Long Haul Flights

[Jimm 437]

With X-Plane I've also suffered CTDs after a long flight (A long-haul for me is 3 hours in the 737 and is about the limit of my patience ;-)). e.g. Only a few weeks ago I was flying over default scenery near Nice in France and for no reason, boom, I'm looking at my desktop. Rather than blaming X-Plane, I'd say it was a probably a plugin causing it. It's happened on numerous other occasions in different areas for no apparent reason (and the log shows nothing).

 

However, to have it crash out after flying LA to Auckland would make me throw the simulator or whatever addon I had in the bin out of frustration. It's a difficult one because you don't know what to blame (The simulator or the addon), since the log file just says the sim has crashed. Luckily, most of my flights are maximum 1hr and generally I'm lucky 99% of the time to get back down and land.

That is a good point about plugins Tony, since this is something many tend to overlook.  We can easily blame the sim first, followed by aircraft or weather or anything else, but plugins can equally be the offending process to cause a crash.  If all of this is being used within XP11, we can plausibly state that the sim is partially to blame, as it is beta, but after looking at other forums that discuss XP, there have been a lot of statements made from people about navdata, or even robust plugins like weather generators, even an improperly coded Lua script can cause crashes as well.

 

I've had issues with XP11, there's no denying that, but it is usually something I have introduced into the sim, and as it goes with all the other sims, errors can occur when you start adding things to the core.  I've taken closer looks at the XP log.txt file and I often see errors in processing data, none of which appear to cause a problem during a sim session, and the errors deal with coordinates of airport data being incorrect, but it appears that XP can overlook those errors and continue, so even that could possible have a lasting effect, over time.  For example, last night, during a render test at KBOS, I received an error during the initial load that an airport I have installed was missing a component (such as a library), despite having the required libraries.  I clicked on the understood button, mainly because I'd flown directly from the offending airport before and it worked fine, but my point here is when XP loads, it has to load the corresponding tile for the airport you want to start from.  Those tiles being as large as they are, may contain 3rd party airports you may have installed, so XP ensures that any and all data within that tile is correct.  So, if you are on a long haul, and you pass over several tiles, XP has to load all of that collective data, and if there are issues with the data within that tile, you may or may not get an onscreen error, which could cause a crash.  

[wiler 394]

GUYS, I really dont want to argue those who want to say p3d is further along and has higher level "study" aircraft that simulate everything exactly like the real life counterpart ( FSL and pmdg), and great weather (ASN). I came from p3d I was a beta user day 1. FSX/P3D is like your first GF , you never forget and it was a great time (sometimes)but you honestly know why you had to move on. I am honest with myself about fsx/p3d, and I wasnt happy anymore. If you arent happy you move on and thats what I did.  When you load up the sim with mostly high settings, global, asn, and one of the more complex aircraft , its a system killer. (I have a high end system) Frames struggle to stay around 30 , micro stutters would never go away for me no matter what , CTDs..... It wasnt all bad and im not bashing, but for me it just wasnt worth the hassle anymore. I literally spent years  tweaking the cfg trying different sliders watching videos on youtube on what others try to get optimal performance, etc... . I knew  I was  trying to get performance out of a sim that would NEVER come, no matter how many times I chased it with a new processor or GFX card. I always though oh the next update or the next gfx card would get me to a rock solid 30fps w no stutters...that day never came.  I actually stopped simming for a while because p3d just wasnt doing it for me anymore, no matter how nice the sim looked.   Fast forward to around the time xp11 came out, I had used xp10 before and hated it for the same reasons why most of the naysayers in here are saying(mainly ignorance on my part) I thought xp11 is worth a try, the videos look great and im just irritated w p3d.  Tried it, and thought wow this has great potential, went to the forums and learned and read about what its capable of and I havnt looked back.

 

For me #1, its stable 30fps, no stutters at almost all max settings. The autogen is much better than global ftx(my opinion) add ortho4xp tiles and its real life looking so sorry you cant convince me your orbx can compete. The IXEG 737, FF757 are amazing aircraft, they might not be as fine tuned as the pmdgs or fsl, but you guys waited how long to get those?? TheLES SAAB  340 blows away any turbo  prop on p3d in my opinion even the mjc dash8.  xenviro is literally a couple months old and its 75%/80% of what ASN is. within 6-12 months itll be very good, the devs are very active with updates.

