Help: Weird FSX plane shadows and a Saitek X45 problem...

[Sundog]

I finally have FSX installed and running, yeah!

But, I have two problems.

1) The airplanes cast cookie cutter shadows across ground objects, e.g.-runways and buildings. Think of how cookies are laid out on a cooking tray. Now imagine your airplane is in the middle of that cooking tray and all of the cookies are shadows. When I fly over anything with structures I see those multiple shadows over everything for about a 50 plane by 50 plane pattern. I'm just guessing at the number, but that's what it's like.

2) I can't get views set to my Saitek X45 joystick hat switch. When I try to set the views within FSX it just displays "hatswitch" for whatever view I choose. So I can choose Pan left, but then, that's all the hat does. It's a PITA. I don't use the Saitek software with this stick, I usually just set it up in game. Any ideas, Saitek users?

Thanks. Once I get these problems corrected I can get on to beta testing and installing all of the freeware I've downloaded over the past couple of years in anticipation of having a system that can handle FSX. Oh, here's the system for reference,

CPU Intel Core i7 920 Processor BX80601920 - 2.66GHz, LGA 1366, 4.8GT/s QPI, 8MB L3 Cache, Quad-Core, HyperThreading, Bloomfield (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4240166&CatId=4072)

MoBo GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5 LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128362)

RAM OCZ Gold Tri Channel 6GB PC12800 DDR3 Memory - 1600MHz, 6144MB (3 x 2048) (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4282839&Sku=O261-7510)

Vid-Card EVGA 896-P3-1173-AR GeForce GTX 275 FTW Edition 896MB 448-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 SLI Supported Video Card (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130479)

HD (FS9) Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136319)

HD (OS) Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322)

HD (FSX) Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136322)

Case Thermaltake Armor Series VA8003BWS Black Full Tower Case w/ 25CM Fan (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133021)

CD/DVD drive LG Super Multi Blu-Ray/HD DVD-Rom Drive - 6x BD-ROM, 6xBD-R, BD-RE 2x, 3x HD DVD ROM,16 x DVD-ROM, 12x DVD-R, SATA (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4303989&Sku=L49-1012)

PSU CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V 2.2 / EPS12V 2.91 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready Active PFC Power Supply (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139009)

Cooler COOLER MASTER V8 RR-UV8-XBU1-GP 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103055)

[harleyman]

Well iot sounds like you have a texture file issue....

Is this a virgin install of FSX / or do you have addons ?

You can run a repair with the disks and see if that helps..But if you have other scenery addons it may be more involved than that.


As far as your stick, I can't answer that at all..Sorry.

[Sundog]

Oh sure, I can never have a simple fix sort of problem! LOL. I have a bunch of add-ons already installed. But if I have to re-install, that's what I'll do. I don't have a ton of scenery installed yet. Maybe about 20 or so add-ons. I'll keep trying to track it down first. I was kind of hoping it was a messed up setting, but it's rarely that simple.

[harleyman]

What scenery addons do you have installed?

If you have GEX..UTX you can rerun the compilers for them and see if they fix the issues...Also again run the FSX disks again and select Repair... Not reinstall...

[Sundog]

OK, your advice helped in a roundabout way. Everything is fixed now. Mostly just a result of "Doh!" moments. :)

1) The view problem was a result of me not programing the correct commend in FSX. There are a whole lot of view commands in FSX!

2) The Shadow problem I figured out, but wasn't sure, as I grabbed the disks to do an uninstall/reinstall. When I grabbed the disks, I noticed my FSX disks were RTM, but the accel disk was beta1. Ooops. I should have thrown out all of my Beta disks. As soon as I downloaded the accel RTM and uninstalled the beta and put in the RTM version, all problems fixed.

So the lesson is, throw out all of your beta disks so you make sure you install the correct version. ;)

BTW, thanks, you're always a great help around here. OC'ing will be the next step. I'll have to read that thread in the tweaking section (Or whatever section that's in above). I have all of the sliders to the right and get a little stutter in some high density scenery areas, so I'm sure OC'ing will fix that.

[harleyman]

Good news...

Never heard of the beta Acceleration disk.....

New to me...but glad ou are back up and flying shadow free....:ernae: