A few days ago whilst playing fsx I spilled some water on my laptop. Thankfully though I have a waterproof keyboard protector. Still, some of the water went into the trackpad and the laptop shutoff. SInce then I've restored windows and FSX, however my addon aircrafts don't show up properly unless I have directx preview checked (only seats show up when I try to fly with add on aircrafts). Even the land and water textures disappear without directx preview enabled.

 

With directx preview checked everything appears as normal.

Any ideas on what might be wrong?

 

THANKS!

 

Specs:

dell xpsl502x

i7 2670qm

2gb nvidia optimus gt540m

6gb ram

inter® hd graphics 

 

Did you try re-installing the graphics drivers? Do you have the BP=0 tweak active? Tried with a clean fsx.cfg?

I restore my laptop to its factory default. So that should have taken care of the drivers and complete fsx removal. And I did update the nvidia to its latest drivers after restoring it. FSX was re-installed so the cfg should be clean. Just added [bUFFERPOOLS] PoolSize=0 at the very top of my fsx.cfg. Didn't make a difference. 

 

I have no add on scenery at this point. Just some add on planes.

Why do you think it runs fine in dx10preview? If it was a hardware related issue then dx10 being checked shouldn't really make a difference no?

Try Boyotes shader mod when I did have a go at DX10 everything was fine but I wasn't able to get the antialaising on my GTX 570 right so I went back to DX9 and did see the same results as picture one with some of my airplanes after installing the shader mod everything was back to normal again.

 

Cheers,

Ruud

Yes! It working now. Cheers Ruud.

 

But I still haven't understood what the problem was. Any ideas what might have caused this?

If I am correctly this has something to do with a shader file that isn't corrected, by putting Boyote's shader mod back then the missing shader files are back again in place as far as I know.

Maybe the FSX guru's have a better explanation but the most importent thing is that's all is working again.

 

Cheers,

Ruud

I have modified your title to change DirectX Preview to DX10 Preview as this is the correct title for DX for FSX.  No such thing as DirectX Preview and it may be confusing to some, especially to moderators like me.... :lol:

 

You should be able to switch to/from DX10 Preview without any modifications to fsx settings.  It's strange you got the corrupted textures when you switched back to DX9.  When you switch from DX9 to DX10 Preview and vice-versa, you must close FSX and restart it.

 

Best regards,

Jim

Thanks for the responses guys. Really helpful. However, I'm confused, aren't dx and directX the same? Not sure if this is helpful or not but I'm running windows 7 64 bit. From what I understand win7 comes with Direct X 11 which incorporates all the previous DirectX versions. 

 

So, is it safe to say that I experienced these problems due to some corrupt entries in my fsx.cfg? And that if I can pin point those entries I should be able to run the game without having to rely on the shading mod?

FSX is only coded for DX10 and will never be compatible with DX11.  You can have a DX11 video card and it will be backward compatible to previous versions of DirectX but DX10 is the best FSX can do.  If Microsoft would have kept the development team still intact, we would be seeing DX11. 

 

FSX works best with an internal graphics card.  You are using the built in graphics from your CPU.  Might be good for newer games but probably not for an oldie like FSX.  Filtering, you need Anisotropic and Anti-Aliasing enabled.  You need to turn OFF light bloom and lens flare until you get it set up properly. 

 

Best regards,

Jim

Both DirectX v9.x and DirectX v10.x use the ShadersHLSL folder in the FSX root filesystem. When FSX starts, it will create two "shaders cache" folders in:-

 

C:\Users\[your username here]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX\

 

These will be \Shaders - for DX9 mode, and \Shaders10, for DX10 Preview mode.

 

If you have the graphics corruption such as you describe - simply delete both of the folders, and let FSX re-create them. The files inside these two folders will then be matched to the files inside the ShadersHLSL folder.

 

A quick DirectX (DX) analogy:

 

Assume for a moment, that the FSX application was written - the actual code inside the fsx.exe - in the Russian language.

Accept, too, that no user application can control any pc hardware, but can only do it through an "interpreter" - an "Application Programming Interface" (API) and therefore the application (FSX) has to be able to understand the common language of that DirectX API in order to effectively "talk" to the pc's hardware, and so a version of DirectX is installed along with FSX - FSX can now talk to the GPU. (and the rest of the pc).

 

1). This API speaks English, but understands Russian. There are 26 characters in the English language: call this DX9. One can create thousands of commands/words/functions in this version of the DX9 language. FSX can now recognize the GPU, and tell it what to do, using the DX9 API.

 

2). Two years go by, and MS adds 4 more characters, making this 30, and they call this version DX10. It is included in FSX - SP2. One can create hundreds more commands, because of those extra characters, and be able to do better graphics, and do it more efficiently than DX9 permitted.

 

3). Add 5 more characters, now there are 35, and call this DX11. One can create hundreds more commands and functions, because of those extra characters. The issue is that our FSX,s latest version SP2, only came with DX10 - not DX11, so until the FSX Russian is updated to be able to talk to DX11, you will not be able to use DX11 - right? It may well be on the pc, but FSX cannot use it.

 

4). A PC with DirectX 11 installed can communicate with applications which only understand DX9, DX10  (backwards compatibility), and DX11, and so one can run FSX using the older DirectX9 API, or one can run FSX using the slightly newer DX10 (FSX with DX10 Preview turned on)..... but not DX11.

 

Incidentally - DX10 was very much a radical upgrade from DX9, with DX11 being an improved version of DX10.

 

Sorry for being long-winded, some maybe say "rambling....."    :lol: 

 

Hope this helps! 

 

 

Thank you both for those answers. @Jim, thank you for the tweaks. My FSX actually runs on the nvidia card but because of the optimus technology fsx doesn't seem to show it. @ Paul, I uninstalled the shader mod because it made the water very bright. I've deleted the shade folders in the locoal/fsx directory but I'm facing other problems(please see the attached image). It's problems after problems for me. Thanks a lot for the help.

This is what my FSX use to look like before my laptop crashed