Square nav lights: is this a bug?

[Guest Nick_N]

You are incorrectly assuming the drivers and the core are correctly designed for the features that SP2 introduce.The original 8000 production runs are a problem child for Nvidia. You are assuming nvidia desinged the cores and drivers correctly for a standard that had not yet been defined when that product was being designed and marketed.I will leave it at that

[Icarus 0]

A big thank you to all you guys for the generous response to my question which sparked this thread - particularly Nick and Bill, without whom I would never have known that FX_2.bmp could be the problem. It was indeed missing from Effectstexture, so I pasted in again, and bingo! Problem solved! Hopefully that may help someone else ...

[Guest PPSFA]

>>You are incorrectly assuming the drivers and the core are>correctly designed for the features that SP2 introduce.>>The original 8000 production runs are a problem child for>Nvidia. >>You are assuming nvidia desinged the cores and drivers>correctly for a standard that had not yet been defined when>that product was being designed and marketed.>>>>I will leave it at thatNickI really appreciate your help and input, I read all your posts on all forums, but I gotta say, if the game I manage ever broke as much stuff as Aces has, with every update, we would have been out of business long ago. We do 'regresssion testing' on every update, for every fix, to ensure we don't have these problems, and we are a small team compared to MS/Aces.Dont get me wrong, I love FS as much as anyone, Im also a 'real world' pilot and I find this an amazing product, but to have to constantly continue fixing problems and issues that shouldnt be there in the first place, is getting rather tedious.

[n4gix 4,947]

>Thanks, Bill, for your specific reply. I've checked FSX>Effectstexture. There is no fs_2.bmp file. In fact, no fs.bmp>files. They're all fx. Of those, there's no fx_2 : just fx-1>and fx_3Sorry. That was a typo on my part. In fact, all external lighting for FSX effects use the fx_2.bmp file, including the landing lights!If that file is missing, then you'll get the "blocky nav lights" and the landing lights will be inop as well!Something deleted that file!The attached .zip file will restore your missing fx_2.bmp file.Here is a complete list of all default .fx bitmaps:07/26/2006 10:41 PM 87,450 fx_1.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 43,762 fx_2.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 87,450 fx_3.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 87,450 fx_5.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 21,914 fx_aurora.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 87,450 fx_barnstorm.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 10,986 fx_bubble.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 21,914 fx_Dots.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 349,594 fx_falls.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 10,994 fx_fireAdd.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 349,594 fx_Firesheet01.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 10,994 fx_flash.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 43,762 fx_FW1.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 43,762 fx_FW2.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 43,762 fx_lightning1.bmp05/12/2006 06:13 AM 87,454 fx_mul_1.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 5,530 fx_shtstar.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 10,986 fx_smoke.bmp05/12/2006 06:13 AM 349,598 fx_swoosh.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 87,450 fx_swoosh2.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 2,794 fx_tracer.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 10,986 fx_track.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 21,914 fx_wake_1.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 21,914 fx_wake_2.bmp07/26/2006 10:41 PM 21,914 fx_wake_3.bmp

[Guest Nick_N]

Your getting into 2 different areas. The issues directly related to the hardware should never be associated with Aces. Although I do agree the time to make shifts was not in the middle of a title upgrade, the majority of the issues you read and see are directly related to the manufacture of the video card, not Aces. I don

[Guest delsimflyer]

Recently I have been seeing blocky lights too. Reading through this thread I checked out my effects\texture folder, and to my surprise it is empty!!could someone please attach the default texture files if the size permits..thanks in advance

[Guest delsimflyer]

light problem solved. found almost all textures in old fs9 cd1.fx_beam.bmp is extra in fs9 from above list. is it required in fsx too? still missing:fx_fireAdd.bmpfx_Firesheet01.bmpfx_mul_1.bmpfx_track.bmp

[ahuimanu 50]

Bill is correct. This was asked and answered in another forum. The OP said he had not installed anything however the aircraft being displayed with the issue is in fact a 3rd party aircraft installation of 3rd part origin and as such those can do as much damage as scenery or other improperly made files.One of my biggest pet-peeves with developers is sometimes they do not respect the default fine name tree and include files that either overwrite or uninstall originals when their product is installed or removed. Default FX and other files should NEVER be included with a package and if a developer wishes to include such files they should be renamed to ensure the integrity of a default install.In this case the FX file FX_2.bmp is either missing or corrupt, or the FX file call is trying to locate an texture that does not exist. I have seen this happen with many products, payware and freeware alike. Lights are FX_2.bmp located in the Effectstexture folder, and, and Halo.bmp located in the main texture folder. If those files are missing or damaged the lights will display the blocks.If the problem is local to one plane, its thier custom FX files that are the issue. If it affects all aircraft then something screwed up you default install.Now, as for flashing "black" boxes, that is something that was introduced with SP2 and Nvidia drivers. That is not a FSX issue. it is seen more on slower systems but even my over-the-top high performance Nvidia systems displays that from time to time as the lights load. Its similar in nature to a slow texture load but certain criteria null the transparancey as it is rendering the texture. You can see this as you change views (pan around the aircraft) or as you come into sight of a airport, or as you leave an airport and place distance between yourself and the runway. As your system loads new textures it dumps some unless you are running a massive amount of memory (system + VC) and when you pan around a distance from the airport you just left, the light textures reload, displaying a black box for a split second. Flashing black or coloured spikes when a flight is first loaded and you pan around the aircraft is another Nvidia driver issue. Once you pan around the plane 2-3 times the black flashes and spikes stop. There are an entire list of Nvidia driver related issues, most are not FSX and are Nvidia problems. Some are seen by both ATi and Nvidia because of older hardware and poor driver development with erespect to the new standards however the ATi R680 card I am testing shows none of the problems the Nvidia cards show and in a few cases, older Ati cards.

