GREAT PLANES RealFlight 7 User Manual page 346

Update Your Drivers-
Before you do anything else, you should make sure you have updated your video and
sound drivers. A large number of difficulties encountered by RealFlight users can be
cured by updating drivers.
A driver is a software program that controls your video or sound card. Each card
manufacturer provides drivers for its own cards. To work correctly, RealFlight relies
on your video and sound card drivers.
It is very important to use the latest available driver for your card. Card manufacturers
frequently release updated drivers to fix problems that occur when the driver is used
with programs such as RealFlight 7. The driver that came with your new computer, on
your Windows disc, or on the disc included with the new card you bought, may not be
the latest version.
If you do not know how to update drivers, you can find instructions in our Knowledge
Base article Q01-1038, How to Update Drivers, at http://www.gpsoftware.com/kb/q01-
1038.htm. This page will take you through the process step-by-step, and has links to
driver download sites for most manufacturers.
Update to the Latest Version of RealFlight 7-
As we regularly release program updates, the difficulty that you are seeing may already
be fixed in an update. Even if you just bought RealFlight, you should update to the
latest version. It's free and only requires a few minutes of your time.
Run the DirectX Test Programs-
If you have updated your drivers and RealFlight to the latest versions and your
problem persists, you should try to run the DirectX samples that come with RealFlight.
The DirectX samples (DirectDraw, Direct3D, Sound, etc.) are test programs written by
Microsoft. These samples ship with DirectX, and are designed to check whether your
DirectX installation, video/sound cards and drivers, etc., are working correctly. They
should work on any DirectX 9 compliant driver.
Please note: These tests are not available with all versions of Windows.
These samples are found in the Technical Support area of the software. Click the
Technical Support button followed by the DX Diagnostics button. Next, click
either the Sound or the Music tabs, then the Test DirectX Music/Sound buttons.
Once these tests have been completed, press the Display tab to access the Test
DirectDraw and TestDirect3D buttons.
The most important tests are DirectDraw and Direct3D, both of which test your video
card and driver. If you are having any graphics difficulty in RealFlight 7 (including
RealFlight 7 "freezing" your system so that you have to reboot), look for the same
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