geoffco

Hi! I have been using the enb series mod in FS9 for years now, but since reinstalling onto a windows 7 setup I have not been able to get it running! Due to some pretty awful panel flickering I moved from a NVidia to an ATI card but the bloom problem was there with both cards... The problem is specifically a CTD with d3d9.dll as the faulting module when either; entering the menus, right clicking to change a veiw property, opening the kneeboard or dropping out to windows - whether it crashes seeme to be fairly random, but at a AI filled airport when there is plenty of 'work' for the system, I can get it to crash reliably with the kneeboard. I have checked and I am using the dll that is available in REX forums, so it's one that is known for FS. I have not got any MSI afterburner software (a known incompatibility) Currently running without the mod enabled but I would quite like to get it back, so any advice on what to check or try would be great... Geoff

Outstanding! Great to see this updated and for us FS9 folks too!! Geoff

Fair enough. I have most of my issues fixed now anyway so I will post the answers here myself once I finish my testing of the other settings... Geoff

So, there is nobody active on the forum here with an AMD card who is prepared to share their settings...? Interesting, but I don't believe there are no AMD users here. This thread is not a complaint or frustrated winge, I am simply asking for other users experiences and settings... PS. For the sceptics, I know that NVidia is better for FS but they do not seem to be able to release a card that can run single card to multi-screenlike EyeFinity. I would need a second card (no space and also too costly) and a third screen (no space for that either, considering my current two are 28"). My NV card and TripleHead2Go simply did not work properly in FS - I spent about a week trying everything I could think of but the combination is simply not playing nice with the rest of my setup. If I thought a NV card could work on my system, I would buy it right now (ok, perhaps next month at this rate of throwing money at FS!) Geoff

This is probably a different effect, but if you are usng the ENB bloom modification, there is a delay setting in there that can cause a lag when switching views... Geoff

The times that I have had a fe.dll ctd it has been a corrupt AI texture. Since it could be just one aircraft livery, you might not see it very often (ie at another airport even with way more traffic) but the continued crashing at the same position makes me suspect that. What to do: go through any AI and see what aircraft are on the airport when the crash happens - get ACA2005 and use the timetabe feature if you don't have it already... Then try and isolate which is the offending aircraft and replace it's textures. You could also think about trying to go through looking for a bmp file with an odd size, but that has never had any mileage for me! Good luck! Geoff

Hi folks, Until recently I had an Nvidia GTX 580 card running dual monitors through a TripleHead2Go, but when I moved from Windows XP x64 to Windows 7 x64 I could not get them working at all well. My panels constantly flickered and the texture loading rate was incredibly slow, even after endless tweaking ang driver testing. I don't know whether it was the NV card or the TH2G that was causing the problems, but anyway I got fed up and bought an AMD HD 7970 card instead. As an additional advantage I can now use EyeFinity for my screens rather than the TH2G so that reduces the clutter a bit as well... I am using the beta 12.11 drivers because I was seeing problems in windows with the 12.10 (freezing with a black and grey striped screen) - actually those drivers were quite good in FS9. The alternative of the 12.3 drivers gave less good performance. So, as a long time Nvidia user, I am not sure about the best settings for the AMD card... I assume the settings in FS should be the same - ie. AA off and mips to default (4) or higher. On the CCC control panel, I have the following: Anti-Aliasing: Override application settings Level: 8X Samples: 24X Filter: Edge-detect Anisotropic Filtering: Override application settings Per-pixel samples: 16X (In FS I have set trilinear) Morphological Filtering: Disabled (This makes everything blurry if I use it) Tesselation: AMD optimized (guess this has no effect in FS) Texture Filtering Quality: High Quality Surface Format Optimization: Enabled (guess this has no effect in FS) Wait for Vertical Refresh: Always on Anti-Aliasing Mode: Adaptive Multi-sample AA OpenGL Settings: Triple Buffering: Enabled Is this how I sould be setting it up or has someone got some good tips as to which settings are good with these newer drivers? By experimentation with AA vs performance, I see the following issues depending on what I use: Multi-sample AA -> Good performance but poor quality (can use full settings) Adaptive Multi-sample AA -> Reasonable FPS performance (I can use the 8X setting ok) but there is a problem with seeing glowing edges around transparent parts of, for example, autogen trees - this is not related to the mip setting if FS9.cfg, I have checked. Also, there is a fair amount of shimmering. Super-sample AA -> Poor FPS performance (even 4X is quite slow) but the problem with tree textures is gone. However, there is a new issue which is that any 'line' textures - like roadways on the airport tarmac - are really badly 'cut up' and not anti-aliased bery well. There is also a lot of shimmer. Ideally I would want something in between the adaptive MS and the SS AA, but I guess there is no such mode... I think for now I will live with glowing trees but any tips would be appreciated! Cheers, Geoff

