Black Section in FSX Sky

I have been encountering this problem where a section of the entire sky goes black all of a sudden--usually before sunset and stays black through the night. Please see PIC.

 

Now I have made a lot of changes to FSX.CFG, but to test this I went back to a completely fresh and clean install of FSX, and deleted the original FSX.CFG file so that it is recreated afresh by FSX and so no FSX.CFG tweaks come into play. And what I observed is that this black section appears for a super fast split 1/2 second (if you blink, you will miss it!) and then is gone and does not reappear. So I am thinking this is some bug is FSX, and there is something in my config, or somewhere, that when this issue appears, **it STAYS** and does not instantly vanish like with original FSX behavior.

 

Can anyone verify this behavior/bug? Has anyone seen this behavior? And then how to fix this?

 

The parameters of the PIC are as follows: Default FSX Airbus, Hawaiian Islands, 22,800ft, February 5, 2017 at 04:41:25 GMT --that's when the black steak shows up. Before that time all is normal, no extra scenery running. Set the time to a few seconds before that and... does the black section appear? The other PIC is a top-down view where you can see what is happening

 

The settings for my PC are: Dell XPS 630i Dual Core, 4GB memory Win XP (using /3Gb option in boot.ini), SP2 FSX Acceleration, GTX 260 video card

 

 

HELP!!

I did a sanity check, and went back to a FRESH, clean install of FSX, then made a video of the split second behavior of this "disappearing sky" phenomena. I then slowed down the video and freezed the frame where this "disappearing sky" phenomena occured (it happens so fast if you blink you will miss it--I think it last 2 to 5 frames at 30 fps). Here is a PIC (the different sky color is because in my FSX setup I enhanced the sky for better, truer color at sunset/sunrise, but in these pics you see original (inaccurate) FSX sky textures after sunset)

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]196571[/ATTACH]

 

Don't feel like the Lone Stranger! I have it too. Noticed it at night flying into Havana, Cuba. My Earth pic isn't quite as good as yours because my computer was slow trying to render it!

 

 

Axtually I solved the problem, but it took awhile. After making a backup of my current FSX \Global\Scenery\Texture folder, I copied over the same from a fresh FSX install,, and finally got my FSX install to work as the Default, with a super split second appearance of the dark part.

 

The 2 files that were the problem were Milkyway_lm.dds and Milkyway.dds. That made sense because I had tried a enhamced version of these back awhile ago (and did not like them).

 

What made no sense is before I did this copy, I had done a binary comparison between what was in there and the FRESH versions, and they were the same!--no binary differences. So I never saw any need to copy these. Yet only when I finally decided to copy the original FSX MilkyWay files, then the problem go away. Still do not know why that fixed it.

 

I then when back to my backup, and made sure I coped the 2 MilkyWay files from FRESH FSX, and all was acting as it should.

 

It is still some sort of bug is FSX, but it appears SO fast you can't notice it unless you are looking for it.

I should add that the way I homed on on the MilkyWay files is because immediately after ther super-short appearance of the black sky section on FRESH FSX, the sky had changed a tiny bit.

 

There was a slightly, slightly brighter band of sky next to the boundry of where the black sky section had appeared for a split second. See PIC which was taken with FRESH FSX right after the split second appearance of the black sky section--I point out the slight band of brighter sky in the PIC. (My guess you wont be able to see in my PIC which was reduced to 85% JPEG quaility inn size to be attached, but trust me-- it is there)

 

That got me to think about Milky Way, and thus the 2 files mentioned in previous post. Making sure I copied the 2 files from Fresh FSX into my FSX, fixed the issue.

 

OK, I've just done the same thing and will test later today!

As soon as I saw the shape of the black sky section on your Top-Down view, I was pretty confident you have the same problem.

 

But the interesting thing is did you ever mess with your sky textures for you to have this problem. I have messed a WHOLE LOT, making my very own edits to the *Sky_*.bmp textures, even going to the point of making minute changes in the various *pre/post/sunset/dawn0 through 9 BMP files to match the transitional appearance of dawn and dusk, including true effects like The Belts of Venus. Though the MilkyWay files are not part of these textures, the point is I have messed a whole lot with my sky, and so I was convinced I did something to my sky to cause this problem where the black section sticks and does not fast disappear. Then I saw the problem in fresh FSX but appearing and then disappearing in a fraction of a second. Since I made so many changes to my sky, it was going to be a challenge to solve this, and It was no surprise that nobody replied to my post. I was all on my own.

