Chip1

Aloha from Hot Kihei,I have been adding FSX buildings and hangers to various scenery I am developing. The problem is that at certain airports hangers and buildings will hover around two feet above the ground. PHNL is a good example. Using ADE I can add a hanger to one location at PHNL and it is perfect, the base is at ground level. A few hundred feet away the same building floats about two feet above the ground. I guess I can plant trees around the base. :( When using instant scenery 2 the problem does not exist with Generic FSX hangers and buildings at all. What is Instant Scenery doing to correct this problem? I've seen this complaint all over blog sites. I've tried to modify the XML and give it a negative altitude of 2 feet with no luck. The compiler will not run if there is a negative value. There must be a way around this but I have so far not hit the end of the rainbow. I checked the entire world and the same problem exists in many airports. Any IDEAS out there would be appreciated.

Hello from the terrain mesh novice! Learning slowly. The FSX mesh is for all of the Hawaiian Islands and the download is located on Simviation. I found it by accident. Here is the location:http://www.simviatio...terrainmesh.htm I see two people on that page who have created Hawaiian Islands Mesh one is by Raimondo Taburet. 63MB and the other is by Lance Tucker. 34.8MB. I tried out the one made by Lance Tucker and it looks excellent. Both are 10 meter mesh. It fixes my "problem" with Kahoolawe. I also gave FSDreamscapes mesh for Hawaii a tryout. I used the mesh that they created for Kahoolawe and kept FSGenesis for the rest of the islands. This seems to work perfectly and again Kahoolawe is now rendered exactly like the rest of the islands. No more complaints. Thanks to all for lessons on terrain mesh. I have been designing scenery for a year or so for FS9 and I now have the design finished for a FSX version of Lanai and Kahoolawe. It is ready to upload to AVSIM FSX Scenery. Like I say I've never had need to add my own terrain mesh but the day may come. It's only when I run into roadblocks with scenery design that I start reading the technical articles by Microsoft. I am finally doing that now on the design of mesh. Chip

Hello Luis,At last I understand what everyone is saying. I got the Microsoft books out on terrain mesh and now at least understand what to expect. I have tried another 10 meter terrain mesh for Kahoolawe and the island remains the same as FS9's version. I have also tried another 5m mesh and it also works. Only the FSGenesis mesh seems to do this. Yes, Justin has been a friend for years and he thinks some low resolution mesh might be near Kahoolawe causing the problem. So far I have not found anything wrong. All of the other Hawaiian Islands show nothing like this one island. I will use alternative 10 meter mesh for Kahoolawe if necessary. No big problem. Chip

Hello Again,I just tried a download of free terrain mesh for the Hawaiian Islands and activated Maui and Kahoolawe, the problem went away and the island is fully rendered at any distance. It must be something that FSGenesis is doing. I may download FSDreamscapes mesh for Hawaii if there is no other way to solve this minor annoyance. It is only nine bucks.

Hello,I've attached some photos of what I see as I approach Kahoolawe. It may not be autogen at all. Possibly the terrain mesh? I'm using FSGenesis for both FS9 and FSX. As the island is approached you can see change take place. From only a couple of miles away there is basically no island other than a sea level terrain and as the island gets closer the terrain is rendered correctly. I have not seen this effect anywhere before at such a short range. Kahoolawe on FS9 remains a fixed island at all times.On the landclass for Lanai I have been totally changing the island to the way it looks to me. I'm there often. I've changed Lanai City to the correct location and shape and added all of the trails and roads that were missing. It's not photo scenery but at least it looks closer to the real island from my subjective view! It no longer looks like New York City around the airport. I used Google Earth and other aids to get close to reality in areas that I have not visited. I have included all the necessary files so you can change things around to your own liking if you have SBuilderX, EZ-Landclass and Airport Design EditorX. I'm going to upload it to AVSIM in a day or so.If you have some idea about the Kahoolawe scenery after seeing the photos I'm very interested. I hope it is not the terrain mesh. Mahalo,Chip

Aloha from Maui, I have been designing scenery for the Island of Lanai and Kahoolawe and am about ready to upload the finished product to AVSIM. I have have not been happy with the way FSX renders Kahoolawe. The entire island seems to be an autogen object unlike the other islands. From all of the Islands Kahoolawe is clearly visible with its mountain peak but due to the autogen it looks as flat as a pancake even from Maui which is only 8 miles away from Kahoolawe. Question: Is there a way to eliminate the autogen so that the island remains like the rest of the non autogen islands.Any help would be very much appreciated.Chip

