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Hi. What's your framerate in your new, clean FS9? If it's greater than 100 to 120 fps or thereabouts, sound will clip rather than forcing a delay to the frame change. FS9 has two ways of handling tasks: some require completion and will delay the frame change so reducing your framerate. Others are not considered essential and are just dumped if not complete at the end of the frame. The playing of some sound files falls into the latter category. Try full screen (may limit fps to your monitor's refresh rate) or just limiting the target fps. D (Workplace lunchbreak so I can't access my FS9 and my memory isn't as good as it might be. It could be that engine & environment are affected but ATC isn't. It could be the other way around. I can't remember...)

Captain Sim stuff also has registry-based copy protection. You can tell that someone has a dodgy copy when they post a question asking why the gear or props or half the instruments are invisible...

Hi Col. Anti-aliasing jaggies or tears when panning? If anit-aliasing then might it be the AA behaviour flag that needs setting to 'Override Application' or to 'Treat Enhance as Override'? I use Nvidia Inspector; I'm not sure if the flag is editable from within Nvidia's own control panel. AA doesn't work for me in full-screen. I have to use a third party app, called Borderless or something similar. D

Thank you, Tom. I knew it was something simple but just couldn't bring it to mind. D

Do you mean that from within FS9, and on Win 10, you can't add a new scenery layer when in the Scenery Library user interface? I've found the same thing and have taken to modifying my scenery.cfg manually when I add a new layer. I think others have found a solution from within FS9.

Hi. You might be better off asking Garry in his forum: https://www.uk2000scenery.net/forum/ D

Hi. I'm not sure if this is what you meant and I've never had FSX but -- aside from the usual pan with the POV hat on a joystick -- panning with the mouse is possible in FS9, though neither works in the 2d view. The virtual cockpit in Dave Maltby's BAC 1-11 has a spot you can grab with the mouse and drag the view around. I recall that his readme or user guide stated that it's a stock function in FS9 but almost never implemented. D

Does dim byd o'i le gyda glanio fel yna ond mae post cyntaf yr OP yn awgrymu bod o'n cael trafferth pan ceisio glanio'r awyren gyda'i ddwylo, nid gyda'r AP, na'r modd APR. D ;)

Hi. The most common problem with a new installation of FS9 on Win 10 is that Win 10 won't allow things to run directly from CD or DVD. If you're trying to run FS9 by using the disk (Disk 4?) in the DVD drive, you'll need instead to do a quick web search for "FS9 no CD patch" or a similar term. The first few hits should present you with a replacement FS9.exe which will run from your hard drive and will not require any CD. Cheers, D

Hi Andy. Do you have a deadzone in your joystick / yoke that you could remove? If there's no deadzone, you could still improve the response curve with FSUIPC. Have you tried different loads for the same aircraft? I play mostly with Captain Sim's C-130 and there's an astonishing difference between the handling of a fully laden and an empty plane. I also found that practising in a variety of aircraft helped. I'd forgotten how twitchy the stock C172 can be after growing used to wallowing in a fully laden C-130. When I was getting familiar with the plane, I had a flight set up to start at a six mile final and, as I improved, I moved it to airfields with ever smaller runways (width and length) and gradually increased the aircraft weight. Sometimes now I can actually hit the centreline between the piano keys... That was the result of thinking about Flight Unlimited's Diamond Point (6 inch wide runway) while reading Bob Mason's account of learning to land a Huey in smaller and smaller clearings. It's also interesting that you imply that aiming short improved your landing (throttle notwithstanding) so perhaps you're focussing on the wrong spot on the runway. It certainly helped me to avoid rolling off the far end of smaller strips... D

Sweet times... D'you remember having to turn sliders down just to get FS9 to run properly? Though mine struggled with launching P3d, I think today's PCs are a bit overkill for FS9 -- the absence of a fourth digit for the framerate really amuses me.

The UK2000 download was called UK2000HeathrowXtreme_Package_3.20.exe so I suppose v3.20 I have Playsims VFR photoscenery covering the whole of the UK, including the missing part of Scotland (very kindly given to me in an unfinished state for a donation to a charity of my choice). I've been cleaning it up desultorily for about ten years... OK, 28.8 fps but it does wobble a bit. That's my C-130 bottom right, parked wherever I say it's going to be parked, and evidence of eclectic AI just beyond the pier in the middle distance. Is there autogen around EGLL? Yes, I think a little, but really just notable London buildings and a few copses & hedges I've added for myself. Long ago I inferred from some threads on the VisualFlight forum that there was a complete set of trees & hedges for the UK but I never followed it up. Making that lot must have been a gruelling task.

