I Loathe FSDT's COUATL!

[dbw1 453]

I recently did a hardware upgrade and these problems hit me as well. It literally took over fsx and would shut me down. I blew off the addon manager, replaced it, same problem. To me it was not solvable so I finally got rid of it. And I'm out the better part of $100 for what I purchased there. It's disappointing because the FSDT sceneries are very good.

[Parping Couplet 117]

I must be very lucky because this stuff never happens with my Couatl installs. What am I doing right? :-)

[ajpongress 467]

Never had an issue with Couatl either.

But the mass of people that do suggests there are some problems with it.

[Anxu00 176]

One more thing to add about Couatl based products:  the trick about LOD technique: to only load the airport as needed:  It sounds good in theory but in reality in cause stutters on approaching the airport sometime a good 1-2 sec, enough to ruin it for me.  I too have all the FSDT products and they seem fine for GA aircrafts, which are what I fly until now.  Now I start to use PMDG NGX and recently the 777, and I notice the stutters on approaching any FSDT airport  At first I thought that it was my settings but they are modest: Autogen at normal, no car traffics, GA and Aliner traffic at 10%.  I spent hundred of dollar on FSDT products but now I am facing the prospect of deactivating them all and to only use GSX when flying airliners which is the whole point of using nice airport add-on,  Sigh

[robert young 2,897]

Hi Julian

 

I just noticed the awesome livery for that Real Air aircraft in your signiture... Where did you get it? link?

 

I think that image is the standard blue livery that comes with our Lancair Legacy, with perhaps a bit of added brightness!

 

Regards,

 

Rob - RealAir

[Tom Allensworth 1,532]

I should probably bite my tongue with regard to this topic and keep my mouth (er, keyboard) shut...

 

Nah, not in my nature.

 

I posted a rant, epistle, or whatever you want to call it, sometime within the last year or so on this same subject with basically the same theme. You would have thought that I took the new family puppy out to the front yard, in view of the entire neighborhood and hundreds of children, beat it, strangled it, and finally put a large caliber bullet between it's eyes.

 

I understand DRM. I support DRM. I advocate that every creator should be rewarded for their work and not be ripped off. But, in this case, I think the protection is hurting the creator of the product.

 

Now I will shut my mouth and move on to other fun topics. :Nerd:

[Airbu099 3]

Do you guys not get what Mir told us?

 

WIthout the Addon Manager, FSDT airports wouldn't have all this "eye candy"!

 

The addon manager does WAYYYY more than what means the eye. I, personally love the addon manager. It lets me know what airports I have installed... it lets me change some FSX settings... all without even Quitting FSX!

 

All of you are just angry and blaming coualt for all your problems because when your FSX crashes, you get very mad, and your first result is to blame the developer. 

 

While the addon manager isn't really buggy at all, the main issue is with FSX. Simconnect is very finicky, even one thing (Like antivirus) that causes FSX simconnect to break, will cause a chain reaction with the addon manager and make everything go haywaire. 

 

The addon manager depends on simconnect for all of it's functionalities, such as real time switching of weather, night and day, and dynamic shadows.

 

Piracy protection is just one small feature of this program, Virtuali could list about 100 more that we had no idea that it does, for all of the airports that YOU guys love so much.

 

If the addon manager really had a "problem" with it, EVERYONE that used it would be experiencing the same problem. But as you can see, the only ones that are posting here, are the ones WITH problems, so it may "seem" like there is a bunch of users on the same boat, but really it's just a bunch of users who refuse to use the FSDT forum to figure out the problem. 

 

The problem IS, something on YOUR computer is conflicting with the addon manager, or simconnect. (Like Antivirus!) This doesn't mean it's your "fault", it just means that obviously FSDT can't make the addon manager compatible with every single piece of software out there.

 

So please stop, and actually go and get help at the FSDT forum for your problems. Virtuali is extremely intelligent and I have yet to see a topic where the issue has not been resolved.

[Guest]

Being a software engineer for a small software company, I'm obviously VERY PRO DRM ... no surprise there.  I don't mind DRM at all ... but it needs to work correctly.

 

 

 

If the addon manager really had a "problem" with it, EVERYONE that used it would be experiencing the same problem

 

At first I was just going to avoid responding to your post because so much of it makes no logical sense.  You honestly believe that everyone's computer is the same?  By your method of reasoning, everyone would have to have an identical computers and identical hardware running on identical operating systems.  PC's don't work like that, they never have from day one.

 

Did you read any these posts?  It doesn't sound like it ... seems you're a 1 post wonder?  You sound like you were "called on" to make a post here ... which if that is the case, this is exactly the type of "support" we're trying to avoid.

