Shoreline graphics problem

[MadWings]

Hello JLCGull,

When I ran FS2004 recently, I remembered you and your troubles, and the frustration I felt when I dealt with games that refused to run properly. Therefore, let me say that I am very happy that you didn't give up and solved the problem! Also, despite of the years of experience I mentioned, your problem was new to me, and it's interesting to finally pick up on what caused it. Now you can join everyone in posting about the more delightful aspects of Flight Simulator... Yeah!

Now that you're ready to have fun, I'd like to recommend some nice freeware add-ons:

RealAir Cessna 172 - Many people, including myself, consider default FS9 C172 fligth model questionable. After I tried this one, flying the C172 was fun again. The Melbourne Training Centre uses this flight model for real pilot training.

Aero Commander 500 - Cargo Version - nice twin-engine utility prop. Excellent 2D/virtual cockpit, with cargo in the back! Incl. "dirty look" for bush pilots...

Hawker Hunter - British jet fighter of the 1950s/60s. Great flight model, nice to fly. Excellent 2D and virtual cockpits. Faster and more agile than ot looks!

Alcatraz - Very nice rendition of the well known prison island near San Francisco.

Saba Island, Caribbean - Mesh & Landclass, incl. the small airfield. Even with GA aircraft, it's a challenge to land there. "When you visit Saba, you can purchase a shirt that says 'I survived the landing on Saba' It really is an intense landing with no room for error", as viridans posts here. But it's also very much fun!

HMNZS Waikato, New Zealand - Absolutely a must-have if you want a nice Nimitz Class a/c carrier. Also get the new carrier deck texture. I recommend the RCBCO-20 gauges by Rob Barendregt and Doug Dawson for carrier operations (catapult/arrestor cables).

Happy simming, dude!

[JLCGull]

Mad Wings,

Thanks for the reply and the tips on the add ins. I'm gald to hear I am not the only one who questions the validity of the default 172. For crying out loud, if it were really that hard to keep the thing trimmed and on course no one would ever learn to fly in RL.

 I'll be traveling for a few days so I won't be able to get to them immediately, but I will definately get to them

JLCGull

[JLCGull]

MW,

I picked up the AC500...sweet sim. And I like the RealAir172 much better than the default.  Saba is fun, but for an adventure take off from Saba and make the short hop to St. Baarts (St. Barthelemy Island...airport designator is TFFJ ) and land there. Remenber, the trade winds mean you always land to the east over the mountain.

 You had better use the RealAir Cessna because you will have some fun practicing your slips!

JLCGull

[chishelm]

Just a folow up for anyone who might have similar problems:

I discovered that that Nvidia was running some "Helpful utilities" at boot up that were supposed to allow easy tweaking ogf the video card. These really were not necesssary as one can get to all that stuff via the Control Panel.  After disabling these start up items the floods have receded and the shape of the shoreline has returned to normal.

JLCGull.

Just discovered this thread. I too am experiencing the same Picassoed landscape problem! Sea textures on hillsides, distinctly random tiles when viewed

[JLCGull]

This explains the fix even though it didn't exactly name my graphics board or my monitor or even my exact problem. It can't hurt to try it:

http://www.avid.com/onlinesupport/supportcontent.asp?productID=97&contentID=7487&typeID=2%20

Good luck to you and happy flying

JLCGull

[JLCGull]

Chishelm,

I also eliminated some other things running at startup that I didn't want by using the latest version of SpyBot S&D and under the Spybot "tools/ startup" section to check out what my machine was loading at boot up.

 There are ways other than Spybot to manage this stuff, but Spybot gives a helpful explanation of what each item is doing (well , for most items) so you are better informed about making a decision about what to eliminate and what to keep. It still isn't perfect, but it beats random guessing.

And that nvsvc32.exe is damn persistent. It simply reinstatesa itself unless you follow the directions to disable it given in the link above.

One last thing that I do NOT think was causing my problem, but I DID change is that I removed completely FS9 from my computer and re-installed it. It wasn't totally simple but here is waht I did:

I used the FS9 patch uninstall first. Then I used the FS9 uninstall to get rid of the sim. Then I went into the Prgrams/Games diectory where I found there were still folders for FS9 and I deleted them.
  After all of that I used a utility to "clean" my registry shortcuts etc. (McAfee). Finally I did a reboot and looked around again for traces of the old sim and found a couple of shortcuts on my desktop to the Aircraft and Scenery folders. I deleted them, cleaned again, booted again. This time I was pretty sure I got it all. I defraged the drive just to be sure to overwrite anything that I might not have actually deleted. Cleaned and booted again.
 Finally I re-installed FS9. I started to look for the update to re-install that BUT before I did I checked my version under the help tab in FS9. It turns out I already have version 9.1 which is where the update takes you....so I didn't re-install the update.

  The dumb thing is that the first time around (1) I didn't have the menu bar on the top of the screen so I was unable to find my version under "Help"..... and (2) the update didn't detect that it wasn't needed, although as I stated up this thread I tried to re-install the update at one point to be sure I got it right, and it DID detect itself at that time.

 I wouldn't think that updating an already updated version should cause a problem, but it is MS...so who knows?

BTW after all that trying to scrape all the old stuff out of the drive,  when I went back to add on the aircraft recommended by Mad Wings I still found vestigal references to add on aircraft from the prior install. Ain't Windows GREAT? The only way to really get rid of anything seems to be a complete re-format of the entire disk!  No wonder Bill retired! Vista is going to kill MS in a long slow lingering death.

JLCGull

[JLCGull]

I am bringing this thread back up all these weeks later because I suffered a relapse of the Picassoed scenery problem after installing a Windows update.

Once agian I tried all sorts of fixes, tweaks and edits to no avail. I would try something, and if it didn't work I'd return to the previous settings and then I would try another thing...and so it went for weeks when I could spare a minute or two to mess with the broken game.

[ashaman]

Not sure why this fix worked as it did, but maybe it can help others with similar problems. (Shadows of the "Ancient Ghost of DOS" I suppose, where order matters when loading utilities!)

Nothing better than a solution found trying randomly to raise up the morals.

I've always known M$'s updates fu*ked with your PC, that's way I update my PC only when I think it's both necessary and a good thing.

Let others decide for you and you'll be crying bitter tears over your lost freedom sooner than you think.

[MadWings]

"Ancient Ghost of DOS"

Dude... this is really a little spooky... I remember you fixed that "Picasso Issue" exactly TWO MONTHS ago, and now, just a Windows update, and out of nowhere, the haunting returns... like the goddamn bogeyman...

Again, nice to see you didn't give up and resolved this sticky b#tch of a problem. Trying to turn things off and back on was a very good idea! You'd usually think it wouldn't make a differece, but all the hardware and software troubles I came across recently confirmed that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. My brother's PC refused to boot, so we checked the usual suspects (CPU, mainboard, memory), which led to nothing. Turned out it was the reset button that blocked the the whole system. It was kind of "stuck", we disconnected it from the mainboard and everything was fine.

Who you gonna call...?  : )

[JLCGull]

Who you gonna call...?