FS9 Blackout

[hjwalter 25]

Hi to Al andl especially to any technical gurus out there,For the first time ever and after many years of FS experience, I got a black screen during a normal FS9 ATC vectored descent to a new addon airport at about 20 Nm distance. FS9 was no longer "responding" and had to be shut down.In the WindowsXP Home event viewer it says: fs9.exe; 9.0.0.30612; facilities.dll; 9.0.0.30612; 0000f558.Does anyone know what this means ? What does the facilities.dll do ? Could it have something to do with the facilities at that airport ?Thanks in advance for any ideas.Hans

[JSkorna 137]

Hi,Could be a duplicate AFCAD.Thanks,

[Guest rekhraj]

does it happen only in that airport or any random airport?AniL RekhraJ

[Guest belga1]

Hello,

descent to a new addon airport at about 20 Nm

Could be also a inter-reaction with FSUIPC ....If you don't use the latest version .. please download the late version(will be harmless) and try again the same flight.Regards.

[ronzie 21]

Here's the link to FSUIPC downloads:http://www.schiratti.com/dowson.htmlExtract the zip into a new folder. Go into that folder. Right click FSUIPC.dll and click copy. Now go into your fs9 modules folder. Right click on FSUIPC.dll, click rename, Enter an X before FSUIPC and overwrite .dll with .dlh and hit the Enter key to set it. This lets you save your current version as a backup. Now with in the modules folder you can right click in empty space and click on paste to put in the one you copied to your clipboard.If you were using another ATC program and not using FS9 ATC there could be another fix which I'll mention if that is truw for you.

Hello,Could be also a inter-reaction with FSUIPC ....If you don't use the latest version .. please download the late version(will be harmless) and try again the same flight.Regards.

[hjwalter 25]

does it happen only in that airport or any random airport?AniL RekhraJ

It only happened when approaching that specific new addon (rather simple) airport so the most logical thing would be to suspect that airport itself and any others in the general vicinity. A duplicate AFCAD or a scenery file containing hidden AFCAD data which, together with the activel AF2_xxxx.bgl, could cause this problem was searched for, but not found. Now I have the experience that when AF2_xxxx.bgl files are removed from any problem airport sceneries and placed in a separate, dedicated and active AF2/Scenery folder, which in turn has the highest FS9 Scenery Library priority (top of the list), then very often such problems can be solved. In any case it's always worth a try and in this case it did in fact solve the problem. The only thing left now is frustration because when such an error occurs I don't know why and when it gets solved in this way I don't realy know why either !! "Facilities.dll" is a FS9 sub-program which relies on correct data being passed to it in order for it to do it's job correctly. Now, if the supplied data or syntax is somehow not correct then the error will be reported as something which went wrong within Facilities.dll itself, while in fact the real problem could have been created somewhere quite different. Maybe the higher priority of the AF2_xxxx.bgl caused Facilities.dll to now become content and do it's job correctly. But why and how ???Regarding FSUIPC, I'm using version: 3.7.5 and I have no real reason (yet) to suspect any wrong doing in the relation between any specific sceneries in my FS9 and that excelent program.Thanks anyway for all your reactions.Hans

[N60JBravo 27]

Just curious what file you are talking about and where you got it. Doesn't hurt to include this info so others can try to replicate the issue.Something I have learned RE: AF2 files is if they were created with AFX as opposed to Afcad they can include "excludes" and these can cause problems that are fixed by changing their scenery priority. However moving them to a higher priority (higher position in the sim library) means they may exclude some of what the designer wanted you to see.Also, it seems this issue is somewhat system dependent and not universal, meaning it affects some people but not all.Something else I recently learned is if you open an AF2 file with Afcad that was created with AFX you will loose those excludes and also changes to taxi signs you can make with AFX. This is compounded by the fact there is no way to tell which program was used to create the file. This can explain how an airport that previously looked good suddenly has autogen all over it.Just my 2 cents worth.