 

 

 

WIthout the Addon Manager, FSDT airports wouldn't have all this "eye candy"!

 

Are you suggesting that because the Add-On manager displays FSX.CFG and allows adjustments to them, this "allows" us to get more "eye candy"?  Have you heard of a program called NotePad?

 

Given that Tom (and apparently many others) have been posting about this same subject for a year and a long list of people joining this thread with problems, don't you think it might be time to actually investigate rather than repeating the same old same old "it's your anti-virus, it's your OS, it's your PC, it's because the moon is full ... ".  I've got a long list of 3rd party products with DRM that have worked flawlessly and they have NOT suddenly decided to wipe out my license keys ... so if it's "all my fault" why do other 3rd party products work while the Coautl Add-On manager does not?

 

When I run FSX, I don't run Antivirus software, my firewall is disabled, UAC is OFF, etc. etc. etc. -- I've done all those support steps and the problem remains.  Last time I visited the FSDT support forum I was told it was a server outage problem ... that seems to keep repeating itself.  I'm sorry, but discussions "over there" have gone no where and based on your post an Mir's post it doesn't look like there is going to be much hope of any future discussion.

 

But lets just say it is all our faults, we've somehow done something that is causing the Add-On manager to fail, a quality product would be coded to deal with failures, they would:

 

1.  Provide some type of detailed logging that can be provided to the developer

2.  Provide meaningful errors to users

3.  Stop when something fails rather than continue

4.  Not wipe out valid license keys when something fails 

 

Sorry I bothered to discuss this ... next time I'll just write FSDT a check with an apology on the back for forcing them to have to deposit my money.  I mean what else do I have to do all day ... I just love wasting time typing in threads like this ... it's the highlight of my day.

[vc10man 732]

 

 

At first I was just going to avoid responding to your post because so much of it makes no logical sense. You honestly believe that everyone's computer is the same? By your method of reasoning, everyone would have to have an identical computers and identical hardware running on identical operating systems. PC's don't work like that, they never have from day one.

Did you read any these posts? It doesn't sound like it ... seems you're a 1 post wonder? You sound like you were "called on" to make a post here ... which if that is the case, this is exactly the type of "support" we're trying to avoid.

+++1 :Applause: :Applause: :Applause:

 

 

All of you are just angry and blaming coualt for all your problems because when your FSX crashes

Eh? FSX crashing? I don't seem to seeing a lot of posts stating this. Rob and I certainly have not.

[robert young 2,897]

I should probably bite my tongue with regard to this topic and keep my mouth (er, keyboard) shut...

 

Nah, not in my nature.

 

I posted a rant, epistle, or whatever you want to call it, sometime within the last year or so on this same subject with basically the same theme. You would have thought that I took the new family puppy out to the front yard, in view of the entire neighborhood and hundreds of children, beat it, strangled it, and finally put a large caliber bullet between it's eyes.

 

I understand DRM. I support DRM. I advocate that every creator should be rewarded for their work and not be ripped off. But, in this case, I think the protection is hurting the creator of the product.

 

Now I will shut my mouth and move on to other fun topics. :Nerd:

 

I remember your post Tom and I posted (as a customer) too. Whatever the "addon manager" does that might be beneficial, I can't see a reason why it cannot do that outside of FSX itself. I remember Virtuali did post some very polite and patient replies at the time. A year on and I still think that this addon manager can do whatever it likes provided it doesn't do it while FSX is running beyond a first activation, although activations outside FSX are much more preferable. The other contention I believe was the use of addon manager by a non-virtuali developer. In this context the addon manager is almost solely a security/activation tool. Activation is obviously necessary given piracy but it is best done without FSX running, as the posts here are now demonstrating.

[dbw1 453]

Two other observations.... my experience when using the demo mode prior to purchase it always ended at about 5 minutes so all seemed well. However for me after purchase the OOM stated happening at around 10 minutes so when running the demo there was no way to know this. The demo mode provided if longer would be helpful.

Second observation.... I have spent so many hours trouble shooting with this stuff trying (and I'm no where near the sharpest knife in the drawer when it comes to computers)  to make it work that it ceased to be fun - All I wanted to do was fly fsx, not figure out problems.

I will say again the sceneries are spectacular - it's just that I couldn't fix the problems I experienced.

[newish1 3]

 

 

If the addon manager really had a "problem" with it, EVERYONE that used it would be experiencing the same problem.

 

this is pure assumption, for example: i´m the guy that almost never posts and rather quietly sits in the back of the bus 

i too had countless quoatl-quirks and i believe there are many others like me..

