Hi All:One of the inquiring fellows over at the SimFlight FSX Forum has identified a strange phenomenon on his copy of FSX involving "image_globe_xx.bgl" files which appear scenery and stutter related, occurring every 60 seconds; be the first one on your block to help us figure it out!!!;-) see: http://forums.simflight.com/viewtopic.php?p=351736#351736GaryGB

Hello Gary,There is no mystery about the image_globe.bgl - it is just the basic texture that is displayed when the ground is too distant and the default ground textures would not be distinct (or pretty) enough.If Jon has stutters, and if anyone else can confirm that they are having the same problem (which would be extremely important before we start to jump at this problem), then perhaps he should comment on the amount of terrain load in his display settings and the type of flight that he is making.To see image_globe displayed, one would either have to be flying at very, very high altitudes and/or have set LOD radius to a higher value than the settings maximum, I imagine.I could be wrong, but Jon simply does not provide enough information for a reasonable diagnosis.Anyway, the thing to do is for other people to launch FileMon and see if their image_globe is loading as well and if they also get stutters at that moment, and if removing the file cures it. Of course, knowing system specs, settings, and flight situation will help to understand all this.Best regards.Luis

Hi Luis:Thank you for your valuable insights and suggestions on this!:-)As regards the prospect of removing the global texture(s), I believe JonP wrote that when he temporarily removed the *global*.bgl files, after an autopilot flight "the sim fell over after about 15 minutes with a memory instruction error".That seemed like it might be a new FSX twist on the "CTD" (which we have seen in other FS versions) that results from a texture tile not being found when needed by the sim.JonP had recently been working on a freeware weather utility for FSX which likely often had him viewing things at higher altitudes. Because of this, I'm wondering if there is a way that he might have set a custom view onto the context menu accessible by right clicking the screen during a flight which might compel FSX to pre-fetch textures for the "Top-Down" or other high altitude views if it has been "cued" via a custom view (or just by toggling it via the menu and then cycling views back to the more often used "spot" or "cockpit" views).Or worse yet, maybe the sim is "remembering" where one was just flying and is still trying to cache old information (just in case one might fly back there or look back there) with a resulting system hit somewhat like the bug we saw in FS9 that was (partially?) fixed with the 9.1 patch.Yet another (possibly far fetched?) idea I had, not knowing much about the meteorological innards of FS much less FSX, was: maybe there is a different coordinate system used for tracking 3-D cloud masses and weather at various altitudes distinct from that used for tracking aircraft position which periodically refreshes data used for weather display?An interesting scenario, isn't it?:-rollHopefully it could be solved by something as easy as keeping view menus at default "aircraft proximity only" settings.Thanks again for any further input on this phenomenon!GaryGB

Has anyone ever followed up on this problem? Not to mention found a solution? It never bothered me until SP1, where it seems the FPS drop has become more pronounced.Flying over water at high altitudes, for example, I get 50-60 fps which drop to 5-8 for a second every time a image_globe file is accessed (according to filemon). Very annoying. Less annoying with unlocked frames, but then textures don't load too well over land. ==Marten:Weber==P-D920 oc3.64MHz 2GB RAM WinXP ATI X1900+1024MB 2xSATA250 2xVIEWSONIC 19"Best AI available today: www.world-of-ai.com