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

[bojote 20]

*******,I added the following as per your post(s):[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD=2147483647 // (2048 megabytes)[Display]TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400 TextureMaxLoad=30[bufferpools]UsePools=0I run FSX with FPS Limiter and I have left my nHancer settings intact and have not changed any other settings in the .cfg except for Texture_Max_Load=4096 which is set by REx. With ActiveSky Evolution producing weather I am running smoothly except for a little jitter here and there, adjust BufferPools perhaps? One other issue for me and for other perhaps is that autogen such as buidlings and trees load when they come into range of my aircraft, is there a setting that I could change to load these at a greater distance without affecting performance? Please note that there are already some buildings and trees that are in view before these stragglers pop into view to fill the voids.I was able to replay my landing in the Level-D 767 without any terrain texture loss or the screen going completely black (another first), and I forgot to mention that when Ryan asked if any other addon was affected, my apologies I had not flown the 67 in a while.Tomorrow right after work I will be reversing the sound DLL edit that Ryan suggested and verify if this has fixed the issue. Thanks for your hard work ******* and for helping us here in the community.

Robert, try completely disabling autogen and tell me if it improves things, if it does, then try 'one by one' disabling this options, and see if they impact performance:Vsync OFFAniso (set it to OFF in nHancer)AA (Set it to application controlled in nHancer)Remeber, that if you change either aniso or AA in nHancer, you'll need to check the options inside FSXDense AG (specially when used with BP=0) is able to completely crash FSX (and even your computer) because it stresses your video card... and don't trust any GPU Utilization readings, they only show % usage for the user space, not kernel/system.. AG produces so many draw calls (even with batching) that they saturate the command buffer and it gets overwritten just do the steps without nhancer (for testing purposes of course) and report back.

[Tabs 2,790]

Do we only put shader cache version in one time to allow the recompile? Or leave it in so every time it starts it recompiles?

It won't recompile unless you change the number to a different one other than 1. What also works (and this is my personal preference is going to Users\(Your Account Name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX and deleting both Shaders folders that are there - the sim will automatically recompile the shaders when you run it. You don't need the SHADER_CACHE_VERSION line if you do this, I tried it earlier tonight.

[bojote 20]

Do we only put shader cache version in one time to allow the recompile? Or leave it in so every time it starts it recompiles?

as long as you don't change the number, shaders won't be re-compiled again.. however, Ryan noticed that even changing the number did not recompile the shaders on some cases (like going back from 2 to 1) so I suggest you always increase them and never repeat a number or completely wipe the shader cache directories manually (careful there)

[Tabs 2,790]

So is the STALE_BUFFER_THRESHOLD line only to be used for 32bit systems or is it actually meant for 64bit systems? What would happen I increased that number....just out of curiosity?

FSX is a 32-bit application, that number is as high as it can possibly be. Setting it any higher will not do anything. You can use it on either a 32-bit or 64-bit OS.

[bojote 20]

Right, so now we are down to a very low 768x768 max texture size along with lower filter quality that even an old 7800 series AGP card with 512MB Vram would have no trouble with, including using any of these add-ons, so not seeing anything new here, we are all just lowering our settings, which lowers the draw on resources that break under Win7/Vista but not under XP. What is new here?Isnt this as other have said just "masking the problem"?

http://forums1.avsim.net/index.php?showtopic=281312There is a formula there that will make things more clear.

[bojote 20]

So I disagree that this is a new solution.

If I sold humble pies, I'll be rich by now my friend... specially if you keep eating them! (don't take it the wrong way) you seem like a nice guy, but you need to have a little more faith in the community, you underestimate people way too much and I'll appreciate we get less 'skeptic' on the issues I address (you seem to harass me constantly) and No.. I don't have a PhD, I didn't help design the Apolo.. I'm just a regular guy with good analytic skills and programming background.. the only thing I'm truly an 'expert' at is backend (client-server) programming, but that doesn't mean that my contributions to the FSX community are not valuable.And for all the people having success with HIGHMEMFIX=1 thanks for trying.. your feedback and responses is what encourage others to try. We are (all) actively monitoring the forums to see if there are any 'sideeffects' to using HIGHMEMFIX=1 and, incredibly... its like a 100% success rate not a single problem so far.

