It seems that some computer systems see birds & some ships that other systems do not.Strange that it is my older computer that sees them, and not the two new ones.On my 3 year old home computer:Pentium 4 3.0 gHz 1 GB RAMNvidia AGP 8x Geforce FX5600XT 256MBWindows XP SP2If I take off from the default airport Princess Juliana (runway 09) and fly directly over the airport buildings, there is a large fishing trawler in the ocean, docked against the land directly behind the main airport buildings. The trawler on my system is all dark grey however.Does anyone else see this trawler? Do you see it properly, or just grey?Every time I fly over this trawler, I get a flock of seagulls (White birds with grey backs). Every time I fly out past the Lighthouse, I also see the seagulls.Every time I fly beyond the lighthouse to the Container Cargo Ship, I also see some seagulls.Does anyone else also always see the birds at these locations, or any other locations? Now if you call up your map view, you will see at the bottom of the island there is a large bay (looks like a bite has been taken out of the island). If you drag your plane to this bay, or fly there, you will see a large white passenger liner which looks good, docked at a pier. On the other side of the pier I see a second passenger liner, with dark grey sides, and light grey top.Does anyone else see this second ship, and if so is it the modeled the same as the first ship?All the cars are full models (not chassis), but they are all grey with white wheels. Some are totally white.They drive at a decent speed.The houses all have white roofs.If I take off on the other island from V C Bird Intl airport, a few of the large trees on the island are just grey upside-down vertical triangles with some horizontal pieces. (On the other systems below I do see them as large trees. There is one of these trees near the hangers at the sea end of the runway)I also see a few large towers/poles that reach up about 100 feet or so, which look wrong. (I don

>It seems that some computer systems see birds & some ships>that other systems do not.I have never seen any birds.>Does anyone else see this second ship, and if so is it the>modeled the same as the first ship?>All I see of the second ship are the railings and sun-shades.AMD 64X2 4800+ S939 1MB (2.4)Corsair Tx PRO 2GB PC35002 x XFX GeForce 7800GTX 512mb Extreme XXX Edition in SLI mode, 84.56 drivers 24 DELL WIDE TFT 2405FPW (1920x1200 32bit)

I think you might be on to something here.My specs:Dell Dimension 8300 (about 3 years old)Pentium 4 2.6 GHz1 GB RAMAGP 8X XFX nVidia GeForce 6200 256 MB (brand new, bought it last week)WinXP SP2I get the same results as you did with your second PC. I have seen black birds once, near the lighthouse. I haven't seen any trawler.I saw the second passenger liner as totally black once, but since then I only see the windows and some other stuff. From what I can see it looks like the other ship, which is fully visible. Most cars are only chassis for me too and I've seen yacht shadows with no yachts.Maybe it has something to do with the graphics cards. You can see the stuff on your FX5600 card, but not on your 6600 or 7300 cards, and I can't see it on my 6200. Maybe it's something that nVidia changed from the FX5XXX cards to the 6XXX cards that make the difference?Klas

I've seen some birds one time above the cruise ship and I haven't seen any since.

I never seen a bird, and i spend alot of time looking for them. I have everything almost maxed out, i get a lot of black airport vehicles, one moment they are there, the next they are gone.

>I never seen a bird, and i spend alot of time looking for>them. I have everything almost maxed out, i get a lot of black>airport vehicles, one moment they are there, the next they are>gone.Exactly the same for me.

>I never seen a bird, and i spend alot of time looking for>them. I have everything almost maxed out, i get a lot of black>airport vehicles, one moment they are there, the next they are>gone.I forgot to mention, all of the sliders on all 3 of the computers I tried were left at the default install-decided positions (mostly lower settings on my old computer). I don't think sliders are the problem.(The only slider I changed & maxed on all computers was water)

I've seen birds once above the black trawler just to the left of the airport in line with the main terminal. The birds we all black too!Gary

No birds for me, so far.System specs:Pentium 4 at 3 ghz with HT2gb DDR400 dual channel rambfgTech Geforce 6800GT OverclockedKP

I've seen birds a few times near the lighthouse and the cargo ship andthe cruise ship near Julianna. I've never seen a fishing trawler nearthe airport.The first time I went to the other side of the island there was a cruiseship as it should be with another all black cruise ship. The next daythere was the cruise ship as it should be and just railings(outline) ofthe ship that was black the day before. The next time I was over there (and ever since)neither of those ships have been around. The cruise ship and the cargoship near Julianna never go anywhere (except for delayed texture loading problems).I've seen shadows in the water (boat shadows with no boat) and I've seenthe blue car. all other cars/trucks are chassis only.Oh yeah - I saw those inverted triangles/pyramids too. I didn't knowif that was a mistake or what.

Tdragger already addressed the cruise ship and some other issues--the textures were not included in the demo to keep the demo small enough to fit on a CD. As far as the birds, I see them sometimes and sometimes I don't--could it simply be that they are programed to randomly appear at different times and places?Randall

>Tdragger already addressed the cruise ship and some other>issues--the textures were not included in the demo to keep the>demo small enough to fit on a CD. As far as the birds, I see>them sometimes and sometimes I don't--could it simply be that>they are programed to randomly appear at different times and>places?There's nothing "random" at all. Many (all?) of the ships, sailboats, motorboats, etc. have their own schedules. They are not "static objects" as in FS9, but will actually "sail" according to their preset schedules...Unfortunately, with the 30 minute time limit of the demo, it's not too likely one will actually "see" such movements, as boats are - by nature - rather slow moving objects... :-hah

> As far as the birds, I see>them sometimes and sometimes I don't--could it simply be that>they are programed to randomly appear at different times and>places?No, I see them every time I fly near the trawler, lighthouse or Container ship. (And I look foward to it each time. It's great to see these white birds appearing and scattering each time you fly towards them. In real life I think you would also always get seagulls hanging out at the same locations).regardsDavid W.

I haven't seen any birds, and my system performs great in the demo. I have just about everything turned on, too. (except ground shadows).Rhett

You know, folks, for a group that decried the inclusion of thing like birds and dolphins when we first showed FSX at CES you are sure spending A LOT OF TIME TRYING TO FIND THEM! ;) ;) ;)