Yeah, I did wonder about that, but as far as I can tell, the only data stored in the sound section is the positions of the faders (volumes for the different sound types), the sound quality level, and a master 'on or off' value... I think the issue has something to do with the fact that in modern systems on Windows 7 the directsound is software emulated and therefore prone to interference... At least that would explain why it sounds like hell when run with all the rest of Windows still active, but works better when the extra services etc are all shut down. Geoff

Well, it's been a journey the last few days getting this fixed, but I think I have it now. For the mouse cursor, yes I have read (and observed) that a right click and then left click somewhere that those clicks have no function will solve the problem temporarily. It's not a big deal and I think I'll just get used to it. For the fs9.cfg setting of texture bandwidth, the 'lore' for fs9 has always been to set either 200-400 or set around 80-100 with a locked framerate and a texturemaxload variable of 6-8 - there was a blog about it from one of the FS developers a long while ago. Anyway, the bottom line is that this part is very different from the way FSX handles things. I also rebuilt the cfg and all the scenery.dat files etc etc as well as checking all drivs and DirectX were as they should be... In the end, I just got £300 worth of pi$$ed off and bought myself an AMD Radeon HD 7970 card. That eliminated the flickering panel and the poor performance very rapidly and by using eyefinity I can also remove the TripleHead2Go from the equation (which may, in the end, have been the real villain here). That seemed all good but then I kept having random freezes with the latest drivers in non 3D applications and in FS9 the ATC and ATIS sounds were completely screwed up. I have totally reinstalled the ASUS sound drivers and then the latest beta drivers from AMD for the graphics card and now it's good to go. One remaining bug is that the ATC voice has a funny echo sometimes, like it is being played slightly too fast, but this does not seem to happen much when I run FS9 with an aggressive AlacrityPC profile to kill off services etc. Hopefully now I change actually get on and fly the damn thing - it's been about two weeks of installing and tweaking so far! Probably it will just CTD or freeze mid flight next. Fun... PS. Yes, if someone with the relevant powers thinks this would do better in the FS9 forum then by all means move it. Otherwise, I will post any further specific questions there or on the hardware board. Geoff

Hi folks, Please can somebody help me with these issues... I just finished reinstalling my whole FS9 setup in Windows 7 x64 and almost everything is working as it should. However, there are a couple of problems that I have not been able to solve. 1) When I switch views, the time for all textures to load up is really slow. I have set the FS9.cfg variable to TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 but this seems to make no difference. 2) My 2D panel is riddled with flickering problems. Seems to be only on XML gauges or overlays, but there are plenty of those in my setup so it's really annoying. I have checked, and the flicker is also present in the default FS9 GPS gauge. 3) The mouse cursor turns black. I see that this is a known problem but I have yet to see a fix for it anywhere? 4) When pressing ALT to view a menu, the screen goes black for a second or so before actually showing the menu. Of these, the second two are not really that important, but the texture loading and the flicker are really annoying and I need to get them fixed before I can start flying again! I am running a 3840x1200 resolution through a TripleHead2Go and only in fullscreen mode. My system is in the Avsim profile and all drivers are the latest, freshly downloaded from the vendors etc. I have a feeling that the problem is something to do with the DirectX settings, but I don't know how I can check that. Dxdiag says everything is fine but that's the integrated DX11... In terms of things I've already tried, the UAC is turned off, the errors are present even with only default planes / scenery etc, the sim is installed in it's own drive. I have tried reinstalling DirectX from the June2010 redistributable and this always seems to find files to update, but there is no difference to the problems! Thanks for any help or advice. Geoff

I take it that there is no movement on this or likelyhood that a replacement will be made - that's a huge shame. I wonder what the difficulty is with this - I guess something with Windows rather than the FS9/FSUIPC side of things, since the concept in XP seems quite simple (or perhaps it's actually very complex, what do I know!)... I never got a proper answer to my question of whether FSHotSFX could be run on a separate XP box with WideFS (then feed the sound output into a sound 'in' on the FS9 pc) - I guess not as it would have been done by now? Suppose it would read the AI but then the AI blast details wouldn't be communicated... Having finally given up and decided to move to Windows7 from XP x64, I am looking for ways to make the AI sound as good as possible without FSHotSFX :( ... I guess I'll just go back to binding reverser sounds to touchdown effects (like I did before many years ago) and stick my fingers in my ears if I see any AI spooling up for takeoff! Geoff

