I'm experiencing a very strange problem with FSX.  All of a sudden I have no cloud or precipitation textures/effects in my sim. It doesn't matter which weather theme I select, whether one of the default themes, ORBX themes, or ActiveSky Next, and there's also no change whether I launch ActiveSky Next or not.  There are zero low or mid level clouds, and no rain, snow or fog effects visible.  I do get a few high level cirrus clouds visible (depending on which weather theme is selected), but that's it.

 

I run FSX:SE (stand-alone install) in DX10 mode with Steve's Fixer.  I haven't made any changed to DX10, Nvidia Inspector or FSX.cfg in the past month so I'm ruling those out.

I'm using Rex 4 with Soft Clouds for textures and ActiveSky Next for my weather engine.   I'm not sure when this started exactly because for the past week or so I've been doing some self-training, flying practice flights with only clear skies selected.  Today I went to fly in some weather again and that's when I noticed this issue.

 

The last thing I did before loading up the sim with the intention of flying in weather this morning was to select a new cloud set from within REX, so that's my chief suspect, but I can't be 100% certain.  The only other things I've changed since I last had properly functioning weather have been switching FTX Central from North America to Global, and making some changes to FlyTampa and SimAddons airport settings using the FlyTampa Configurator and SimAddons Scenery Manager respectively.  I can't imagine how these would affect the weather textures but I figured I should mention it just in case.

 

Things I've attempted so far to correct the issue:  Using the REX option to "restore textures to what they were before installing REX"; flushing the shader caches; switching back and forth between DX10 and DX9 mode; reinstalling a new REX theme.  None of this has worked. 

 

I'm guessing there's a corrupt texture file (or several) somewhere, but how do I locate and fix it.  I would really like to avoid using the Steam option to "validate integrity of game cache."  This would probably work but from my understanding it will also mess up most of my addons and require a fair bit of work and reinstalling of many addons.  This is really frustrating because I finally had my FSX setup exactly how I wanted it with everything working just about perfectly for me.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Regards,

 

Corey

 

 

Have you gone into Control Panel, to see if there is a recent restore point?

This will often work. Peter  Sydney  Australia

Thanks for the suggestion Cat.

 

Unfortunately my FSX install is on a dedicated drive which does not have system restore turned on. I've been a bit neglectful, and my last backup copy of that drive was made a few months ago, so restoring from that will be just as bad as a Steam repair option I think.

 

If anybody knows a way to find out which texture files are missing I could try reinstalling just those textures from the default FSX ones on the backup. That will at least give me my default clouds and precipitation back and I can go from there.  I'm not convinced that it's missing textures causing my problems though, given that the missing clouds and precipitation persist even after I tell REX to restore my default textures.  Is there a file that tells FSX which textures to call in given situations?  If so I think that may be corrupt.  I'm just guessing here.   

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Regards,

Does Rex not back up your previous texture set when you load new textures?

Yes it does.  But even reverting to backups the clouds and precipitation remain missing.

Wow, that is strange.  Have you backed up your FSX.cfg file to a different location, deleted it and then forced FSX to build a new one?  Another suggestion is to load an earlier saved flight to see what textures load.  Also try using manually configured weather or one of the simulators weather presets?  Just to see if there is any isolation to your issue.

Corey

 

How many files are in your Texture folder?   A Default Texture folder will have about 1,652 

Wow, that is strange.  Have you backed up your FSX.cfg file to a different location, deleted it and then forced FSX to build a new one?  Another suggestion is to load an earlier saved flight to see what textures load.  Also try using manually configured weather or one of the simulators weather presets?  Just to see if there is any isolation to your issue.

 

None of those make any difference. No matter what I choose or do there are no low/mid level clouds, no rain, no snow, no fog, no lightning.  Rebuilding fsx.cfg also didn't fix it. Previous saved flights also have none of these textures.

 

 

How many files are in your Texture folder?   A Default Texture folder will have about 1,652 

 

There are 1,854 files in my texture folder.

 

 

I'm at a loss here.

