when I play the demo, for some reason a big black bar takes up about a forth of the screen at the bottom.  please help/

I had the same problem after installing a 3rd party aircraft. Try hitting Alt + Enter a few times.

Did you change anything before it happened? I suspect you installed an aircraft like me. If so, exit FSX remove the addon & then play around with the views. You might also like to check your display settings. It should revert to normal like mine did.

Do you have the latest drivers?

When I first installed the demo onto my laptop, the water kept loosing its texture and parts of the aircraft model was shaded black or white. However, all that went away after I installed the Omega Drivers. You can get the Omega Drivers by clicking here.

Hi
the black bar has to do with the 2d panel info in the panel.cfg (well it did on my system)kinda like fs9 when you loaded a new aircraft and the 2d panel was all mucked up
I found removing the 2d panel all together from the panel.cfg (just leave the VC cockpit entrys) fixed it,iits prob. just a case of different window default sizes in FSX,havnt had a chance to sort out the real cause but ist prob something very simple
Wozza

You folks are all over the map on this "issue..."

The so-called "black bar" is simply the bottom edge of the 3d-View Window.  Normally, the Window00 section is configured such that the lower edge of the 3d-View Window falls just below the top edge of the 2d panel.

It is done this way for two reasons.

First: Performance - there's little point rendering pixels that're covered up by the 2d panel!

Second: Point of View - having the 3d-View Window sized this way allows a better view of the taxiway/runway, and also moves the horizon line to a proper perspective with respect to the 2d panel.

To summarize the "issue," if you see a "big black bar" at the bottom of the screen, it simply means that your 2d panel isn't displaying!!!

Shift-1 will turn it back on...

Keep in mind that the entire camera/view system in FSX has changed. There are now multiple "sub-views" for each of the previous S views.

I would urge everyone to simply sit still and cycle through all the view options, beginning with the VC (default) view.

Press the A key to cycle through all of the "Cockpit View" cameras.

Now, press the S key to switch to the next major View Category, and again cycle through all the sub-view options with the A key.

Hey Bill
we talking about a different prob here (think its a demo only prob as MS prob left a fair bit out )
the whole screen ends up in the wrong ratio (ie in external view aircraft looks skinny)
as Hager has found its related to 3rd party aircraft with the render to 3d line in the panel.cfg others have found that changing the
[Default View] Ysize also had an effect
prob the same thing its all a trial and error thing we all learning as we go mate

cheers
Wozza

This is a limited bug with some 3rd party aircraft. I happened on it by accident & suspect the panels were originally created for CFS2. The FS2002/4 default panels don't have that render_3d_window=1 CFG entry. Changing the value to 0 fixes it.