Board index FlightGear Support Graphics

Strange Black Dots

Graphics issues like: bad framerates, weird colors, OpenGL errors etc. Bad graphics ar usually the result of bad graphics cards or drivers.
Forum rules
In order to help you, we need to know a lot of information. Make sure to include answers to at least the following questions in your initial post.

- what OS (Windows Xp/Vista, Mac etc.) are you running?
- what FlightGear version do you use?
- what graphics card do you have?
- does the problem occur with any aircraft, at any airport?
- is there any output printed to the console (black window)?
- copy&paste your commandline (tick the "Show commandline box on the last page of FGRun or the "Others" section on the Mac launcher).
- please upload a screenshot of the problem.

If you experience FlightGear crashes, please report a bug using the issue tracker (can be also used for feature requests).
To run FlightGear on old computers with bad OpenGL support, please take a look at this wiki article. If you are seeing corrupted/broken textures, please see this article.

Note: If you did not get a reponse, even after 7 days, you may want to check out the FlightGear mailing lists to ask your question there.

Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Mon Feb 24, 2020 4:03 am

BUG!!!
What happened?
All of a sudden black dots began to appear!
Urgently need help!

Image
Best regards,
Mars.
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby xen_steda » Mon Feb 24, 2020 4:49 am

Hey if you havent tried this already, do a hard shutdown, shutdown computer then switch off back button if on a desktop and if on a laptop, take battery out and press and hold power button for at least 15 seconds. That may help this problem. Good luck.
xen_steda
 
Posts: 234
Joined: Sun Jan 05, 2020 4:53 pm

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Mon Feb 24, 2020 5:38 am

Hi xen_steda,
I don't really understand. What back button :?:
I'm using MacBook Air (2012) 4GB RAM i5 Intel Graphics.
And without my selection osm2city automatically loaded after the squares appeared.
Best regards,
Mars.
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:13 am

Found a way to temporarily solve it, by opening pilot list of multiplayer.
Waiting until the disease is over...
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby V12 » Mon Feb 24, 2020 10:51 am

I'm not MacOS familiar, but try to update Your graphics driver.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby enrogue » Mon Feb 24, 2020 9:51 pm

Unfortunately with macOS & Intel drivers there isn't much you can do with updating drivers - you're stuck with what the OS provides (both a blessing and a curse at times)

Try resetting the PRAM and/or SMC

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3604
User avatar
enrogue
 
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon May 19, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: London (UK)
Callsign: enrogue
OS: Ubuntu, macOS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:01 am

Yeah, and another problem is if we want to fix this I probably need a person to fix hardware, but you know I'm in Beijing so it's not possible. :(
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Tue Feb 25, 2020 3:04 am

Well I do have a temporary solution :)
Probably using that until it's over.
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Wed Feb 26, 2020 5:40 am

I don't think this is a hardware problem, but I'm not sure.
I managed to fix them by turning off anti-aliasing.
And when I turn it on again, the dots are back...
:!: :?: :idea:
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby V12 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 7:21 am

This is driver related problem. Older ATI/AMD GPUs had similar problem with antialias and wrong displayed texts. In laptop, I had ATI/AMD FirePro M5950, there was strange problem with sprite lights on runways.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Wed Feb 26, 2020 9:05 am

But how do we fix it if we are in China ??
Or we just turn off anti aliasing?
Regards,
Mars,
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby enrogue » Wed Feb 26, 2020 10:05 am

Well if it's this Macbook Air here https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macb ... specs.html

It's Intel HD4000 integrated graphics, and the driver you get is dependant on which version of macOS you are on - there are no downloadable/updateable drivers for macOS & intel graphics. In fact for all macOS later than High Sierra, there is no way to update even Nvidia drivers as Apple is refusing to sign them.

So you can disable antialiasing (it does sounds like a driver bug), and I don't think there's much you can do about the driver other than making sure your OS is up to date

FG does run on Catalina, but only on the nightlies, or if you compile it yourself
User avatar
enrogue
 
Posts: 292
Joined: Mon May 19, 2014 7:40 pm
Location: London (UK)
Callsign: enrogue
OS: Ubuntu, macOS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Wed Feb 26, 2020 1:20 pm

I know I am not on MacOS Catalina.
I'm on Mojave!
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby V12 » Wed Feb 26, 2020 11:08 pm

Best solution is turn off AA.
Fly high, fly fast - fly Concorde !
V12
 
Posts: 2757
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2017 5:27 pm
Location: LZIB
Callsign: BAWV12

Re: Strange Black Dots

Postby Marsdolphin » Thu Feb 27, 2020 2:06 am

Hi,
AA? What is that?
Regards,
Mars,
"When everything seems to be against you, remember that the planes always takeoff into the wind".

Have fun flying!
User avatar
Marsdolphin
 
Posts: 180
Joined: Wed Feb 05, 2020 8:41 am
Location: Beijing, China (ZBAA)
Callsign: MARS006
Version: 2020.4
OS: Mac OS

Next

Return to Graphics

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests