Flight Simulator 2002: Known video-related issues (309638)

MORE INFORMATION

General information

When you are using Flight Simulator 2002, you may notice that the runway lights are not as bright as they were in earlier versions. This may be addressed by updating your drivers to the latest version. For information about how to contact your Video Card or Chipset manufacturer, see the "Contact your video adapter manufacturer" section of this article.

The following video cards and chip sets have known video-related issues in Flight Simulator. By updating your drivers from the video-card manufacturer, you may resolve some of these issues.

ATI

To download updated ATI video drivers, locate the following ATI Technologies Web site:

ATI Radeon

Retail drivers for Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition: Flights may start to a black screen when you use higher screen resolutions. You can fix this issue by installing the latest drivers.

Scenery and spot plane appears to have blue tint or tone.

ATI Rage Fury Maxx

Retail drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: When you try to display drop-down menus by pressing the ALT key, this does not always work. To fix this issue, install the latest drivers.

ATI Xpert 2000 Pro

The latest drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: You may experience texture corruption when you use higher screen resolutions.

ATI Rage Fury Pro

All drivers for all operating systems: Textures may become corrupted, with lines appearing on the screen.

ATI Xpert98

Both the retail and latest driver versions for Windows 98 Second Edition: The sky textures may be visible through the terrain in certain locations.

ATI Mobility 128 AGP 4X

Hitachi retail drivers for Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me): The Japanese version of Flight Simulator 2002 may restart or cause the program to stop responding (hang).

ATI Mobility M4

Garbled or no Text with in the game and Main menus. This can also include the ATC window and any option windows that appear.

Note This chipset is used in Laptop computers. ATI does not provide drivers for this chipset. Contact the computer manufacture to see if they have a newer driver available.

ATI Rage Mobility

Cannot adjust visibility, always set to infinite (so no fog, or clouds are available).

ATI Fire Gl2, ATI Fire Gl3, ATI Fire Gl3

Cannot start Flight Simulator. These video cards do not provide DirectX support that is required to run Flight Simulator.

ATI Rage 128 Chipset

To change the Local Weather settings to higher cloud densities and lower visibility, follow these steps:

Microsoft Windows 98

You must have ATI Driver Version 4.13.01.7192 or newer installed. If you do not, download the latest drivers from: You must have DirectX version 8.1 installed. To download the latest version of DirectX, visit the following Microsoft Web site: After you download and install both of the updates, change the following setting. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Right-click your desktop, and then select Properties.
2. On the Settings tab, click Advanced.
3. On the Direct 3D tab, clear the Table Fog Support option.
4. Click Apply, and then click OK two times.

Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP

In Windows 2000, you must have ATI Driver Version 5.13.01.3279 or later installed. In Windows XP, you must have ATI Driver Version 6.13.3279.0000 or later installed. To download the latest drivers, visit the following ATI Web site: You must have DirectX version 8.1. To download the latest version of DirectX, visit the following Microsoft Web site: After you download and install both of the updates, change the following setting. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Right-click your desktop, and then select Properties.
2. On the Settings tab, click Advanced.
3. On the Direct 3D tab, clear the Table Fog Support option.
4. Click Apply, and then click OK two times.

ATI Radeon 8500 and ATI Rage 128 Ultra

You may experience flashing textures during game play. To resolve this issue, download the latest drivers. To do so, visit the following ATI Web site: If the issue continues to occur, to work around it, reduce the Z-Buffer Bit Depths setting. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click the Display icon.
3. On the Settings tab, click Advanced.
4. Click the Direct 3D tab.
5. Reduce the Supported Z-buffer bit depths to 16.
6. Click Apply.

Diamond

To download updated drivers for Diamond, locate the following Diamond Web site:

Diamond Speedstar

Aircraft skins may be displayed as chrome when viewed up close.

Diamond Speedstar A90

Shadow textures on some aircraft may become corrupted.

Diamond Viper II Z200

Reference S3 Savage 2000 drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: Flight Simulator may stop responding (hang) when you use higher screen resolutions. You may be able to resolve this issue by installing the latest drivers.

Diamond Stealth III S540

The latest drivers for Windows 98: Evidence of texture swapping and corruption may be visible on the aircraft.

Diamond Viper II Z-200

The retail, the latest, and the reference drivers for all operating systems: Auto-generated trees may be visible through the aircraft. Virtual cockpit textures may be corrupted.

3dfx

Updating the drivers may help with the following issues:

• After you install the product, the computer may stop responding (hang) on restart. Updating the video card drivers helped with this issue.
• Aircraft may have no textures or colors. Updating the drivers may help with this issue.

To download updated 3dfx video drivers, visit the following Voodoo Files Web site: The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.

Voodoo 3

Retail drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: Aircraft instrument panels may flicker on and off when you use higher screen resolutions. Also, water detail textures are not visible when you use this card.

Voodoo Banshee

Also applies to Creative Labs video adapter that use Banshee chipset.

To resolve this issue, download and install the latest version of the reference driver for Voodoo Banshee-based video adapters. To do so, visit the following Voodoo Files Web site: The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.

