Hello

I have encountered twice a strange issue: when approaching an aiport, an artifact appears which is basically the runway / taxiway textures perpendicular to the ground, pointing upwards above the ground:

https://imgur.com/a/L41eml0

I initially thought of it as a particular addon bug, but I have had this happen with two different airports by different developers - MK Studios GCTS and Aerosoft GCLP.

Any idea on what could be causing this? I find it a strange coincidence happening in the same region (Canary islands) while it hasn't happened anywhere else. 

Cheers

I just landed at GCLP stock airport didn't see any issues.

Perhaps something is not installed right?

You can uncheck some add-ons in the Options menu and restart the sim. See if anything changes.

17 minutes ago, SteveW said:

I just landed at GCLP stock airport didn't see any issues.

Perhaps something is not installed right?

You can uncheck some add-ons in the Options menu and restart the sim. See if anything changes.

Another strange thing is that it doesn't happen every time, just last week I landed at GCLP with the same scenery and this didn't happen. Also this last time, when I was taxiing in about 2 mins after landing, the "artifact" disappeared.

Could it be a driver issue with the graphic card? Maybe I'll try a driver update and see if it keeps happening.

It is an odd problem. Definitely make sure things are up to date. If it's an  Nvidia GPU go into the Control Panel and restore/apply the P3D and global 3D settings so they are clean. I've seen a few similar oddities, maybe not exactly that, like bridges turned into cliffs. Those were caused by something an addon did.

Edited August 19, 20196 yr by SteveW

It's probably a long shot but apparently random appearances often boil down to something that can alter whenever you fly there. Perhaps an AI aircraft that has been injected, or a different weather type injected on that occasion. Try a test with no traffic or clear weather to eliminate.

Adjust your terrain mesh.  Not sure that this is the problem but easy to check. Increase to at least 5 m. (left of full right).

Good idea.

Also try renaming the Prepar3D.cfg so that defaults itself.

Besides all of what was said above, I've seen that stuff (graphical anomalies) happen when a gfx card was on its way out.

Monitor your graphics card heat, make sure that is not a problem.

What card do you have, and how old is it?

Hi guys

Thanks for all the input, your comments have given me some food for thought:

18 hours ago, SteveW said:

It's probably a long shot but apparently random appearances often boil down to something that can alter whenever you fly there. Perhaps an AI aircraft that has been injected, or a different weather type injected on that occasion. Try a test with no traffic or clear weather to eliminate.

I don't use AI traffic, I was flying online and there were no other pilots nearby at the time. When I load a flight in one of those two airports this doesn't happen, it has only happened at the end of flights.

17 hours ago, downscc said:

Adjust your terrain mesh.  Not sure that this is the problem but easy to check. Increase to at least 5 m. (left of full right).

I thought that too, but I'm already using 5m, occasionally 1m. I did switch the graphics profile within P3D during the flight, but I do that on occasion and never noticed anything unusual.

16 hours ago, Mace said:

Besides all of what was said above, I've seen that stuff (graphical anomalies) happen when a gfx card was on its way out.

Monitor your graphics card heat, make sure that is not a problem.

What card do you have, and how old is it?

The card is a GTX 1070 Ti, it was purchased new in December and it hasn't given me any trouble so far. That said, it makes some sense to me that this might be GPU related. The fact it only happened at the end of 2-hour flights might indicate the load became too much for the GPU. I've been monitoring the temperatures with MSI afterburner since yesterday, and the card so far doesn't seem to go above the mid 70s.

That said, where I live the weather has been unusually warm (almost 30º C) and I guess that might have been straining the system. Also, I have several addons very close together in this particular area: GCTS, GCLP, GCXO, GCGM and GCLA, which include not only the airports but also vast areas around the islands with photoreal, landmarks, etc. Maybe this combination is putting too much stress on the GPU occasionally?

In the image it seems like the entire taxi/runway layout alone is copied and presented perpendicular to the airport, about the centre location. Nothing else. Otherwise the views look the same graphically speaking. The stock airports seem to be without issue. It could be possible the GPU has an issue. But before messing around disturbing the machine it would be wise to check the stock P3D on there.

Edited August 20, 20196 yr by SteveW

...you did try with some addons unchecked:

20 hours ago, SteveW said:

You can uncheck some add-ons in the Options menu and restart the sim. See if anything changes. 

Eliminating the possibility of software problems is easy.

Edited August 20, 20196 yr by SteveW

I have stock installations of all the simulators so I can in minutes check out software on a stock P3D. Otherwise I would have no idea if any issues arise. If I did not already have a stock P3D installed, I can do things like rename the addons folder make a new one, maybe with one item in there under test. They could be moved to a safe folder. Depends on what's been installed. Another way is to backup, uninstall P3D and rename all the folders, install P3D and enable. The original configuration is safe and parts can be moved into the stock install. In one way or another, I would have deduced if this is hardware or software within the hour, had it been affecting my systems.

Edited August 20, 20196 yr by SteveW

6 hours ago, SteveW said:

In the image it seems like the entire taxi/runway layout alone is copied and presented perpendicular to the airport, about the centre location. Nothing else.

Hey GG, Steve,

This is just a wild guess, but that's not a rogue texture, but rather a ground polygon that is misplaced. It doesn't even look like the correct polygon for that airport. The trick would be to locate the BGL file that contains the polygon and open the file in MCX to see what's wrong with the size/coordinates. Or, the entire BGL library file that contains that ground polygon may be corrupted.

Jay

That is payware that's been out a relatively long time now though.  It would surprise me to see a the bgl being released in that condition by a reputable developer such as that one.  There would be reports of the same oddity by others, if it were a software thing, I would think.

Given the loadup of photoreal and objects there, perhaps there is some memory starvation of the gfx card going on.  I've seen strange graphical artifacts occur in that scenario, too.

https://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/145966-objects-in-the-air-at-gclp-sim-wings/

Aerosoft claims that it is an issue with P3d4.4 and 4.5, not the GCLP airport, so who knows? Aerosoft support claims that  there is a workaround, which is listed in that thread.