Nellis AFB CTD's support thread

[tjwhite56]

Well guess what. I had the Dawn/Dusk smoothing set to on. My card is a GeForce / nForce 610i using driver version 191.07 (which I think are the latest ones) and DX 10.1. Turned Dawn/Dusk smoothing off an now I get no CTD with all textures and BGLs installed.

Same drivers I have. I just looked on Nvidias site and there is a newer version maybe Ill try that later. I kinda hate to mess with it because I havent had the boot problem lately. From what I gather a file that is part of the drivers goes into an "infinate loop" and I get the dreaded Windows encountered a problem shut down message. Sure wish I understood all this stuff, Santa brought me a case of Labatts, and I'm doing my best to try and see if that will help clear things up

[VulcanDriver]

Well guess what. I had the Dawn/Dusk smoothing set to on. My card is a GeForce / nForce 610i using driver version 191.07 (which I think are the latest ones) and DX 10.1. Turned Dawn/Dusk smoothing off an now I get no CTD with all textures and BGLs installed.

Same drivers I have. I just looked on Nvidias site and there is a newer version maybe Ill try that later. I kinda hate to mess with it because I havent had the boot problem lately. From what I gather a file that is part of the drivers goes into an "infinate loop" and I get the dreaded Windows encountered a problem shut down message. Sure wish I understood all this stuff, Santa brought me a case of Labatts, and I'm doing my best to try and see if that will help clear things up

Let me know about the new drivers please.

[Firebird]

Well that's some progress guys, although I am still at a loss as to why it happens to you guys but not to me, as I too use an Nvidia, GTX260, and the latest drivers 195.62 . Mike, what are you using?
I would say try the very latest, as I did here of some bad things about version 191, unsubstantiated personally. See if that makes any difference.

So from the rest of the guys having issues, are you Radeon or Nvidia, and do you have the blending on or off?

[tjwhite56]

Well guess what. I had the Dawn/Dusk smoothing set to on. My card is a GeForce / nForce 610i using driver version 191.07 (which I think are the latest ones) and DX 10.1. Turned Dawn/Dusk smoothing off an now I get no CTD with all textures and BGLs installed.

Same drivers I have. I just looked on Nvidias site and there is a newer version maybe Ill try that later. I kinda hate to mess with it because I havent had the boot problem lately. From what I gather a file that is part of the drivers goes into an "infinate loop" and I get the dreaded Windows encountered a problem shut down message. Sure wish I understood all this stuff, Santa brought me a case of Labatts, and I'm doing my best to try and see if that will help clear things up

Let me know about the new drivers please.

Updated the drivers, same result CTD Dusk/Dawn

[MIKE JG]

Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT.

[djnocturnal]

Nvidia 8500 GT

[Johnny Test]

Well guess what. I had the Dawn/Dusk smoothing set to on. My card is a GeForce / nForce 610i using driver version 191.07 (which I think are the latest ones) and DX 10.1. Turned Dawn/Dusk smoothing off an now I get no CTD with all textures and BGLs installed.

I'll be damned! I followed your lead & disabled the Dawn/Dusk Smoothing in my FS9 settings menu, and now it works a treat!

[Trim_tab]

I have a ATI 9600XT and Dawn/Dusk Smoothing enabled in fS9 and can't fault the damn thing... very interesting... really puzzling, I wonder what the underling conditions that causes this... its got to a combination of addons.

[MIKE JG]

I'll be damned! I followed your lead & disabled the Dawn/Dusk Smoothing in my FS9 settings menu, and now it works a treat!

What I want to know is WHY this is happening. IOW is it related to the scenery files and how they interact with certain graphics cards or what? If so, I'd like to know so going forward I can design scenery that doesn't do this.

Here is a theory that I have about this: Some of the ground textures do not make use of a night version, the "_LM" suffix that goes at the end of the texture file name. For example the airport background does not use a night version. My understanding is that if there is no night version of a given texture file, FS9 simply applies the appropriate shading to the day texture and all is well.

