Note: this issue has been resolved – please see here!

I’ve received a few bug reports about this today: NVidia’s new 352.86 WHQL drivers for Windows do not work with X-Plane 10. I’m contacting Nvidia now to figure out what has happened.

In the meantime, to fly X-Plane, use the previous 340.52 WHQL driver.

I’ll post more when I learn more; we’ll resolve this with either a driver update or an X-Plane update, based on what has actually gone wrong and which can happen first.

Update: NVidia was able to suggest a work-around in our shaders that avoids what I think is a driver bug. Since we can cut an X-Plane build faster than NVidia can re-release their drivers, I have cut X-Plane 10.36 rc1.

You can get 10.36 rc1 by running the updater and checking “get new betas”; the updater will run even with the newest NVidia drivers.

10.36 rc1 is identical to 10.35 except for version number and a single shader change, but it’s also highly untested; I wanted to get it posted ASAP to accelerate the process. So please give it a try and file a bug if it doesn’t work like 10.35 (but working with the new NVidia drivers.)

Update 2: Sigh…this is what happens when I try to rush out a patch. The 10.36 patch’s free space calculation is totally borked. This will be fixed some time today. (This will be the third time I cut a patch.)

Update 3: the meta-data on the 10.36 rc1 patch is fixed – if you haven’t installed it yet, try again; you’ll need 30-40 MB of disk space, not 30-40 GB. 🙂

Update 4: Steam users – 10.36 will be available for Steam in a day or two; until then, please run older, functioning drivers.

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.

70 comments on “NVidia 352.86 Drivers Do Not Work With X-Plane”

  1. I had the same issue. Error message saying it can’t load some texture files. Please let me know their response.
    Regards,
    Guy

  2. It just hangs while loading for me, with a white square in the lower left of the screen.

  3. I had the same trouble as well. Please let me know their response.
    Best Regards,
    Daniel

  4. That driver´s version, 340.52 is too old, I have a GTX980 and the first version is 344.11.

    If you have a contact with Nvidia, please report the problem we have with this card and micropauses.

    Thanks.

      2. Good to hear that. I hope Nvidia also looks into this, as it may have impact on other software too.

      3. Actually even 350.12 works fine with gtx980 on win7 64, it’s 352.86 that fails

    2. I recommend the 347.88! I have a 970 and it works best for me, definitely try it out? 🙂

  5. FYI, I have been using driver 350.12 on GTX 760 for some weeks now, and X-Plane 10.35 is running fine with that. It seems whatever changed in the driver to break X-Plane, it was added after 350.12. Did not try 352.86 though.

    1. ditto

      also 352.86 only has improvements for the 9×0 line and only for Witcher 3

      stick to 347.88 for 7×0 and older card as 352.86 is unstable on 7×0 cards

  9. Just wanted to mention that the previous driver was 350.12 not 340.52. I just reinstalled 350.12 and it works fine now. The 340.52 is to old and does not work for my gtx 970

  10. Hi yes have the same issue after updating nvidia gtx 750 Ti, cant load shaders glsl.

    Please let me know, when nvidia will fix this problem

    Yours

    Volker

    1. reinstall the 347.88 the new drivers are unstable on 7×0 cards and only have improvements for The Witcher 3 any way

  12. Thanks for the heads up, im using 346.59 now for Linux does this affect all distros?
    PS.. It was this week we get some info about 10.40 yes?

    1. You can’t. We’ll get 10.36 on Steam as soon as we can. My guess is 2-3 days. I n the meantime, you’ll have to run an older driver!

      1. Steam downloaded 10.36r1 (64-bit build 103600) for me today, according to the log file, but when I start x-plane I still get an error and the small white box in the lower left. Have 352.86 and a GTX680.

        This is in the log file:
        =====Resources/shaders/terrain_frag.glsl=====
        (prefix:
        #define APL 0
        #define IBM 1
        #define LIN 0
        #define LIMITED 0
        #define HAS_GSHADER 0
        #define HAS_SRGB 1
        #define HAS_SHADER_LOD 1
        #define GEOM_MODE 3
        #define TEXTURE_MODE 0
        #define PROJ_BASE 0
        #define DECAL1 0
        #define DECAL2 0
        #define ALPHA_MODE 1
        #define LIGHTING_MODE 1
        #define NUM_LITES 0
        #define HAS_SPEC 1
        #define NORMAL_MODE 0
        #define USE_SHAD 0
        #define USE_LITE 0
        #define USE_SCAT 0
        #define USE_TONE 0
        #define CSM_COUNT 0
        #define BORDER_MODE 0
        #define NITE_MODE 0
        #define FOG_MODE 0
        #define OUTPUT_MODE 0
        #define USE_CRAZY_ALPHA 1
        end prefix)
        0(304) : error C1008: undefined variable “STEPS”
        0(310) : error C1008: undefined variable “STEPSI”
        0(318) : error C1008: undefined variable “STEPS”