[ronzie 21]

FSUIPC is at version 3.85. Go ahead and install it backing up your current .dll as I mentioned in my previous post. You should not need any changes to your current fsuipc.ini as the .dll will automatically make them if needed.

[hjwalter 25]

Just curious what file you are talking about and where you got it. Doesn't hurt to include this info so others can try to replicate the issue.Something I have learned RE: AF2 files is if they were created with AFX as opposed to Afcad they can include "excludes" and these can cause problems that are fixed by changing their scenery priority. However moving them to a higher priority (higher position in the sim library) means they may exclude some of what the designer wanted you to see.Also, it seems this issue is somewhat system dependent and not universal, meaning it affects some people but not all.Something else I recently learned is if you open an AF2 file with Afcad that was created with AFX you will loose those excludes and also changes to taxi signs you can make with AFX. This is compounded by the fact there is no way to tell which program was used to create the file. This can explain how an airport that previously looked good suddenly has autogen all over it.Just my 2 cents worth.

It concernes a non standard FS9 (not included in Asia AP958180.bgl) airport: Gap Sanliurfu (LTCS) in the South/Eastern part of Turkey. The author is a guy named: Vedat Sencan. Download file names are: LTCS_Gap_airport.zip corrections_LTCS_fix.zipBoth in the AVSIM library.After your much appreciated "2 cents worth" I had another good look at this airport and found that when opening any FS9 flight and then "going to" LTCS via the drop down menu, the normal choice is a.o. given between: The active runway and ......TWO times runway 22 ??? ........ which I've never seen before. However, standard FS9 ATC does vector me to runway 04 and I thought I had solved the "blackout" problem by giving the AF2_LTCS.bgl a higher priority but this was somehow probably just a lucky shot. The AFCAD file seems to be O.K. (no fatal faults) and I did insert some AI airline codes into the existing parking positions via the "normal" AFCAD2 program, so you may be right in saying that the AFX program was probably used to create this file and that I have now created some kind of exotic technical conflict by editing it via AFCAD2. Even when slewing along runway 22 from the correct end towards the 04 end, FS9 freezes up so there is definitely something very wrong here, also in conjunction with the unedited original AFCAD. The only reason that I wanted to install this airport was to be able to fly not too long ATC controled flights to and from the really excelent and freeware Zvartnots (UGEE) airport in Armenia. The only reason that I now would prefer to really keep LTCS is that I want to know what's wrong and I feel that just deleting it and finding some other addon airport in the vicinity, is taking the path of the least resistance, which has never been my style.In the meantime I have posted an E-mail to the author about this problem and am awaiting his reply. I will report the outcome if and when he replies.Thanks for your !! two dollars !! worth, it really got me going again.Hans

[N60JBravo 27]

I downloaded the file, installed it and tested it without problems.I can't seem to download the fix right now, will try again later.Seems to be missing some textures on some bushes, other than that it's a nice looking airport.If you are seeing 2 runway 22 listings in the create-a-flight window I suspect a bad AF2. Might be a result of your adjustments, might have been a bad download from the beginning.I would suggest you delete the files and download a fresh copy.

[hjwalter 25]

I downloaded the file, installed it and tested it without problems.I can't seem to download the fix right now, will try again later.Seems to be missing some textures on some bushes, other than that it's a nice looking airport.If you are seeing 2 runway 22 listings in the create-a-flight window I suspect a bad AF2. Might be a result of your adjustments, might have been a bad download from the beginning.I would suggest you delete the files and download a fresh copy.

PROBLEM SOLVED !!!It turns out that this LTCS airport had 4 start locations with crazy headings, elevations and double designators, all for a single runway. I deleted them all and inserted 2 correct ones. I also saw that the Airport Reference Point had a magnetic variation of 38.0 which was way out of line with other airports in the immediate vicinity so I changed it to -3.7. Not sure though if this is correct and what kind of influence this will have.Amazing that this type of error can cause such seemingly unrelated errors in .dll files with resulting black screens etc.By the way, I've been looking around for the missing bush textures which you mention but I suspect you are missing some standard textures.Thanks for all your inputs.Hans