Last night I reinstalled FS9 onto a freshly formatted partition. I did so reluctabtly because, quite frankly, I needed a break from the frustration I've experienced with CTD's during the past few weeks. I reflew the test flight that I and my friends had used last weekend, and to my horror I could not get the sim to crash! After several attempts, I headed off for some much needed rest. I again tried the flight a short while ago and experienced a CTD. Seems my fresh install really didn't do anything for me.In the meantime JonP01 contacted me about an idea he had. In thinking about what some of us were experiencing, and given the fact that he has suffered none of these maladies, he reflected upon what might be different on his sim install. And then he remembered.The seasons.bgl he's been using for the past few months is the file from FS2002.Because he wasn't satisfied with how MS modeled the seasons in his native Australia he replaced the FS9 seasons.bgl with the FS2002 version last August. During the summer in the Northern Hemisphere and before the seasonal CTD really started rearing it's ugly head.So we've been testing the past few hours. First we tried the ENAN flight on a date of October 25, 2003 in daytime. With the FS9 seasons.bgl on both our systems we both experienced a CTD during flght loading. We then exchanged the FS9 seasons.bgl for the FS2002 seasons.bgl, and both of us loaded the flight without problem. We then tried a couple of flights rhumbaflappy had attached to one of his posts late last week. The filghts in his zip file were LFMR in summer and LFMR in winter. During our tests with the FS9 seasons.bgl both of us suffered CTD's during the winter flight but the summer flight worked perfectly. We then traded the FS9 file for the FS2002 seasons.bgl and the winter flight loaded without problem for both of us. Again the summer flight worked fine with the FS2002 seasons.bgl.During our testing neither Jon or I have experienced any strange anomalies when substituting the FS2002 seasons.bgl for the FS9 seasons.bgl. The FS2002 seasons.bgl can be found on Disc #2 of that sim. It is 1,035KB in size and is dated 4/17/2001. The FS9 seasons.bgl can be found in the SceneryBASEScenery folder. It is 586KB and dated 5/9/2003. Be sure to back up the FS9 file before replacing it with the FS2002 version. Drop the FS2002 seasons.bgl into the FS9 SceneryBASEScenery folder.We hope others will try the seasons.bgl exchange fix and post their findings. It should be noted that doubtlessly some of the CTD's some folks are experiencing are indeed hardware related. Also, some CTD's can be attributed to add-on software. This fix (and any other software fix) will not help them. They must first get their computer/sim configs squared away. But for those who have suffered from the seasonal CTD's (ie. no problems flying in summer, but CTd's during winter) this simple exchange of files looks very promising.Jon credits others (John Ci, rhumbaflappy, Chris Willis, Justin, Holger among others) for pointing him in the right direction of this fix. Evenso, Jon himself is to be commended for continuing to search for a solution to a problem he wasn't suffering. His resolute efforts show the true spirit of this community.So go forward and test. Test in areas where you've suffered the seasonal CTD's. And then share your findings with your fellow simmers here.As for me... I'm off to do some stress free simming. First time in three weeks.

Dick (rhumbaflappy) just posted another zip file in another thread. The filghts are LFNC in summer (no crash) and LFNC in winter (crash). I experienced the CTD with the winter flight.I exchanged the FS9 seasons.bgl for the FS2002 seasons.bgl and both of Dick's LFNC flights loaded fine.

Well I have only had the CTD when I tried the ENAN Oct. 25th flight. I never got it any other time when flying in FS9. I still wantetd to try this fix and it works on my machine. Thank you very much for working on this problem and posting what you guys came up with. I hope this will help the rest of the FS community fix the CTD problem so we can all get flying rather than fixing problems.:-hah

Hi Greg.There is a problem. Go to LFNC at December 25, 2003... with the FS2002 seasons.bgl, and it causes a CTD on my system. I'm attaching the FLT and WX.That suggests the seasonal transitions have a different timing for FS2002, but the CTDs remain at the season changes in some locations.( And once again, Joachim's terrain.cfg fix cures the problem ).Dick

