geoffco

Not sure how it works in a 737, but in the 717 the fuel / wings are kept warm by heat exchange (and cooling of) engine oil. This in turn reduces the risk of wing surface ice... If I recall correctly from being in the cockpit of a 717 flight, the fuel was at +16C with the TAT being shown at around -30C in cruise at FL360. I asked the same question and the captain explained how the systems are integrated to make use of the heat! Geoff

That's worth a try! I just successfully removed the problems I've been seeing by converting the tree textures to DXT1 with alpha... I'm sure I tried that before but obviously didn't check carefully enough! Still got the main trees as DXT3 and see no issues with them... Geoff

Yes, the object would have to be replaced with one that has seasonal textures... Fine without though as most of the time I fly high enough not to notice and then when lower down I have other things to be concentrating on Added the shard at the same time. To be honest, that's what finally made me get the rest of London to a good state... One thing though, the red lights on the shard texture are way too big. I removed them in my sim as a quick fix. Also, based on photos I've seen, the night texture should have more purple lighting? Geoff

Ok, thanks. I'll stop poking at it and just fly the sim Geoff

You shouldn't be too reliant on those landing rate calculators. I run a VA and we use FSAcars - does much the same as kacars - and the readout of the landing rate can be influenced strongly by the frame rate in the sim or any stuttering on touchdown... I have noticed that I get 'heavier' landings or strange numbers (like positive fpm touchdown) if the sim is struggling... Still usually get -50 to -150 fpm for most landings. Getting the configuration and speed right is the key, then flare should be easy enough if you pay attention to the RA / call outs... Geoff

Hi folks, Anyone here using the Visual Flight London VFR package? I'm sure I have seen screenshots of this scenery where the trees change texture with the seasons... However, in my new install they are really rather too green and leafy for the time of year. Is there a fix out there or have I just seen some picture of a funky new FSX version or something and got confused? Happy enough if there is no fix but would like to know if there is... PS. Took long enough to fix the autogen exclude problems (replaced with the exclude from the free London VFR Landmarks) and the misaligned Thames (removed the 'align to default' VTP files) but now really does look rather good over London! Geoff

I see this too, although only on trees that are 'planted' by addon scenery, and only in certain light conditions... Also momentarily when 'new' autogen trees are loading I see it on 'default' trees. I have tried a lot of messing about with alpha channels and re-building the mip images etc but while I have got it looking better it doesn't fix it! I just live with it and don't look too close! Geoff

My experience is with FS9 rather than FSX, but perhaps it still applies... -> I use RadeonPro (beta from guru3d forum) as it gives access to tweaks that are not easy to get from CCC. You will still need the CCC to set up eyefinity but after that I uninstall it and set everything with RP. -> on windows 7 x64 ultimate, I have found the catalyst 12.10 to be unstable in and out of FS. 12.11 beta6 is good. The other beta versions have bad gauge fickering (for me). Good luck. With a bit of tweaking etc I have my sim running better with my 7970 than it ever did with my previous NV 580 card. Also, eyefinity is pretty sweet! Geoff

This sound like what happens when the following settings are too high: Terrain Default Radius=9.5000 Terrain Extended Radius=4.500 Terrain Extended Levels=4 Those are my current settings and I now see the problem only very rarely. In the past I have experimented with higher settings and this type of tearing and ground scenery gaps was sometimes the result... Also, where in the world are you flying? I know that for me the buffer mesh sorted out a lot of the problem but I still got those issues in Northern Europe (north of 65 degrees) even after installing buffer mesh so I don't think the coverage extends everywhere... Hope this helps. Geoff

I get this sometimes where there is photoscenery, but I have not solved it. I think it is a consequence of having locked frames and the system not being able to deliver enough data per frame. As usual, there is a small price to pay for the advantages of the framelock. I mostly see the problem when descending out of the cloud layer so perhaps it is something to do with the graphics engine using up all its 'energy' making the forward view and cloude look nice and then doesn't have time to deal with the ground scenery..? I have a workaround that is quicker than yours though: go into the keyboard assignments and find 'reload scenery' (or something like that, perhaps it is 'scenery refresh') then assign a key press to that (I use Ctrl-Shift-S). Then when you see the problem, just press the key combination and all the scenery will reload. Geoff

Ran into SweetFX back in mid November and posted about it in my ENB series thread but I guess it didn't get noticed. SweetFX has another added benefit for AMD graphics users which is that you can inject it with RadeonPro - I have found my system to be unstable with any d3d9.dll mods that go in the FS9 folder but with SweetFX injected with RP I am getting great results. (Everything in fullscreen mode) Geoff

Is this what happens with DXT clouds and the render to texture setting unchecked? Just look if you have that unset in the display options. Also, do you have any settings like dynamic weather enabled, which might be trying to access some data that it cannot reach? Geoff

As far as I have found, this is all about the anti-aliasing... With my setup (FS9, Win7x64, AMD7970 gfx and 3840x1200 dualscreen setup) I find that my FPS is dreadful if I use any supersampling AA but actually is fine with adaptive multisampling - I run 8x with edge detect and get 30 FPS most of the time (which is pretty good for 4.6M pixels). I have also found that using the new beta of RadeonPro which allows 1/2 vsync has helped somewhat as well. (I have also noticed that some combinations from REX + Overdrive have a bigger FPS hit than others, even though all are 32-bit and HD quality) Geoff PS.Actually I am finding my AMD card to be better than my previous NV one. It is certainly faster in FS and now that I have ironed out the initial issues, I think the image quality is better as well!

