Sorry to say that I too just had this problem. I flew a flight earlier today to FSDT KCLT with no issues - there was heavy cloud cover the entire way, so I’m not sure if things went bad in terms of ground depiction or not, but when I broke out of the overcast on approach, the terrain and airport was fine. On that flight, I used full GSX services at departure and arrival.
However, I just flew a flight from KELM to KDTW and experienced exactly what everyone else has been describing. The only GSX service I used for this flight was pushback.
Here’s the thing: I have been a tester for the Aerosoft CRJ for quite some time, and I have flown this exact flight at LEAST 150 times over the past year while testing that aircraft.
It is my standard test scenario for any new aircraft I fly because it takes less than one hour to accomplish, and I know from experience it does not present a heavy graphics load that might skew test results. Much of the route is over water, traversing Lake Erie.
i know this flight like the back of my hand, and am very familiar with exactly how my system responds using a variety of complex add-on aircraft.
I have flown this same flight with default clear weather, and with r/w Active Sky weather ranging from fair skies to heavy storms. In all that time, I have never had any issue with graphics or frame rates.
I flew this exact flight 3 times last week with the MaddogX with no problems, prior to installing L2.
I have always had “original” GSX on this computer - using it mainly for the pushback function.
Today I flew the same flight plan as always: KELM HERBA YQO.SPICA2, FL 280, with a planned landing on runway 21L. No weather injection - just default clear skies.
During descent, I began to notice the terrain textures becoming increasingly blurry. By the time I crossed Lake St. Clair descending below 10,000 feet, the terrain tiles on both sides of the lake and the city of Detroit were just featureless green haze. I could see the (default) KDTW airport at about 11 o’clock, and it was a black square.
I have a liquid CPU cooling system, and heard the heat exchanger fans kick into high speed (which is unusual), and noted that all 4 cores were showing between 80 and 85C on my taskbar CPU temperature display.
In the 2 years I have owned this computer, I have NEVER had CPU temps that high! Not one single time. The warmest I have ever seen before was about 65C while flying the FSL A319 on an approach into Aerosoft EGLL, and that was on a hot day in July when the temperature in my computer room was about 30C.
I assume that all 4 cores were saturated at close to 100 percent load, though I did not check.
On final approach, the airport remained a black square, with only the runway VASI lights visible. At about 300 feet AGL, the airport graphics finally loaded, piece by piece -enough to land successfully.
As I taxied in to gate A61 at the terminal, the surrounding terrain resolution got better and better, and my CPU temps started to decrease back to a more normal range, but they were still on the warm side.
I have a well-optimized system, with 16GB system RAM, and a GT 1080 Ti GPU with 11GB VRAM. Running P3D 4.3 on Windows 10 Pro 1803.
I have added nothing new to this system recently. I run with antivirus disabled when flying. As a Windows 10 Pro user, I have disabled mandatory Windows updates.
I have ORBX Global Textures, NA Landclass and Vector, just as I have had with every flight I have made over the past year. I own multiple high-end airports by FSDT, PacSim, Fly Tampa and Flightbeam.
I have had no performance problems or graphics issues whatsoever, running the Aerosoft CRJ, Leonardo MaddogX, PMDG 737/747/777 and FSL A319 and A320. I almost always run with Active Sky weather, and typically fly 5 or 6 times per week.
The strange thing is that I have flown three previous flights (to KATL, KPHL and KCLT) since installing L2 with no issues, but things truly “went to hell” on this last flight, (between two default airports) with no weather injection — and the symptoms mirror exactly what multiple other users are reporting.
By the way, it has long been my practice to run the FSDT Updater, and to clear the scenery index folder before loading P3D to begin a flight, and I did so today before this latest one that went wrong.
I will clear the shader cache as well before my next flight.