Dirt runway dust flashes on and off

[tailspin45 20]

I7 3.8Ghz, GTX760, Win 10, FSX Gold. My frame rate is 30 or better and smooth with few blurries and very rare stutters or glitches.

But when flying off bush strips the dust cloud kicked up by prop wash flashes. Doesn't occur using DX-9.

I've read and reread the Fixer manual but can't identify a tweak that might solve my problem. And I've studied tweaks for fsx.cfg, too, but it's not obvious what I might do to solve the problem that way either.

Can anyone with more knowledge than I suggest a solution?

You can see what I mean at 0:14 and 0:19. 

 

 

It's worse in the original clip 0:19-0:26, but I edited most of it out by cutting to a different camera.

Please disregard the rough aircraft handling, lack of airspeed control, and cursor in the captures. ;-)

 

[SteveFx 258]

I am afraid that there is no simple solution, at some level effects are broken in the fsx dx10 engine and all we can do is try and work around them and or accept the minor issues that sometimes occur

The fundamental problem is that somewhere in the draw call batching deep in the fsx engine there is a bug in the sorting which leads to properties such as flashing leaking to the next effect in the sort.  This only occurs for the first few effects in the sort.

If somewhere in the neighbourhood there is a flashing light that gets sorted high up in this sort order then flashing of effects such as dust can occur.  

The workaround is to create a non flashing effect light in the scene that shines on something (in the way that say a nav light illuminates  the wing)  In fsx unlike real life most lights do not  illuminate anything!  These lights go high up in the sort order and so help prevent the issue occurring.

Turning on landing lights will usually suffice. 

Alternatively you can try adding a lightfield to the airfield.  See  chapter 7 of the manual .   For a dirt strip you may need to compile your own lightfield, a template for this is provided. However even this may occasionally not work.

When it occurs it’s frustrating, it has some causal relationship to other nearby scenery with effects and so can change as your camera moves.

 

 

 

 

 

[tailspin45 20]

Thank you very much for your thoughtful and thought-provoking response.

I know enough about computers and programming to be dangerous, so your details about sort order were intriguing.

I'll bet dollars to donuts my rotating beacon is the culprit. I'll try turning it off first and if that doesn't work I'll try turning on the landing lights.

Again, thank you for your helpful (and quick) reply.

[tailspin45 20]

Problem solved.

For other who read this thread:

Tried turning off the flashing beacon, and it helped. Tried turning on landing lights, and it helped.

Still some minor blinks, but nothing like it was.

Just occured to me that what I'm seeing now could be related to numerous lightning flashes in the area that are evoking the sort bug and causing the dust to flash

I'll try changing the weather to CAVU and see what happens and will report back.

But the problem is essentially solved as far as I'm concerned.

[tailspin45 20]

What I didn't say, but should have, is you knew about all this!

That's simply wonderful.