Corrupt Tooltip Text ?

[Lionheart]

I'm running XP Home with SP3 and FSX with Acceleration -- but I seem to recall having the tooltip text problem on portovers as far back as FSX SP1. It seems to be happening with every portover I have, but not with Accel/SP2 native aircraft.

The corrupted-font issue occurred to me late last night just before I'd gone to bed. Are the fonts specified in a .cfg somewhere, and might it be possible to just specify a different font by editing the file? Just an idle thought...

The Fonts are called in exact locations 'in' a gauge and 'in' a particular gauge string. Models do not have the ability to have a font called for. Models meaning, not a gauge, but a part or a 3D gauge (animated parts). Their tooltips are hardcoded with the stock FSX font. But gauges are definately 'optional' and dialed in (if needed/desired) by who makes the gauge code. But, I havent heard of someone changing Font in daytime to night time zones, and I wonder now 'if' its possible to change the actual 'tooltip' font itself, as that might be hardwired into FSX.

It 'might' be available and reassignable in the FS config file. You may even be able to 'add' an entry to the config file (if there isnt an entry for Font type for tooltips in the FS config file), and assign it a new Font, test the new Font, until you find a Font that works properly with your sim.

I remember in Beta testing FSX, that there were alot of problems with some peoples computers with reading tooltips. Some computers were almost locking up with tooltips. I wonder if this could be a graphics driver based issue? This would explain how this happens with updates


Bill

 

[RCAF_Gunner]

Thanks Bill. Since I'm not a modeller I wasn't sure what you could do especially for the gauges that seem to be part of a model vs gauge files overlaid in the 3D model with the panel.cfg entries.

I've brought my system backup to SP3 and the latest patches. I've tried the original DX that came with FSX as well as the latest one with the same results. I put the fonts back to the original set because I believe the extras were owing to aircraft I haven't installed in the new game yet. I've also tried going back to a 169.x series nVidia driver as well as the latest driver. The results all seem to be the same.

I believe it is somehow "hard wired" into the game because I've discovered three different behaviors with the same FS9 mdl:

• in windowed mode the tooltip displays correctly and is using the font specified by your desktop theme (to make the illustration more distinct, I increased the default size from 8 to 12 and set the colour to red)
• in full screen mode the tooltip is garbled during the daylight rendering
• in full screen mode the tooltip displays properly during nighttime (and dusk) rendering with a font either called by the gauge or some default setting from FSX (see the second image)

I have even managed to "confuse" the tooltips by toggling the lights on and off several times but not consistently enough to make an full observation.

I'll double check the gauge's xml file to see if it's calling for a specific font. I think I did already but I'll confirm it.

So, my thought at this moment is if the a/c can display the tooltip at night in fullscreen mode then the font it wants is probably OK and it's more to do with the lighting or different fonts being called by the game under different lighting conditions. That doesn't explain why night works for several of my FS9 mdls but not all.

Hopefully what I'm saying makes sense and rings a bell with someone who might know where the setting is (or what I can add to the fsx.cfg file) to override the default behavior.

Rick

 

[Bjoern]

The fonts should be the same for day and night.

*Maybe* it has something to do with the daylight behaviour of the FSX engine (shaders, font handling)...

 

[RCAF_Gunner]

The fonts should be the same for day and night.

*Maybe* it has something to do with the daylight behaviour of the FSX engine (shaders, font handling)...

I think the a/c do call the same fonts in the day and at night but they don't render properly under many conditions. To my eye it looks like an alpha channel doesn't get rendered properly on the font itself because the basic block shape is there but it's a solid black. I realize there may not be alpha channels associated with fonts but that's the best way I can describe it.

I figured out the relationship between the lights and the tooltips displaying correctly in fullscreen at night. It makes the problem even more strange. In fullscreen, in order for the tooltip to display correctly at least one light has to be on. If you toggle L twice (to turn them all on and then all off) then the text is garbled again. What supports my belief above about them being the same font is that as you toggle the lights on and off if you can hold the mouse over the tooltip steady enough you can watch it toggle between garbled and clear.

Of the seven aircraft I'm testing, three don't display the text properly at night either, three will if a light is on (doesn't matter which light) and one will until the first time you've toggled all the lights off then it stays broken after that.

I've reinstalled FSX on my Vista volume (for testing; I'm still leaning towards running it under XP at the moment) to confirm this is an XP issue. Both OSes have the same version of DirectX now and the same version of the nVidia drivers. I've even tried installing all the fonts from my Vista volume into XP and it made no difference.

So, for now the issue seems confined to XP (Pro 32bit at least as that's what I have but perhaps the Home version and 64bit versions are affected too). It doesn't seem to matter if SP2 or SP3 are installed. Although it'd be easy to blame the FS9 models, I don't think this is entirely the case because the tooltips work under Vista.

Since lighting of the aircraft as well as the environment seem to be a common factor, I agree that somehow this is a bug in the game engine that only seems to surface under XP. It's possible the three a/c that don't work regardless of the lighting condition have mdls that generate their lighting effects differently because all three come from the same vendor and time frame of original release.