Fair enough. That's how a lot of tweaks are done in FS after all ;) Had a look at the idle thrust curve and tweaked it so that the aircraft nicely holds about 18kts in idle (medium weight on concrete surface*) *Although all the main runway surfaces are the same friction in my Sim1.dll anyway Thanks for the tip. Geoff

Interesting. I have been using a modified Sim1.dll for some time (I edited it myself following some instructions from another forum) but have not tried also editing the air file... What change do you recommend for the idle thrust factor? I have set about a 10% increase just now but not yet tested it... Geoff

Yes, it works well under XPx64. This is just about the last sticking point as to why I don't upgrade to Windows7 x64... I hope somebody will develop something! The kickstarter idea might work - if a developer (with at least some demonstrable experience) took on the project I would be happy to pre-pay towards the software and I would guess quite a few of us here would do so too... Geoff Geoff

Wow! I didn't realise that was possible for somebody unqualified to control on IVAO - I suppose I have just always been in division controlled areas! I have only had god experiences with the professionalism of IVAO ATC. Occasionally, you will get someone who is being trained and is under direct supervision. In this case, the person doing the training will often put out a private message explaining that and encouraging patience...Geoff

Well, look at that! :( I was still on v1.50.11 and it wasn't there in that version. That's a very useful feature to have - good news!Geoff

Unfortunately I think this is only in the FSX version of ADE ? (I do have a ProKey so that's not the issue)...Geoff

Hi Abe,I'm not able to access my FS PC for a few days as I am travelling, but basically yes, the generated BGL file goes in a scenery folder that is activated and does not require a texture folder. The RWY12 BGL is just a 'map' to tell the sim to place objects from the Static Objects Library. This does have to be in the scenery library (perhaps it has to be below the new created scenery?) and does have both a 'scenery' and a 'texture' folder, since it's there that the actual object models reside... Hope that helps.PS. When I downloaded RWY12 (a good while ago) it did come with enough documentation to make all this fairly clear : http://www.rwy12.com/rwy12/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=7Good luck with it!Geoff

I have RWY12 in FS9 and have had it for several years. The static objects library is added as a separate scenery layer within added scenery, then the program itself is outside of the FS directory. After compiling the bgl files in the program, I usually move them into their own scenery folder and activate as normal, or I add the bgl to an existing folder if I am just enhancing some other scenery... Works just fine though in all situations.I have no experience of using it with FSX.Geoff

Hmm, I suspect it is not so simple as that. The UT bgl files probably exclude any default autogen on the roads which would, of course, include these lights. It surprises me that this idea for moving lights has not been more widely applied in packages like UT etc...Geoff

Looks like it is working with default scenery / roads data only... I have UT Europe and in Europe I cannot see the effect anywhere, even in the major cities. However, in the US where I have no custom scenery the effect is working and looks rather nice. It would be really nice to get this to work in the UT roads as well, but I don't know if that will be possible!Geoff

I'll have another look... Good if it is a subtle effect. I was worried it would be too much....Geoff I'll have another look... Good if it is a subtle effect. I was worried it would be too much....Geoff

Well, I tried installing it into the folders as laid out in the download - the bgl into scenery/generic/scenery the XML file into the autogen folder and the terrain.cfg into the FS9 root.... It doesn't work though so any ideas appreciated.Geoff

Can't help you directly, other than to say just open the aircraft.cfg and find the lights section. Tweak the coordinates*, save the cfg file and then re-load the aircraft in FS... Repeat as needed - I have done this for many many aircraft ;)* Light coordinates are like this: light.xx, [type of light],[lengthways coordinate +ve is fwd],[sideways],[up and down +ve is up],effect_nameAs for the flashing, that will be the beacon light reflecting in / on the VC surface. I don't think the advantage in using the shockwave beacon outweights this problem when it occurs so perhaps for those just revert back to the 'standard' beacon effect in your original aircraft.cfg.Geoff

Does this actually work? Anyone managed it... I had a quick look but saw nothing so I wonder if it is region specific? Or perhaps it is only working with roads in default scenery?Geoff