        Plus the same lines for =====Resources/shaders/terrain_vert.glsl+Resources/shaders/terrain_frag.glsl=====

        What could be wrong with the steam patch? Or is it only me?

  14. Why is the updater telling me that I need 109 GB of free space to update to the BETA when its such a small change? I am unable to update due to this with close to 70GB of free space.

  15. I tried updating x-plane to 10.36rc1 from 10.35 but for some reason the installer want to install 132.1 GB??!?!
    obviously I don’t have disk space for it as x-plane is already installed, how to workaround it?

    thanks
    Dekel

  17. Same here…I cannot upgrade because it tells me i have no free disk space. It would need 330 GB!!!

  18. I feel a little frustrated with this driver stuff and I guess that the future doesn’t look bright regarding Opengl and nvidia. I tried 350.12 and I suffer stutters and freezes so I had to revert back to 338.77 (not sure about the number) to have them disapperead (same scenery, same time, same plugins, just replaced drivers).
    I feel disappointed to be forced to run one year old drivers, I don’t blame XPlane for that of course, but I just observe this worrisome trend by Nvidia.

    1. I have seen notes that going to Nvidia Control Panel and inside the 3D_Settings changing the setting for “Threaded optimization” to “off” should help wrt. the stutter and freeze problems.

      I had this issue as well with newer drivers and reverted back to 337.88 (Win7 64-bit) to get away from it. I have not yet tried the above hint myself.

      1. Theoretically I would expect higher framerates with threaded optimization on or on “auto” (which I think is still on for X-Plane); if you find that you have stutter with the optimization on (but not off) or there is a difference between specific drivers, please file a bug and include driver numbers.

        What would be MOST useful is if you see stutter in the fps test.

        1. What is correct syntax to run FPS test on Win7-64-bit with X-Plane 10 64-bit (latest release version)?

          At installation directory D:\X-Plane 10 tried to run from command shell X-Plane.exe -fps_test=1

          Parameter is then listed in log.txt, however XP starts up as normal, all windows, plugin-popus etc. remain in full interactive mode as if no option was present.

          Also tried with double-minus “–fps_test=1” then it will not even start or write anything to log.txt, returns immediately to command prompt.

          1. X-Plane.exe –load_smo=Output/replay/test_flight_c4.fdr –fps_test=3

            The fps test number should be: 3 for high-end x-plane system, 2 for medium-to-low x-plane system.

            When it finishes, FRAMERATE=nnnn will be in the log file.

        2. Ben, tried FPS test as pre your instructions.

          With double-minus signs on command line, XP crashed two times.
          I have just sent in automatic Crash report for this.

          With single-minus signs there was no effect, XP came up and displayed Quickflight as normal, no start of any FPS test. Same effect with Quickflight on startup turned off.

          Any ideas?

          1. Please file a bug – I don’t see your auto-crash report. The most likely thing is a mistake in the command line syntax.

          2. The following worked on W7 with 10.36

            C:\X-Plane 10>X-Plane.exe –fps_test=3 –load_smo=Output/replays/test_flight_c4.fdr

            note the missing “s” in “replay” in Ben’s post

            @Ben , wouldn’t it be beneficial to also log min and max framerate ? Currently we get:

            FRAMERATE TEST: time=245.4, frames=1844, fps=7.52
            GPU LOAD: time=245.4, wait=47.0, load=19.1%

            One last thought. When you start XP the first time you get this cool replay of the Piaggio on approach. I’d love to see a menu entry like “Run intro demo”, simply to enjoy the beauty of the replay, test the effect of system performance tuning and to easily impress visiting friends…

  19. I would like to know when X-Plane 10 plane will Arktiti landscapes of Antarctica and that is all missing latitude?
    Implement please them in the upcoming update. that you have to release blizhayzhie days.

