Screen "flickers"

[Hoggorm]

I see that my screen "flickers" quite a bit. It seems like the screen turns bright white for a fraction of a second once every now and then.

I have an nVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT video card with the latest drivers as I can see...

Can it be something in the settings that I should try to change, or is this just a part of the sim?

Thanks,

 

[garyw]

No, it's not part of the sim. Do you have the latest Nvidia drivers? Latst DirectX?

 

[wehaveaproblem]

I get this problem too, I'm sure I read it was unnavoidable on some systems... Are you using Vista?

 

[Hoggorm]

Yes, i run Vista, but think I had the very same problem on my XP laptop back in 2006 as well.

My computer is a Dell XPS M1530 and I've installed the latest driver for the GeForce 8600M GT found on the Dell Support pages.

I have DirectX 10.

I run Orbiter with the followig Video mode:

Direct3D T&L HAL (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT)

Full screen, 1440 x 900, 32 bpp colour.

I've also tried the Direct3D HAL (NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT) mode with the same result...

 

[wehaveaproblem]

My PC is a fairly beastly duel core x64 vista machine and as yet I have found no way to eliminate this happening, I just put up with it. If there is a fix however, i would love to know it.

 

[TSPenguin]

Doug Beachy has discovered the fix for it way back.
Disable the sidebar and everything should be stable.

 

[Hoggorm]

The first thing I did when I started my computer with Vista was to disable the sidebar, so on my computer that don't seem to be my problem. However, I did some testing with the parameters in the Orbiter Launchpad (not only on the video tab), and that seem to have done some magic. The "flickering" is gone, and I have better frame rate!

 

[evensis-]

I have the same issue, quad core 3ghz, gtx280 (with the lovely downclock bug, so i only get 20fps in orbiter sigh). Gonna disable the sidebar and see if it fixes it for me!

 

[buckethead]

i found a way that is a little bit strange. idk if it will work 4 u, but try to play with the main menu open (the ingame sidebar) for some reason it stops the flickering.

 

[-Pv-]

To me it seems the more headroom you have, the worse the flickering. Doing things that reduce the frame rate seems to help me.
I have Dual Core 2.8GHz X1950 Vid. My frames are usually around 90 - 120.
-Pv-

 

[Rocketman]

how do you disable the sidebar?

 

[Jarvitä]

how do you disable the sidebar?

taskmgr.exe, processes tab, select sidebar.exe and click end process.

I should note, this problem only appeared in Vista for me. In XP and win7, there's no such problem. As noted, disable the sidebar and close any windows on secondary monitors.

 

[dbeachy1]

You can also right-click on the sidebar and then click "Close Sidebar" in the popup menu; that will close the sidebar until you reboot or until you click on the 'Windows Sidebar' tray icon to display it again.

If you want to prevent the sidebar from reappearing on the next reboot as well, locate the "Windows Sidebar" tray icon and right-click -> Exit. If you want to restart the sidebar sometime later, click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Windows Sidebar.

 

[lclark]

Hello All. My first post. Hope I'm doing everything to specs.
I used vistaboost to fix the problem. Found it at Hanger Mods.

 

[Q3ark]

I get the "white flashy" problem if I run iTunes in the background to listen to music. Strange thing is, if I minimise iTunes before switching back to Orbiter it dosen't happen. I always thought it was something to do with the iTunes animated menu thing.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

I believe that the problem is caused by any program running in the background that has a always on top option, taskmanager will cause it to happen if you forget to close it.

 

[tblaxland]

I believe that the problem is caused by any program running in the background that has a always on top option

I also get the problem when running Yahoo Widget Engine under Win XP, its no big deal to turn it off though.