Hello Darem,Thanks for all of the information. Hey, I have nothing to loose by trying anything after bashing my head against a wall playing with memory and everything else. I think it has something to do with the graphics memory when it is first being loaded. The video you see is created by loading a saved flight on final approach and that is when the problem is the most obvious. If I start up at any airport and just hit F12 and slew to a high altitude and back and take off from the airport no "flashes" are visible at all. The other method is to slew around the area, at first there are the "flashes" and then they stop and do not return and flying is perfect. At least it is a repeatable fix and it must mean the loading of memory or something else that is not so obvious. I have been using Microsoft Flight Simulator since it was first created. I had a Radio Shack TRS_80 with a 1.78 MHz clock and 16 KB of RAM. Flight Simulator was very slow. I have to admit FSX is amazing but getting it working perfectly really is a big job. I'm almost there.I have tried some of the FSX.CFG fixes above over the past month but not every one mentioned. It can't hurt to experiment. I'll back up the CFG file and play around. It would be nice not to have to slew into space and back before using FSX. There is no problem at all on FS9 or any other program. All graphics and memory tests are positive. I also have the latest graphics drivers which helped slightly. I've used Nicks profiles and they work well.This is the youtube video I mentioned, I forgot that I put it on another forum and not here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mVzFlceW_IThanks to everyone for all of your help.Aloha,Chip

Hello from PHOG tonight,I have just gone over to the latest drivers (258.96) for the GTX 4 series and love them. nHancer will not work with the new driver and hope there will be an update soon. The good news is Nick has the profiles that do the same thing as nHancer and I'm using NVIDIA Inspector and GeForce 3D Settings Profile Manager which makes setting the new drivers up very easy. Not as easy as nHancer though. I think the same problem still exists but will have to run more tests. If I find an answer before the next century I'll let you know. I'm looking around for another graphics card so I can eliminate the 480 as a cause of the glitches. I've run memory and graphics tests on everything and can find nothing wrong.Chip

Aloha,I have seen Affinity Mask bounced around the blogs. What are your FSX.CFG settings for AffinityMask. I would greatly appreciate any FSX.CFG information that might help the rendering of graphics or other tweaks that you are using at this time since your system is working. How is the AffinityMask set up for six cores? I will let you know if there is any improvement with the new driver update.Chip

Hello from Kihei. I just installed 258.96 and will set it up as Nick did with the nHancer. I'm also using the the NVIDIA Inspector 1.91 and found access to everything that the nHancer was capable of doing. Almost have everything set for FS9 and FSX. No matter what the minor problems with graphics the GTX 480 and i7 980X are a good match. I have never seen such performance before. In case your interested I will be uploading my redesign of the Island of Lanai soon for FSX. It is a huge improvement over the default.Again thanks for the help.Chip

Hello ...A clear sky at PHOGI gave it a try and no change. One important note: If I slew around over a large area there are many "flashes" like you see and they stop totally after I do that. I then can land at the same airport that you see and there are no artifacts at all. It is as if that when the memory is initially being loaded with the textures that the flashes appear and after it is loaded all works well. If I exit FSX and restart and run the landing from the same position the artifacts return. Interesting. If you are using the same mother board what Bios revision are you using? I'm using revision F5.I am still using the older driver 197.55 for the GTX 480. I have held back because I like using the nHancer and I don't think I had the same "flashing" problem with the i7 930. I guess it is time to upgrade to the latest driver. I have it ready and have the driver sweeper ready to clean things up. If that doesn't work I'll remove the GTX 480 and see if the old 5770 ATI card has the same problem. If it does it may be a system problem. Chip

This is my last post on the topic concerning the GTX 480 and i7 980X. Please take a look at the video and if you have had similar problems with graphics and found a solution I would love to have the answer. My next step is to try another GPU and if no luck change the CPU and memory. You can find the video on you tube at the following: Chip

Hi Vic, I'm somewhat glad to hear others have a similar "problem". In my case I get a number of flashes that are repeatable at certain airports without panning. I was glad to find it repeatable at Lanai City Airport on the South Approach. I now at least can work on the system with a glitch that I know will be there every time. I hate problems that are intermittent. I prefer a good total failure! I was ready to change the GTX 480 with a replacement but since you see the same thing on other graphics cards that sounds like a mistake. I may try under clocking the 480 and see what happens. I may try the i7 930 again as I can't recall seeing the same problems when I was using that CPU. I hope I'm wrong.Chip

I turned off the hyperthreading and no change in the problem. You are correct, because I like nHancer I have not yet upgraded the drivers to the latest versions. I guess I'm up against a wall and will have to do that now. I'll let you know if any change takes place. Thanks much for the help. Chip

Aloha from Maui,I have just upgraded from a i7-930 to the i7-980X and am using the GTX-480 for the graphics and no overclocking at this time. The improvement is is more than I expected with FSX flying now being very smooth with excellent frame rates. The problem I'm having is graphics glitches that happen randomly when landing or flying at low altitudes. The "glitches" seem to be related to autogen scenery activation. Some scenery such as certain runways flash white for a few milliseconds. Groups of trees in rare cases flash white when the autogen trees are activated. When flying at high speeds a few hundred feet above the ground I never see any of the stated problems. When slewing FSX at low altitudes (1500 feet) the "problem" is much worse. I have given FS9 a try over heavy scenery and nothing like this ever happens. I have tested the graphics with Kombuster and the system is perfect. No artifacts. All of Nick's settings for nHancer and Windows 7 64 are set properly. I am using service pack 1 and 2 with Microsoft Acceleration. I also have the FSX Gold Addition waiting to replace the present FSX install if I find no fix. I can't recall having the same problem with the i7-930 but only used it for a short time before going over to the 980X. I was mainly working on scenery design and the same "problems" may have been there. Only FSX seems to have this problem. I don't know what is normal for FSX as I have only been using it for a few months.You can find some photos of the glitches located on the forums Monitors, Video Cards and Drivers. Listed under Graphics Problem with GTX-480 and i7-980XI posted my question on under MOBO, RAM, CPU'S & Other Hardware because I'm wondering if the problems might be related to the hardware I'm using. The MOBO or RAM?Any suggestions would be appreciated.Chip

Hello Bob,Pardon the mistake on the i7-890X, It is a 980X as you may have guessed.Thanks much for the information. No the GPU temps when at low or high temperatures have the same problem. I'm not overclocking the CPU or GPU. I've used MSI's Kombustor graphics stability test program and can find nothing wrong at all. FS9 shows no problems even when slewing through the most dense scenery. I have run other test programs and get no errors. The photos are a bit extreme as the glitches last for around 1 or 2 milliseconds. I'm beginning to wonder of it is the CPU Memory. I'm getting ready to remove FSX as it is SP1 and SP2 with Acceleration. I will reload with the Gold Edition although I'm a bit worried nothing will change.Aloha from PHOG,Chip

I'm very sorry you have a similar problem, it is very strange. I worked on the problem all day and have had some improvements with FSX.CFG modifications that many say do not work. I don't think this problem was there with the i7 930 and I don't think the i7 980X has anything to do with the problem. It may be my memory causing errors. I will keep you informed on my progress. I know there is an answer. There are very few "experts" here on Maui so I'm alone with the problem.

I have been using a i7 930 with a GTX 480 for about a month and the results were excellent. I replaced the i7 930 with a i7 980X and the system seemed to be working very well. I did not give it a real checkout as I was designing scenery for lanai for over a month and not flying very often. I then noticed some odd artifacts in the FSX graphics when slewing. Flashes on the screen and scenery anomalies. I did some standard approaches to airports and would see the graphics problems pop up every so often. Runways lighting up white at auto-gen distances and horizontal and vertical streaks that would flash across the display for a few milliseconds. At other times there is absolutely no problem at all. I rebuilt my FSX.CFG file and checked to be sure Nhancer settings were set up properly following Nicks methods. I've run tests on the GPU and CPU with no errors showing up. FS9 seems to fly perfectly with none of the above problems.I've attached a few photos from FRAPS that show what I see. What you see in the photos are of a few milliseconds duration and obviously do not look as bad as the photos.Any ideas would be appreciated. I may go back to the i7 930 to see if that clears up the problem although the GTX 480 may be the problem

Hello Luis,I can't tell you how grateful I am for your scenery design help. Your system works perfectly. I just turned December into June! I almost fell out of my chair. For years I have wanted to do this for my FS9 scenery in various areas of the world but thought it was impossible. I will use your fix for FS9 and FSX. I used EZ Landclass and painted 3's into the cells that cover Lanai and created the RAW file. The simple way to cover large areas. I may leave the high altitudes alone because we get snow at 10,000 feet in the Winter.Aloha,Chip

Thank you so much for the information. I had absolutely no idea that it was possible to use just one season all year around. Yes, you are right Spring and Summer are each around six months long in Hawaii and there are slight changes for some trees. Not much though. I will try this out. I thought there was no way to do this as I've never seen any write ups like yours.Mahalo,Chip

Aloha from Maui,I have been adding land new class scenery to many Islands around the Pacific for some time and have always run in to problems with Hawaii. Microsoft says Hawaii is in Region H which is tropical . On both FSX and FS9 when the settings for seasons are set to Winter Hawaii changes to a Winter land class. All other seasons look excellent. I have been converting my FS9 designs to FSX and have been making minor modifications to fit FSX land class. I was ready to upload some of the scenery changes when I checked the Winter Season and found the "problem". The land class I created for Lanai is much closer to the real Lanai and the rest of the Islands will also be greatly improved. If anyone knows a way to get around this problem please let me know your secret. I checked Region H in the South Pacific and there is no change when the FSX or FS9 is set to Winter. I can change the Winter textures but that will effect other locations so it probably is a bad idea. The other answer is just skip Winter when flying around Hawaii. The easy way out. That is what I recommended for FS9. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.Chip

What overclocking frequency are you using? Do you leave the overclocking on all of the time or only when you use FSX?I checked out Smart6 and ran some benchmarks using Everest Ultimate Edition and I get huge improvement using those tests.Again, thanks for the advise!