Thomas, I've seen that "translucent plane" thing you're talking about on a few occasions, but it went beyond that. At KSEA on a couple occasions, not only were the planes translucent, also were ALL the airport buildings! Gradually over a few seconds the textures started filling in and things started looking like they should. Until that time, I felt like Superman, with X-Ray vision ;)I had the sliders cranked, some maxed but most at around 50 - 75%.This happens only rarely, 95+ % of the time things look right. Can only assume that some system resource is eating clocks when that happens, slowing down the load of textures.My system BTW is more than enough for FSX - FX-60 oc'ed to 2.81, 2gb Corsair PC4000, 2x 7900GTX SLI, DFI LanParty NForce4 mobo, XP Pro SP2.To the OP, when I load FSX and select a plane, it looks EXACTLY like your pic in the preview window, for about 1.5 seconds. Gradually, the outside skin of the plane appears, then finally the paint I selected. But 1st, I see only the interior of the plane as in your pic.You might try running MemStatus when you fly and see how much of your video ram you're using, and how much is available.Good luck, hope you get it sorted out!

Well, given that my system is pretty slow, when I first arrive at KBOS as I'm booting up FS it is barren. Then the translucent buildings and planes start popping up, then everything starts to fill in solid, till eventually everything is solid. The problem I had was that it went through that cycle, everything filled in, but then eventually things started going translucent again, and it wouldn't go away.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Hey guys ...thanks for all your support. I

Well, it sounds to me like it could be any number of things, but based on your description and the specs of your machine, something is really dragging it down, and access to memory, disk, or video memory is getting impeded. Since you've already messed with the video drivers and determined they aren't the cause, is there a chance one of your memory chips is either not fully seated or is not functioning properly? Have you performed any machine diagnostics or run any benchmark programs?What you are stating above sounds like disk thrashing, as if for some reason Windows is having to page to disk.From my story above, it takes about 20 seconds to 1 minute (give or take, it seems like forever, but isn't really that long. I haven't actually timed it.) for KBOS to fill in when I start up, and after that I am fine, and get between 10 to 15 fps (locked at 15, around 6 - 10 fps with 100% traffic turned on. But even with full traffic, flying is a little choppy, but I can pan the view very smoothly.Next thing you might try, if you haven't already, is remove the memory chips and reinstall them, and while you are at it, the graphics card and disk io cables, too, making sure everything is fully seated and installed properly. Could it be the memory chips are in the wrong sockets? Or do you not have enough memory chips? I'm no guru, but believe I have read that some boards are designed such that you MUST have two chips because they use interleaving.If you can borrow chips from somebody else, try replacing the memory chips one at a time with new ones.You might also try installing the new version of the demo, as it is closer to the release code. The original demo is a bit different from the release code.How much video memory do you have? Is it shared memory? I read somewhere that the Quadro cards in laptop are all shared memory models. This isn't the best, but it shouldn't cause problems like you are seeing.I installed FSX on a $500 Compaq Presario V6100 with 512 MB of memory and a video card that used shared memory, and it performed better than what you are describing. That was with the sliders turned down to minimums, but it was flyable in that configuration. It worked better once I upgraded it to 2G mem, but even at 512 it was flyable.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

After i upgraded my laptop to vista rtm fs9 started doing this for me. I get constant clipping now and disappearing parts like you. I'm sure it has something to do with the graphics driver or fs9 not being compatible with vista and dx10 with my laptop's native vista display driver. Kinda a bummer though as i liked laying in bed at night and flying the choppers in fs9. :(When/if nvidia ever decides to grace us with an 8800 vista driver then ill try it with my main gaming machine...

Hey Thomas ...As far as I know my card has about 512MB Ram. I

mmhhh could this be it??? I

Yes, it definately sounds like something wrong with the video card.I've also heard that having more than 2GB of memory can give XP fits, especially if its XP Home. But that is merely heresay. I don't know the details.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Fortunately it

Nope, 256 MB of vid memory is plenty, my laptop only has 64 MB of video ram and it runs ok. Not great, but it is definately usable.You said it's a PCIe card. Have you (can you) set up AGP memory cache or whatever it is? On my laptop, the video is built into the motherboard and doesn't even give me an AGP memory option, so I believe that PCIe does not use AGP memory (experts out there, is that true?). Perhaps you should check your BIOS and reduce or remove any AGP memory settings?Regarding the other games running ok, if you are running out of video memory running a benchmark, it does not seem that things are good. The original Demo is quite different from the released code. Similar, but different. A better check would be to load the new demo.As far as FSX is concerned on my laptop, it runs well, and I use it occassionally, but at this point, until somebody comes up with a real solution for those stupid brown textures and I can use autogen at levels similar to FS9 with performance equal to FS9, and Squawkbox FSX upgrade is released, I'll be sticking with FS9 as my main sim. But I'm going to continue using and exploring FSX, there are A LOT of features I really like about it.Thomas[a href=http://www.flyingscool.com] http://www.flyingscool.com/images/Signature.jpg [/a]I like using VC's :-)N15802 KASH '73 Piper Cherokee Challenger 180

Hi, Saw something like that with my eVGA 7900 GTX , What I did is shut off all the SIM CITY crap and put all sliders down to minimum and start from there. Settings seem to change on their own.Good LuckTony