Because Mark said, "Might be worth for fun to have a thread where we all time our FS9 start up time." Four scenarios: First and second launches after reboot, both with and without Defender's real-time protection. No other apps launched. Maximised windowed mode, 2560 × 1440 Unlimited fps. Usually limited to 60, matching the monitor, otherwise the graphics card is the limit. At 100% it has a rather noisy fan. 306 scenery layers, all active but it would take a while for me to work out which are actually loaded for the default flight, which is a cloudy and breezy summer morning at EGCW. Of interest to me was absolute best & worst famerate. The worst is about 32 fps in any complex aircraft at UK2000's EGLL with weather and 450 AI. The best is mid-Atlantic CAVOK in the stock C172, where I achieve about D27 FPS. I suppose FS9 ran out of digits and it's actually 2027 fps. Spec: Core I5-7400 at 3.4 GHz Gigabyte Z170-HD3P Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB SSD SanDisk 1 TB SSD Asus GTX 1060 6 GB 4 × 8 GB Corsair DDR4 Win10 Pro 64 bit No power saving... Times: From PC reboot, with Defender RTP on: Launch to main menu 30 sec Load default flight 121 sec more (total time 151 sec) FPS 75 Second launch with RTP on: Launch to main menu 13 sec Load default flight 18 sec more (total 41 sec) FPS 73 From reboot with Defender RTP disabled: Launch to main menu 14 sec Load default flight 31 sec more (total 45 sec) FPS 74 Second launch with Defender RTP disabled: Launch to main menu 12 sec Load default flight 17 sec more (total 29 sec) FPS 72

Well... result. I'm sorry it took so long but I wanted to compare the bad layer/folder structure with the supposedly correct one. I ran test 5 and test 2 again. It turns out that my PC is not strictly immune. It's just that the increased use of memory is so slow as not to cause any problem. With the two landclass BGLs in a layer that includes a populated texture folder but no appropriate texture file, the bug takes up an extra 2.1 MB per minute. So if you have a local texture folder without the correct texture in it, then regardless of what other textures are in that folder, the bug will be triggered. What's the limit? 2 or 4 GB? It's either 16 or 32 hours to crash, which may explain why it isn't an issue for everyone. With the two BGLs in their own landclass layer (no texture folder), there was no memory leak. In fact, FS9 had unloaded a few kilobytes. D Bad structure, start: Bad structure after two hours: Own layer and no texture folder, start: And own layer after two hours:

Hi. You might need to flatten the image before saving, or you may end up with a different format. Just a straight save of the tx from paint.net could be stripping out the alpha channel too. As Chris suggests, use DXTBmp for viewing and saving texture files. It will send images to the editor of your choice and reolad the new image after you've finished editing, letting you see what you've made. Using DXTBmp as an intermediary will also avoid losing transparency or gloss finishes, and will ensure you have saved the edited image in the correct format (won't reload in DXTBmp if it's wrong). D

Hi. I'll run number 5 again (maybe tomorrow) and leave it for a couple of hours. I just had a quick look with resource monitor instead of task manager and my CPU usage was steady at 34%. One core is at 100% and the others are almost idle. Following Luke's suggestion, for scenario 5 FS9's working memory increased by about 30 MB in 15 minutes but a (very) quick check showed something similar when the two LC files were back where they should be. I wasn't aware that there are different types of LC file. What were the three files or downloads that caused the OOM? D

Huh. There must be more to it than my waffle. I just tried a bunch of different scenarios at SCIR, for which I have 2 LC files by Giovanni Miduri: LC2643.bgl & LC2644.bgl. Memory use was stable each time. The pictures are taken after about 10 minutes sitting on the runway: 1. Base memory usage with no sim running 2. Both LC files in their own layer with no local texture folder 3. As above with a newly created empty local texture folder 4. Both LC files moved to Isla San Felix scenery layer containing VTP, LWM, AFD & mesh but no local texture folder 5. Both LC files moved to UK2000 EGDP scenery layer, with a populated local texture folder 6. User aircraft also at EGDP The memory & CPU usage was stable and similar in each trial.

Hi Hans. That's exactly what the landclass bug is described as doing. I guess I didn't explain it correctly. It doesn't necessarily need an empty texture folder: it just has to fail to find the correct texture in the local /Texture/ folder. That's the part that had escaped my understanding. I think that in your case, the landclass bgl was in one scenery layer but the associated texture file was probably in another layer or in the FS2004/Textures/ folder and that triggered the bug. *** Hi Tom. I don't think I've ever had a file & folder structure that could trigger the bug but it may be that my PC is also immune. I think I'll experiment this evening by adding a Texture folder to one of my LC layers, with and without contents. If my patience allows, I'll also move a LC bgl into a standard scenery layer and see what that does. D

