Odd sky display (not FSUIPC related)

[Arnaud_S]

Hi guys,

I am a registered FSUIPC user, and I know what I am going to ask has nothing to do with FSUIPC. Simply, in despair, I had the idea that Pete and folks on this board would maybe have a sufficient good FS engine knowledge to help me avoid a re-install. Factly, I think that if on Pete's forum I dont find the soslution, then I will have to re-install.

I know Pete is away at the moment and I hope he enjoys his moutains :) .

Few weeks ago, I've noticed that the sky in FS has come to a very odd display - again, I know that is not FSUIPC related -.

here are two shots:

Maybe on the first one you dont see the problem, due to your monitor brightness settings, so here the same screenshot, exagerated with Photoshop so that you see what's wrong:

Awfull. What is more important in FS if its the sky rendition? This happens also in the daytime, but its less obvious due to stronger lightening.

I have several ideas about what the problem might be, but they all lead me to a system and FS re-install. Either FS dead install, DirectX issue, drivers issue.

I use a 1280/1024/32 FS resolution, and the screen support easily that setting, as well as the graphic card (ATI 9800XT).

I dont exclude hardware problem.

The main question is: is there a known .dll in FS that deals with the sky which maybe got corrupted and that I could replace?

I dont use any third party sky textures, everything is default and I havent installed recently anything new.

Has anyone ever witnessed such a weird sky display?My FS install was a year and half old, and I take a good care of it, so its always been extremely stable, as I am always very carefull when it comes to install add-ons sceneries or aircrafts.

Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Arnaud

[Frank.O]

Hi Arnaud,

I'm not an expert on that but I would suspect the graphics driver to be the culprit. It seems to have difficulties to display the colour gradient. Have you changed any settings there? Try another colour depth or try to reset every setting to its default value in the driver. Also try to set AA and AF to application dependant instead of turning it on in the driver.

Just a few shots in the dark of course :)

Regards,

Frank

[Arnaud_S]

Hey Frank,

(are you the Frank I know from the AI small world? :) )

Yes, not later than this morning, I uninstalled my gfx drivers, and installed two other versions: with both versions, the problem still occur, and yes, with all default settings as well as custom settings.

I changed and tried different values for the monitor gamma, brightness and contrast, but nothing helps here.

To tell the whole story, my good old CRT ran out of order two week ago, and someone convinced me to try an LCD 17". What I did.

So at first I thought the problem came from the new LCD monitor, but it doesnt: factly, I suspect the LCD (which brightness is a lot higher than on CRTs) just revealed an already exisiting problem that I didnt notice on my CRT.

Anyway, if even the problem came from the monitor, you would have seen the screenies normally on your monitor. The fact that you see the problem makes me conclude that it is a software problem.

In the meanwhile, and because I still had a doubt on the monitor, I made a test with another CRT and could see the problem was still there.

My last fear is that when my old CRT 'burnt', the graphic card got kind of a shock, and that my problem simply comes from the graphic card.

Other than that, I am thinking of an FS problem, some .dll screwed.

Thanks a lot for replying Frank.

Regards,

Arnaud

[Frank.O]

Hi Arnaud,

(are you the Frank I know from the AI small world? :) )

I don't think so :) don't know AI small world.

Other than that, I am thinking of an FS problem, some .dll screwed.

If it is an FS problem I would tend to suspect a configuration error somewhere. Is FS set to the same resolution and colour depth as windows? Often when graphic cards or drivers are changed their entries remain in the FS9.cfg so scan this file for multiple [Display.device....] entries and remove the unneeded. Also you can try to delete/rename the fs9.cfg and let FS build up a new one with default settings.

Regards,

Frank

[Arnaud_S]

Hi Frank,

Thanks again. yes, I already tried to remove the fs9.cfg file and let Fs rebuild. That didnt help unfortunately.

However I saw just next to the fs9.cfg file a dxdiag.xml file I never saw before. Maybe was put there when i performed the DirectX tests diagnostic the other day.

I will wait for Pete's return, and I will probably head for a complete re-install now.

Some friends of mine did some test for me: as I suspected my gfx card to be u/s (the screenies looks like 16bit colors), I asked them to turn their FS

in 16bit colors and see what happen: nothing like on my screenshots.

Sigh...

Regards,

[Pete Dowson]

I will wait for Pete's return, and I will probably head for a complete re-install now.

I'm here now, but I confess I am not sure what you find awful about the views you posted. If you could capture a picture with at least the horzon in it and maybe some scenery, and explain what you think is wrong, then it might make more sense to me, but those just look like views straight up of an early morning or evening sky.

In any case, I'm afraid I am no expert in any of the graphics of FS. You may have better luck in the main FS2004 forum.

Sorry,

Regards,

Pete

[Arnaud_S]

Well, thank you anyway Pete for replying. Actually my systrem has a real problem - I noticed recently that ACM's rendere doesnt wotk any longer.

Might be DirectX the problem.

Thanks for all your help.

Best,