However I wonder if this is a case where forcing FS9 to use a specific night texture might prevent this dawn/dusk texture blending issue. I can try some tests here in another week or so when I get home.

It's never been an issue before but we're still finding out things that no one knows about.

[djnocturnal]

disabled Dawn/Dusk Smoothing and it works for me now too:)

[MIKE JG]

Well good, now time to understand the why part.

[Firebird]

Excellent news, and again thanks to TJ for actually spotting this. We could have gone for months w/o trying this.

@Johnny Test
Could you confirm whether you use an Nvidia or a Radeon based card please.

So in a nut shell it appears that some as yet unknown factors may cause Nellis to CTD with the Dawn/Dusk blending option switched on. So far we think this is limited to Nvidia based cards, but this is not proven, and the answer is to switch the blending option off.

Before we cast this in stone and place a warning in an amended Docs, is there anybody that still gets a CTD in any condition at either Nellis or the other place that we haven't supplied in a hidden file.

[Blank Fang]

I am using NVidia GeForce 7800 GTX and disbled Dawn/Dusk blending option.
No CTD's anymore
-----
Willy

[-foxtail-]

2xRadeon 3870 in Crossfire, Vista 64
After disabled Dawn|Dusk blending no CTD

[swp53]

ATI Radeon HD2400 Pro. No CTD with dusk/dawn blending turned off. CTD with turned on. Vista Home Premium 32 Intel Quad 6600 2.4ghz 4gb ram

[Kurosaki]

(new guy here)

I use Vista Home Premium (hopefully not for that much longer), 64-bit, with a run of the mill Intel-Integreated graphics card. Quad-core 2.33 ghz.

Similar crash issues as everyone above: crashes with or without "MAIW_Nellis_AFB_Base_Poly_VTPP.BGL" and having dawn/dusk texture bleeding on OR off - always during the "Loading Terrain" phase of start up.
I disabled all my other addon sceneries, tried flying towards it, and crash. Hope this helps! I've worked as a software tester for about 4 years now and am pretty confident we'll get to the bottom of this.

[Johnny Test]

@Johnny Test
Could you confirm whether you use an Nvidia or a Radeon based card please.

ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro

[Firebird]

(new guy here)

I use Vista Home Premium (hopefully not for that much longer), 64-bit, with a run of the mill Intel-Integreated graphics card. Quad-core 2.33 ghz.

Similar crash issues as everyone above: crashes with or without "MAIW_Nellis_AFB_Base_Poly_VTPP.BGL" and having dawn/dusk texture bleeding on OR off - always during the "Loading Terrain" phase of start up.
I disabled all my other addon sceneries, tried flying towards it, and crash. Hope this helps! I've worked as a software tester for about 4 years now and am pretty confident we'll get to the bottom of this.

Welcome,
OK we need a bit more diags now, as you seem to be the last man standing.
Could you answer the 9 questions we asked for originally at the beginning of this CTD thread.
Thanks.

[Ray_Merkel]

1. Version of OS: XP SP3
2. Version of FS: 9.01.040901.01
3. Nellis and Easter Egg installed or Nellis only: Nellis Only, I don't think I have the Easter Egg installed?
4. Time of day that CTD occurs: Dawn and Dusk
5. UT USA installed or not: Not
6. Third party mesh installed and if so which one: dem_38_uswc_nev.bgl By FSGenesis/Justin Tyme
7. Was the package installed manually or using the installer: Using the installer

Ok, I tried to run fs9 at Nellis at dawn and I get the CTD.

I tried to run ProcessMonitor but I got an error with it. I will reinstall and try later.

I did however, disable the dawn/dusk smoothing option and when I reloaded FS at Nellis at dawn, it loaded and ran fine.

My Video card is Nvidia Gforce 7600 GS

[Firebird]

Thanks, Ray. Can you confirm that it loads OK during the day as well.

Oh and you should really find and install the egg, you will like it