It works absolutely fine. I had problems where the installer would not run from the CD properly but copying the four disks to the HDD was then no problem to install... When it asks for the next disk you just open the relevant folder and click to continue. Of course you will still need the 4th CD for running the program. Or else you'll have to use some other solution that I don't think is allowed to be talked about on this forum, even though I suspect at least 80% of users are doing it..! Geoff

What was the last thing you installed / changed / tweaked before the probLems started? Often it's the culprit... When that message comes up, what module is causing the problem - usually there should be an option to see ,ore details about the problem... If you know what module has a problem, sometimes it can help shed light on what is causing the crashes. As a quick check, because AI is often the problem, try disabling all AI and testing if the problem still happens. If it does not, then you'll need to go through your AI and look for errors. Other common causes of errors and crashes are duplicate AFCAD files, corrupted textures or incorrectly installed landclass. Knowing which module was the cause will help rule some of these out. Good luck! Geoff

I did increase the environment sound slider but did not hear the sounds. However, now I increased it more and suddenly the sounds do play! Looks like somehow there is a cutoff and below 60% on that slider the sounds are not played. Even quietly. Anyway, fixed it now. Thanks. (I do still miss the variety and the spoolup sounds of FSHotSFX though!) Geoff

Yup, my previous setup with nVidia on XP (x64) had no problems using ENB - I had the two screens then too but they were on a TripleHead2Go... The problems now seem to be very much related to Windows7 and/or my AMD GFX card... The FXAA and SMAA blurring I see is on the text and detail in the panels. Scenery seems fine with it turned on... Again, I suspect this might be an Nvidia vs AMD issue due to different driver implementation. Geoff

Sorry, perhaps that was unclear in my post. I have DX11 on my machine but of course it also includes DX9 and DX10 within it. Of course FS9 is not using anything other than DX9 but then in that particular post I was responding to Hans who suggested that by having DX11 on the machine they had encountered issues using a DX9 application. I was simply pointing out that I didn't have that particular flavour of problem... PS. Still no crashes with SweetFX injected through RadeonPro... Geoff

Haha! His sound sets are usually pretty good though (and this did work previously on my XP setup). Geoff

Hi folks, Having moved to Windows 7 x64, I have obviously had to loose FSHotSFX (which really hurts my FS9 experience). To try and improve the situation, I re-downloaded the two packages I used before FSHotSFX: aisnd101.zip AI SOUND ENVIRONMENT Version 1.01for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 © 2005 by Airport Chat Developer Team aisnz.zip Aaron R. Swindle Skysong Soundworks I installed them as per their respective readme files. However, I do not hear any of the sounds when the AI aircraft land! I have confirmed that they are using the effect and the tyre smoke etc does display. I have also confirmed that the sounds are correctly installed. These worked really well before, so I don't understand why they now do not. Can anybody shed light on this. Are there any FS9 / Windows 7 users here that have these sounds installed and working? Also, if you don't use these, what AI sound tweaks are you using? Am I missing a better solution? Thanks, Geoff

Right folks, here is how to get bloom etc in FS9 with an AMD HD graphics card if the other 'normal' methods give CTD... Get SweetFX and install it in it's own folder, not in the FS9 folder. Get yourself a copy of Radeon Pro Beta - the latest build has the ability to integrate SweetFX! (You need to set the SweetFX directory in the RP settings) So far, I have had the best results by setting the main graphics settings on the global level, and then setting the SweetFX parameters in a profile for FS9. My tests so far do not indicate any advantage in using the FXAA or SMAA injectors - they just gave horrible bluring - I will test those some more though... Geoff

Spoke too soon! Now had a couple of CTD with no module name reported... Turns out that the d3d9.dll of SweetFX does not have the proper debug info included, but that is indeed the culprit. Damn. Looks like I cannot use any of the d3d9.dll modifications with this setup. Geoff

Hi Hans, I am using DX11 on my computer but there is no problem on startup - FS9 crashes with d3d9.dll only when viewing the menus, right clicking or exiting with Alt-Tab... So far it's looking good with SweetFX. I completed a short fligth this morning and there was no d3d9.dll crash... Lots of tweaking still to do with the mod though. Geoff

To answer my own question: I went and asked about this on the ENB Series forums and the response was that the mod is probably having difficulties because I am using dual screens. With my previous setup and the Matrox TH2G then that was not an issue as the system was 'seeing' only one screen... Oh well, I guess that means I can't use the bloom mod with AMD Eyefinity! Luckily, I came accross SweetFX - does similar things to the ENB Series mod, although the bloom is not as good (in my opinion). Main point is that it seems to not crash with my system! Further testing to follow! Geoff

Thanks for the info: Those settings give excellent image quality on my system but cannot supply a reasonable framerate with my two screen setup. Also, the FPS is really poor in heavy cloud. So far, I am settling towards using 8x (24x with edge) AA but in adaptive multisample. This gives good quality apart from the edges of trees and that can be solved with mipbias=5. There is now some shimmering but I think I'll live with that (trees and taxiways shimmered on my old NVidia card as well). Geoff