Complete Freeze - No Crash Record

[Kuragiman 227]

So I did a flight from KPHX to KSEA today using Avialsoft's EFB.   When it was producing the flight plan it said there was an error with KSEA, that some of the runways were bad.

 

2 and half hours into the flight, just before Top of Descent, I looked down and set a DME station in the NavCom and reached up to the MCP to turn the course nob and suddenly the sim just froze in place.   Sound was still playing.  Frozen screen.   EFB paused on the Display unit.

 

I got no crash message.  No Fatal Crash screen.  No FSX has stop responding.   Just solid frozen screen.    I had to CTRL-ALT-DEL to the Task Manager and it showed FSX not responding in the manager.   I had to manually shutdown the simulator process.

 

 

This generated NO crash information in AppCrashView.    The flight was going so perfect until I touched the damn MCP.

 

This is the PMDG 737/700 NGX.

 

Anyone experience a hardlock freeze before with no crash message?   Could it just have been the EFB software wigging out because of the airport being broken?   I know KSEA is notoriously cursed.     I need to do a few more flights to see if it happens again.

[Kuragiman 227]

Tried to fly the same route today...   got a Fatal Error this time... at the exact same spot the game froze up completely last time, 99 miles from Seattle Tocoma.    Nothing was recorded in the crash log though.    What is wrong with this part of the US?

[Jim Young 2,356]

If you got the g3d.dll error around Orbx Seattle/Tacoma, then the FSUIPC.dll should have trapped the faults and stopped you from crashing.  You do have FSUIPC.dll installed right?  100 miles from Seattle is pretty far away though and I'm not aware of crashes that far from Seattle (but it's possible). I know we have discussed crashes before but cannot remember what all you have installed.  If you do have the FSUIPC.dll installed, you can look in the Module folder and open up the FSUIPC.log.  It will tell you everything that happened from the time you started up FSX and will even tell you how many crashes it stopped.  Just be aware that the log is rewritten every time you restart FSX.  If I have a crash or "event" during a flight I will usually save the log as the name of my flight plan (i.e., KLAXKSFO.log).  That way I can document some things in case I need to go to the developer as ask for support.

 

If nothing was recorded in the AppCrashView, then you will need to look in the System Event Viewer.  Once the Event Viewer is open, look under Custom Views>Administrative Events.  This will show you ALL of the events that occurred when you turned your computer on today.  You can also look in the individual folders for events but Administrative Events will show them all.

 

There are a lot of reasons for crashes around Seattle.  For most, it is not frame rate friendly territory (too much eye-candy I guess). 

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Kuragiman 227]

Thanks for the tips on where to look for additional error logs.   I do in fact own and use FSUPIC and WIDEFS from Pete.   Unforunately, if it recorded a failure it will be gone as I decided to fly to Salt Lake City instead of Seattle.    

 

I don't use ORBX Pacific Northwest (eyeing it though.  It looks stunning!).  I do use FTX Global from ORBX though.

 

I'll take a look at the other log places and see if I can see why it choked out in the exact same spot.   3 hours of flight wasted both times.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I once had freezes 100% of the time at the exact same location too (with my old i7 2600K overclocked to 4.6GHz).  I do not see them with my current system.  I found out what caused the freezes.  It was my AS2012 weather program.  If I activated AS2012 before using FSX, I got the freezes.  If I did not activate AS2012 and used the default real weather program (which I understand is also tied to AS2012), then no crashes.  I also lowered the cloud texture setting to no higher than 2048 and all other textures at 1024 or less.  I really don't use AS2012 textures anymore as I own all of MegaSceneryEarth V2 photoscenery.  I have Orbx PNW and all of the other sceneries too and have enabled them as I like their rendition of KSEA. 

 

I think most freezes are the result of high texture settings (4096 or 2048 - both are HD textures).  Then one goes into the fsx.cfg and sets their Texture_Max_Load setting to 4096.  Not good!

 

Best regards,

Jim

[Kuragiman 227]

The only HD textures I have are the PMDG 737 cockpit and Flightbeam's KPHX.   I use REX WXPLUS and all my clouds are actually running at 512 because honestly I see no difference in cloud detail at 4096 vs 512.  What I do see is a MASSIVE FPS loss because of AA.    512 pixel clouds look more natural to me anyway with their fluffiness and blurry edges.    Those HD clouds don't look right to me.  They are TOO sharp.

 

I am going to launch from Salt Lake today and try to enter Seattle.   If it crashes and freezes again when I get to 100 miles out then I know there is something super wrong in the KSEA area for me.   Don't know why.   I did notice that Avilasoft's EFB screamed out Errors when loading KSEA in the flight planner.  It said the runways were all screwed up.    That was the first freeze.   I went out and got the more popular KSEA upgrade that fixes the runways and adds the third one correctly.   I thought maybe EFB made FSX lock up because of that error.   The addon KSEA fixed the error messages but this time it Fatal Crashed rather than Froze but at the same distance.

 

Just another problem in a long list of problems.   Just when I think I have it all hammered out and my frames and smoothness is good something else screws up.  *sigh*   Welcome to the world of FSX.

[Jim Young 2,356]

You might want to try putting the following in your Scenery section of your Fsx.cfg.  It will alert you if it is missing an object or textures.  It might be helpful if an alert came up around the area fsx freezes. 

 

[sCENERY]
// To show alerts or areas, set to = 1
// To hide alerts or areas, set to = 0

// Alert for missing textures
ShowMissingTextureAlert=1

// Alert for missing objects
MissingLibraryAlert=1

// Render Trigger areas as visible boxes
ShowTriggers=1

 

Best regards,

Jim
 

[Kuragiman 227]

Thinks Jim.    I have done so.    I did my flight from Salt Lake City to Seattle today with not a glitch in sight.   The view to Mount Rayner, passing by my left wing with FS Global 2010 Ultimate was stunning.    It was a night landing by the time I got there.    Really crappy weather which was good.  This is the first time I've seen REX WXPLUS pull off a soupy landing.   I didn't see the runway till about 800 feet from the ground.  ILS landing for the win.    I honestly think it was just OOM since my previous flights were more than 3 hours from KSEA.  The flight from Salt Lake is just over 2 hours.    I had LOD_RADIUS=9.5 set the first freeze and 8.5 my second attempt.  Tonight I had it at 6.5 and no crash and that was with bad weather and VoxATC WOAI AI planes lined up and ready to depart after I land.    FPS was 24-29 all the way in on a triple monitor setup.    I have conquered THE BEAST of All Airports.    We'll have to see if it gives me any trouble departing tomorrow for my next leg.

 

I still find it amazing that I can suffer from OOM with 32 GIGS of RAM at the PC's disposal.  I guess FSX will only EVER use 6gigs of it at any given time.