Flicker Problem

[Guest tonycrider]

Hi everyone,I've just reinstalled Fly! II after a long absence (not my choice). The machine is new and has the following hardware:ATI Radeon X600 with 256MB3.0GHz Dual Core Intel Proc1GB MemoryI've made the appropriate render.ini changes (Vertex=0) and so forth, but I get this unusual flicker every 3 to 5 seconds. The screen clearly goes black for a fraction of a second and then carries on quite normally. Everything else seems to be working just fine. The problem is more irritating that debilitating and I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue and might have some suggestions on how to cure it.Also, on exit, Fly! crashes with an access violation (exception 5). Again everything works quite normally, but when I click OK to leave the simulator, Windows reports the GPF. I've also just "ordered" the ROTW DVD. When it arrives, I intend to use their installer and see if that makes a difference.In the meantime, any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.Cheers, TC

[Guest tonyc]

Welcome back, Tony. It's not the same problem as yours, but it started when I went from an FX5600 to an FX6600. FLy2 would lock up after a few seconds or the screen would flicker from texture corruption. MSFS was worse.I kept on installing and unistalling every conceivable video driver, AGP GArt and all versions of Nvidia drivers. Nothing. The blue screen of death would always show the nd4.dll driver as the culpit. I no longer had the fx5600, so I purchased a used fx 5950. Still the same problems.Then one day I decided, as part of my troubleshooting by the elimination process, to remove one of the two 512 meg memory chips . both programs have become stable again. With some motherboards, the GART driver has been an issue for both ATI and Nvidia. In my case, it was the memory and how it interacted with the new video card drivers and graphic intensive games....tony

[RandallR 444]

It certainly sounds like a driver issue, though other things can be the cause.Tony, one thing that may be necessary in your case is to use the original drivers from TRI. When you install all of the updates and patches, the first drivers are overwritten with updated drivers for nVidia chips. These nVidia-compatible driver updates are not always compatible with non-nVidia cards. I don't normally recommend complete reinstalls, but it may be worth it in this case.If you decide to try it, do the following:1. Uninstall Fly!II completely - including erasing of the directories and the removal of any notations in the registry. Defrag.2. Reinstall the original Fly!II.3. Copy the tridx*.dll files from the Fly!II root directory to a safe place.4. Now install all of the patches, following the FAQ procedures - these will overwrite the video dlls.5. Set the new dlls aside and move the original video files back in. Make sure vertex=0, etc., and boot her up.Good luck!

[Guest tonyc]

that's interesting, Randall. Initially, it was the problem with fs2004. Texture corruption would reach a point when the program would crash. As I changed many drivers, it began to impact FLY2 as well. Since all of this had started with the introduction of a new video card, I thought for sure that it was video /gart driver related. I even went to an ATI 9800 , but I returned it because it failed as well. Misteriously, having gone from 2 different 512meg ram modules to one has stabilized both games. No lock ups and no weird texture corruption.... My motherboard is an A7n8x and several forums have pointed to some incompatibilities ....I spent too much time to even want to find out. I can , however, try putting the second ram module back and see if the problems reappear again.....tony

[RandallR 444]

Interesting - if you're satisfied with current operations without the extra 512 RAM, then maybe stick with it. I've got a new system I'm putting together right now (with 1GB RAM) and you guys are beginning to scare me...

[Guest Colins2]

Hi Tony,I also had a problem with an ASUS mobo.I think mine was the same model but I no longer have it.It was the deluxe version anyway with lots of built-in extras.It was fine at first and I was very impressed.Gradually, things stopped working; first one lan port, then the other.Then a processor fried on me..............I tried the same as you, re-installing drivers etc. but still had problems.Then Fly! started flickering on me just as you describe.Every other program I use was fine, it was just Fly! that suffered.On my other machine, Fly! was fine. (I have Fly! installed on a portable HD)In the end, I bought an ultra-cheap mobo as a stop-gap until I can afford to move to a 64bit platform. It has the same RAM installed and the same processor, video card, lan card etc. but it works just fine :-)I also have 1GB RAM installed.Maybe it was the combination of mobo and memory that was the (Fly!) problem?CheersColin

[Guest chezz]

Tony,we have the same motherboard ASUS A7N8XE and i used to have ATI 9800 all-in-wonder unitl it finally stop functioning after 2 years of use and now I am using ATI x800 xl with a 2Gig of memory and no problem here at all I'm using the latest ATI catalyst driver.hope you sorted things out.chris_CA