Having Black or White Screens in FSX?

[gman! 1]

If you are having black screens or white screens during or after a flight or when you window with any aircraft, I think I may have found a possible solution, that I know at least works on my PC. Many people after upgrading to Windows Vista or 7 have been getting this wierd problem. The only solution seemed to be to lower your sound quality in Windows or turn down settings etc. This problem does not happen on Windows XP although, and NickN and other people knowledgeable in IT have said it is a memory management problem with later versions of Windows. I do not think its a problem, but rather Microsoft abandoned old methods and went to newer more efficient methods of using memory, and sometimes to go forward, you have to remove old feature that could make programs work properly. I have found that to solve this problem you have decrease your bufferpools instead of increase it. This problem may be common for people for everyone that has service packs on FSX because at the release of FSX the bufferpools value was 1MB and after SP1 it was raised to 4MB by default. I have set my bufferpools to 500,000 bytes (About 500 kilobytes) and my problems went away. I think with the way Windows manages memory now and because of improvements to DirectX, you now longer have to increase memory values, and this might be why when you increase bufferpools you get more graphical anomalies, depending on the amount of memory you have that is. Here is the line of my bufferpools, and remember if your on Vista or Windows 7, and have this problem please try this, if things get better, please spread this info. If it still doesn't give the results you want, keep decreasing it the bufferpools but do not set it to 0 bytes.Here is the line for 500Kb bufferpool:[bufferpools]Poolsize=500000I can confirm this will not decrease performance and in my case actually made things a bit smoother, gained FPS in heavy areas, and I also do not get the "gray" bare 3D models with no textures when switching views with this. Try it, you won't be disappointed I promise :(

[duckbilled 310]

Tried it on a short flight.It does seem smoother and I didn't see a negative impact. I'll have to try it on a longer flight. Replay seemed a lot better with this.I am trying to cure the loss of aircraft textures or scenery textures just before the end of a flight. Many times I also experience a white screen or a black screen after the texture loss. Now if I could just figure out what my sound issue is I will be happy.

[gman! 1]

Tried it on a short flight.It does seem smoother and I didn't see a negative impact. I'll have to try it on a longer flight. Replay seemed a lot better with this.I am trying to cure the loss of aircraft textures or scenery textures just before the end of a flight. Many times I also experience a white screen or a black screen after the texture loss. Now if I could just figure out what my sound issue is I will be happy.

Great! There are some problems with with Windows 7 because of the numerous things they have changed or abandoned from Windows XP/Vista, but if you find all the problems with FSX and Windows 7, you will be extremely satisfied with it. Glad it seems to be improving things so far. :(

[Guest jasonaerts]

I will certainly give this a shot when i get home, as i am experiencing graphical anomolies when panning or changing views and have noticed completely removing buffer pools is better then having any value i tried but none were as low as Kb.Thanks... might be hope for us yet ;)

[Guest jasonaerts]

Setting the low bufferpools seems to have cleared up some things for me :)

[gman! 1]

Setting the low bufferpools seems to have cleared up some things for me :)

Great, looks like more and more people are getting close to their dream of no problems. If you still encounter problems, try decreasing it in steps of 100KBs from 400KB. If it still doesn't work when you reach 100KBs, decrease in steps of 20KBs (80KBs: 80000, 60KBs: 60000, etc) (I have mine @ 300KBs (PoolSize=300000))

[MMartinov 48]

Guys we are on the right track here!I have my Bufferpools lowered in steps to 300,000... Now in busy areas I have constant 20-25 FPS. MEGA Airport Frankfurt by Aerosoft was a No-No area for me before even with the i7 965. Now I have a really smooth experience there. The texture corruption has not occured to me yet at least not on a short flight. Don't know if it will on a long hauls (I don't do longer that 2 hours anyway)great idea GMAN!!!

[gman! 1]

Guys we are on the right track here!I have my Bufferpools lowered in steps to 300,000... Now in busy areas I have constant 20-25 FPS. MEGA Airport Frankfurt by Aerosoft was a No-No area for me before even with the i7 965. Now I have a really smooth experience there. The texture corruption has not occured to me yet at least not on a short flight. Don't know if it will on a long hauls (I don't do longer that 2 hours anyway)great idea GMAN!!!

Thanks for replying. I like this solution as well, because as it prevents black screens for most, it also increases FPS and smoothness on my PC :(.Safe Flights!

[Guest jasonaerts]

Thanks for replying. I like this solution as well, because as it prevents black screens for most, it also increases FPS and smoothness on my PC :(.Safe Flights!

Updated to the latest Nvidia Drivers, deleted and let FSX rebuild my .CFG.... No more black screens and no cfg tweaks @ @ and its running like a dream??? ~So confused.New 196.21 drivers seem to be working better then the 195.62's please try them out and post results

[Guest Heavy_Driver]

To add to your confusion: I have never in 10 years found deleting the fsx.cfg file to help.

