I've finally started to come to grips with the 707, and decided to try my first long-distance flight today.  The flight itself went well, until I was coming in for approach.  

Shortly after capturing the localizer, my windscreen went completely black, as if the textures had suddenly changed.  I ended up having to land the plane from third-person view, as I couldn't see outside.

This happened roughly when the A/P intercepted the glideslope, but I think that may just be a coincidence, since it didn't return to normal after I'd shut off the autopilot and touched down.
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e47/Carshows1969/7071.png

EDIT: Perhaps related but perhaps not, on nighttime flights, I've noticed black, flickering bars and polygons that flash across the screen.

Hi MustanGrande.

If you could provide your computer specs, it could help in trying to find out what possibly went wrong. Without knowing your specs, my guess is that FSX was demanding more from your graphics card than it could handle. Because the 707 uses HD textures, which demand a lot of power, AND coming into a high density city adds to that. In many ways you were lucky to only get blacked out windows. One thing you might try next time is with the sliders down a notch to see if that doesn't overload your Graphics Card.

You should have attempted the landing without leaving the VC. If you had of succeeded, you would have been one very proud 707 Captain! And that would be well deserved too. ;)

Mark

Haha!  Yeah, I suppose you're right, but on my first landing with this bird, I had my hands full already!  

Here are my specs.
CPU: 3.2 ghz Pentium 4
2GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 4650 (1GB)

Ahhh. It was your first landing in the 707. You definitely needed to see what you were doing. It's a pity you had to do some astral travel outside the plane to see what you were doing. ;)

1G HD 4650 - I thought that would be good enough. I'm not very familiar with ATI though. Your CPU specs are the same as I had just prior to FSX being released. I was able to upgrade to an E6600 and an extra 2G of RAM (total of 4G RAM) in anticipation of the release of FSX.

Mark

I can run FSX with the settings cranked up and still have acceptable FPS.  I don't think the video card is the problem.  Granted, I get blurries due to a lack of system RAM, but that's a separate issue.  

I'm thinking that this was a one-time thing, though the black flickers when flying at night have shown up several times.  (And only from within the cockpit, oddly enough.)

I hope that on your next flight, that doesn't happen. I'll bet it was a bit of a downer to an otherwise good flight! :(
And if it does, just lower the sliders a touch and it could work fine.

Mark

Hopefully it was a one-time thing.  I plan to do some more flying today, so we'll see.