OK, I get the CtD on that flight. That's the first CtD I've had in nearly 5 months flying with the fs2002 seasons.bgl file. I'm not sure where that leaves us. So do you get any CtDs at all with the terrain.cfg fix? I guess at worst we can change the season.bgl files depending on when we are flying :(

Hi Jon.I started looking into this becuase I refused to believe that the default FS9 had CTDs, as I never had them.I have found some with the help of a few simmers, but not many will respond by attaching zipped FLT and WX files to help me confirm. ( It's really not hard... if you get a CTD in fall or spring, save a FLT for summer, and alter the day of the year and season of the FLT file with notepad ).So yes, seasonal CTDs exist in the defaults, and the change of seasons from fall to winter in the northern hemisphere triggered the reports.The FLTs I have are from Europe... usually the Alps and some in Norway. I'd love to see some in North or South America. I don't know if Australia or New Zealand would have them, either.I'm sure some simmers are having CTDs for other reasons, but this is the only type that I can find that affect the defaults. Holger Sandmann has found some CTDs to affect his British Columbia addons, in which he uses VTP polys and lines and improved mesh. I think the terrain.cfg fix cures his problems as well.i haven't heard from Justin Tyme on this, but his US national landclass seemed to have this type of CTD... and I still wonder if the terrain.cfg fix would cure that as well.There was an Itaypack landclass that seemed to have CTD problems, but what I saw in TMFViewer led me to believe that could have been due to the method used to merge the separate landclass files together... maybe.Dick

I'd like to try and reproduce the problem in Australia. I've got many hundreds of hours of FS2004 simming up in Australia and no CtD to report. As I said to Greg, the default FS2004 package was Summer all around, so that's why I always used the FS2002 seasons.bgl file (it modelled the 4 seasons). The sim came out here in Oz in September, when it was already Spring. That said, if I did change the time to winter, I could still never reproduce a fault.I'll keep experimenting to see if I have create a fault in the south eastern hemisphere. I think it would be impossible to reproduce a fault in Australia using a stock FS2004 install, becasue TMFViewer confirms it is Summer 365 days per year.

I too can confirm that Dick's LFNC Dec. 25 flight crashes the sim with the FS2002 seasons.bgl.I've not tried the terrain.cfg fix yet. Off to try that in a while. But first I want to find someplace in the Sierra Nevada that creates this CTD.

Greg,That terrain.cfg fix works for that scenario on my machine. The only thing is although it fixes it, the side effect is it does make the airports look FS2002-ish. It would be nice to have the FS2004 airports look the way they are supposed to without CtD.It's a bit unfortunate that so far, anything that seems to fix the CtD is forced to detract from the visual quality of the sim. I was hoping it would be possible to interchange the season.bgl files depending on what day it is, but Dick's scenario above falls over whichever file I use. I also still can't reproduce a southern hemisphere CtD.

Did you replace all the MaskClassMap entries to 0 or just the ones for the roads (MaskClassMap=1)? You should be able to leave the entries for airports (MaskClassMap=2) and avoid the CTDs while retaining the FS2004 airport backgrounds.

Yes, I tried that about half an hour ago. Unfortunately no luck there. I still get the CtD with Dick's latest flight upload. It looks like this latest flight resists all published fixes to avoid a CtD bar the Joachim fix - at least on my setup. I also tried reducing the texture size slider to halfway, but Dick's flight still caused a CtD. Is it causing a CtD on your machine?

tdragger... I've made the changes you recommended in your original post on the Terrain.cfg fix, (changing MaskClassMap=1 to MaskClassMap=0) but I still get the CTD with both the FS9 and FS2002 seasons.bgl files.:(

I'm just dropping in to say Hi, and glad you are back Jon.Honestly.I also hope the next time someone has a problem with MSFS9, you won't assume Incorrectly that it is their system and not the fault of the program itself.My use of the word allegedly turned out to be correct afterall.Regards,Joehttp://aboutpolitics.net/images/bannerav.gif.About Politics.net - FORUMShttp://pub162.ezboard.com/baboutpolitics.Contribute to the Richard Harvey Scholarship Fund.http://www.avsim.com/pages/scholarship.shtml

Enough, Joe. Run along... we're working here.

See http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...id=170557&page=--qnh