Hi Folks,

A couple months ago these strange symbols appeared. After a long search could not find a solution.

 

I uninstalled the MD, re-installed, fixed all good.

 

Now the problem is back, anyonr have any ideas? I have checked the font of my Win7, Also checked the guage set-up for the PMDG.

 

I can do another re-install, but it is going to come back, I suspect.

Will try to post a screenshoot

 

Thanks,

JerryF

Perhaps it is a font issue? Have you altered, deleted, or removed any fonts? Have you changed system locales or anything else that may have interfered with how fonts are displayed and loaded?

Use the repair option first see if that fixes it, its a font issue as doing a search on it brings up a few options to solve it

Thanks guys, I went ahead and did an un-install, and a re-install. Good now, but I feel it will be back, so will be watching. Have not changed any fonts that I am aware of.

 

JerryF

That looks more like a string corruption issue. Somehow, the strings that should be displayed aren't properly terminated (or have the wrong length specified) and you're getting binary garbage data displayed. Another possibility if the whole string is corrupt is that the pointer to the string is invalid, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It looks like it's only happening after a number, but not all numbers.

 

Checkdisk might find and fix some errors if the file is messed up. Other than that, no idea.

 

Hook

Other than that, no idea.

You have no idea at all.

 

The font is missing or corrupted. Look at all the other data - it's in the wrong font.

 

Best regards,

Robin.

You have no idea at all.

 

Thank you for your expert opinion. I've been working with this stuff for a few decades.

 

The font is missing or corrupted. Look at all the other data - it's in the wrong font

 

Most of the text is correct. There is some garbage at the end of some strings. It looks like all the data is there, but has garbage appended onto it. I could cause the identical string display intentionally without corrupting fonts.

 

Hook

Most of the text is correct.

I believe Robin is referring to the font itself. Surely the display fonts (e.g., hdg/mag) of the MD-11 are not that ugly! Plus, the color of the font seems unnaturally white in comparison to the other white parts of the displays.

I believe Robin is referring to the font itself. Surely the display fonts (e.g., hdg/mag) of the MD-11 are not that ugly!

 

Gotcha. So there are two problems... one is garbage data at the end of strings, the other is either a missing font or ugly fonts used by the MD-11. Something is corrupt, maybe several things.

 

What I've seen with actual corrupted fonts, which doesn't happen often, is something that looks like bar code. There are probably other patterns. You'll see odd characters on forums occasionally, which have the actual hex code of the character. Edit: those are undisplayable data.

 

Hook

One other thing springs into my eye when I view the picture:

Shouldn't the background of the airspeed indicator and the altimeter be gray, and not black?

Shouldn't the background of the airspeed indicator and the altimeter be gray, and not black?

Something looked odd with the darkness of the displays in contrast to the unnaturally white text on some of them. It appears that the backgrounds you mentioned should be gray, but isn't there a PMDG setting that can alter these? I do not own the MD-11, so I do not know whether it has the same display color options the B747 has.

If you look carefully it is not bad or missing data in strings. It's a character display problem as the expected font is missing, so the character position in the substitute font is displaying weirdness due to it being a different character set.

 

Ä should be 0

à should be /

Ç should be 2 or 3 (it is a different size font IIRC in the display)

É should be 5 or 6 (it is a different size font IIRC in the display)

 

The lower case is likely because the correct font lacks lowercase characters, and these just happen to match in the substitute font.

 

All characters are accounted for, and all strings are otherwise the correct length, though look weird due to the above problems.

 

If you'd been "doing this for decades" you'd know all this.

 

I'm outta here. Back to the thread...

 

Best regards,

Robin.

(it is a different size font IIRC in the display)

 

Ah, that makes more sense. They're using a customized font with different sized characters in the same font. That must make the original text of the display string in the program look a bit odd. Not how I'd program it, but when it works, it probably works quite well and will be a bit more efficient.

 

When a font is missing, a program will use a substitute, which in this case has default characters instead of custom ones, so we're seeing the original text data from the program instead of what the programmer intended. THIS is why I wouldn't have used a custom font with different character displays, although it would have complicated the programming a bit to use standard ones. Just a bit of defensive programming.

 

It's a character display problem as the expected font is missing, so the character position in the substitute font is displaying weirdness due to it being a different character set.

 

Agreed. And I would have agreed with you before if you'd said this instead of the personal attacks.

 

Hook

Thanks guys, I went ahead and did an un-install, and a re-install. Good now, but I feel it will be back, so will be watching. Have not changed any fonts that I am aware of.

 

JerryF

After I did a uninstall/install it disappeared in my case. But it didn't came back, when I uninstalled the MD11 and also all his repaints and installs them again.

 

Eric

Thanks for all the help folks,

I have made several flights with the MD11, since the re-install, still running good.

 

JerryF