[Jaymom]

Steel9898....if you have a ATI card as I do, did you download the Catalyst Control Center for your card? I had the same problem as you do and it was caused by having the settings too high in the CCC. When I set everything to DEFAULT the problem went away. I have Anti-aliasing set higher then default now though without any problems. I also found that the latest drivers for my ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT card was a must.
Anything below that and everything outside was black when the sim was set to Perfect. Also you must use OPENGL

Jaymom