Blurries and contention (round 2)

[=Hollywood= 0]

I had issues too once SP1 was installed and concerned me. I had no virus checker on (clean clincial system), and SP1 definitely introduced some blurries.I'm concerned because I'm not sure how well stuff I'm working on will work on end users systems, but by the sounds of it it's happening mostly with photoscenery and all...I'm still scratching my head and wondering what happened... Hoping someone is able to figure out what's causing the blurries...My system was a P4 2.4 and 1GB ram, 128mb radeon 9800 pro and had no blurries under RTM, (had all my sliders set so FSX didn't call more system or video ram than my computer physically had), with SP1 I ran into major blurring issues that just didn't go away...Hopefully something somewhere can be identified...

[Guest S77th-GOYA]

I have XP Home and blurries like crazy. But anything is worth a try. Good luck to you.

[Guest S77th-GOYA]

Have you compared Dxdiags? Something like this seems to rule out hardware as the culprit but there may still be a setting for the hardware that could be the cause.Another test might be to make sure the same background processes are running with the same amount of available RAM.

[PhilTaylor 45]

This is an interesting case, and if we could diagnose it that would be very helpful.So let me restate what is going on here.Config A works fine.Config A' ( A prime ) is almost identical but doesnt work.According to standard isolation and debugging rules, it is most likely that there is something about Config A' that is causing the issue.Otherwise, all configs would have blurries.

[Guest Dave65]

>"One thing,I get a bit better frame rates than he does,same>video card,8800 GTX.">>I'd be swapping some parts. What about environment? Swapping parts is the next step,only environment change is Ultimate Terrain USA,we both have it..

[Guest S77th-GOYA]

Phil, perhaps you could give Dave instructions on how to proceed with narrowing down the problem? Would you start with dxdiags?

[PhilTaylor 45]

He and his friend need to compare and contrast and isolate what is different and eliminate the differences 1 at a time. That is a process I cannot devote time to.Note, it might be worth switching from XP Pro to XP Home to see if that is an important variable.

[sightseer 895]

My only thoughts on Dave65's issue is that maybe the FSX.cfg tweaks are differnt? Its strange.As for me, I'm tired.FSX RTM worked moderately well and I hoped SP1 would improve things and in a a way I guess it did but only after inserting several tweaks into FSX config.My system has never suffered a CTD under FSX (let alone a hard reboot). I had gotten rid of blurries and i had sliders turned up pretty good and I had decent frame rates (locked around 20).I installed Acceleration/SP2 and I've taken two flights. The first ended in a CTD and the second in a hard reboot.I've only noticed a few visual changes. The concrete runways, the taxiway lines, the water looks better, and my VC lights dont work (as I understand the vclights were commented out so that cockpit shadows would work).I thought that my problem might be caused by RAM but I see people with much more ram also having blurries. I dont know if any of you are having CTDs or hard reboots.Another thing I notice is that most lights appear as black blocks for several seconds. The virtual cockpits take many seconds for textures to load. I sit and wait for the sky and clouds to appear.I'm assuming that the new features (such as cockpit shadows) are using more resources which might explain my problems but it doesnt explain why someone with more RAM would have similar problems.Perhaps its the DX update that was done??I'm running DX9c and have been since I built this system. It has worked fine until this install of Acceleration/SP2.Accelaeration has good things. The F18 is a blast. I went to Edwards AFB and it looks cool.I cant handle random CTDs and hard reboots though.I'm tired of tweaking. why must every 'update' be an apparent setback?

[JimmiG 244]

"I wont bore you with the countless permutations my drivers and cfg files have gone through in search of a solution. But I am finished begging aces for a response to this issue."Well there are dozens of .cfg tweaks, driver tweaks etc. that an improve the situation when running SP1 - The thing is, with RTM I don't have to apply *any* of them. Out of the box, textures load instantly, no matter if its generic scenery, TileProxy or the 1m/pixel England and Wales scenery. Also, even with all those tweaks, SP1 is worse than RTM without tweaks for me.

[JimmiG 244]

I also feel this frustration..-They release FSX and it's a little buggy and FPS is very low, but at least it works as intended, displaying nice scenery and effects and so on. A patch to improve performance and fix a few bugs would make it a great sim.-They then produce SP1. Instead of fixing the little things, it creates all sorts of problems with blurries etc. because they decided to rewrite much of the engine for multi-core. The only thing that actually improves performance is the batching, which applies both to single-core and multi-core users.-Then they release SP2 which adds some eye candy for DX10 users but apparently does little to restore the crisp terrain textures that we had over ONE YEAR AGO with RTM.IMO, SP1 was a big experiment - "Let's add multi-core support to the terrain engine just because we can and see what happens!". There was *nothing* wrong with this aspect of FSX RTM. Sure, it only used one core.. but it *worked*. It was actually very fast compared to FS9 - the 1m England photo scenery loaded much faster than the 5m England scenery ever did in FS9. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.I'm not even angry any more. I've simply given up FSX for now. I use RTM now and then for TileProxy, but that's it. If they ever restore the crisp textures I knew and loved from RTM, I'll give it a shot again. Gettting away from the convulated mess that is FSX has given me new energy and inspiration to do other things. For now, I'm concentrating on RPG games and making music, my other two hobbies.

[Guest sheeny]

Phil, With all the issues that the blurries is throwing up is there going to be a new service pack to maybe address the problems so many of us are experiencing.Best Regards,Sam

[Guest Dave65]

Hi guys,I have been working on swithing parts with my friends computer to try to find why he doesn't have blurries and I do.I did this hoping to shed some light on as to why some of us have it and some don't.First thing I did was make sure we both had the same version of everything,Riva Tuner,video drivers and so on,after swithing cardsthere was no difference except he now had better frame rates,and mine was not as good,but he still didn't have blurries and I did,why my card gets better frame rates than his is anybodys guess,both are overclocked the exact same.Next was the CPUs,there was no difference except his runs cooler than mine does.Memory,same thing no difference.I made sure we both had fresh rebuilt CFG files with the only thing added was for My Traffic X,we both have it.there is one thing I failed to mention,I simply didn't think of it,we both have 22 inch wide screen monitors,but different brands,I don't know much about monitor technology,but could this be the cause of this problem,our monitors??The only other thing that is different between our computers is he has XP Pro,I have XP Home,but I highly dought this would cause this issue.I will know more with the monitors when I can get his over here,or mine to him to test this out..

[Guest n99wb]

"Swapping parts is the next step,only environment change is Ultimate Terrain USA,we both have it.."Small e environment. Move your monitor or speakers, try a different AC outlet, do you leave your cell phone near your box, what can you unplug, printers, stereo, etc. Anything you can take off-line.If the systems are identical, the first thing I'd swap is the hard-drive.

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,This did make a difference for one of the mods here!Jimhttp://www.hifisim.com/banners/hifi-community-sigbanner.jpghttp://www.hifisim.com/

[Guest Jimbofly]

I wonder if it's a process that's present in XP Pro and Vista that isn't present in XP Home that's causing the weird contention issues...James