Ghost plane

**John Gordon** · 01-11-2013, 08:34 PM

I am a long time FS flyer who has just upgraded to FSX. Have spent several million dollars on some of your wonderful airplanes; thanks! Two; they are the Meyer 200 D and the "Baby" Grumman Tiger show up as a (two guys in the Meyer) sitting in space with glass around them and wingtip light fixtures starboard and port.

I'm on a Vista (I know...I know). Is this a Vista thing or have I made some blunder in installation?

Thanks for any ideas, thanks also for all the wonderful airplanes, and the new and improved Burlington Int'l and Plattsburgh airports!

**cbear** · 01-11-2013, 10:08 PM

Hi , what are you system specs and do you have direct X 10 preview selected?

Bruce

***aputech*** · 01-11-2013, 10:22 PM

John, I've had the same problem myself from time to time (day before yesterday, KTVL to KSBA) but in my case it only happens when my video card's GPU gets a bit too warm, when I've been flying in dense cloud cover for 2 or more hours. That's the only scenario that's caused it so far. What's the scenario when it happens to you? Is it shortly after you begin the flight, or enroute, or after an extended period of flying? How are your graphics sliders set? Oh, btw, I ran FSX just fine on Vista--never had a single crash-to-desktop or freeze. Can't say the same for Win 7/64.

aputech

**djadlib** · 01-12-2013, 07:56 AM

Do you have the service packs 1 and 2 installed? Some airplanes require them to be installed.
Also the DirectX10 preview could cause this (as Bruce suggested)

Harro

**John Gordon** · 01-12-2013, 10:16 AM

Hi, thank you Bruce, Aputech and Harro: I am on a Vista made by Gateway about four years old; stock whatever and whatchamacallits. No accelerator that I am aware of, and yes, now and then things will slow down. I go get another coffee and it's fine.

I have installed dozens of planes from you folks and had more fun than a grownup should have. Only these two planes, when I "change" to them from "free flight" screen, appear on the preview screen as a guy (two guys in the meyer) in space, spinning around, surrounded by glass and running lights; but nothing more. Clearly the cabinet has not loaded properly. I never fly them in that condition: I find it too breezy.

I think the meyer specifies that it was NOT tested on Vista.

Ah, updates. The first thing I tried to do when I loaded FSX onto my computer was to go online and look for updates (to FSX, service packs 1 and 2 to the OS HAVE been installed). Two updates available: cannot download 2 until 1 is installed, so I tried to download 1, but was unable to for some reason; so that is a catch 22. In my experience microsoft aren't all that good at customer support so if anyone knows the trick to updating FSX with the two available upgrades that could well be the problem.

Do note, however that so far only these two of dozens of planes and 2 airports have been thus effected, and flight in all aircraft is satisfactory, if you overlook the antics of the bone-headed pilot!

Thank you all for your ideas, I am very grateful.

John G

**djadlib** · 01-12-2013, 09:23 PM

Unfortunately Microsoft has discontinued support for FSX (not that suppport from Microsoft has any value anyhow).
The FSX service packs 1 and 2 are both available at the AVSIM.com site though. You do need to register there but it's free and it's also a great Flight Simulator site (almost as good as flightsim.com

).
Make sure to download the service packs for FSX as they also have the service packs for FSX SDK (developer kit) and that's a whole differerent program.

Harro

**John Gordon** · 01-13-2013, 02:59 PM

Many thanks to you, Harro! It would have taken me ages to figure all that out. Here I go...

John G

**John Gordon** · 01-13-2013, 08:03 PM

Alas, I have been able to find the SDK files you cite above, but as yet have found no trace of Service Packs 1 or 2 for FSX. Have you any idea what they were called, or where they were located? I hate to pester you.

Or is there any other source for obtaining those updates?

Many thanks,

John G

***fxsttcb*** · 01-14-2013, 06:54 AM

"Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Service Pack 1"
"Microsoft Flight Simulator X - Service Pack 2"

**John Gordon** · 01-14-2013, 10:24 AM

Many, many thanks! I was able to find these links elsewhere last night and they did lead to AVSIM, so though I still do not know where on the site they were I got them and yes, they solved the problem of the ghost planes. Now I see that I need to go fix the propellers. My dad used to opine that "Farming is fixing." So is flying!

Thank you for the help.
John G