Never had any problem with FSX-SE until today. Loaded the sim and all looked normal except the preview window was black.

I went ahead and launched: No plane but it did have a shadow on a dark runway. Bits of scenery on the horizon but rest black with little white clouds.

I went back to the plane selection screen and all my planes were properly displayed...went through the launch again withsame results. I restarted the sim several times, hen restarted the PC several times. During one of these STEAM started an update which took quite a while. Then went through that MS license agreement, etc. Still no joy.

Went to STEAM to check integrity of data (or whatever) no joy

Let FSX create a new .cfg 

At this point I haven't a clue

 

 There have been no changes (no new add-ons, tweaks,etc)  and everything was okay Monday.

Some help will be very much appreciated

 

 

Details:

              Default plane at Friday Harbor

              EzDok

              Linda

              FSUIPC licensed version

Some kind of weird Windows or graphics driver update overnight?

Change your compatible mode to Windows 8 (I presume you are running Windows 10)

BLAST! Forgot to say: Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

I believe that the

steam update is the culprit. I now have proper graphics again. However everything was reset as if it is a new install,All settings back to default and strangey, some of my planes are left off the preview (eg. Ant;s T-28A is there but only tthe title in a blank box for the T-28B).  Very annoying to say the least. Itleft my default plane at start but put it in glider mode near Friday Harbor.

Also and THIS is REALLY a pain: Nearly every time I exit FSX and later try to restart, Steam popup tells me FSX is still running. Check Task Manager and it is NOT running but the only way to get it to run is to restart my PC.

 

Steam has turned out to be too much tinkering for me so I am usingP3D Professional mor and more

I have had a this very same weird situation over the past year: First time it happened, I was in a near-panic mode. Tried re-starting FSX-Steam,and a few other things, but nothing worked.

 

Then I found a very simple fix for it:  I deleted the FSX.cfg file, and let it get re-built.  That put everything back to normal.  But, of course, I had to add-back all the recommended modifications to the FSX Config file (by cut-and-paste). The other annoying result of this fix is needing to give permission again to all  gauges and/or apps upon loading non-default aircraft.

 

 Apparently, the config files somehow becomes corrupt, perhaps by certain add-ons, thus leading to black sky, no aircraft visible(?)