[pete_auau 1,173]

I must be very lucky because this stuff never happens with my Couatl installs. What am I doing right? :-)

same  here never had  any issues  at all, suppose its like  that some users  get ctds  and others  don't  all depends on whats pc its installed on

[guidos 2]

I'm glad I read this thread. I don't have any FSDT airports and was just about to buy some. After reading this thread I don't think I'll be putting any FSDT software on my new smoothly running computer....at least not until I read that this issue is resolved.

 

Ted

I feel the same. I have bought only Geneva airport from FSDT. It is weird, if I am uninstalling the airport and couatl then FSX works without a problem. I am not buying from FSTDT until the add on manager is stable.

[Airbu099 3]

 

 

By your method of reasoning, everyone would have to have an identical computers and identical hardware running on identical operating systems.  PC's don't work like that, they never have from day one.

 

Sorry, I never said that. I said if they addon manager really had a "problem", than everyone that had it would be reporting the same problem.

 

Since everyone's computer is different, and everyone DOES have different software, the problem is with something on YOUR computer that is conflicting with the software, which is why, everyone is reporting different crashes, different problems... etc.

 

 

 

Are you suggesting that because the Add-On manager displays FSX.CFG and allows adjustments to them, this "allows" us to get more "eye candy"?  Have you heard of a program called NotePad?

 

That's not the "eye candy" that I'm talking about. Have you ever heard that making a change to your CFG IN FLIGHT might be handy without having to:

 

Close FSX.

Go in Appdata

Go to Microsoft
Go to the "FSX folder"

Open it with notepad

Save it

Replace original

Restart FSX

Restart Flight.

 

Lets say you are close to running out of memory on landing. So you access the addon manager and change your 4096 textures to 1024 easily without losing your flight.

 

Flightbeam: some of the most interesting features in KIAD are the extremely dense forest around the airport, which is multi-seasonal too, and the night lights that change depending on the weather (in low visibility, the apron lights project a *different* halo on ground, compared to good visibility), this feature was of course made possible with our Couatl scripting engine, and if they did those thousands+ of trees in multiple seasons without the Addon Manager, they would have taken 4X the amount of VAS...

Also, they need to create objects programmatically, in order to be able to use shaders on ground which, incidentally, give them full DX10 compatibility without heavy flickering ground problems, which is what you get if you try to use ground shaders and ground in native FSX code, if you don't add extra programming.

Someone on fsdeveloper.com proposed an alternative method based on LODs levels to achieve this, without needing a module, but with that method, guess what, the memory requirement increases dramatically for each ground layer used, while with our method, we don't create multiple version of the ground layers.
 

For the same efficiency reasons, the Addon Manager also handles Trial and registration, in order not to waste memory for an utility-only module and a protection-only module. By having both features in the same module, they save even more memory and resources compared to having two separate modules or (even worse) a separate module for every product, but fact that it's ALSO used for protection.

 

 

so if it's "all my fault" why do other 3rd party products work while the Coautl Add-On manager does not?

 

First, I never said it was your "fault"! It's nobody's fault. The reason why is because hardly any other addon relies on simconnect so much. Something on YOUR computer is conflicting with simconnect, or the addon manager (Like Antivirus!) This doesn't mean it's your "fault", it just means that obviously FSDT can't make the addon manager compatible with every single piece of software out there. Since the addon manager relies on Simconnect so heavily, when something breaks simconnect than it breaks the addon manager and ALL your sceneries don't work. 

 

 

 

When I run FSX, I don't run Antivirus software, my firewall is disabled, UAC is OFF, etc. etc. etc. -- I've done all those support steps and the problem remains.  Last time I visited the FSDT support forum I was told it was a server outage problem ... that seems to keep repeating itself.  I'm sorry, but discussions "over there" have gone no where and based on your post an Mir's post it doesn't look like there is going to be much hope of any future discussion.

 

Well I don't know for sure, because I'm not a support Specialist, it certainly doesn't HAVE to be those things. Something else is the problem and the only way is go to seek support, because the entire "server outage" excuse is really bad, and I really doubt any problem will go "nowhere".

 

 

 

Did you read any these posts?  It doesn't sound like it ... seems you're a 1 post wonder?  You sound like you were "called on" to make a post here ... which if that is the case, this is exactly the type of "support" we're trying to avoid

 

I read every post here. I am a long member at the FSDT forum, and I actually READ and follow what he says, and I found this topic and I felt the need to register and post.

 

I'm talking about the support forum HERE: http://fsdreamteam.com/forum/