Display Issue

[Mick]

Lately I've been taking a break from fiddling with skins and scenery and stuff, and doing a little flying. Now I've discovered an issue that has me puzzled.

After I fly for a while, maybe half an hour or more, my scenery resolution suddenly drops to something awful. Trees go from looking like trees with branches and leaves to blobs of muddy color. Detail disappears from everything but the aircraft I'm flying - that looks normal, but nothing else does.

I stumbled onto something that might be a clue to someone less clueless than I. If I switch to windowed mode, that fixes the issue for a little while. When the world goes blobby again, I can get the resolution back by switching back to full screen mode, but not for long.

I've never flown much in the past, but I've flown some, and made a handful of linger flights without anything like this happening.

The onset has not been gradual; the issue appeared rather suddenly a couple days ago.

I am utterly clueless about diagnosing anything like this. I hope it's something amenable to a bolt on repair, like maybe a video card problem, but I have no idea how to tell what's wrong.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? I'd be very grateful for any suggestions or explanations!

 

[Shessi]

Hi Mick,
Sounds like your graphics card (GC) is possibly over heating. Being summer the ambient temps are higher and when the sim gets going more heat stress, it then overheats and causes these issues.

If you are using a separate graphics card it may be the cooling heat sink is clogged up with dust etc, and needs cleaning out, and/or the thermal paste between the GC and motherboard needs re-newing.

If you are using the onboard graphics chip, then heat will cause the same result, but the fix is to clean out the CPU heat sink. Or if the chip is on it's way out then a new motherboard.

Also check all the fans are working both the case fans but also on any GC, as a seized or blocked up GC fan would also cause the overheating (no cooling air flow!).

Let us know.

Cheers

Shessi

 

[glh]

Mick:

All good suggestions from Shessi.

And if you can do it, you might consider adding a second case fan and oriented towards the graphics card. I find them in the electronics bins at my local Goodwill/Salvation Army/thrift stores or at flea markets.

You may need to find and wire in a compatible connector to your motherboard, your power supply or put it on a separate
12VDC transformer power supply as the situation may require.

I have two Dell GX620 desktops that I use for FSX and CFS2 (one game on each) with aftermarket Nvidia 512MB graphics cards (with fans) and I added one fan (bought at Goodwill) to each desktop very close to the front intake. Spliced them to a 12VDC circuit on the power supply that ran the original fan.

I have run them both for probably 7-8 years with no problems. Bought them off lease on Ebay from a reputable dealer and they have paid for themselves years ago.

I also break the cases and clean the whole inside with a new nylon paintbrush and a vacuum cleaner to remove all the junk; I do this every two years and tag the case with the cleaning date. Rub the dusty area with the paintbrush and hold the vac nozzle right next to it.

 

[Mick]

Thanks guys,

I suspected heat, since the problem didn't happen until I'd been flying for a while. But today it presented immediately when I started yesterday's previous flight in FS1954, yet GW3 looked normal at the same location. Curious. That sort of inconsistency leaves me scratching my head.

Still, heat makes sense. My rig has two big fans cranking away all the time. They crank so hard I can hear them from the next room! When I had this confutor built I specified lots of cooling. But it has been rather warm this week - though not nearly so hot as a week or two before, when I had no such trouble. Still, it's been well over a year since I took the side panel off and blew and vacuumed out all the dust and cat hair. I guess it's past time to do that again.

If is heat, I wonder if it might also be a tired video card. Or just the card. The one I have in there is a top of the line nVidia card, but it was top of the line six years ago, probably now not so much. And maybe it's getting tired.

I have a good friend who is an IT guy. He knows a lot about confutors but nothing about FS. If I do need a new vid card, he can help me with that, selecting the replacement and installing it. When he did some work for me last year he remarked that my rig was still pretty powerful by contemporary standards despite its age.

Whether it's heat affecting the card, the card itself, or both, your comments seem to confirm that the issue has something to do with the video card. That narrows things down for me! And it's a relief. Despite the expense, replacing the card is a straightforward repair and far more inviting than trying to sort out some kind of mysterious ailment within FS.

Thanks for the comments!