So I was playing Tribes2 tonight, and I was having fun doing it. It's nice to zone out for a few hours. Cheaper than a movie, anyway. But this recurring problem stopped me from fully experiencing the expensive joy of my computer and its software: My video card/driver/whatever would only refresh the bits that were being drawn at just that instant.

Since that sounds weasely and ambiguous, I took a screen capture (you just hit the "Print Screen" key in Tribes2, BTW). Here is what it looked like when I was playing:

It would only get that way after about 30 minutes of playing, give or take 20 minutes. Normally when it did that I'd just restart the game. I loose all my points and such, but I don't play for points anyway.

The reason I didn't quit this time was that I was flying the bomber, and I was directly over the enemy base with about four missles after heading towards me when it happened. I was the pilot, and I had IMacFrugal as the bombadier and HAK|Kairee for a tailgunner. Reason I remember their names is that I play with Kairee all the time and IMac is my brother. So I didn't just want to bail out over the enemy base, leaving them to fend for themselves. I figured that I could mostly see, and that I might as well keep flying. I'm sure at some point in at least one of the armed air combat situations in the last 100 years that someone has been flying mostly blindly. I figured I might as well too. (Not that playing T2 has anything on that. No, not even close. Ain't no ballpark, neither... it ain't even the same damn sport. The only thing the two scenarios might possibly have in common is the feeling that you are taking these folks someplace "dangerous" and your job is to get them there safely so they can do what they need to do. So if you can keep on, you keep on. Say what you want about my comparison, but anyone who has been immersed in a video game knows what I mean. There's personal investment. Just not physically.)

Trey and I were on the phone together, so he helped me a little. He'd at least tell me when he could see the ground or when it was getting too close. I could kind of see the targeting reticle for the enemy base. It's the bright red line in the center. It seemed to want to overdraw all the rest of the undrawn crap the most often, so that helped. Trey would tell me which way to go, I'd go. I could sometimes see our speed, heading, and/or altitude, usually in some random combination. One ninth of the time I was doing pretty well. We even avoided a missle. Trey had the steering wheels, I had the pedals. And we drove through the video game equivalent of downtown during Friday rush hour. Did it for 15 minutes, actually. It was kind of a hoot. In the end we got shot down, but Trey managed to take out quite a few people. Kairee ended up bailing out (at my request) in order to take care of the generator. Got it, too, I think. Did some damage, anyway.

As for the cause, Trey seems to think (and I'm starting to agree) that it's a problem with my video card getting hot. I've got a GeForce2 GTS near an Athlon 1.33GHz CPU, and they are right behind two 10,000rpm hard drives with fans blowing across them. My machine isn't wanting for heat. I don't know if I could have a hotter machine without having a disk array or quad Alphas or something. It's why I have 8 fans. I need them.

So maybe the card is hot. T suggested that I get a blow drier and start Tribes2 while heating my card artificially. If I see the same thing happening, then it must be the heat. Then I get some duct work going.

I need to build a fan/duct system to bring fresh air into my PC and let hot air out. I wonder what PC Power and Cooling has to offer?