Disappearing Aircraft

[Alfashark]

Hi all,
Fired up X for the first time in a week or two this evening, intent on a good ground-hugging thrash...
All was well for the first 10min, then I switched views to get a few screenshots of the aircraft against the hills (was in the default Extra 300). All of a sudden - no aircraft! I cycled back through the views and the VC was there... tried again, still nothing to be seen from outside
Switched to a couple of other a/c but the same story - VC but no external model.

I closed X, shut down the computer and went for a cig, thinking maybe it was a one off anomaly. Restarted and fired up X again - same scenario - VC but no external model. (tried using default a/c as well as ported FS9 and FSX addons)
Checked nHancer incase something had changed there but that was fine, nothing changed.
Tried FS9, and all was well in there

Apart from logging onto NZFF and the VASK websites, the computer hasnt been used for anything else in the last 2 weeks, no FSX or FS9, no addons installed in that time... no nothing.
This has got me buggered!

Q6600 2.4Ghz
4Gb DDR2 RAM
750Gb HDD
8600GT 512mb
Vista Ultimate 32bit

[Adamski]

QUOTE (Alfashark @ Sep 20 2008, 01:13 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi all,
Fired up X for the first time in a week or two this evening, intent on a good ground-hugging thrash...
All was well for the first 10min, then I switched views to get a few screenshots of the aircraft against the hills (was in the default Extra 300). All of a sudden - no aircraft! I cycled back through the views and the VC was there... tried again, still nothing to be seen from outside
Switched to a couple of other a/c but the same story - VC but no external model.

I closed X, shut down the computer and went for a cig, thinking maybe it was a one off anomaly. Restarted and fired up X again - same scenario - VC but no external model. (tried using default a/c as well as ported FS9 and FSX addons)
Checked nHancer incase something had changed there but that was fine, nothing changed.
Tried FS9, and all was well in there

Apart from logging onto NZFF and the VASK websites, the computer hasnt been used for anything else in the last 2 weeks, no FSX or FS9, no addons installed in that time... no nothing.
This has got me buggered!

I've had this a few times. My "fix" seems to be to rebuild the scenery cache by moving an area up or down (then back again). It seems to clear out "junk" in some way. Also, try tweaking your display settings down a notch - it may be that some recent change took your FSX over some sort of memory threshold.

In the same vein, Google around for the hack that makes FSX recognise RAM over 2GB (worked for me).

[toprob]

Do you have service patches installed? This used to happen a lot before SP1, but I haven't seen it since.

[Alfashark]

Sorry, should have stated - I'm running SP1 + Acceleration.
Tried backing the display settings down a notch or two... still no external model

[gokanru]

In the same vein, Google around for the hack that makes FSX recognise RAM over 2GB (worked for me).


Is this the hack that you are looking for,

3GB /userva=2560,

just add this to the boot ini file so your boot ini should end up looking like this,

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect/3GB /userva=2560

[Timmo]

What graphics card are you running? my card HATES bloom!

Enabling it means that
a) Ai aircraft disappear (their shadows and ID tags are still there, just not the aircraft.
b) The screen sometimes gets a white out
c) some aircraft textures go transparent (which sounds like the problem you are having)

....so try turning bloom off and see what happens.

[HardCorePawn]

QUOTE (gokanru @ Sep 20 2008, 11:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In the same vein, Google around for the hack that makes FSX recognise RAM over 2GB (worked for me).

apologies for the highly geeky/technical nature of this post

This is technically incorrect... it is about "Address Space" which is not the same as RAM... and whether or not FSX can use more than 2Gigs of Address space is dependent on how the executable was compiled (ie. LARGEADDRESSAWARE)... FSX SP2 is compiled as LARGEADDRESSAWARE, so can use more than 2Gigs of Address Space should you put in the /3GB option... note that the /userva value is used to control how much between 2Gig and 3Gig that you want available for user processes ie. /userva=2560 would give 2,560Megs of address space for user processes and the remainder for the Kernel/OS etc...

More info on /3GB switch:

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2...ifying-3gb.aspx

note that by using the /3GB switch, you are reducing the address space for the System... which includes things like drivers!


Also, as far as I am aware, this 'hack' is not available within Vista (no boot.ini)