[tfm 169]

you are correct. however, Nothing Ever shows up in Event Viewer in reference to the FSX black screen crashes. Nothing to do with Nhancer or any Nvidia drivers either.does this mean that i have a prob. with the 285? the reason i ask is that the black screen probs. that im having is that the system seems to be hung after the black screen occurs. i have to press the reset switch and reboot to get back to the desktop. sometimes during the initial reboot i get a BIOS beep code that (according the ASUS P6T-Deluxe V2 Manual) indicates that the video card is not detected. however, the system will continue the boot process normally into Windows. occasionally, the initial restart via the reset switch will not work and i have to turn the PSU off via the PSU power switch. then i can turn the PC back on via the power switch on the PC and the PC will boot into Windows without any probs.thanks again for the help.happy flyin, Tim Wheeler

Tim This problem has nothing to do with the black/disappearing textures issue discussed here.In my case, it had to do with the temperature of the card. Try going into the nVidia control panel and changing the fan settings. Start by making the fan run at 100% all the time. Then see if you still get the problem. If not, then you know you've found the cause. The next step is to fine-tune the fan settings to reduce the noise levels. You need to use the funny graph in the nVidia control panel to make the fan speed increase at a fast enough pace to avoid the problem recurring but without being at 100% all the time. It calls for trial and error but I've found that making it run at 100% from 40% GPU use onwards seems to work well.Tim

[zap737 1]

Tim This problem has nothing to do with the black/disappearing textures issue discussed here.

First of all, thanks to ******* for his awesome work on this problem.*******, you said you were working on the black screen problem, but I wonder if the problem I have is related to that as well.The problem I have is with a white/cream window that appears when switching from full screen to windowed mode after about 15-20 Alt-Enters (NOT Alt-Tab).The sound keeps going and the simulation keeps going, but the window/full screen is cream/white.On rare occasions you can recover but most times you cannot.This happens in windows XP SP2 x64 with Nvidia 8800 GTS.Is this related to the black screen or is it something different?Tim (tfm) do you think this cream window problem is a fan speed issue?Pete

[corkyo4 2]

Is there any chance of consolidating all of the tweaks again, its seems that the fixes described by ******* also have addition lines of code in subsequent threads i.e.

But If you want the *Full* Miracle you need TWO things:One:[bufferPools]UsePools=0

If all of the lines of code associated with the fix to issue 4 are compiled together that would be of help, as i say there a lots of lines of code floating around and it is hard to know what should and shouldnt be used.

[gman1986 14]

Thanks *******. Have edited my .cfg and got rid of NHancer and the result is fantastic. Pretty rock solid results as far as I was concerned. Flying around MegaAirport EGLL was very stable in the Concorde X, no stuttering anymore.Thank you again.

[Guest 413X3]

Getting rid of nhancer also gets rid of the special anti aliasing, do you notice any quality of graphics decrease with the tweaks?

[bojote 20]

Is there any chance of consolidating all of the tweaks again, its seems that the fixes described by ******* also have addition lines of code in subsequent threads i.e.If all of the lines of code associated with the fix to issue 4 are compiled together that would be of help, as i say there a lots of lines of code floating around and it is hard to know what should and shouldnt be used.

I will, just give me some time.. I want to do the 'short' version and the official 'technical' white paper kind version.. I have bills to pay too :) and some customers I need to keep happy.

[windshearDK 52]

Dear Ryan, PMDG and last but not least *******.Thank you for taking on this huge but crucial task of biting the CTD issues in the butt!Problems like these have reduced the fun factor of flightsimming for many years and this is why I admire and respect you. You decided to solve an issue which was not product related out of respect for your costumors and love of the game.Thank you all!