I'm glad to know you've found the problem, and it's taught me something too. It ties in with the general advice concerning empty texture folders, and to be honest is something I should have thought of. As I understand it, BGLs requiring a texture file initially direct the search to the local /Texture/ folder and, if there's no suitable tx there, will extend the search to other folders as necessary. The empty texture folder issue relates to landclass: apparently there's a bug in the landclass implementation that prevents the extended search and keeps opening new instances of the search in the local folder, tying up an increasing amount of memory. If there's no local /Texture/ folder for a landclass scenery layer, the search starts elsewhere, circumventing the bug. It hadn't occurred to me that the same mechanism would use up memory if a landclass BGL was in an ordinary scenery layer with a populated /Texture/ folder. I'd read about the LC search bug, and about the empty folder thing and knew that LC needs to be in a separate layer but putting them all together was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me... Live and learn. :)

Hi. I may be well off the mark here but as your memory useage continuously creeps up, I don't suppose you have a scenery layer somewhere with an empty /Texture/ folder in it do you? If you do, try deleting the texture folder. D

Yes, just for AI. They're all installed manually in manually created folders with manually edited aircraft.cfg and are all converted to 888-8 before use. I did find one other instance of aptsign.bmp but that's not in a scenery layer. It's in ADE's root folder and is required -- ADE doesn't start without it. Disabling it for the duration of a quick test flight made no difference to the taxi sign's appearance. I also tried changing the size of the sign in ADE, also with no effect on the transparency. On the other hand bigger signs are much better when taxiing -- I can read them now before I've passed them. I did baulk at the thought of editing so many airports but then thought I'd limit it to dealing with signs at my destination while planning a flight. D

Hi Robin. If Plan-G looks as though it might be what you want, I think Tim Arnot is still active at the CBFS forum. He also has his own support forum. D

It's not something that's frustrating me so much as constantly scratching at my curiosity nerve: I don't like having no explanation for such things. chris_eve, I felt a little excitement yesterday on reading your change of format suggestion. I hadn't considered it at all. Ahh... 24-bit bmp, DXT1, DXT3, 888-8, mips, no mips, fresh alpha, no alpha... Stranger still, more letters, fewer letters red sign, yellow sign: And it's still only a few of them, seemingly random, with that dodgy transparency usually only seen on badly rendered chickenwire fences. CRJ_simpilot, the Nvidia settings in your screenies are the global defaults that I used when I deleted the Nvidia and the NI profiles -- I hadn't changed my global profile. I'd reinstated Nvidia control panel settings one by one, and made a fresh NI profile, also from scratch. I've just tried uninstalling NI as you suggested and that makes no difference either. It's a strange effect, quite infrequent and very definitely only affected by the Ground Scenery Casts Shadows option. It looks as though the entire sign is rendered as a shadow, transparent for the ground but still opaque to some objects, like the stock C172. D

Hi. Thanks for replying. The hashes are an exact match: 6222406F6FC77755D3408F408D7760BE26E110A3834AE562DDBF1CAD4259B3E5 6222406F6FC77755D3408F408D7760BE26E110A3834AE562DDBF1CAD4259B3E5 That's a long checksum, especially in hex... I don't believe it's a driver issue: the problem was identified in 2012. I suppose though that it may be a broad-based Nvidia problem but I don't know what make of card the other chap was using. The thread is here at FSDeveloper. I rebuilt FS9.cfg with no effect. I worked twice through each custom setting, starting from a clean config file: once in FS9's panel and a second time directly in notepad. A mind-numbing series of reloads. Nvidia's control panel 3d settings has no effect. Neither does my Nvidia Inspector profile. The only thing that affects the taxi signs is FS9's ground objects' shadows setting and it only shows up at certain distances and angles. I even thought it might be related to looking through the windscreen but with the appropriate view-angle it happens in every view. I've installed nothing more than some AI textures for some months, and since storage hasn't been a constraint for about a decade, I invariably convert them from DXT3 to 888-8 before I use them. Recently I've been modding some stock airfields, but disabling all of that lot makes no difference. I try to avoid using installers and much prefer manual installation from zips. That way uninstalling is simple and I can be pretty sure that addons haven't changed stuff in the background. Stranger still, it doesn't seem to affect every taxi sign so there's some other parameter that I've missed. Orientation of the sign perhaps, either by the compass or relative to the sun. Just a dark closing thought... I suppose it could be an indication that my graphics card is dying. D

Hi. This inability to render taxi signs correctly is something I don't recall seeing before. It doesn't happen to all taxi signs but content, stock/addon, orientation et c. don't matter. Also, it only happens in daylight so presumably only when the signs are not illuminated and I've only seen it on the yellow taxiway signs. I found (while rebuilding fs9.cfg, scenery layers & nvidia profiles) that I can turn the bug on and off by selecting or deselecting Ground Scenery Casts Shadows in the display settings. An online search returned only one relevant result: an inconclusive thread in fsdeveloper from 2012 that suggested it was a driver issue. Has anyone else ever noticed it and found a solution? Sunny airports look strange with no shadows. First, with shadows turned off: And with shadows enabled: