terrain.dll

[rjevansuk 3]

A couple of weeks ago I uninstalled my Horizon Gen X Scottish scenery from my c: drive and reinstalled on my second drive to free up space on the C:

FSX started crashing every time I loaded a flight even if it wasn't in Scotland. I uninstalled all of my Horizon, UK2000 and Earth Simulations photo scenery, but FSX still crashed when loading a flight.

The only way I could get FSX to load was to "turn down" the scenery settings:

Scenery complexity: sparse,

Autogen density: none

Special effects detail: Low  

 

I found this forum  and checked the event viewer and discovered that the faulting module is terrain.dll

 

I couldn't find how to fix the problem other than to turn down the scenery settings. Given that fsx used to run perfectly well on much higher settings I'm not sure where to go from here?

 

I still have the following installed:

Orbx Australia scenery installed but not checked in the scenery library

Rex 4 texture direct, soft clouds and weather architecture

Rex essentials

VOXATC UK

 

So do I uninstall all including FSX and reinstall?

 

Any thoughts welcome.

 

 

[Jim Young 2,356]

 

 

The only way I could get FSX to load was to "turn down" the scenery settings:
Scenery complexity: sparse,
Autogen density: none
Special effects detail: Low

 

According to the AVSIM CTD Guide (link in my signature):

 

"Terrain.dll - Usually indicates high scenery/terrain settings in FSX/P3D, especially Autogen."

 

So this fits your scenario too.  Have your tried -

• just turning off Autogen and leaving the other settings normal?
• rebuilding your fsx.cfg (move to a temporary folder and the fsx.cfg will be rebuilt and return your settings to what the techs said was best for your computer system)?
• try the other suggestions in the AVSIM CTD Guide? (for instance, scan your system for corrupt system drivers, make sure your hardware drivers are all up to date?)

Scenery not enabled in the scenery library will not run so they have no affect on your issue.

 

The only clue you provided in your OP is the fact the terrain.dll was identified in the event viewer.  It does not tell us the "rest of the story".  Some other thoughts I have are -

• did you raise the REX settings to the max and also set your LOD_Radius to 6.5 and Texture_Max_Load to 4096?  Not good...
• use any tweaks in your fsx.cfg?  Really not good.
• do you have a very good computer system to run the "eye-candy" add-ons you indicate are installed?

So, there is no known solution but you have the knowledge that everyone who has had the terrain.dll crash had their settings set too high and/or had "bad" tweaks installed in their fsx.cfg that took up even more valuable resources.  You will just have to investigate your personal situation.  It could be as easy as rebuilding your fsx.cfg because people employ tweaks over the use of their simulator that don't work as they were not employed correctly.

 

Best regards,

[rjevansuk 3]

Hi Jim,

 

Thanks for the reply

 

My system is an AMD Phenom II 1090T 6 core processor, AMD R9 200 Graphics card. The system has been running fsx stably for a few years. fsx.cfg was last modified in 2014

 

1. I have turned off Autogen but fsx crashes with Scenery Complexity above sparse

 

2. I have just tried to rebuild fsx.cfg as suggested. fsx crashes on loading a flight, the event log states that terrain.dll is the faulting module.

    one weird thing, the aircraft preview shows a grey aircraft.

3. I'm working my way through the ASIM CTD guide.

 

A few other points

Lod_Radius= 4.5

Texture_Max_Load is 512

the last mod to fsx.cfg was MIPBIAS=6

 

fsx.cfg was tweaked in 2010 using the ******* Bojote tool

 

Regards

 

Roger

[Jim Young 2,356]

I'm sorry but I have no idea how powerful your system is.  It does not look very powerful (but more and more addons are using more eye-candy and resources as computer systems get more powerful).  I have not been able to find any other solution for a terrain.dll error other than high settings.  I do think that tweaks can contribute to crashes if they are not used properly.  If you are using the Bojote tool, you have an extremely old computer system and you need those tweaks to get it to work better. 
 
Okay, I checked out your cpu and it is not very powerful - https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Phenom+II+X6+1090T.  So you have to be extremely careful with your computer settings.
 
You should never have a texture_max_load of 512; otherwise, you will not like FSX and this is probably why your aircraft preview shows grey aircraft.  I never thought FSX could run any default textures at 512.  With REX Texture Direct, you have configuration settings there too.  Once I set my resolution to 4096 in texture direct for my low level clouds, 2048 for the high level clouds and then I set the texture compression to 32 bit.  It brought my system (see specs in my signature) to its knees.  Subsequently I changed the 32 bit to dxt5. 
 
You should use at least the default settings and the default settings can be obtained by going into the FSX settings and simply clicking on return to Default settings.  Or you can move or delete the fsx.cfg and let it rebuild the next time you restart FSX. 
 
I don't know what a mipbias tweak does.  Think some believe it gets rid of the blurries so I wont comment further on that.
 
If reducing your settings does not get rid of the crashes, then I would begin uninstalling your addons, with REX Texture Direct first (make sure you return the backup first) to see which addon is causing your crashes.  Good luck!

 

Best regards,