[Tabs 2,790]

Guys, this is important - ALL we are recommending you do right now is the line that fix the texture corruption issues:[GRAPHICS]HIGHMEMFIX=1Do that and delete the two Shaders folders contained in Users\(Your User Name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FSX - FSX will recompile them the next time you load the sim.Also, something I forgot to mention last night if you're running Windows 7 - run FSX in Vista compatibility mode. (the first option, not SP1 or SP2) This forces the Windows Display Driver Model to use the previous version that existed when the sim was created, not the newer one that seems to have issues with it. (this is likely what Daniel Van Os was seeing when he isolated the API calls involved in the crashes in the old thread) To set this, right click the fsx.exe file, select properties and then set it along with Run as Administrator. (which is always good to have set) We'll be bringing this issue up with people at Microsoft to see if they can fix it in Win7 SP1.EDIT on the compatibility mode - this is apparently causing some other issues on certain video cards - do not try this if you have dual cards or a GTX295 for now. Leave it off.Again, the above is NOT a performance tweak, it just fixes the texture corruption.-----------Now...The stuff with disabling the FSX engine's vertex buffer (aka BufferPools) to speed FSX up is very promising for giving us a huge performance increase, but it causes a very high level of system instability right now if it is not set correctly. (I saw several crashes when ******* and I were testing it yesterday) It is highly system specific and you need to find the correct values for your sliders and framerate lock for your own machine in order for it to be stable. I would very much advise everyone to wait until *******'s whitepaper that explains in detail the hows and whys of the issue and how to tweak your setup to use it before attempting this. It is quite technical and this is absolutely the first time anyone has actually deeply understood at the core level what ACES did with the graphics engine and why precisely FSX is so CPU limited. One VERY tantalizing possibility that arises from all of this is that SLI may be able to provide huge performance gains if we can figure out how to configure it correctly with the buffer disabled...In the interest of clarifying a few things for people already trying these settings though, here's a few notes:On nHancer use - my sole purpose in recommending the 8XS setting in the past was image quality, that mode fixes the shimmering in the "alpha test" objects like the trees, power pylons etc. I was the first one to suggest those settings in 2007 and I want to make it very clear that I was not making any sort of claim that those settings were good for performance under all conditions. They are fine WHEN the GPU is being underutilized, as it always has been in FSX up until now. Disabling the vertex buffer creates a whole new ballgame for the sim here and the old "tweaks" are not going to apply. The reason is that *******'s method has the effect of making the GPU much more important to FSX performance than it ever has been in the past. It was fine to recommend really high GPU image quality settings (modes with a supersampling component etc) because the card was being highly underutilized in the past. The vertex buffer is essentially a limiter on how fast the CPU can send information to the GPU to be processed - when it's enabled, the GPU can't be saturated with commands and crash, but at the same time it can't perform optimally either. FSX was programmed in 2004-2006 and the vertex buffer does not scale well to today's hardware. CPUs and GPUs are much more powerful now and the potential performance to be had appears to be held back by it. When you disable the buffer, the raw power of the GPU to process commands being fired at it by the CPU becomes paramount. In this situation, having features like high levels of AA with supersampling components turned on has the effect of making the card work harder to start with. It gives you less raw power to process the command queuing from the CPU. This raw power situation is why SLI may benefit us suddenly - with more GPU power, theoretically you should be able to run higher settings and a higher framerate limit with the buffer off and not get crashes vs. what someone can run with a single card.Now, with all of that said, if you can arrive at lower FSX slider and framerate limit settings that are satisfactory to you vs. completely maxed out and you don't cause the CPU to overload or near-overload the GPU, then it's going to be possible to still use the nHancer settings everyone knows and loves and have both superior image quality and much better performance than we're used to.You don't by the way need to actually disable or uninstall nHancer - we tested this yesterday. As I've said repeatedly in the past, nHancer is just a frontend for editing the Nvidia game profiles, that's it. It does NOTHING if you reset the profile to default. All you need to do if you're going to try out disabling the buffer is right click the FSX profile in nHancer and select "Delete / Reset profiles". Once that's done, the FSX profile should go back to saying nothing but "AA:EnhanceOnly" in the Summary column. You're good to go then. Turn AA and aniso on in the sim. (these do work now, we checked it last night, Nvidia has fixed the issue where they wouldn't work without being forced on through the driver)

[bojote 20]

The stuff with disabling the FSX engine's vertex buffer (aka BufferPools)

For those who like to 'understand' things... here's a good read:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff539490.aspx