To work around this issue, disable hardware acceleration in Flight Simulator 2002. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Flight Simulator 2002, and then click Settings.
2. Click Display, and then click the Hardware tab.
3. Click to clear the Enable hardware acceleration check box, and then click OK.

If you cannot start the game or view settings, follow these steps:

1. In Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the following folder:

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2002

2. Right-click fs2002.CFG, and then click Open With
3. Click Notepad, and then click OK.
4. On the Edit menu in Notepad, click Find.
5. In the Find what box, type [DISPLAY], and then click Find Next.
6. Click Cancel.
7. Click to insert the pointer after the right bracket (]) in [DISPLAY], and then press ENTER to insert a new line.
8. On the new line, type the following:

   Disable=1

9. On the File menu, click Save.
10. On the File menu, click Exit.

Elsa

To download updated Elsa video drivers, visit the following Elsa Web site:

Elsa Erazor III

Retail drivers for Windows 2000: Flight Simulator runs only in software-rendering mode. This generally causes slower performance.

Elsa Erazor III Pro

All drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: Black specks may appear on the terrain when the Water Reflections option is selected in the Display Settings dialog box.

ELSA Gladiac 511

Windows 98: You may experience texture corruption. To resolve this issue, download the latest drivers from the Elsa Web site.

Intel Extreme Graphics Controller and Intel 82810

When you try to take off, the game locks up and returns an error that the system is out of memory and flight simulator will close. To work around this issue, disable hardware acceleration in Flight Simulator 2002. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Flight Simulator 2002, and then click Settings.
2. Click Display, and then click the Hardware tab.
3. Click to clear the Enable hardware acceleration check box, and then click OK.

If you cannot start the game or view settings, follow these steps:

1. In Microsoft Windows Explorer, locate the following folder:

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\FS2002

2. Right-click fs2002.CFG, and then click Open With
3. Click Notepad, and then click OK.
4. On the Edit menu in Notepad, click Find.
5. In the Find what box, type [DISPLAY], and then click Find Next.
6. Click Cancel.
7. Click to insert the pointer after the right bracket (]) in [DISPLAY], and then press ENTER to insert a new line.
8. On the new line, type the following:

   Disable=1

9. On the File menu, click Save.
10. On the File menu, click Exit.

Matrox

To download updated Matrox video drivers, visit the following Matrox Web site:

Matrox Marvel G-400

Both the retail and the latest available drivers for Windows 98 Second Edition: Texture corruption may occur when you select the Antialiasing option in the Display Settings dialog box. Additionally, you may experience visible flickering on the windshield and doors of the Cessna 182S and the Boeing 777 in this configuration.

NVIDIA

To download updated NVIDIA video drivers, locate the following NVIDIA Web site:

NVIDIA drivers

Windows 2000: The computer may restart (crash) when you change the resolution in the Display Settings dialog box. To resolve this issue, download updated drivers from the NVIDIA Web site.

Windows Millennium Edition (Me): The computer may stop responding (hang) when you change views while flying in the float plane.

Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows 98: The computer may restart in Safe Mode after installing the program.

Geforce 4 Ti (4200, 4400)

When you play Flight Simulator 2002 on a Windows 2000-based computer that has Service Pack 3 installed, the game menus will not appear when you press the ALT key on your keyboard. To work around this issue, disable antialiasing. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click Display.
3. On the Settings tab, click Advanced.
4. On the GeForce tab, click Additional Properties, click the Geforce 4 tab, and then click 3D Antialiasing Settings.
5. Click the Manually select the antialiasing mode option, and then select the Off (no antialiasing) option.
   
   Note If the card is already set to "Manually select the antialiasing mode", click to select the Allow applications to control the antialiasing mode option, and then test the game.
6. Click OK, click OK, and then click OK again.

S3 Graphics Pro Savage

When you play Flight Simulator 2002, you may experience the following:

• The aircraft textures do not appear.
• The game stops responding (hangs).
• The background scenery shimmers.

To resolve this issue, contact the manufacturer of your computer to obtain the latest video adapter drivers for your hardware. If the issue continues to occur, obtain a different video adapter.

Contact your video adapter manufacturer

For information about how to contact your video card manufacturer, click the appropriate article number in the following list to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Microsoft provides third-party contact information to help you find technical support. This contact information may change without notice. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy of this third-party contact information.
To identify the manufacturer and model of your video adapter, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, point to Settings, and then click Control Panel.
2. Double-click System.
3. If you are using a Microsoft Windows 95-based or a Windows 98-based computer, click the Device Manager tab.
   
   If you are using a Windows 2000-based or Windows XP-based computer, click the Hardware tab, and then click Device Manager.
4. Expand Display adapters.
5. Note the manufacturer and model of your video adapter, and then click OK.
6. Close all windows that are open on the desktop.

Note Reference drivers are drivers that are released by the manufacturers of specific video chip sets. Retail drivers are drivers that are released by the manufacturer of a video adapter or sound card that use a specific chip set.

The third-party products that this article discusses are manufactured by companies that are independent of Microsoft. Microsoft makes no warranty, implied or otherwise, regarding the performance or reliability of these products.