Graphics corruption in FSX - (UPDATE: possible solution found!)

[Scott434 12]

TomThe question is: removing sound.dll fixes the problem? The answer in my case is NO.

It would really help to add your system specs/environment to your posts/signatures so it is easier to correlate problems, fixes etc. Without this imporant info it is near impossible to get a handle of what combination of hardware, OS and add-ons are causing/fixing what problems. Thanks!!

[Tigh 6]

I disabled the sound.dll and loaded up the MD-11 in a situation where I know I will get missing textures (Situation 4). There was no difference and sure enough I ended up with a skeleton aircraft on switching to Locked Spot.However, I think you we are on the right track here. My current work around for complex aircraft is this:-Launch the Sim in the default trike, go to an outside view to load the textures cache (to get rid of the graphical spiking). Go back to virtual cockpit and load the aircraft of my choice (either PMDG MD-11 or FSLabs Conc normally). I can then go into menus to load a panel state, go to outside views, etc. and all seems to be well. I am not testing to destruction however, just doing all the normal things I would do to set up a flight.What this suggests to me (as a layman) is that somewhere we are overloading the system, we're trying to push textures through a "tube" that's just too thin and we're loosing some. By first loading up my scenery (UK2K or Aerosoft airports) and then loading up the complex addon aircraft I am introducing the textures in two stages and not flooding the machine. The sound.dll fix might just be reducing the stress on the system and not be the root cause of the problem itself.Another thing to note (and perhaps test) is where I experience these problems. I never see these problems outside Europe and I believe that is both because of the structure of FSX and the fact I have many scenery addons in Europe that stress the machine. In the States or Asia I never see this problem with any aircraft even spawning into it straight from the menu screen because I'm not stressing the machine so much.My machine specs: Asus P5Q Pro (RealTek ALC1200), E8600@4Ghz, 4Gb RAM, GTS250 1Gb, Vista 64.FSX Accel, Scenery Tech, GEX, UTX, FTX, REX2.0, ASE, GenX, UK2K EGLL, EGKK, EGSS, EGCC, VFR1+2, Aerosoft EDDH, EDDF, EDDK, FSDT LSGG, LSZH, KORD, KJFK;Real Air SF260, Duke, PMDG MD-11, FSLabs ConcordeX.Regards,Dan Parkin.

[Guest 413X3]

I would suggest everyone with problems even after removing the sound dll also remove the fsx.cfg file and possibly even uninstall and remove all pmdg extra things, then do a clean reinstall. disable the sound dll, and try again

[EvgenyK 0]

Ryan,Just a side comment: I've never seen PMDG asking people to share CTD dumps with you. Why wouldn't think about it? It is extremely powerfull tool in case you can't reach machine with a debugger. You will be able to see stack, heap, and other memory and process related things. You can also ask people to create dumps manually, in case issue is not causing CTD, this can be done by simple right click on the process in task manager, so it won't be hard for the customers.The only question is how to share dumps, because usually those are really huge (equal to process size in memory), so even zipping those will produce ernomously sized files.

[F.Schmid 0]

It would really help to add your system specs/environment to your posts/signatures so it is easier to correlate problems, fixes etc. Without this imporant info it is near impossible to get a handle of what combination of hardware, OS and add-ons are causing/fixing what problems. Thanks!!

I have posted my system specs a few msgs up here. But, no problem. Here it goes again:WinXP SP3 32 bitsMoBo - Intel dp35dp (http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/motherboards/dp35dp/dp35dp-overview.htm)Core2Duo E6750@2.66 GHz2GB RAMNVidia GeForce GTX275 896MB (http://www.nvidia.com.br/object/product_geforce_gtx_275_br.html)Chipset Intel P35 Express (http://www.intel.com/Products/Desktop/Chipsets/P35/P35-overview.htm)Audio onboard: Intel High Definition Audio (http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/hdaudio.htm)RegardsSchmid

[Guest 413X3]

If you still suffer this issue then your OS being 32bit would probably be the weakest link imo. And the only 2gb ram

[dazz 69]

I copied that dll into my FSX root folder but it keeps crashing :(No skeleton a/c with my JS41 thoughSpecs:Asus EVO M4A785TD-MAMD Phenom II X4 965 O.C. 3.8GHz8Gb DDR3 Corsair dominator @ 1600Dedicated 300Gb Western Digital Velociraptor1Tb Western Digital 7200rpm 32Mb cache

[Tabs 2,790]

Ryan,Just a side comment: I've never seen PMDG asking people to share CTD dumps with you. Why wouldn't think about it? It is extremely powerfull tool in case you can't reach machine with a debugger. You will be able to see stack, heap, and other memory and process related things. You can also ask people to create dumps manually, in case issue is not causing CTD, this can be done by simple right click on the process in task manager, so it won't be hard for the customers.The only question is how to share dumps, because usually those are really huge (equal to process size in memory), so even zipping those will produce ernomously sized files.

