Scenery missing

My husband bought FS X; he has an AMD Athelon 64 3000+ 2.00 Ghz 1.00 GB ram, 128 video memory, Nvidia GForce FX5200 display driver with the most recent (8/2006) driver. The Globel setting is set to ultra high. At the airports, when you are sitting on the runway, most of the side scenery is blocks of white, some of it is filled in. I've tried changing all sorts of settings, less scenery, more or less of all the sliders and nothing seems to make a difference. Do you know if this is a fault in this particular scenery, or is there something else I should change?

Thank you,

Carol

I wouldn't personally run FSX on ultra high with an FX5200 card and only 1gb of ram. The more detailed your graphics the higher pull on your video graphics memory and the FX5200 is a mid range with low end ram (128mb only). Try notching everything to Medium Low and seeing if things show up then work your way up in quality settings. I know you said you've tried the sliders but try Medium Low, load in, and if the scenery is still white blocky, then it could indicate that graphics card has compatibility issues with FSX.

May need to contact MS Technical Support then.

Are you saying it's harmful to the monitor? Or harmful to the video card? When it was set at just High before I was getting so many white blocks. I'll try what you said about the sliders. Is everything else we have okay? Video memory is something I add as far as hardware? Or does that come with the graphics card.? What graphics card would you recommend, assuming I don't want to spend $200 just for a graphics card.

Thank you,

Carol

Sorry I should have been a bit more specific. It won't be bad for any hardware specifically just that the higher the graphic detail, the more video memory and graphic processing needed. Each graphics card series is different in strength like having a Ford Focus vs a Porche 911 Turbo.

The FX5200 series is a middle range graphic card so on in a game or simulator like FSX that can draw a lot of graphic strength the higher you have the settings, it won't be capable of keeping up or handling the processing and will skip drawing things like textures (thus why you see white boxes).

Think of it like it needs to do 3 tasks but only has the ability to do 1 task in the time restriction then has to do 3 more tasks. In order to keep up it will just not do 2 of the tasks. There isn't much you can do there without either 1) reducing the graphics settings until your card can handle the load or 2) upgrade to a newer style graphics card with more power.

As for less than $200, there aren't many out there that would handle high graphics. My comment was mainly because I have 2 x 7900 GTS graphics cards in SLI mode (means 2 graphics cards acting as 1 graphic card) that cost me in the $800+ range and they can't even handle Ultra High and struggle a bit on High.

One more thing you may want to try doing is reducing the Autogen to none. That helps a lot of people. While you won't get the fancy trees and houses all around places, not having that is better than just getting white boxes everywhere.

So try the lower settings (Medium-Low) and reduce your Autogen (I don't remember exactly where it is, just go through the tabs) to None and then give it a try. See if that works.

I forgot to mention video memory. Each graphics card has fixed video (graphics) memory and it is not upgradeable. So if you graphics card has 128mb and a game comes out that requires 256mb, the only way to play it is to buy a new graphics card with 256mb. 128mb isn't that bad but 256mb or 512mb would be ideal for anything above Medium graphics.

I know with my two cards with 512mb each, they run 80%+ memory usage.

Sounds like you are one serious gamer! I would go for a new video card in the $150 range, and it seems as though the basic computer places like Compusa and Best Buy, etc. have lots of 256 and 512 cards for that price. May not have all the bells and whistles, but if it can accomplish getting better scenery for him, that's what we'll do.

I think a trip to the store is in order. Thanks very much, and I'll try your other suggestions.

Carol

Changed the scenery to sparse and the autogen all the way to the max and got good results. However, the little boy who plays with the flight simulator wanted a new graphics card also, so we went to Compusa today (I WANT IT RIGHT NOW!!!) and bought an NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS with 512 memory and that uses a power plug (internal) and it really really makes a difference. Everything is now working well. Of course, it makes sense - we add memory to our computers for more ram so more programs can work at the same time - stands to reason we need to add more video memory so more graphics can appear at the same time. It was $179 with $50 in rebates, so I think $129 for what we got is pretty good and the important thing is, the program now works great and he's very happy with it.

So thanks again for all the suggestions,
Carol, the FSX widow

Yah the autogen is the big kicker I find more than weather that's why I have it just turned off. I don't care about seeing little houses randomly all over the place hehe.

Good find on the graphics card that's a really good price. Also as a last suggestion, make sure you go to www.nvidia.com and download the latest drivers. The ones that ship with graphics cards are typically out of the box very out of date and the recent drivers provide a series of updates for many more recent games including FSX.

Glad it's working now though.

newegg.com

You said you had two graphics cards in your computer. Since I now have the new 512 one, can I also put in the old 128 one (assuming there's a slot which I don't know because I haven't opened it again)? If it can be done, is it a major deal to configure? Wouldn't it then give him 640 video memory?

Carol

No you can't. Only SLI-Ready cards (such as the 7600) are capable of working with another card, which has to be the same as the other one (like 2 7600's). However, I also have a FX5200, so I highly doubt that your motherboard can support 2 video cards. AGP motherboards (which is what you have, I am 99% sure about this), only support 1 video card. If you really want another card, keep this in mind:
New motherboard = New processor + new memory + new video card = Lots of money spent.
I say new video card, because you'd have to but another 7600, but this time with PCI-E interface, not AGP.
So I suggest that you forget about using 2 video cards, unless you have lost of money to spend.
By the way, I am also thinking of buying a 7600GS back here in Portugal. Are you having any problems with it? I heard that it gets very hot....and that you had to buy another power supply to make it not crash....

The first week he had it the fan seemed loud, but now it isn't. It is AGP. It doesn't seem to have too many problems - he says sometimes he does have to reboot because it doesn't boot up right, but that may be Windows. It's hard to know when there's a problem if it's the computer or Windows. Usually it's Windows. But doesn't seem to be a problem with power supply. He is still having somewhat of a problem with FSX with jerky movement and controls not responding, but it may be that FSX is so memory and power intensive that unless one has a gaming computer (which his is not) it won't be that perfect. He's got a gig of ram and the new video card is a 512 which should be - should be adequate, according to Microsoft, but maybe there are some more settings we can tweak.

Carol