One difference on my system, since I have an 8800GT, is Windows runs under DX10 on the Vista partition but under DX9c on the XP partition. I only use the DX9 mode on both (i.e. DX10 preview is off) but there could still be some underlying interaction that makes the difference.

My hope is there is a parameter that gets set differently for some reason when FSX is installed on XP vs Vista which can be tweaked. I just haven't found a config setting that looks obvious yet. I haven't given up yet though. :costumes:

 

[Bjoern]

Seems to be confined to XP indeed. I've just had this bug occur to me in a native FSX aircraft. But it vanished a few moments later.

Built-in Poltergeist?

 

[BASys]

Hi Folks

My apologies.
Thought someone else might have posted definitive info on this.

It affects -
tooltips, menu, r/h context menu, kneeboard titles, mission captions, etc.

It's not a fonts, driver, OS, or OS service pack, related issue,
rather one of available resources.

The corrupted font display issue was a known beta problem,
caused by dithering of the viewport, (affecting all items in the window),
(as per a/c textures initially displayed sharp, then mipped to lower level),
and occurence is symptomatic of exhausted resources.

Pressing ESC, ESC, sometimes clears,
particularly effective if the FPS impacting object(s)
are no longer in the viewport, (i.e. you've overflown them).

Switching between day & night, or vice versa, or any time changes,
will cause the scenery to reload,
and will probably cause the display to render ok.

Most noticeably occurs in default photo-scenery based missions,
again where sliders are set too high,
where the caption initially displays ok,
but is almost instantly dithered to illegible.

The issue is more prevalent in SP2 or Acceleration,
due to higher hardware spec requirements.

Utilising FS9 models with rendering issues,
may further impact,
and cause this to occur at lower slider settings.

Prior to starting FSX -
stopping any unnescessary services, applications, clearing the clipboard, etc,
and then defragmenting memory,
will minimise repeat occurences.

HTH
ATB
Paul

 

[RCAF_Gunner]

Hi Folks

My apologies.
Thought someone else might have posted definitive info on this.

It affects -
tooltips, menu, r/h context menu, kneeboard titles, mission captions, etc.

It's not a fonts, driver, OS, or OS service pack, related issue,
rather one of available resources.

The corrupted font display issue was a known beta problem,
caused by dithering of the viewport, (affecting all items in the window),
(as per a/c textures initially displayed sharp, then mipped to lower level),
and occurence is symptomatic of exhausted resources.

Pressing ESC, ESC, sometimes clears,
particularly effective if the FPS impacting object(s)
are no longer in the viewport, (i.e. you've overflown them).

Switching between day & night, or vice versa, or any time changes,
will cause the scenery to reload,
and will probably cause the display to render ok.

Most noticeably occurs in default photo-scenery based missions,
again where sliders are set too high,
where the caption initially displays ok,
but is almost instantly dithered to illegible.

The issue is more prevalent in SP2 or Acceleration,
due to higher hardware spec requirements.

Utilising FS9 models with rendering issues,
may further impact,
and cause this to occur at lower slider settings.

Prior to starting FSX -
stopping any unnescessary services, applications, clearing the clipboard, etc,
and then defragmenting memory,
will minimise repeat occurences.

HTH
ATB
Paul

Paul,

Thanks for that information. I think that helps explain what Bjoern saw yesterday with one of the FSX native aircraft.

As a test, I just set all the sliders to minimal but I still have the corrupted tooltext issue on the FS9 a/c. What makes this odd for me is the hardware I'm running XP on is the same as the hardware I run Vista on. Previously I had just a Vista install and now I have the computer setup for dual booting. Even at moderately high settings under Vista I did not have this problem. My basic h/w specs are an Asus P5KC mobo, Q6600 proc oc'd to 3.0GHz, 4GB DDR2-800 ram and an 8800GT 512MB card which doesn't allow me to run everything at the highest settings but does fairly well. If I'm pushing my settings too hard under Vista what I notice is the blurries coming back in the scenery and/or outright ground textures flashing as white tiles.

I've configured the two OSes with the same versions of DX, nVidia drivers, latest patches, etc. I realize some drivers will be different for XP then they will be for Vista even with the same hardware and even though I'm running both as 32bit. However, I can't imagine the game runs that much worse under XP (actually, in addition to getting rid of the UAC nags, I was hoping XP would be better because I have Vista Ultimate that has a lot of extra stuff built into the core that isn't likely helping my gaming at all).

I do suspect FSX doesn't render the text layer properly under certain lighting conditions in XP. I've haven't had much time the last couple of days to try to compare config files, etc, but I'm hopeful it's just a matter of FSX being installed with a different parameter somewhere under XP compared to Vista. It could just be a bug in the exe that can't be fixed under XP especially if the game was optimized for Vista.

During the beta testing, do you recall any XP specific factors/issues that would be worth trying?

Thanks,
Rick