Wrong aircraft-specific settings INI files loading

[JD396 38]

So, the past few days my sim has been loading the wrong aircraft-specific settings INI files for the NGX and 77X. It'll load one from a different aircraft - in the PMDG setup page on the CDU, it'll have all the right settings from the wrong file loaded. I haven't been able to consistently reproduce the issue but it's happened several times now. What exactly happened this morning: I finished one flight, shut the sim down and did other stuff, then fired the sim up again with another aircraft... and it loaded the INI from the previous plane (the AS 739 and UA 738 direct from the OC). It's not always the previously-loaded INI that it loads, though... it randomly pulled one I don't know I that I ever even flew the other day.

 

I did have like forty bazillion liveries installed, but I uninstalled all of them except the house liveries and have just been installing them as I've felt like flying them and the problem still occurs. I could have sworn I saw a thread about this once a while back when I wasn't having the problem and didn't care, but I couldn't find anything pertinent in the forum.

 

Anyone seen this one before?

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Anyone seen this one before?

 

You can set liveries to use a single hours/ini file. I have a feeling that's what's happening.

 

That, or a bunch of your liveries share a tail number in the aircraft.cfg.

[JD396 38]

 

 

You can set liveries to use a single hours/ini file. I have a feeling that's what's happening.

 

The "Fixed Config" entry in the CDU menus is blank and that's the only place I know of to force the same hours and ini files. Is there somewhere else to check? At any rate, I never did that deliberately.

 

 

 

That, or a bunch of your liveries share a tail number in the aircraft.cfg.

 

The aircraft.cfg's are clean now, as of right now the only liveries installed are the house liveries and a couple downloaded thru the OC, and I've never jacked around with the cfg's directly. It also pulled a -900 ini when loading an -800 so they're separate cfg's.

[JD396 38]

So I checked the "Details" page in FSX and it's loading seemingly random tail numbers (even from liveries I've deleted and hand-checked the aircraft.cfg for their absence) when I load a plane. So, if I type in the right tail number before actually loading it, it all works just fine. I don't know what's causing it but it's easy enough to work around.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

So I checked the "Details" page in FSX and it's loading seemingly random tail numbers (even from liveries I've deleted and hand-checked the aircraft.cfg for their absence) when I load a plane. So, if I type in the right tail number before actually loading it, it all works just fine. I don't know what's causing it but it's easy enough to work around.

 

Interesting. What other add-ons are you running?

[ClearedtoLand 149]

I have infrequently experienced this before as well, but I didn't look into it in as much depth as you have, I would load an aircraft, say  Pegasus 737 800, call sign Sunturk  and reg TC- AAL, do a flight, exit the sim and on the next occasion, this could be half an hour to a few days later, load a different aircraft, say South African Airways call sign Springbok and reg ZS-SJV. When I go to select the SAA aircraft, it would have Sunturk listed as call sign and show TC-AAL as its reg. It happened with other variants as well.

 

At that point I would simply correct those in the UI before proceeding with the flight. I don't recall ever seeing the call sign and reg number listed incorrectly in the aircraft.cfg files, so what causes the confusion, I am not sure, but because it was such an easy work around, I never actually bothered to even look it up (when something doesn't quite work the way it says its going to work, I assume a mistake on my part, in this instance, being careless when installing the livery).

 

Occasionally this would happen after installing a new livery, but as it is not always the case, I'm not sure whether that is related, or whether it would be related to installing a livery that is maybe older, or contains some other error.

 

Kyle asked about add-ons, so I will list a few, but I am not really sure whether any of these would be a contributing factor since I have experienced this before adding some of these to the sim.

 

PMDG 737 NGX (600/700/800/900)

PMDG 777 200LR/300ER **

A2A Cessna 172 **

A2A Cessna 182 **

A2A Piper Cherokee **

ASN **

Editvoicepack **

MyTraffic 6 **

Aerosoft Airbus Bundle **

FSUIPC **

 

The ** after the add-on indicates that I had already experienced this problem prior to installing that particular add-on.

 

And about 90 scenery add-ons ... I'm hoping I don't have to list all of those.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Occasionally this would happen after installing a new livery, but as it is not always the case, I'm not sure whether that is related, or whether it would be related to installing a livery that is maybe older, or contains some other error.

 

Manually or through the Operations Center?

[ClearedtoLand 149]

Manually or through the Operations Center?

