Any ideas what causes this?

**expat** · September 24th, 2009, 07:00

These spikes are all around the Salton Sea between Palm Springs and El Centro CA. Is this some kind or scenery/mesh conflict?

Regards

expat

***Daube*** · September 24th, 2009, 07:09

I would say a problem with the mesh itself.
Those pikes are fix, right ? They do not flash, or appear/dissapear etc ?

**expat** · September 24th, 2009, 07:26

Yes, they are fixed and do not interfere with the running of FS, i.e. doesn't cause any stutter or freeze etc.

**Lewis-A2A** · September 24th, 2009, 07:32

You are overloading your GPU is the normal cause I believe. Try lowering the settings.

**airtj** · September 24th, 2009, 08:22

Did you tweak your flight sim config with buffer pools? I had mine set high and got those results trying deleting the setting and see if that helps.

**kilo delta** · September 24th, 2009, 08:40

Originally Posted by Lewis-A2A

You are overloading your GPU is the normal cause I believe. Try lowering the settings.

Exactly...those peaks are due to memory issues with the graphics card. Reduce the settings slightly and it should go away.

**GypsyBaron** · September 24th, 2009, 08:47

Those spikes in your screenshot are a result of bad mesh
elevation settings.

The spikes produced by an overloaded video system will
be variable....come and go...not static.

I have seen both on my system and recognize the difference.

The "overload" spikes are usually emanating from the
autogen trees.

I'd suggest you look back and see what scenery ( mesh )
you may have added recently and disable it in an
attempt to isolate the culprit.

I had a great many terrain spikes when I added one of the
10M mesh files that covered the northeast USA in areas
extending from the Hudson River near Albany on out
to the Boston area and up into New Hampshire.

I removed the offending mesh files once I isolated those
causing the problem but not before I had spent a few hours
creating multiple "flattens" to "correct" the mesh aberrations.

Paul

**Lionheart** · September 24th, 2009, 08:47

The Airforce was experimenting with a space born vehicle that could fold space. However, during a test flight, they went to FTL at low altitude while over the Salton Sea area, and accidentally pulled up part of Earth up to about 120,000 feet altitude.

Horrible site...

Some cows, several civilians, quite a few cactus, and some Chevy Suburbans were seen falling from the sky for days.

Bill

Milu83 · September 24th, 2009, 09:57

Hello expat,

Sometimes i got this problem also. And by me the trees also doing the same. I dont Know what kind of Graphic card are you using, but try lowering the settings. It's because some texture "overloading"
To much autogen, + texture resolution are set to high. FSX uses alot of video-memories, Phisical memories and alot of swap file for the thousands of texture files that are loaded during the flight. Look after these 3 things, for the first times.

After this ( when the problem also occures) set to default the graphics settings in FSX, and in the VGA driver. Don't use FSX anti aliasing and he VGA anti aliasing together. Set the filtering in to anisotroph....and some little time eating tweaking, and you are there

Good luck:ernae:
Milu83

***Roger*** · September 24th, 2009, 11:13

It's always worth reading the preceding posts. As Paul says it isn't a graphics card issue because the artefacts are a permanent feature of the area and gpu overload spikes are ephemeral.

***Henry*** · September 24th, 2009, 11:22

Originally Posted by Roger

and gpu overload spikes are ephemeral.

Darn Rog you got me reading a dictionary again never heard of that word

But i believe you are correct
aich

**gera** · September 24th, 2009, 11:37

Originally Posted by Lionheart

The Airforce was experimenting with a space born vehicle that could fold space. However, during a test flight, they went to FTL at low altitude while over the Salton Sea area, and accidentally pulled up part of Earth up to about 120,000 feet altitude.

Horrible site...

Some cows, several civilians, quite a few cactus, and some Chevy Suburbans were seen falling from the sky for days.

