[SeeksTheTruth]

Gentlemen,

  I've played previous editions of FS Open as far back as 4 years ago and with the plethora of excellent mods out, plus a spiffy new box to play it on, decided to get back into the cockpit. But I've run into a really weird error. On any screen where I have mouse control over the cursor, there's an area at the bottom of the screen that, if I move the mouse into that area, makes the game freeze for up to a minute. I can juuuust click on the "Accept" button for missions, but if I try to click on "Options" for example, the game hangs. This area is rather more visible during loadup, when the tips popup appears. You can see the bottom of the hanger screen but the top portion is still the green-n-black screen.



You can just see the bottom of the FS logo is cut off. It's all black below that line.

Lastly, and I believe related to this issue, if I hit the escape key while in the hanger screen, I get the "Are you sure?" popup (as normal), but the hanger screen in the background shifts down about an inch. But the strip at the bottom remains static.



The line is clearly visible; a transition which cuts across the 'Options' and 'Exit' mouse-over sections of the pic.

Here's my system stats:
Macpro Quadcore 2.66
OS 10.4.7
OpenGL 1.4.11
OpenAL 1.1
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT Gfx Card

FS Open 3.6.9 App
Run using the Launcher (See 3rd and 4th pics)

I'd appreciate any thoughts you have on why this is misbehaving. I've run thru a couple missions of the main campaign and they seem to work fine. I've got one other graphics issue, but I think that's related to the mediavp's and I'll post another thread for that.

Edit:  Probably should have included the Launcher screens...

[Turey]

The first issue is related to the Mac dock bar. I believe Taylor has a fix for it, but perhaps you could try disabling it in the meantime.

[karajorma]

http://www.game-warden.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3713&highlight=dock

That's the Beyond The Red Line thread about the problem. I don't know how easy it is to run FS2_Open with a BtRL build on the Mac though (on windows it's a like for like swap). Of course you can always just play BtRL until someone can post a fixed FS2 build if it isn't that easy. 

[SeeksTheTruth]

The first issue is related to the Mac dock bar. I believe Taylor has a fix for it, but perhaps you could try disabling it in the meantime.

Hmmm... That's weird because I moved my dock to the right side of my screen (like the M$ Oriface toolbar I have at work). I'll try to disable it as you suggest and see what happens. Karajorma also had a BtRL suggestion I'll investigate as well...

[taylor]

Hmmm... That's weird because I moved my dock to the right side of my screen (like the M$ Oriface toolbar I have at work). I'll try to disable it as you suggest and see what happens. Karajorma also had a BtRL suggestion I'll investigate as well...

The bug has nothing to due with the dock, it's an apparent bug in the Apple drivers with regards to PBO support.  And since only NVIDIA drivers support PBOs at the moment, only those people with an NVIDIA card get the problem.

Although it's a bit old at this point, you can give this build a try.  It does have several bugs of it's own, but the PBO crash bug is fixed at least.

[SeeksTheTruth]

Hmmm... That's weird because I moved my dock to the right side of my screen (like the M$ Oriface toolbar I have at work). I'll try to disable it as you suggest and see what happens. Karajorma also had a BtRL suggestion I'll investigate as well...

The bug has nothing to due with the dock, it's an apparent bug in the Apple drivers with regards to PBO support.  And since only NVIDIA drivers support PBOs at the moment, only those people with an NVIDIA card get the problem.

Although it's a bit old at this point, you can give this build a try.  It does have several bugs of it's own, but the PBO crash bug is fixed at least.

<<Googles "PBO" and "Nvidia">>  OK, so if I understand this correctly (perhaps better to say "rudimentarily..."), it's a driver problem with NVIDIA's graphics cards and OpenGL? And my solution for this application (FS Open) is to live with the quirk (now that I know how to work around it) or go with an earlier build that fixed this issue, but has other issues? OK, I'll stick with the Devil I know.   

I do appreciate the assistance. I am regularly astounded at the exceptional quality of intellectual capital resident on forums like this. It is heartening to know that after all the downloads and installs and readme files, I did actually manage to install it correctly. And it is working; I just finished the first three missions in Derelict. It's not that the build is buggy, it just manifests quirks in my particular system.