It happens with either installation method. Off the top of my head, I recall seeing this issue after manually installing quite an old Shenzhen Airlines livery manually, but the Pegasus Airlines and SAA livery were installed through the Operations Center.

 

It is worth pointing out though that I have manually installed a Rwandair livery which did not present this problem.

 

Like Jack, I had large number of liveries installed when I was still using MS FSX, but I have not yet installed them all in FSX SE, and I have not yet experienced this issue in FSX SE.

 

I apologise if I am giving you a bunch of random and unrelated info here, but I am hoping that if I can provide you with enough info, it would help you to eliminate anything that isn't a contributing factor.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

I apologise if I am giving you a bunch of random and unrelated info here, but I am hoping that if I can provide you with enough info, it would help you to eliminate anything that isn't a contributing factor.

 

Not much to go on here, honestly.

[ClearedtoLand 149]

Not much to go on here, honestly.

Precisely. That's one of the reasons that I never thought much of the issue myself. There doesn't appear to be an obvious pattern to the cause, it is very infrequent, it doesn't affect anything else in the performance of the aircraft and given the absence of other users reporting a similar issue on here, I don't even think it's a problem caused by PMDG add-ons. Maybe third party liveries.

[kevinh 409]

So I checked the "Details" page in FSX and it's loading seemingly random tail numbers (even from liveries I've deleted and hand-checked the aircraft.cfg for their absence) when I load a plane. So, if I type in the right tail number before actually loading it, it all works just fine. I don't know what's causing it but it's easy enough to work around.

This isn't the answer, but you've marked it as the answer which is very confusing.

 

The problem is probably related to the way FSX remembers any changes made to tail numbers, flight numbers, etc. These are recorded in numberical order at the time the livery was installed. If you delete and add liveries the OC updates the aircraft.cfg file but not these state files. So things can get out of sync. The solution is to manually delete the state files, which will regenerate automatically.

 

Copy and paste the following line into the start menu search bar:

 

%appdata%/microsoft/FSX/simobjects/airplanes

 

Then scroll down to the PMDG folders folders. In each aircraft version folder you will find a file called state.CFG. Just delete it and that will let the system reset itself. 

[JD396 38]

This isn't the answer, but you've marked it as the answer which is very confusing.

Yeah, I don't even remember hitting the button. I un-marked it.

 

 

 

The problem is probably related to the way FSX remembers any changes made to tail numbers, flight numbers, etc. These are recorded in numberical order at the time the livery was installed. If you delete and add liveries the OC updates the aircraft.cfg file but not these state files. So things can get out of sync. The solution is to manually delete the state files, which will regenerate automatically.

I think you just hit nailed it. This is where my mind was going when it got too late and I got sick of troubleshooting last night. I just didn't know where besides aircraft.cfg FSX stored tail numbers and that kind of information, but you found it. Sure enough, the state.cfg's are loaded with pretty much every livery I've flown, organized by fltsim.XX number... so when that changes in an aircraft.cfg, the number gets out of sync and it pulls the wrong ini file.

 

Now I understand why I wasn't able to reliably reproduce the issue - I was loading the same aircraft that had generated the problems for me enough times that it updated the relevant state.cfg. Before I clear all my state.cfg's I think I might deliberately toy around with it and see if I can replicate it again.

 

I guess it would eliminate the problem entirely if the OC could nuke the state.cfg's when deleting a livery out of the middle of the aircraft.cfg.

[kevinh 409]

 

 

I guess it would eliminate the problem entirely if the OC could nuke the state.cfg's when deleting a livery out of the middle of the aircraft.cfg.

Glad that fixed things. Adding a livery can re-order the sequence in aircraft.cfg too, So ideally any livery change should cause the state file to be deleted to avoid the problem you had.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

[Just for the record: I marked Kevin's response as the solution for passers-by. I'd completely forgotten about all of those files.]

[JD396 38]

Glad that fixed things. Adding a livery can re-order the sequence in aircraft.cfg too, So ideally any livery change should cause the state file to be deleted to avoid the problem you had.

I dink around with liveries a lot so I'm going to keep an eye on the state.cfg's from now on. I might write up a little batch file or something to clean them up.

 

I'm halfway shocked I haven't come across this problem before -- but then again, I probably did have it in the past and just didn't notice. I only caught it the first few times because of something blatantly obvious in the configuration (KGS/LBS or the side-by-side displays in the NGX).

 

It's funny... you'd think after modding the bajeebers out of every version of MSFS from 5.1 onward, it would stop surprising me. MSFS never fails to amaze.