Bill

hahahahaahah, there you go Bill!!!!!!, you see its easy!!!!!!!!!!!!.....the heat!!! the heat!!!!! the heat!!!!!!.....overheated video card!!!!! and I also found a ****** midget looking for some grass around the blotted ram chips!!!!!!......welcome to the club Bill!!!!!you finally joined me at the twilight zone!!!!!!!!

***Daube*** · September 24th, 2009, 15:37

Originally Posted by expat

Yes, they are fixed and do not interfere with the running of FS, i.e. doesn't cause any stutter or freeze etc.

Then it's a problem with the local Mesh.
If those peaks would appear ramdomly, move, flash etc... then they would have been the consequence of overloaded hardware. But from what you say, this is not the case, this is a scenery issue.

**Cactuskid** · September 24th, 2009, 18:20

Yep, it's a mesh problem alright! I had the same problem around Cape Cod and New Bedford after I installed the 10m mesh add-on. Some parts of Florida too... If I disabled the mesh add-on in the scenery menu, the problem went away. I'll have to try it again with toned down settings, and see if it helps...

**Piglet** · September 24th, 2009, 19:57

I actually like all those anomalies! Gives a strange "other world" quality to FSX...

**expat** · September 25th, 2009, 00:33

I actually like all those anomalies! Gives a strange "other world" quality to FSX...

LOL !! Have to agree with you Tim. Was taking the Howard on a dawn run from Las Vegas down to El Centro and it was weird - Star Trek like - flying around and through those things, kind of like the rings of Saturn.

Fully agree it's not overloading/heating etc. Seen that before and as mentioned that is a variable, not fixed phenomenon and you get flashing etc. This is completely confined to this little corner and my system is running very smoothly on the current settings.

Now, as it is probably the mesh, is there anyway to "fix" a mesh file or is it really a choice of mesh or no mesh? This is some freeware mesh for FSX I found at simaviation. Have it installed around the US and South Pacific and it is very good otherwise. Will any FS9 freeware mesh work in FSX?

Thanks for all your replies.

expat

***Daube*** · September 25th, 2009, 01:23

Yes, any mesh or landclass from FS9 will work in FSX.
Only textures can be problematic, but this concerns only sceneries. Meshes and Landclasses contain no textures, so they never cause any problem.

In fact, I'm using a FS9 landclass for Switzerland in my FSX.

***anthony31*** · September 25th, 2009, 16:06

Originally Posted by expat

Now, as it is probably the mesh, is there anyway to "fix" a mesh file or is it really a choice of mesh or no mesh? This is some freeware mesh for FSX I found at simaviation. Have it installed around the US and South Pacific and it is very good otherwise. Will any FS9 freeware mesh work in FSX?

Not really. It's actually probably easier to recreate the mesh yourself. As it is a freeware mesh I presume the creator sourced some freeware data and then run it through fsx resample to create the .bgl. Making mesh is pretty simple just so long as you know what you are doing (which is the hardest bit, a search of fsdevelopers will show up various threads regarding creating mesh).

The problem with free sources of raw mesh data is that they will usually have some holes in the data which need to be fixed before creating the .bgl file. There are various free programs available that will read the raw data and can process it as well as export it as a picture which can be cleaned up in a paint program.

Have a look at the scenery files for your mesh. If you are lucky it will be in small .bgl files and if you can identify the individual file(s) causing the problem you could remove them. If you are unlucky it will be in one big file and you have to throw out the baby with the bath water.

**Gdavis101** · September 25th, 2009, 17:06

I usually get those just before an out of memory error..

**sblzei** · September 25th, 2009, 23:02

I reported the same problem to this forum one year ago. It happens to me in the very same area (SW of the Salton Sea, S. California - see map). It can be seen from quite a distance (San Diego), therefore it is not genereated when you fly over the area.
It must be something in the mesh (default or added - I have Genesis).

I guess we have to live with it

Ezio

**Shylock** · September 26th, 2009, 06:47

I had this issue when I was running Ultimate Terrain X. After a few updates to UTX it fixed the problem. At one point the Salton Sea was like -175,000 ft down. It was just a big hole you can fly down into.