 737 or something i forget (used it for about 6 seconds) the FSX screen would go black quite often(even on default planes). You could resize window and everything was still working (could hear the sounds) just screen was black.I uninstalled PMDG (and reinstalled FSX) and has been fine since..I ALSO had the same problem with one of the Level-D addons. (t wasnt installed at the same time as the PMDG one) I do the exact same FSX install procedure each time so pretty sure it was those 2 programs giving me.. issue. Im using nhancer + 196.21 drivers and only the tree&cells/widescreen/max_texture_load tweak..oh yeah, I have all that aero theme crap turned off to if that makes any diff. (using class theme)

[bojote 20]

I think I might have discovered something really interesting....Notice that a lot of people have 'problems' when using PoolSize=0, yet, in my case I run FSX flawlessly with it, yesterday, I bumped all video quality settings UP.. including MAX resolution 1920x1080, Antialiasing 16x, AFx16. After doing that, I was able to make FSX crash using PoolSize=0!!! However, this same scenario with a big PoolSize value (450.000.000) did NOT produce any crashes. FSX was stable, SLOW, but stable.Bumping all video quality settings to max values mostly affects GPU memory utilization (I have an nVidia GTX285 w/1GB) so, what PoolSize does is tell FSX to 'reserve GPU Memory space'. the PoolSize setting tells FSX the MAX size of the memory pool, so, when this pool is exhausted in dense scenery areas swapping occurs creating lag/stuttering. In fact, someone mentioned that memory latency was 'reduced' when using big PoolSize values!! and yes, IT DOES MAKE SENSE! but it makes even more sense NOT to create a static pool, but trick FSX into believing it has unlimited access to GPU memory!!I can NOT make FSX crash using big PoolSize values (450.000.000), however, performance is severely affected in VERY DENSE areas such as NYC, with FSDT KJFK and Manhattan X, other areas work fine.PoolSize=0 effectively tells FSX NOT to reserve ANY GPU memory at all, 0 is 0 in this case, however, this doesn't means FSX will NOT utilize Video memory! it will, but not a the software level and causing the video driver to do all the GPU memory management! which will improve performance considerably! There is a downside to this approach, and it is that FSX will utilize ALL of the avalilable GPU memory until exhaustion, causing FSX to crash when there is no more GPU memory available.In conclusion, Using PoolSize=0 will effectively improve performance on >1GB Video Cards, and, based on what I have noticed so far a 2GB Video card *might* in combination with PoolSize=0 be the holy grail of FSX performance.

[bojote 20]

In conclusion, Using PoolSize=0 will effectively improve performance on >1GB Video Cards, and, based on what I have noticed so far a 2GB Video card *might* in combination with PoolSize=0 be the holy grail of FSX performance.

You can check the facts yourself!! get GPU-Z (latest version) and check VRAM utilization with PoolSize=0 with FSX running!FSX will USE more VRAM with PoolSize=0 no matter what value you use for PoolSize, this proves that PoolSize=0 effectively lets FSX manage video memory at the driver level!!!! A 2GB video card IS the holy grail for FSX when used with PoolSize=0

[Erv Moore 21]

You can check the facts yourself!! get GPU-Z (latest version) and check VRAM utilization with PoolSize=0 with FSX running!FSX will USE more VRAM with PoolSize=0 no matter what value you use for PoolSize, this proves that PoolSize=0 effectively lets FSX manage video memory at the driver level!!!! A 2GB video card IS the holy grail for FSX when used with PoolSize=0

Hello bojote, don't know about all that "Stuff" but one thing for sure, I know it works with 17.8 flying hours on my Win 7 64/FSX HD system. Thank you very much! ! ! ! ! ! erv

[gman! 1]

Thanks for replying and asking to the posts above. I agree with you about NickN, he has some good solutions, but he is not the one that created them so he shouldn't be taking too much pride, and he doesn't like to listen to any other tweaks other than his, which is a downside for simmers that may have specific problems, since they will probably look at his guide and possibly not others. I recommended not to set it to 0, because when I was on Vista 64-Bit, setting it to 0 gave very wierd anomolies such as tress stretching, and autogen stretching through my aircraft and such. I have never tried this on Windows 7 though, and I will report back, trying 0 as soon as I come back to you :). The bufferpools line seems unnecessary now due to the new techniques in which system memory is handled and GPU memory is handled (GPU mem can be used in combination with system mem on any card. Start > Run > dxdiag 'OK' > Display > Look @ Amount of Vid Mem). Plus things that you really need will most likely already be in the memory, so you do not have to set aside any memory to store more. I'm thinking the problem with bufferpools and probably why people get the black screens and invisible textures may be due to a memory leak, resulting in textures displaying in a corrupted form, or also because things that stay in memory for too long, with being updated every once in a while, can reduce performance.I like to have a little bit of bufferpools, in the KiloBytes size just so it can store very small textures such as the textures for lighting effects, and other small textures I may not know about.----------------EDIT: Yours and my theory seems to be on the right track!!! I saw a posting in the PMDG forum a while back where someone said when he changed the latency on his system memory, he would not get black screens and texture anomolies anymore. The bufferpools may be swapping system memory with video memory when it becomes full, since Vista and Windows 7 have new memory management where the sys mem can be used for the GPU. If/When this swap occurs, the differences in latency between the video card memory, and system memory could cause be causing textures to render too slowly to display properly in the simulator, causing texture corruption (not to the files). Since the feature to use system memory is not native in XP, this may be why users of XP don't see the problem.The system memory may be slower than your GPU memory, causing the card to wait for textures to be loaded in GPU memory or not loading fully/correctly, or the system memory may be faster than the GPU memory, causing another bufferpools specific bottleneck!Great job everyone, and good luck!

Found an interesting post in the Bufferpools thread within the "MS FSX" Forum. Look at the bus latency with Bufferpools=0 and Bufferpools=500000 (500KB). With 500KB the latency is lower, and I'm guessing this will mean 500,000 would cause less black screen, and performance than a bufferpool of 0.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1716745

[Capt Lalle 0]

Found an interesting post in the Bufferpools thread within the "MS FSX" Forum. Look at the bus latency with Bufferpools=0 and Bufferpools=500000 (500KB). With 500KB the latency is lower, and I'm guessing this will mean 500,000 would cause less black screen, and performance than a bufferpool of 0.http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1716745

With Bufferpools=0 or let's say 400.000.000 there is no difference at bus latency on my system.It's always in the green area with a maximum peak of 110.Tested a flight with bufferpools=0 and also with 1000000, two times the same, first the upper men

[gman! 1]

Found a very interesting post that may work for everyone :(http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?s=&...t&p=1725985

[bojote 20]

If you are having black screens or white screens during or after a flight or when you window with any aircraft,

Use this to solve it:[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1Source: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=281538

[gman! 1]

Use this to solve it:[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1Source: http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=281538

Yes, this is very good tweak that works. This should clear up any problems related to airplane parts/textures turning invisible. Thanks to bojote for going through the hex, dynamic library, and other files of FSX to find secrets within the simulator! :(