No Buildings Until Close Up

[Yankee]

Hello
Some of the buildings in my LAX scenery (as well as some of the other FSDT sceneries) sometimes do not show up. They just appear as black outlines on the ground where they are supposed to be. I have been searching the forums for hours now and I haven't been able to fix it. Sometimes restarting Couatl fixes it and all is well. However most of the time the building that was originally gone will appear, but then another building somewhere else in the airport will disappear. I have tried reinstalling the scenery as well as the addon manager alone with my antivirus off, I am NOT running fsx in a compatibility mode and yes I have both menus in the addon tab in fsx. However the buildings do appear when I come very close to them which is strange and very annoying when on approach.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[virtuali]

If your buildings disappear entirely (not must leaving pieces or lower detail version of them), and reappear only when getting close, it doesn't have anything to do with the Addon Manager, Couatl or the antivirus. If there was a problem with them, you wouldn't see anything, regardless of the distance.

The only known cause for this is the Compatibility mode. We had reports that not just FSX.EXE Compatibility mode might affect this, but even other add-ons launched together with FSX, that has the Compatibility mode enabled.

Check your %APPDATA%\Microsoft\FSX\EXE.XML file for a list of programs that are started by FSX, and be sure that none of them has the Compatibility mode enabled. If you launch FSX using a 3rd party launcher ( = not with its icon ), be sure that one doesn't have the Compatibility mode enabled too.

[Yankee]

Here is my xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="Launch" version="1,0">
  <Descr>Launch</Descr>
  <Filename>exe.xml</Filename>
  <Disabled>False</Disabled>
  <Launch.ManualLoad>False</Launch.ManualLoad>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>Couatl</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
    <Path>fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe</Path>
  </Launch.Addon>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>Couatl</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
    <Path>C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe</Path>
  </Launch.Addon>
</SimBase.Document>

Is it weird to have two entries for Launch.Addon with different file paths?

I also checked again for compatibility settings and both of them are set to default with no checkmarks (fsx.exe, and couatl.exe).

[virtuali]

Is it weird to have two entries for Launch.Addon with different file paths?

That's not normal, and none of our installers put the *complete* ( C:\Program files, etc. ) path for couatl.exe, the normal line is the first one.

It's possible you created that entry yourself, because for some reason Couatl didn't load, so you try to fix it by adding it manually to the EXE.XML path ?

In any case, try to remove the whole 2nd entry for Couatl.exe , from  <Launch.Addon> to  </Launch.Addon> this might in fact cause problems.

[Yankee]

Ok I just removed the second entry so now it looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252"?>
<SimBase.Document Type="Launch" version="1,0">
  <Descr>Launch</Descr>
  <Filename>exe.xml</Filename>
  <Disabled>False</Disabled>
  <Launch.ManualLoad>False</Launch.ManualLoad>
  <Launch.Addon>
    <Name>Couatl</Name>
    <Disabled>False</Disabled>
    <ManualLoad>False</ManualLoad>
    <Path>fsdreamteam\couatl\couatl.exe</Path>
  </Launch.Addon>
</SimBase.Document>
 
I loaded up fsx twice and I still have the same problem. I went to KFLL to test it out there and have noticed that one building in particular almost never appears. Maybe this is because this building was designed differently or contains other files than the other buildings? Its the west parking garage, southwest of terminal 1 if it helps. At KLAX it tends to be the control tower and the "encounter" restaurant in the middle of the airport.

Thanks again for the help!

[virtuali]

I loaded up fsx twice and I still have the same problem. I went to KFLL to test it out there and have noticed that one building in particular almost never appears.

There's nothing wrong with the buildings, if there was a problem with Couatl, they shouldn't show up at all, not just when close. I'm sorry, but I can only confirm that everyone else that had this problem, fixed it by eventually finding a program they ran in FSX that was still running in Compatibility mode.

Other than that, it might be a video driver bug or an FSX settings problem, try the following:

 - First try to reset your video driver settings to default. Be sure you don't use "Transparency Antialiasing" (or "Adaptive Anti-aliasing" ).

- If that doesn't work, try to update your video driver too.

- If that doesn't work, try to reset your %APPDATA%\Microsoft\FSX\FSX.CFG file, to have FSX rebuild a new one with default settings

- Be sure you apply the HIGHMEMFIX tweak to the FSX.CFG, you can enabled it with the Addon Manager too, that's the only setting that really needs to be applied.

[Yankee]

Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I have an Intel 4000 HD graphics card, but it has no option for anti-aliasing and I have looked on their forums and it says that it is programmed to only use application settings when pertaining to anti-aliasing (and no anti-aliasing is not checked within fsx). I also have tried the Highmem fix but that also has not worked, nor has resetting the fsx.cfg.

I don't think this affects it, but I am running Windows 8. Again not in compatibility mode for any other OS, however on my windows 7 desktop that I had about 2 months ago, I still had the same problem. I also checked all of the known fixes for it on my old computer and the problem was still there so I don't think it's an operating system issue. But I could be wrong.

Any ideas?

Thanks

[virtuali]

Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I have an Intel 4000 HD graphics card, but it has no option for anti-aliasing and I have looked on their forums and it says that it is programmed to only use application settings when pertaining to anti-aliasing (and no anti-aliasing is not checked within fsx). I also have tried the Highmem fix but that also has not worked, nor has resetting the fsx.cfg.

That card is basically an unsupported one. We never test on anything else than NVidia (which most of FSX users have) or ATI, but the HD4000 it's not something I'd use for FSX, and we don't have any idea of which problems this cards (well, it's not really a "card", since it's integrated in the CPU) might have.

[Yankee]

What do you suggest I do? I'm running FSX on an i7 laptop so I can't substitute for another card. Any ideas?

[virtuali]

I'm running FSX on an i7 laptop so I can't substitute for another card. Any ideas?

Sorry, but that's the shortcomings of using laptops for gaming. This doesn't mean you can't use a laptop for FSX, but but best gaming laptops usually have separate nvidia or amd graphic chips, instead of the Intel integrated one, and most of games out there are not optimized for it.