They might have something to say to one of the people who actually programmed FSX, but that's not the type of programming we're doing here... It's largely meaningless when even we don't fully understand how the sim works at the core with respect to this kind of graphics thing. If it was a crash happening within PMDG code, then sure, but that isn't what this is.

[HUSSAR 262]

Just completed a 12hour 48 min flight from Auckland to Vancouver, the only issue this time which I have not seen before is the displays are not refreshed unless I cycled through the VC camera views with the A key. The "zoomed" version when opening with a mouse click are fine though.My CPU and GPU temps seem high as they are hovering around 56

[Guest Shockwave]

I have been following this thread for some time while building my FSX rig (see sig). What interests me is the posts that claim that moving back to XP64 on the SAME hardware virtually eliminates the particular problems that are the topic of this thread.Can those of you that have moved back to XP64 from Win 7 on the same hardware respond with a description of your system and add-ons? Also, if anyone is running a dual boot config with XP64 and Win7x64 comment on which dual boot utility you are using? Thanks!At this point in time, I am thinking about the dual boot route since I want to fly more than I want to bang bits.

ASUS P6X58 - I7-920-DO @ 4.4 - 12Gb 2000-8-8-8-24 - 285GTX-1GB - Creative Fatal1ty Pro Audio - Dell 2408WFPI had installed Win7-Ult-64 clean for months and then installed XP64SP2 on second partion just recently. I am Using the Win7 Bootloader fro dual booting, however had to use the WIn7 Disc and re set the Win7 bootloader for Win7 as it gets corupted by the XP install as normal when instaling an older OS after a newer one, then used EasyBCD beta 2.0 from within Win7 to automaticly do all the settings for the dual boot, it finds the XP install and coppies all relavant ntldr files and paths..was a snap. Dual Boot menu comes up and I can pick either one, or it defaults to Win7 after some many seconds.I have Tons of add-ons like FSDT JFK/KORD, ManhattenX, Orbex-PNW etc that break FSX on WIN7 along with complex Aircraft use and high settings use. Still building my new FSX-XP, it is upto SP2/Acceleration and now adding all the addons back. My Win7 FSX install remains intact so I can test side by side.I encouurage everyone to complain to MS over what seems to be a WDDM issue in both Vista/Win7 or this may be the final bullet that kills our game.

[Capt Lalle 0]

I encouurage everyone to complain to MS over what seems to be a WDDM issue in both Vista/Win7 or this may be the final bullet that kills our game.

I've said this several times in different posts but noone believes it.The "sound fix" doesn't eliminates the problems it only helps in not overloading the system so fast.FSX has reached it's limits with highend addons using massive video memory, it's no 64 bit application with endless virtual address space.

[Guest Shockwave]

I've said this several times in different posts but noone believes it.The "sound fix" doesn't eliminates the problems it only helps in not overloading the system so fast.FSX has reached it's limits with highend addons using massive video memory, it's no 64 bit application with endless virtual address space.

I agree with your statment about the "sound fix", its the same as the other so called "fixes" just as you state, however I do not beleive that it is about FSX reaching it's limits (It is Limits, but it is a limit that should not be there) As others have suggested I am led to believe it is a problem with the WDDM of Win7/Vista.IF you use something like Process Explorer to watch actual usage all of these symtoms can be reproduced at various sizes of ram usage and all below the address limit for 32 bit applications. Also as I test so far your theory doesn't explain why under XP64 the problem dosnt seem to manifest itself. I have tested this all to the point of actually running out of ram, and when that happens without the other odd symptoms you get a "FSX has run out of system Memory and must be shut down" error measage, not just a Black Screen.For instance BP=4mb With a max scenario loaded up to eat up the ram we can make FSX.exe grow to 2.6-3.0GB ram usage, or put in a BP of 500MB and under the same max scenario watch it grow the same @ 3.1-3.5GB, but in either case we can duplicate all the same symtoms of Video corruption and Black screens all at various stages of actual ram usage.