        1. hi Kirill,

          a developer group around me is working on antarctica for x-plane. see the .org developer forum… but you need to be patient, prompts like “immediate” aren’t motivating for a group of developers spending their free time the community (and i guess, also not for the pros in the LR team).

          cheers.

          1. Hello. And I hope, too, Arctic landscapes are created (70 north latitude 90 north)or rather to the North Pole?

  20. The X-Plane 10.36 which you plan to release in the coming days will be whether it is modified or upgraded network mode of flight?

  23. I can confirm that the latest beta seem to load x-plane 10 with my NVidia card and driver: NVIDIA 352.86.

    Thanks

  24. Great support, that’s what I call this. Not available on Steam but still….

      1. Thanks Ben, support is outstanding at X-Plane. I am only a recent convert but really appreciate that. Looking forward to 10.40.

    1. So first: please file a bug. I was completely unaware of problems with Mountain Lion and the GF780.
      Second: probably not? If the drivers are borked in a final older release of OSX and there’s a newer version of OSX that fixes those drivers, there may not be anything I can do, and it’s probably not a good use of time to try to build a rare setup. I read a little bit of that thread and the Mac drivers that are buggy are also dirt slow…

  26. Version 10.36 hangs on the first plugin load.
    I have filed a bug and sent the Log.txt but I don’t see a Crash Report generated in the Output folder.
    Is there a way to revert back to 10.35?
    My video card is an AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series.

    Thanks,
    Benoit Richard

    1. Apologies for the panic.
      I just realized a friend might have hacked the default scenery folder a few weeks ago… (“It’s a great global weather plugin. Trust me, you’ll love it”).
      I should never listened…

      Anyway, I am now attempting to install a second copy of X-Plane on my Windows 7 64bit machine and start cross loading plugins and my collection of Custom Scenery.

      I will report back if I still experience the same freeze or errors with a clean copy.

      Cheers,
      Benoit Richard

  27. Thanks for this quick update!

    Many folks around some forums are reporting Increased performance , the improvement varies some report ~8fps some ~25 more fps , and as I said it’s NOT only a few , it’s something alot of people are reporting.
    so I wonder maybe this work-around did some sort of “magic: , or Nvidia maybe tweaked some opengl stuff from their side?
    Personally I didn’t see anything changed but that’s maybe because Im using a poor GTX 460 🙁

    1. Hi,

      The work-around makes -absolutely no difference- in framerate!

      (Computer nerds – I moved a #define out of a function body because in the 352.86 drivers, #defines inside function bodies don’t macro-substitute correctly. This is super weird – #define is supposed to be a -pre-processor-. Anyway, clearly this isn’t going to change fps.)

      It is very possible that the driver change changed fps, at least for some cards – NV has carte blanc to change the kitchen sink under there.

  28. Thanks for your answer Ben.

    I sent several mails to Randy (last 09302014) and he said “We will take a look”, therefore I didn’t file a bug, I thought you were working in it.

    I will send that bug on monday and I understand your position, but I hope it can be solved (Laminar Research, Apple, I don’t know), because as I said you a lot of software doesn’t work in that news OS X and we cannot fly X-Plane.

    Thanks again

  29. 10.36 steam version still have frozen problem when use latest nvidia drivers 352.86.My video card is gtx970m

  30. Hey,
    I got about 15-20% increase in framerates, you should be checking the source for this improvement – maybe you can increase FPS even more.
    My specs:
    I7 4790
    GTX 970
    16GB RAM

  31. Hi Ben ,

    Can confirm on the current 10.36 Steam Beta Build that the error still exists with the Shader problem using latest Drivers,, from what i can see in the log file the difference between Disc and Steam is 2 days sine Compile dates , Keep up the good Work , Looking Forward to 10.40 ,

    Emma Bentley
    Flight Factor Aero

      1. Steam patch appears to be fixed…running 10.36 now with the nvidia 352.86 drivers via steam.

        Thanks!!

      2. Seems to be fixed now! Because the latest Steam patch is working for me with 352.86.
        🙂

  33. The last nvidia driver 352.86 seems to improve the quality of textures and of course there’s an improvement in FPS, that doesn’t necessary mean that x-plane 10.36 is made on this driver but probably the GPU works better with the new driver.
    Finally i think that x-plane 10.40 could and sholud be better optimized so we can fly smoothly even in populated zones and this colud pass through the use of directX maybe, which surely are better than opengl. But i don’t know which could be the technical difficulties in programming the sim with directX.
    Thanks for your beautiful work!!!

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