A number of users have reported “ghosting” with NVidia Windows hardware and X-Plane 10. The artifact typically looks like this:

What you’re seeing there is the scene from last frame being left around where the sky was supposed to be drawn, but was not.  As the camera moves, we get a trail of artifacts.

For a few days I couldn’t see this bug on my own system, and this afternoon I tried to reproduce it based a report from a user with the same hardware as my development machine.  So after a bunch of failed tries and scratching my head at the German version of the NVidia control panel, I was overjoyed to see this:

I mean, how cool is that!  That could be our new startup screen!  It’s like a giant 737 is going to pop up out of the screen and eat us all.  (Hint: if you are in the pit of a 747 and an airplane appears over the horizon that looks bigger than you from 20 miles away: run!)

It appears that this artifact is caused by turning on full screen anti-aliasing in the Nvidia control panel (with “override application settings”) but not in X-Plane.  My work-around: use “application controls” for the control panel and set FSAA in X-Plane itself.

Here’s another fun one:

This shows up with moderate global shadowing.  This shows up on the 285.62 NVidia drivers; the 280.62 and (for the very brave) 290.36 drivers don’t have this problem.

I don’t think there’s a moral of the story here; we’re still working through bugs, but I did find the bottom of my in-box, which I hope is an indication that the patches are helping at least some users.  There are a lot of different card/driver/OS combos, so working through all the combinations (as Windows X1000-users are finding) will take some time.

About Ben Supnik

Ben is a software engineer who works on X-Plane; he spends most of his days drinking coffee and swearing at the computer -- sometimes at the same time.

16 comments on “An Awesome NVidia Artifact”

  1. Had this exact ghosting effect when I booted up the demo for the very first time, however running on ATI 6870 so this issue is not NVIDIA-specific. The same work-around (disabling HW anti-aliasing) worked for me too.

  2. Same ghosting effect here everytime I start a new demo with no preferences yet. My problem gets solved once I change 16 bits to 32 bits. Works like a charms on my
    GTX260.

    I also have “override application settings” ON (actually it’s always on, no matter what executable is running).

    I didn’t think about it as a bug. I thought it was a “16 bits sucks” problem. xD

      1. Dunno why but when I start a fresh beta, it starts in 16 bits even when default option is the one to copy the desktop resolution (can’t remember the exact name).

        Anyway, just add a popoup saying “when you turn your sim into 16 bits, Austin buys a kitten. Please, we have enough kittens!” xD

  3. I’ve seen the same ghosting effect as in the first screenshot on my AMD 6970 card under Linux. Catalyst 11.11.

    I think I know what causes it. Not sure if I’ll get to it this week with finals on Monday, but I’ll try to document it and file a bug report with proper logs and description.

    Just got my DVDs!!!

    1. I don’t think this is as simple as driver bug…the behavior is too consistent across both vendors.

      To make it weirder, I found code in X-plane that simply avoids the direct blit and uses a shader to copy IF there is ANY FSAA involved. That’s probably why we don’t see this when you pick X-Plane’s FSAA – then X-Plane knows what’s going on and takes the conservative code path. I’ll make a special build on Windows and see what happens…

  4. Thanks for the tip on changing 16 bit to 32 bit. That got rid of my flashing rainbow fluoro effects on the runway.

    The X-Plane display resolution option lists lots of 16 bit colour options. Is that generated from my OS / monitor or something for you to remove as well?

    I have the Intel X4500 GMA G41 integrated graphics card with latest drivers. I get occasional flashes of black in the sim window even with no clouds, no weather, no objects, no terrain (Paris in demo), default apt.dat, low res. I have 2GB, dual core, windows 7 64 bit. Could that be lack of memory as windows uses 0.75GB?!

    1. Yeah, I have to change several time the screen resolution just to see some 32 bit resolutions in the list.

  5. This effect is not limited to Nvidia cards. I get the same ghosting effect on my i7 Win7, ATI5870 Eyefinity6 card with HDR off.

    1. Can ypu post me _only_ the OpenGL extension list from your log.txt file? That’s that HUGE list of stuff like GL_ARB_multisample GL_EXT_kitchen_sink in one long paragraph.

  6. The 737 at the runway horizon is truly awe-inspiring. I literally laughed out loud when I saw that. Anyway, I had the stuck throttle problem and it persisted across all aircraft. Even the stock Cessna 172, which I’m pretty sure is an aircraft not normally equipped with auto-throttle. In my case, I could still advance the throttle by hitting F2 and pressing F1 closed the throttle. I “fixed” it by deleting every single X-Plane preference file, as removing the calibration one alone did not work.

    It happened to me while I had last closed X-Plane 10.01 with the Propjet, possibly with autothrottle set. In 10.03 the Propjet is gone and my joystick throttle never worked right until after deleting all preference files. Anyway, have fun squashing all the bugs. I imagine you’ll stay busy for at least a couple months, which is plenty of time for me to save up to buy or build a new computer by spring.

  7. Had the same problem on my system before updating to the third beta. Fix may have been to turn on atmospheric scattering.

  8. I have an iMac with an ATI Radeon 2600 Pro HD and when I run X-Plane 10 on OSX Lion it works fine, but when I run it on Windows via Bootcamp, I have the exactly issue you described. So it seems not a nVidia exclusive issue.

  9. Ben,
    The latest update as of today, it seems that with HDR on I’m able to hold the frame rates pretty close to no HDR.
    However, I have no AA with HDR on. (shadows only work with global low or below)
    I’ve tried with nVidia inspector profile on & off, just in-game also.
    I’ve tried 3 different drivers up to 290.36, but with that beta driver XPX will not run,
    I just get a blank screen and have to re-boot.
    I’m using Geforce Driver 285.62 now.

  10. I’m having massive problems with X-Plane 10 retail on the following hardware:

    Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.4GHz
    16GB DDR3-2000 RAM
    2 x 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD
    1.5GB Zotac Geforce GTX 580 (285.62 drivers, stock speed)
    Windows 7 Pro 64-bit

    I am getting MASSIVE artifacts and geometrical faults everywhere – on the aircraft model, scenery, roads, sky, etc. I’ve already tried the above suggestions such as making sure my AA and AF settings in the nVidia control panel are App-Controlled.

    What seems to help is setting a shadow setting as low as possible (currently I have it on static).

    The weird stuff happens regardless of aircraft selected or world location.

  11. First time I used XP10 10.00b no problems using settings from ATI CCC not XP10 App. But after version 10.02b I have this problem like the pic shows us. It’s is better if you guys could make us use both options: XP10 Settings or ATI/Nvidia CCC because with CCC I can earn more FPS (50-60) against XP10 settings (20-30). Ah … HDR is off (10-20). I also updated my video card and XP10 10.03B4. Solutions???

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