Hi.  I'm having a problem with the GNS 530 running in P3D alongside Plan-G.   This is a combination that has worked fine for me in the past, but whenever I try to connect Plan-G with the Mindstar GPS active I reliably get a P3D hang and need to force kill it.   In the exact same flight, without the Mindstar GPS, everything is fine.

 

This is on Windows 8.1, with P3D 2.4.  The Windows event log shows an application hang error:

 

The program fsx.exe version 10.0.61637.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.

 Process ID: 8d34

 Start Time: 01d05b5174501aea

 Termination Time: 84

 Application Path: F:\Prepar3D v2\fsx.exe

 Report Id: 0cd4073f-c745-11e4-8267-60a44cae5854

 Faulting package full name: 

 Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

And then an application error:

 

Faulting application name: Prepar3D.exe, version: 2.4.11570.0, time stamp: 0x542314d3

Faulting module name: API.DLL, version: 2.4.11570.0, time stamp: 0x5423155e

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x00005001

Faulting process id: 0x39d8

Faulting application start time: 0x01d05b51d92009b1

Faulting application path: F:\Prepar3D v2\Prepar3D.exe

Faulting module path: F:\Prepar3D v2\API.DLL

Report Id: 3100b5eb-c745-11e4-8267-60a44cae5854

Faulting package full name: 

Faulting package-relative application ID: 

 

 

This is showing the binary as fsx.exe because I'm running with the Estonian Migration Tool to support Ideal Flight, but this same thing happens without Ideal Flight and with the EMT virtual FSX install disabled.   I can replicate this whether I have Plan-G connecting via SimConnect or FSUIPC.  Other applications using both SimConnect and FSUIPC work fine, as, again, does this setup without the GNS running.

 

Any help?

 

 

Edit: Oh heck, one thing just hit me as I was thinking back over my troubleshooting:  this actually worked fine when I was using the stock navdata, at least for the couple flights where I had it.   It only began being an issue once I installed the up to date realnavdata product.

You can not use anything that wants to access the FS flight plan data. It's due to a flaw in the core sim that we've been unable to get Lockheed-Martin to even notice.

Can you identify which data reads in particular will cause this problem?  As far as I know, Plan-G doesn't attempt to read the flight plan itself, or at least it certainly doesn't show it.   I've just turned off every data type I can turn off that it reads from the sim, including not even showing my plane's location, and this still happens.

 

FWIW, I've turned on IPC read logging in FSUIPC and I'm not seeing anything in particular logged before my crash.

 

Is this incompatibility documented somewhere on your website or documentation?   I'm worried now about what other add-ons may not work with the GNS530 even though they don't superficially read flight plan data.

 

,,,

 

And yeah, now I'm crashing running PFE, and with VfrFlight.   This has pretty much become completely unusable since I installed your updated nav data.   (It was fine before that... how could that be?)

At this point you're going to need to submit a support ticket via our support email.

 

I believe you have something installed incorrectly and this is going to require someone going through the files and such to see what's going on.

 

Also, just to be clear... I have no idea what PFE is nor do I know what VfrFlight is. Like all of the other developers out there, we don't purchase everyone else's addon and test to see if it behaves well with our code.

 

We adhere to the limitations documented by the SDK. If anyone steps outside that zone, then all bets are off as to what works and what doesn't.

Ok... I have done some testing. Plan-G does retrieve the active flight plan from the sim when it's running. As I've stated, due to a bug in the core sim, this is going to cause problems. We have tried, without success, to get Lockheed-Martin to look into this issue.

PFE

VfrFlight

 

I don't expect a developer to know of or test against all add-ons, don't worry.  That's not remotely practical, nor a reasonable expectation.  However, it would be nice for a customer to know about a potential limitation such as this beforehand.

 

It's unfortunate that LM won't fix this bug.   Any idea if it's still present in 2.5?  That might prompt an upgrade, because I'd love to be able to use your add-on with everything else I have.   As it is for the moment, I have completely uninstalled the 430/530.   It was making too many other add-ons unusable for me.

 

Incidentally, it seems like your uninstaller misses something...  I was still crashing even after uninstalling, had to hunt down the Hypergauge in my dll.xml and manually disable it there to get my system back.

All 3 applications you've indicated rely very heavily on the default FS flight planner's flight plan interface. Unfortunately, this is exactly where the bug is. If we create a flight plan in our code, it is possible to inject it into the sim... but critical data is 'dropped' by the sim when we do this.

 

No, 2.5 doesn't fix the problem and as I've stated L-M doesn't even take note of our pointing it out.

Because we have been unable to get L-M to actually pay attention to this issue... I can tell you that changing our core code in our 430/530 units so that they no longer interact with the sim's flight planner system is on a list of enhancements we intend to make. Unfortunately I can not provide a timeframe.

Thanks, Ed, I appreciate the information there.    I'll keep an eye out for news about new releases from you guys and pick things back up when this change comes out.

 

I'm curious, if you have time, if you could explain from a developer's perspective what the FS flight plan interface provides other than...   the flight plan?   These three applications all work without any plan loaded in the simulator, and for the most part don't seem like they need to explicitly load any plan present as a discrete entity either.  (Unlike, say, Active Sky Next, which has an option to do just that).  I'm wondering how, for example, PFE, which really only needs to know about your location, vector, and comm settings, because it uses a flight plan provided outside of the simulator, can benefit from loading flight plan info from the sim.

 

I know it's not your responsibility, just curious and you seem to have an understanding of this.

I cannot speak for what any of those applications specifically do or don't do code wise other than to tell you that I tested Plan-G by loading a 172 with our 530/430 in it. Plan-G ran without issue as long as I didn't create a flight plan. The minute I created a flight plan, the core sim crashed. If Plan-G isn't running, the sim doesn't crash. The only part of all of this that's common is that we created a flight plan and injected it into the sim.