I have experienced both issues: brief black square on lightsblack/colored spikes on first panwith the latest (and previous) drivers for my ATI 3870 512 MB card (and later, 4870 - 1GB card).I have been on Vista 64 SP1 with either 4 GB of 8GB of system memory.This may suggest that something else, perhaps DirectX, might be causing this. I am using the November 2008 Direct X SDK/Runtime.Anyhow, I just wanted to chime in that have seen it on at least two ATI cards. I'm not ready to call the 4870 an old card.

[Guest Nick_N]

I have experienced both issues: brief black square on lightsblack/colored spikes on first panwith the latest (and previous) drivers for my ATI 3870 512 MB card (and later, 4870 - 1GB card).I have been on Vista 64 SP1 with either 4 GB of 8GB of system memory.This may suggest that something else, perhaps DirectX, might be causing this. I am using the November 2008 Direct X SDK/Runtime.Anyhow, I just wanted to chime in that have seen it on at least two ATI cards. I'm not ready to call the 4870 an old card.

Please check at the date on this.. it was well over a year agoThe black boxes on lights which appear for a moment are an indication a system is not keeping up with the priority in a visual pan, especially after installing SP2The OP was complaining about all lights remaining a box at all times which was caused by a addon corrupting the original light bitmapsBlack spikes are driver related to latency on the buss due to how FSX works. They are usually seen if the user is pushing their system too hard with autogen, or, video memory being saturated but again the changes in FSX which switched autogen to batch calls forces this to appear more often. There have been confirmed chipset issues which are affected by different drivers that have been pinpointed to create latency problems which FSX autogen saturation brings to the surface. None the less there has been quite a bit learned in the last 1.25 years since that post was made and at that time I was not seeing any of the issues on the systems I was testing.. and unfortunately the 1GB ATi cards do not work with FSX the same as the single core 1GB Nvidia cards.A user is far better off on a 8800GTX 768MB card from 2006/2007 than a ATI 3000-4000 series card (including the x2) in FSXThe 280/285 being preferred over all other cards if the CPU and memory support is in placeThe issues that were being discussed are rarely seen on the better hardware and a correctly tuned system.but thank you for the information :(

[highflyerbel 3]

The black boxes on lights which appear for a moment are an indication a system is not keeping up with the priority in a visual pan, especially after installing SP2

I just updated my system coming from a Athlon 4000+, I have the same problem with the black square box for about 2 seconds approaching any airport and find it very annoying, i know this is a older post but i just wanna know if people have experienced this with up to date hardware.

[Berlopez 33]

Sorry to bud in on this topic,it's relevant for me. I downloaded last night Shockwave 3D lights Redux. Installed and all seemed as expected. beautiful light reflection and haze. BUT!!! My NAV and Beacon have a black box in front or behind I can't really tell.?I know I posted in another thread,sorry about that, I replaced a file about a year ago...Don't remember which one to correct a faulty one from Eaglesoft ( Thanks again for that file Bill) I wonder if this has anything to do with it??? I uninstalled the Shockwave lights And the balck boxes are gone. Can this be a GC.Nvidia GeForce 7500 LE driver issue or I may be runing out of memory? Berlopez

[OldMaintChief 7]

My experience goes back to FS98 on Win98 with a GF256 video card. One day NV issued a new driver and I had the black squares around exterior lights. Roll back the driver and they would go away. Contacted NV, those were the days they would talk to you about MSFS problems, and they said it was a MS problem. I switched to ATI cards and never had a problrm, until FSX on XP. They will flash when they come on or you first see them (XP, Vista, or Win7). Haven't seen them stay there.I got rid of my autogen spiking by installing FPS_Limiter_MAX.DaveIntel Core I7 975 Quadcore OC @ 3.75 Ghz (Air)Asus P6T DLX V2 X58 1366, BD Combo Plextor B310SA6GB (3x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR3 1866C7GTHIS ATI 4890 1GB, Samsung 24", Saitek X-52 ProLogitech Z680 5.1 Speakers, G15 Keyboard, G5 MouseThermaltake Element S Case, Corsair 850HX PSUC: Intel 80GB SSD w/Windows 7 Home 64D: WD 300GB Velocity Raptor w/FSX+Accel+GEX, F4AFE: WD 1TB Caviar Black w/Data SH4

[oliebol 0]

On this site is the sollution for the problem, install it and it's fixed!

http://www.justflight.com/supportfaq/flight-simulator-x#FAQ4

[Jim Young 2,356]

Please do not answer old topics.  These topics have been discussed several times in other topics.  No need to go back several years and answer old questions.  This topic is hereby locked.

 

Jim Young

AVSIM Forum Moderator