[bojote 20]

* SOLVED! *I was planning to write a new post, but due to Ryan being so kind to 'follow up' on this thread, I guess my best contribution is to post here for others benefit. I'm 110% confident, that this 'solves' the Dissapearing/Skeleton VC Textures, I'm also confident that this will get me on the 737 Beta Team :)You can start by adding this in the [GRAPHICS] section of your fsx.cfg file. also, the 'theory' about sound, is partially correct, it was totally on track on what (part) of the problem was... :) the 'sound' plays a huge role here.. specially, the sampling rate.[GRAPHICS]SHADER_CACHE_VERSION=1 // it 're-builds' the Shader Cache (good to do on every fsx.cfg change) just enter a random number (versioning)HIGHMEMFIX=1STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647 // (2048 megabytes)[Display]TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 // Default is 40 (made 10x faster so we dont end up filling the stale buffer which is also used by the sound card)TextureMaxLoad=30 // Default is 3 (same as above, we need to make video texture transfers *fast* so it won't affect low latency devices)[sOUND]SOUND=1SOUND_QUALITY=2SOUND_LOD=0Also, make sure the sampling rate/quality, for your 'sound card' is set to the 44100 sampling rate (CD Quality) you change this in your Sound Control Panel. 44100Hz is the format used for most .wav files in FSX, when a 'wav' needs re-sampling it takes 'time' which you can't afford to loose in our case. I know some of you have never seen 'some' of the above settings ever, but if any of you guys (reading) are ex-MS employees or were involved with the development, you can confirm to the group what I'm saying ;) you can Ask Rafael Cintron (and no, he was not kind enough to give me the info, I had to spend DAYS reading HEX codes to figure this out) the root cause of the problem is a DPC latency issue + stale buffer saturation with the Video and Sound card in your system, the above settings 'balance' things so both play well together. For those that used my 'shader tweak' you can forget about it... you don't need it anymore after this, also ALL FS2004 ported A/C work with no problems. The only 'caveat' is that now, ANYTIME a texture object or building 'dissapears' you'll get an application crash in the FSX API.dll module when you switch windows, thats NOT bad, it just means, you have now a WARNING! I'll provide aditional info when enough people test this solution, this is ONLY TESTED on Windows 7 64-Bit and FSX with SP2 installed. (don't know if it works for acceleration, SP1 or RTM) have not yet tested under Vista or XPone more thing.. this is NOT the solution to the 'black screens' caused by Windows TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) that problem is caused for OTHER reasons I've mentioned in other posts that nobody seems to read or believe (its due to the command buffer being flushed, for excessive ammount of draw calls made to the D3D API and the video card not being able to keep up reading the ring buffer fast enough) also, this is NOT related to 'mouse clicking' the VC and getting and error, that is yet ANOTHER error... (the one people fix with UIAutomationCore.dll) Enjoy people... and remember, *IF* you get an API.dll crash, don't worry... this solution can be tweaked to your particular 'setup' and make it work... the HIGHMEMFIX=1 is what 'triggers' the API.dll error, by default this value is set to 0, so, FSX (very cleverly) doesn't crash!! but, starts making stuff dissapear and gets unstable (and eventually crashes later on) specially when on final ;)As for the Black Screens caused by the Windows TDR (Timeout Detection & Recovery) I'll later post a solution to that as well... I have more than 3 weeks researching this, and I'm exhausted.

[aceridgey 330]

^^ the above post seems very interesting..question,, by increasing these values, will it affect performance?Alex

[bojote 20]

question,, by increasing these values, will it affect performance?

It depends, if you Video card is already stressed out, it makes things EVEN WORSE.. because, you end up with a lot of stale data. I don't want to get 'too technical' but I would suggest for people to try doing the following (just do it for TESTING purposes) not permanentely, but please, DO IT you'll need to:Force VSYNC to OFF on your Video CardLet The Application control Antialiasing and Anisotropic Filtering (set them to application controlled in the nVidia control panel) Make sure you use MultiSampling AA, and not SuperSampling or Combined.if you use the evil nHancer, set Aniso there to OFF (it will still work), seems to be a bug with nHancer.If you use dualview or Clone mode, DISABLE it, make sure you ONLY use one monitor when doing the tests.Set pre-render frames to 0LOCK your frame rate!! 20 or 25 (for testing of course)The above steps will ensure your video card will be able to process every single request at incredible speeds, which is exactly what you want.. the longer the card takes to process a request, the faster the stale buffer will fill. both Video and audio are using the SAME stale buffer.EDIT: Yes, I know the 'evil' nhancer comment, can scare some.. I'll get into that later, but, personally, I don't recommend its use for FSX, it totally messes up the 'balance'. specially, when 'set-up' for high quality settings like some 'experts' reccommend.