New Comp with FSX, Flickering Textures? Help?

[Guest HeavyFan]

Hey guy's. My Dad bought a new Comp. A HP Intel, Dual, or I think Quad CORE, With Alot if Ram, I forget how much, and the Vid card is what came with the Comp, it has 256MB! Now I installed FSX on it, and now I see see Flickering Textures on the ground, around Lakes and near the Terminals? Is it the Crappy VID Card this thing came with? Or is there a fix somewhere for this? Please Help me try to Get FSX running good on this new System. THank's.

[Guest JSPuonti]

If I'm not mistaken, what you're seeing is Z (depth) order flicker. Basically, two textures are laid so close to oneanother that the vidcard is having trouble figuring which one of them should be drawn "on top" and thus you see the two textures flickering. This can also happen at the edges or intersections of polygons (lake and fog layer edges).To my knowledge there's no way to get rid of it completely on the user side, however you can diminish it by changing your vidcard's depth buffer from 16 bits to 32 bits (assuming it's set to 16).Usually depth buffer matches that of your color depth, so make sure your Windows desktop's color depth is set to 32 bits. Some games offer independent depth buffer settings (FSX does not) and some driver packages might also allow you to switch your color depth and depth buffer separately. I don't know what drivers you're using, but you should check them just to be on the safe side.You should look for "depth buffer", "z buffer", "w buffer" and the like.

[Guest jshyluk]

Also, even if the computer is brand new, there's a good chance the drivers may not be up to date. Find out exactly what your videocard is, and search the Interent for more recent drivers. That can help as well.Jeff ShylukSenior Staff Reviewer, Avsim