Hi Corey,

 

This really sounds like a shader code problem to me, specific to the files in ShadersHLSL.  I would recommend manually restoring any that have been backed up (for example, ASN automatically backs up the shader files with .BeforeASN before applying visual fixes - this is for the SwarmCloud.fx in misc folder).  You could also try disabling all visual fixes in ASN which will automatically attempt to get them in an original state.  I believe the DX10 Fixer also modifies shader files along with REX.  It's hard to say what the specific problem is but I'm fairly certain its with the shader files and restoring them (and then clearing the shader cache - very important) will probably resolve this.  If you need direct assistance please open a ticket at http://support.hifitechinc.com and we can help.

Im having the same issue as the OP.I[m using  p3d tho. The minute I launch asn  all clouds disappear. This started happening a few days ago.

Thanks for all that info Damian. Do you know where I may find the original shader files?  I don't think I have any of these backed up as originals.  I was able to find the 2 specific ones you mentioned that were backed up by ASN as .BeforeASN and reinstated those two but this made no difference to what I saw in sim.

Hi Corey,

 

This really sounds like a shader code problem to me, specific to the files in ShadersHLSL.  I would recommend manually restoring any that have been backed up (for example, ASN automatically backs up the shader files with .BeforeASN before applying visual fixes - this is for the SwarmCloud.fx in misc folder).  You could also try disabling all visual fixes in ASN which will automatically attempt to get them in an original state.  I believe the DX10 Fixer also modifies shader files along with REX.  It's hard to say what the specific problem is but I'm fairly certain its with the shader files and restoring them (and then clearing the shader cache - very important) will probably resolve this.  If you need direct assistance please open a ticket at http://support.hifitechinc.com and we can help.

 

Well, I remembered that I have a vanilla install of FSX:SE on my old laptop.  I deleted the ShadersHLSL folder from my root FSX folder, then copied the vanilla ShadersHLSL folder over. I also erased my shader cache folders and my fsx.cfg for good measure (again).  Restarted FSX and loaded a flight... Still nothing. No low level clouds or precipitation no matter which weather preset I try.

Thanks for all that info Damian. Do you know where I may find the original shader files?  I don't think I have any of these backed up as originals.  I was able to find the 2 specific ones you mentioned that were backed up by ASN as .BeforeASN and reinstated those two but this made no difference to what I saw in sim.

 

Hi Corey,

 

This confirms that it wasn't ASN that caused or influenced this issue, but I still do think there may be a problem with other shader files (that ASN doesn't touch) causing this.  You may want to try disabling other shader-related add-ons (DX10 fixer, for example) and restoring things to default as much as possible.  As a last resort you may need to reinstall FSX completely.  

 

I'd like to iterate that I'm not suggesting that other add-ons are or may be the cause of this, but when troubleshooting issues like this, it is worth looking at everything that may be related and thus my suggestions to try restoring to defaults as much as possible.

Hi Corey,

 

This confirms that it wasn't ASN that caused or influenced this issue, but I still do think there may be a problem with other shader files (that ASN doesn't touch) causing this.  You may want to try disabling other shader-related add-ons (DX10 fixer, for example) and restoring things to default as much as possible.  As a last resort you may need to reinstall FSX completely.  

 

I'd like to iterate that I'm not suggesting that other add-ons are or may be the cause of this, but when troubleshooting issues like this, it is worth looking at everything that may be related and thus my suggestions to try restoring to defaults as much as possible.

 

Well after trying just about everything, including uninstalling ASN, REX and Steve's DX10 Fixer, and replacing the ShaderHLSL folder with the default one, I was about to give up and do a reinstall or Steam "repair."  But then I noticed a folder in the FSX root named "weather."  I have no idea what the files in this folder do, but I erased the folder and replaced it with the one from my vanilla FSX install from my laptop...  Astonishingly, that fixed the issue!  All of my low level clouds and weather effects are now back.

 

I have no idea what corrupted the files in that folder, nor do I have any idea which addons normally alter those files or why, but at this point it doesn't matter.  Hopefully this doesn't happen again, but if it does I'll have to spend more time narrowing down which addon is the culprit.

 

 

I deleted the ShadersHLSL folder from my root FSX folder, then copied the vanilla ShadersHLSL folder over.

 

FTR, those are not the shaders folders that you should be deleting, those are the originals that are there for backup.

 

When people mention that deleting the shaders folders might fix something they are talking about the shaders folders in...

 

C:\Users\your name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX

 

regards,

Joe