pedrovazua wrote on Oct 25^th, 2010 at 3:15pm:

I also use the the 2D A/P panel in the 3D cockpit but more and more often when I pass the cursor over the 2D A/P panel (which I normally put on the top of my screen) the entire screen goes black (only sound is still available) and the only option is to stop the flight and restart FSX again which is a real disaster. I tend to use the normal 3D A/P panel but as suggested above the pitch control is a real pain. Has anyone else had the same experience and maybe found a solution?

Although I have had my FSX screen go completely black (Direct3D seems to stop working). It can happen on any FSX aircraft, not just the 727. I run FSX in "windowed mode" and it happens mostly if I'm go back and forth between FSX and other open programs (including Windows Explorer). I quite often have Acrobat, Windows Explorer, FSC 8.6 and others, running at the same time. I have found that my main culprits are Flight Sim Design Studio 3.5.1 and Gmax (both these programs hate sharing Direct3D with any other program).

I have not found a solution. I also found that it was worse when I had my Nvidia 1GB 9800 GTX+. I see it far less now with my current system. Maybe that's because it is more powerful. Could it be that you have FSX settings to high for you system? I never experimented that much with the settings once they looked just right. I liked where they were at. I would just swear at FSX and restart it when it all went black. I still do (swear at FSX and restart it, that is).

Mark