SOLVED

 

I played FSX since 2008.
Although I haven't played it prior to few weeks ago for about several years.

During my years of playing FSX I have never experienced what I have experienced today.

Although It might have something to do with my unorthodox flight profile.

 

This unorthodox flight is a simulated flight from EHAM (Amsterdam) to YSSY (Sydney) without time acceleration.

Meaning that FSX ran for about 12 hours straight (4 hours from YSSY) in the Banda/Arufara Sea.

 

It is there that things went haywire.

I regularly check on my fsx session to change course etc and see if everything is ok.

I play on hard realism settings and I fly in a Opensky 777-200ER with Air france paint.

 

The first thing I realized is that the realism settings went from hard to easy without me changing any settings. It happened just like that in the background.

I was especially ###### because I had to recalculate the actual fuel loss and add fuel in the "fuel and payload" settings because my 777 failed to burn actual fuel for 1 hours straight as it flew on "unlimited fuel" due to the automatic settings change from hard to easy realism.

 

It gets weirder though.

Having fixed that and saving my flight I went back to doing other stuff at home. When I came back I saw that the autopilot was disengaged and I went from 39.000 feet down to sea level.
Again with the realism settings automatically switched to easy so I didn't crash but jumped across the sea in a uncontrolled direction.

I thought, what!?!?!? .... maybe I actually forgot to engage the autopilot after fiddling earlier with the realism settings. But then I realized I never touched the autopilot.

I also saw that my "Attitude Director indicator" was completely bugged out and the autopilot meters where blacked out.

 

But all the instrument panel settings are completely ok, and identical to how they were when it flew normally for thousands of miles.

 

Here is a picture that shows it.

Activating the autopilot turns on the blacked out meters but doesn't solve the bugged out ADI.

It then continues to fly on autopilot by the settings as it does normally but then it bugs and fails again after 30-60 seconds.

 

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE!?

 

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention something which is also visible in the screenshot.

The engines also failed automatically. They can be restarted and auto fail at the same moment when the autopilot auto fails.

Plane suddenly became completely unusable.

It works again after restarting FSX and reloading my flight. But not after reloading my flight in the same session. So it must be a bug. I just wanted to show how ridiculous this is. Maybe theres a actual answer for why this happens.

 

SORRY FOR THE WALL OF TEXT

 

Scratch the OP

 

Sorry I feel ill for having posted this because the answer to the problem was quite simple and mundane.

I forgot something after years of not playing. I haven't yet ran into this problem because I haven't yet done very long flights since I returned to FSX and it's related to the realism of the Opensky 777 plane that I just completely forgot about.

 

Even although fuel is still being displayed I forgot to put the crossfeed valve to open as it only shows fuel in the right tanks while the left tanks are empty.

Yet that still doesn't explain why FSX automatically switched to unlimited fuel and easy realism as one side of the tanks ran out. Is there a way to make FSX not do this?

 

The problem occured right after disabling unlimited fuel that my aircraft engines flamed out and thus all the other systems.

Now that the valve is open it flys fine.

Yes, that JB Panel on POSKYS T7 is great. But as you say you have to keep an eye on the crossfeed/ centre fuel tanks, hence you had a flame out.

 

Don't have any idea why realism settings would switch though... sorry.