Flight Sim Help!

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Member for

17 years

Posts: 2

FS People, I need your guidance & wisdom.

I am currently in the process of assisting an Air Cadet Squadron and given my interest in Flight Sims I have been put in charge of the Squadrons Simulator. At home, my set up is basic but the squadron based one is better but runs poorly.

A 2.8 Ghz Chipset, 1 Gb Ram and an ATI Radeon Graphics Card (9600) 256Mb with twin outlets. One outlet runs standard monitor and other runs via a Projector - scenery on the big screen, cockpit controls on the monitor. Running FS2002 & 2004. CH Yoke system but no rudder pedals (yet!).

Two issues. As soon as you split the screens the images become juddery / low refresh rates etc. Thought with the above power, the system should be able to cope (no internet connection, no virus checker, stand alone system, no other background software). Also within 30 seconds of using "Hardware Acceleration" the system crashes and only way out is to switch of the PC. For both FS 2002 & 2004 there is nothing to do but run them in "safe mode" and hence low end graphics and low refresh rates.

I am sure this is something very simple but none the less aggravating. Any ideas that perhaps do not involve throwing shed loads of cash at the project?

Many thanks all.

Original post

Member for

19 years 1 month

Posts: 232

If you're gettting a crash with hardware acceleration enabled there is certainly something wrong.

It could be either hardware or software related. The first thing I would do is check the display drivers are up to date and that you have an up to date version of Direct X is installed (9.0c is the current version) Once you have updated the display drivers I would recommend running dxdiag. To do this click start, run and type dxdiag into the box and run through the test options on the display tab.

If you the problem persists after a driver update I would suggest checking the hardware. Do you have an alternative graphics card you can try ?

You may find resolving this initial problem improves the performance loss you experiance on two displays, however running two displays will always reduce performance significantly.

Let us know how you get on ?

Bruce

Member for

17 years

Posts: 2

Flight Sim Help!

[QUOTE='lectra;1087412]If you're gettting a crash with hardware acceleration enabled there is certainly something wrong.

It could be either hardware or software related. The first thing I would do is check the display drivers are up to date and that you have an up to date version of Direct X is installed (9.0c is the current version) Once you have updated the display drivers I would recommend running dxdiag. To do this click start, run and type dxdiag into the box and run through the test options on the display tab.

If you the problem persists after a driver update I would suggest checking the hardware. Do you have an alternative graphics card you can try ?

You may find resolving this initial problem improves the performance loss you experiance on two displays, however running two displays will always reduce performance significantly.

Let us know how you get on ?

Bruce[/QUOTE]

Bruce thanks. Graphics Card drivers are up to date but forgot to consider the Direct X issue (Update & DXDiag). The performance slow down I could put up with if the PC managed to stay running. I will let you know. Thanks.