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In a previous post I discussed some of the hang-on-start problems we were seeing on NVidia cards.  Since these started relatively recently, but the sim code hadn’t changed much, we thought maybe there was a driver issue.

Since then we’ve collected a few more data points:

  • Some users with older cards are seeing problems starting X-Plane – there are shader-compile errors in the log file when this happens.  Our shaders haven’t changed.
  • Some users with newer cards see rendering artifacts: typically the cloud shadows will darken some terrain triangles, but not others, which make the terrain look very weird with broken cloud cover.
  • Some users still see a hang on startup which is “fixed” with –no_fbos.

Now here’s the interesting thing: the shader compile errors and rendering artifacts appear to be happening with the 270.61 drivers; going to the 260.99 drivers seem to help.

So if you have NVidia hardware, there are a few data points I am looking for.  Please post a comment if you meet any of the following:

  • If you have the 270.61 drivers and see either visual corruption, crashes or hangs, please try going back to 260.99 and post your results, including what card you have.
  • If you have the 270.61 drivers and a new card (GeForce 400 or 500) and you do not see corrupt cloud shadows, please post so – we need to know if the bug only affects some users.
  • If you have the 270.61 drivers and an old card (GeForce 7xxx or older) and you can run without crashing, please post so – we need to know if the crash bugs only affect some users.

As always, we don’t know if this is a driver bug or an X-Plane bug, and who “fixes” the bug may not be an indication of whose fault it is.  We will work around the bug even if it is in the drivers, and sometimes this kind of problem is due to X-Plane doing something naughty that some but not all drivers tolerate.  We won’t know if this is really a driver bug until we have a full diagnosis.

Edit: These bugs are Windows/Linux specific; Macintosh users will not see them, nor do they have driver version numbers that match the normal NVidia scheme.

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.

21 comments on “NVidia Driver Update”

  1. I have GTX 480s and am using version 275.27 of the Nvidia drivers and cloud shadows are definitely not drawn right.

    1. I’m using Quadro Drivers 256.01 on Mac OS and the shadows look fine with the GTX 480.

  2. I have a GTX 570SC, currently using the 270.61 driver, getting the darken triangles.

    Gonna roll back and see what happens.

  4. GTX260 here. Since I installed 270.61, clouds seems to be OK but runway looks weird sometimes when you are ready for take off. Looks like an icy runway but with small corrupted graphics like lines all around the runway (and only the runway).

    Last drivers were working fine.

  5. I am running a GTX 285 under Win7 64-bit. I got weird rendering issues when upgrading beyond 266.58 (random pieces of runway tile had a dark or light tinge). Reverting to 266.58 fixed this. Just installed 275.27 today, and I no longer see the issue.

    – Robin

  6. Here are my card specs from Mac OS X snow leopard system profiler. I do not know what drive number I have, yet often times upon start up of X-plane, the intro screen either flickers, has graphical corruption and or has straight lines randomly over the screen coupled with images of the desktop/ previous& current open applications. This does not last throughout the startup, just the initial clicking of the icon to load x-plane.

    NVIDIA GeForce 9400M:

    Chipset Model: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
    Type: GPU
    Bus: PCI
    VRAM (Total): 256 MB
    Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
    Device ID: 0x0863
    Revision ID: 0x00b1
    ROM Revision: 3385
    Displays:
    Color LCD:
    Resolution: 1280 x 800
    Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
    Mirror: Off
    Online: Yes
    Built-In: Yes
    VR-4085DF:
    Resolution: 1920 x 1080 @ 60 Hz
    Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
    Main Display: Yes
    Mirror: Off
    Online: Yes
    Rotation: Supported
    Television: Yes

  7. As to the recent “edit” footnote disregarding Mac users, regardless the description of the issue I posted still stands as a problem. Any ideas on what this may be? Not huge deal, sim runs fine and other graphics issues have not came up in a long time ( such as pixelated/fragmented colored wing pylons, missiles, etc)

    Thanks

  8. I am using a NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M with my setup, and all is fine with the exception of an occasional weird looking scenery glitch in the form of a “frozen waterfall”.
    This is a pretty tough one to explain, but when you fly, if you look in the distance you could sometimes see a weird looking object 200-300 feet off the ground, and it looks like water or steam in suspended animation. This is not affected by weather, visibility, time of day, or location. I saw one near the Himalayas, one in the suburbs of Chicago, and one at night somewhere in the middle east.
    I think the best way to put it is it looks like a burst fire hydrant.
    Since this is a rare occasion, it doesn’t really bother me much, but since it caught my attention and it’s very odd-looking I thought it was worthwhile to mention here.

  9. I am using a Nvidia GeForce 430gt. I have load all old Drivers from 260.99 to 270.61.
    X-Plane 9 V9.67 will not runnig. On my other PC whit a Geforce 9800gt X-Plane 9
    V9.67 is runnig perfect.
    MFG Torsten

  10. Ben,
    Mac users have similar problems. My X-Plane survives 15 minutes at most before the MBP completely freezes. It happens with 3 different MBP’s using SL.
    Situation is worst on a MBP 6,1 with the GT 330M (driver version 256.00.35f05 supplied by Apple, I tried OEM drivers in the past too – same issue)

    the log only says:
    5/19/11 1:57:12 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0x3 = Fifo: Unknown Method Error
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 00000069
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel IOHIDSystem::relativePointerEventGated: Unwanted Direction Change Y: oldDy=85 dy=-2
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 0000006e
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 00200000 00008597 00000474 00000010
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 0000047e 00001408 00000001 00000016
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 00000000 00000000 00000403
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel 00000010 00000000
    5/19/11 1:57:16 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel exception! exception type = 0xd = GR: SW Notify Error
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel NVDA(OpenGL): Channel timeout!
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel 0000006e
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel 00200000 00008597 00000474 00000010
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel 0000047e 00001408 00000001 00000016
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel 00000000 00000000 00000403
    5/19/11 1:57:36 PM kernel 00000010 00000000

    ….until sudo reboot

  11. Rolled back to 266 drivers and all is well, even tried the 275 beta drivers which were the worse.

    GTX570SC, Win 764

  12. I have a Nvidia 7600gt and currently using the old 260.99 drivers. No problem on xp9

  13. I have a Geforce 9600 GT on 64-Bit Ubuntu 11.04 using the 270.41.19 stable driver, and X-Plane works absolutely perfect for me.

  14. GTX480. At work our main app has similar problems as X-plane with the 270.x drivers (270.41.06). Flip back to 260.19.44 and all is well. Problems such as crashing on startup creating and setting up FBOs, etc. It’s not just X-plane. We’re avoiding 270.x hoping NVidia is hard at work tracking down what broke.

  15. I’m getting startup crashes.
    Using GeForce 6200. Problem started when I upgraded from 9.3 that came on the disk to 9.69 through the downloaded update installer.

    Tried both 260.99 and 270.61 with no luck. Tried -no_fbos after command line w/no luck (if I did it correctly – would be great if you would tell us less than proficient users how just to make sure)

    Interestingly, it will run if I run the update installer and use the botton that says “Fly X-Plane 9 Now” but of course I have to wait 5 mins for the installer to check the files for update first.

  17. Update: Fixed in 260.99. I found a post that referenced the need to delete the contents of the preferences folder after updating. This solved the crashing and it runs fine with 260.99. With 270.61, it loads to a strange set of colored lines.

  18. I upgraded my drivers to 275.33 and X-Plane 9.70 and cloud shadows are still corrupted with my GTX 480s.

  19. After installing any Nvidia driver after version 257.21, X-Plane 9.70 fails to load past the startup screen. The program completes 25% progress, then stalls, which then requires a task manager close of the program. If I re-install Nvidia driver version 257.21, everything works again. I have insured that all old Nvidia drivers were removed before installing the newer version drivers (including the newest version 275.33). I have tried all of the suggested posts and no change. My operating system is: XP Pro SP3, 3 gig ram, (BFG Tech) Nvidia 9600 GT OC.

  20. I was trying the current demo (X-plane 9.70) on my PC and don’t get it loaded. It hangs at “Loading”. After some web research I found this issue and can state that I am using the most current WHQL drivers from Nvidia: 275.33 with a dual card config: GTX 470 and GTX260-2 – no sli-config but the GTX 260-2 dedicated to physX and an TH2Go-Device. It works very well with FSX and all my other games, but not at all with x-plane. A look into nvidiainspector advanced settings showed me that there is no pre-defined x-plane profile at all. The hang on startup fix mentioned above didn’t help either. The rest of my system is: windows 7 64bit with all the “ms-fixes and updates” and some TuneUp tunings. Maybe this helps?!
    Regards michael

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