[Guest jasonaerts]

To add to your confusion: I have never in 10 years found deleting the fsx.cfg file to help.

That is strange, ive found everytime i have done it that i get significantly faster initial load up times, and an overall more responsive interface.. lol maybe im doing something wrong ;)

[bojote 20]

If it still doesn't give the results you want, keep decreasing it the bufferpools but do not set it to 0 bytes.

Why do you say not to set it to 0? In early 2009 I created a thread where I suggested the use of [bufferPools] PoolSize=0 based on my experience with the Windows 7 BETA, but NickN completely disgeregarded the post as he was the ONLY authority on FSX tweaking. Granted, I use MOST of his suggestions, EXCEPT for the bufferpools one. And, pride its a very hard thing to fight. He will never accept he is wrong when it comes to Win 7 and the way it handles BufferPools. But, who cares.. I mean, I have great performance, I offered the tip and he made me look as some ignorant spreading rumors :) Since then, I have NEVER ever again commented on the issue. However, I do use PoolSize=0 on Windows 7, and its been like that for the past 9 months, (both the BETA and RTM Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate versions) and my FSX stability and performance is second to none. Its very easy to prove.... just get the most scenery intensive products for a single area and do a quick flight. For example, I have Manhattan X and FSDT Kennedy.. both products will kill ANY system, right? and you can not fake it with sliders because manhattan X will still show a huge number of scenery objects.Just picture this scenerio: dusk (with rain and fog) using a Helo over Manhattan X and with FSDT Scenery installed and most sliders at 75%. Add to that, FRAPS to capture a 360 degree fast turn. Fraps imposes a 5-6 FPS hit, I will show you (with fraps) a steady 23-26 FPS scenerio like I just described. and YES, PoolSize=0 period.. If I set bufferpools to ANYTHING other than 0, the sim will stutter like crazy.. my theory? bufferpools is a buffer to store scenery objects that once its filled will swap memory pages using your OWN video card memory and bring it to a grinding halt because your video card memory which is GDDR3 and probably running at 1200-1300 is not low latency and probably SLOWER than most i7 systems DDR3 memory at 1600. Again, you don't have to believe me, nor I expect you to and I really don't care either :) but, I publicly challenge, ANYONE to show me a video over Manhattan X at dusk, with rain captured with fraps with REX2, GEX, UTX, Manhattan X, FSDT's KJFK using DX9 at a steady 24-26 FPS (only exepction is to use DX10 which will mach it regardless of bufferpool setting, as if DX10 totally ignores the PoolSize value)here's the video: (I just created it 5 minutes ago)http://www.venetubo.com/v/16024

[darem 84]

Well, poolsize= 0 doesn't work on my system. Stutters, crackles. 500000 does (and inVista, i had to use 590000000 (not kidding) to NOT have graphical anomalies.(Edit:) 0 seems to work ONLY if I have extremely high AA setings (combined x8 - which has, funny enough, little to no impact on my framerates at 3360x1050, but boy, does it look good :-))

[gman! 1]

Why do you say not to set it to 0? In early 2009 I created a thread where I suggested the use of [bufferPools] PoolSize=0 based on my experience with the Windows 7 BETA, but NickN completely disgeregarded the post as he was the ONLY authority on FSX tweaking. Granted, I use MOST of his suggestions, EXCEPT for the bufferpools one. And, pride its a very hard thing to fight. He will never accept he is wrong when it comes to Win 7 and the way it handles BufferPools. But, who cares.. I mean, I have great performance, I offered the tip and he made me look as some ignorant spreading rumors :) Since then, I have NEVER ever again commented on the issue. However, I do use PoolSize=0 on Windows 7, and its been like that for the past 9 months, (both the BETA and RTM Windows 7 64 Bit Ultimate versions) and my FSX stability and performance is second to none. Its very easy to prove.... just get the most scenery intensive products for a single area and do a quick flight. For example, I have Manhattan X and FSDT Kennedy.. both products will kill ANY system, right? and you can not fake it with sliders because manhattan X will still show a huge number of scenery objects.Just picture this scenerio: dusk (with rain and fog) using a Helo over Manhattan X and with FSDT Scenery installed and most sliders at 75%. Add to that, FRAPS to capture a 360 degree fast turn. Fraps imposes a 5-6 FPS hit, I will show you (with fraps) a steady 23-26 FPS scenerio like I just described. and YES, PoolSize=0 period.. If I set bufferpools to ANYTHING other than 0, the sim will stutter like crazy.. my theory? bufferpools is a buffer to store scenery objects that once its filled will swap memory pages using your OWN video card memory and bring it to a grinding halt because your video card memory which is GDDR3 and probably running at 1200-1300 is not low latency and probably SLOWER than most i7 systems DDR3 memory at 1600. Again, you don't have to believe me, nor I expect you to and I really don't care either :) but, I publicly challenge, ANYONE to show me a video over Manhattan X at dusk, with rain captured with fraps with REX2, GEX, UTX, Manhattan X, FSDT's KJFK using DX9 at a steady 24-26 FPS (only exepction is to use DX10 which will mach it regardless of bufferpool setting, as if DX10 totally ignores the PoolSize value)here's the video: (I just created it 5 minutes ago)http://www.venetubo.com/v/16024

Thanks for replying and asking to the posts above. I agree with you about NickN, he has some good solutions, but he is not the one that created them so he shouldn't be taking too much pride, and he doesn't like to listen to any other tweaks other than his, which is a downside for simmers that may have specific problems, since they will probably look at his guide and possibly not others. I recommended not to set it to 0, because when I was on Vista 64-Bit, setting it to 0 gave very wierd anomolies such as tress stretching, and autogen stretching through my aircraft and such. I have never tried this on Windows 7 though, and I will report back, trying 0 as soon as I come back to you :). The bufferpools line seems unnecessary now due to the new techniques in which system memory is handled and GPU memory is handled (GPU mem can be used in combination with system mem on any card. Start > Run > dxdiag 'OK' > Display > Look @ Amount of Vid Mem). Plus things that you really need will most likely already be in the memory, so you do not have to set aside any memory to store more. I'm thinking the problem with bufferpools and probably why people get the black screens and invisible textures may be due to a memory leak, resulting in textures displaying in a corrupted form, or also because things that stay in memory for too long, with being updated every once in a while, can reduce performance.I like to have a little bit of bufferpools, in the KiloBytes size just so it can store very small textures such as the textures for lighting effects, and other small textures I may not know about.----------------EDIT: Yours and my theory seems to be on the right track!!! I saw a posting in the PMDG forum a while back where someone said when he changed the latency on his system memory, he would not get black screens and texture anomolies anymore. The bufferpools may be swapping system memory with video memory when it becomes full, since Vista and Windows 7 have new memory management where the sys mem can be used for the GPU. If/When this swap occurs, the differences in latency between the video card memory, and system memory could cause be causing textures to render too slowly to display properly in the simulator, causing texture corruption (not to the files). Since the feature to use system memory is not native in XP, this may be why users of XP don't see the problem.The system memory may be slower than your GPU memory, causing the card to wait for textures to be loaded in GPU memory or not loading fully/correctly, or the system memory may be faster than the GPU memory, causing another bufferpools specific bottleneck!Great job everyone, and good luck!

[bojote 20]

EDIT: Yours and my theory seems to be on the right track!!! I saw a posting in the PMDG forum a while back where someone said when he changed the latency on his system memory, he would not get black screens and texture

Gman, check this out, thats what I discovered back then:http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtop...t&p=1566836One thing I would like to make absolutely clear here: The contributions made from NickN to the sim community are absolutely wonderful. I hold the upmost respect for the guy. It just happens that, some times, out setups are very different and what works for some people fail for others, so, having said that there are some things I want to clarify:1) I don't use nHancer.2) I do use the nVidia control panel with the following settings: 8 AF, 4 AA, vsync On, Triple Buffering On all the others are default.3) my FSX.cfg config doesn't have any weird or out of the ordinary setting (except for the PoolSize=0) all others are kind of standard or NickN's suggested settings.4) I fly exclusively Online (VATSIM) with squawqbox, I use FsP, Fly the LevelD in VC w/TrackIR and have REX2, GEX, UTX and some FSDT, Imaginesim and Fly-Tampa sceneries.5) my frames are locked at 26 and they NEVER move from there. Yes, I do have a very high end PC (i7 920 @ 4.2) but even people with my same setup can't achieve the levels of performance that I have.EDIT: Water detail is Max 1.0 (just one notch before the Max) scenery and autogen are set to 'dense', clouds at 70 miles, all other sliders full right.The only way (at least for me) that allowed me to 'confirm' that the PoolSize=0 option was optimal for BufferPools was to create a situation file that was absolutely overkill. For example, at dusk, with fog and rain, using Manhattan X scenery from aerosoft plus FSDT's KJFK in VC using a Helo to make fast and crazy 360 turns. Also, the nVidia drivers play a big role here.. why? well.. back in april 2009, Win 7 BETA was NOT happy w/bufferpool poolsize set to 0. Now, using the latest nVidia Drivers (after september 2009) seem to be very happy with Poolsize=0 so, there is definitely, a memory management issue here... I don't think I'll be adding much more to this post because everytime someone suggests an FSX setting might be beneficial then someone jumps in making fun of you or completely trashing your arguments with baseless counter arguments :) so.. this is a leave or take it advice, I really don't care what your performance is, I like what i have, and I chose to share with the community my findings. what you do with the advice, is up to you... just, don't let pride and prejudice get in the way.. some times, unlearning what you already know is the best way to approach the solution to a problem.Have a good night you all,