 

Fortunayley I keep a fresh unaltered copy of FSX on my hard disk, and can swap out any folder I need in an instant to compare behaviors

 

I was so relieved ONE other poor soul (you) had it too. I don't know what I'll do if your problem does not go away, and I won't know what to say if you never touched anything in your sky files (like even maybe some addon program, etc. that can copy many files that you do not know what the program is really doing).

 

Please let me know what your results are.

As soon as I saw the shape of the black sky section on your Top-Down view, I was pretty confident you have the same problem.

 

But the interesting thing is did you ever mess with your sky textures for you to have this problem. I have messed a WHOLE LOT, making my very own edits to the *Sky_*.bmp textures, even going to the point of making minute changes in the various *pre/post/sunset/dawn0 through 9 BMP files to match the transitional appearance of dawn and dusk, including true effects like The Belts of Venus. Though the MilkyWay files are not part of these textures, the point is I have messed a whole lot with my sky, and so I was convinced I did something to my sky to cause this problem where the black section sticks and does not fast disappear. Then I saw the problem in fresh FSX but appearing and then disappearing in a fraction of a second. Since I made so many changes to my sky, it was going to be a challenge to solve this, and It was no surprise that nobody replied to my post. I was all on my own.

 

Fortunayley I keep a fresh unaltered copy of FSX on my hard disk, and can swap out any folder I need in an instant to compare behaviors

 

I was so relieved ONE other poor soul (you) had it too. I don't know what I'll do if your problem does not go away, and I won't know what to say if you never touched anything in your sky files (like even maybe some addon program, etc. that can copy many files that you do not know what the program is really doing).

 

Please let me know what your results are.

 

Will do! Haven't tested yet and I have never made any changes to sky textures.

Oh, now this is going to be interesting!

 

Do you have a "fresh" copy of just-installed FSX handy to compare?

 

I install FSX on a substitued Drive letter F: in F:\FSX. I have the complete fresh FSX install under F:\FSX-FRESH. All I do is rername folders FSX to FSX.current and FSX-FRESH to FSX, and I can run fresh FSX with the same good old desktop icon--no other changes neccessary. Some scenery link files might force a scenery recompile becasue they (link files) are stored under C:\Docments and Settings..., but other than that it's a smooth switch and I can go back and forth at will.

 

It would be interesting to see if a fresh FSX on your PC then behaviors as your current FSX install--that is the black section appears and sticks and does not go away right away

I just did a test flight same as when the Milky Way screwup happened. All is good now with the replacement files!;) My FSX backup is not for flying but only for needed files.

Phew! Good news!

 

Now if only you could figure out how those files got changed. I knew I had changed mine at some point, trying a different MilkyWay. But what about you? Any ideas?

Phew! Good news!

 

Now if only you could figure out how those files got changed. I knew I had changed mine at some point, trying a different MilkyWay. But what about you? Any ideas?

 

Only changes in that entire area in the Caribbean was a couple of addon airports at Saba, St. Maarten, and St. Barths.

That's pretty weird.

 

But then so was the fact that a binary comparisons with me showed no differences.

 

At least we know what to do.

 

I might go to some astronomical website and figure out the best time and date when the Milky Way is completely in the sky, fly then and see if I really see anything noticeable, and if not, maybe just see if I run FSX without these 2 DDS and see what happens.

 

If you Google "milway.dds, fsx" you get a few hits--one is how to black it out completely if you do not like it.

 

But it's interesting that noone else except us 2 seem to have had this partucular problem with the sky just disappearing

Since I love the challenges of flying at night and seeing the starry night sky, I am going to try this version of the Milky way.

 

Hey, you/we know what to do if we get into trouble (-:

 

http://www.fs2000.org/2014/12/10/fsxp3d-milky-way-texture/

I have messed with 2 different MilkyWays. Very dramatic differences. Would you like to see my comparisons and thoughts?

 

Or if you do not care much about nighttime flying, it's then a mute point for you--you can stick with FSX default MilkyWay (which is pretty hard to see anyway.)

 

Let me know, and I'll share some posts/pics