 

Now with that all said and the point of this thread was I am very happy to complete my first true longhaul flight. not 2 or 3 hrs guys, we are talking 6+ hours minimum, non stop no saves. Ive never been able to accomplish that before in a sim thats running 30fps, all max settings with ortho tiles loaded most of the route and with complex aircraft.   If you want to say my experience wasnt good enough, fair play to you . If it makes me happy then thats all im concerned about. trust me guys im picky and have high expectatons of my sim, xp11 is right there, it needs some polishing no doubt but its the future and im glad to be on board. 

[Jimm 437]

GUYS, I really dont want to argue those who want to say p3d is further along and has higher level "study" aircraft that simulate everything exactly like the real life counterpart ( FSL and pmdg), and great weather (ASN). I came from p3d I was a beta user day 1. FSX/P3D is like your first GF , you never forget and it was a great time (sometimes)but you honestly know why you had to move on. I am honest with myself about fsx/p3d, and I wasnt happy anymore. If you arent happy you move on and thats what I did.  When you load up the sim with mostly high settings, global, asn, and one of the more complex aircraft , its a system killer. (I have a high end system) Frames struggle to stay around 30 , micro stutters would never go away for me no matter what , CTDs..... It wasnt all bad and im not bashing, but for me it just wasnt worth the hassle anymore. I literally spent years  tweaking the cfg trying different sliders watching videos on youtube on what others try to get optimal performance, etc... . I knew  I was  trying to get performance out of a sim that would NEVER come, no matter how many times I chased it with a new processor or GFX card. I always though oh the next update or the next gfx card would get me to a rock solid 30fps w no stutters...that day never came.  I actually stopped simming for a while because p3d just wasnt doing it for me anymore, no matter how nice the sim looked.   Fast forward to around the time xp11 came out, I had used xp10 before and hated it for the same reasons why most of the naysayers in here are saying(mainly ignorance on my part) I thought xp11 is worth a try, the videos look great and im just irritated w p3d.  Tried it, and thought wow this has great potential, went to the forums and learned and read about what its capable of and I havnt looked back.

 

For me #1, its stable 30fps, no stutters at almost all max settings. The autogen is much better than global ftx(my opinion) add ortho4xp tiles and its real life looking so sorry you cant convince me your orbx can compete. The IXEG 737, FF757 are amazing aircraft, they might not be as fine tuned as the pmdgs or fsl, but you guys waited how long to get those?? TheLES SAAB  340 blows away any turbo  prop on p3d in my opinion even the mjc dash8.  xenviro is literally a couple months old and its 75%/80% of what ASN is. within 6-12 months itll be very good, the devs are very active with updates.

 

Now with that all said and the point of this thread was I am very happy to complete my first true longhaul flight. not 2 or 3 hrs guys, we are talking 6+ hours minimum, non stop no saves. Ive never been able to accomplish that before in a sim thats running 30fps, all max settings with ortho tiles loaded most of the route and with complex aircraft.   If you want to say my experience wasnt good enough, fair play to you . If it makes me happy then thats all im concerned about. trust me guys im picky and have high expectatons of my sim, xp11 is right there, it needs some polishing no doubt but its the future and im glad to be on board. 

Well put Wiler, thank you.

[PaulGR 168]

Sad to see that you got a CTD at the eleventh hour. It is why I gave up FSX a decade ago, and why I will not do any long flights in XP either. I am even concerned about 2 hour flights and avoid those as well. All it takes is one 12 hour flight like yours that crashed and I would never do it again.

 

************

And just in case you think this might be impossible, I am a software developer myself and I don't think I have EVER seen or had reported a CTD with my software. All software has bugs, but the idea is to trap the error and then do something about it, even carry on. A scenery bug should never give a CTD, for example.

 

Anyway, good to get some feedback on other people's experiences.

 

And I'm a NASA engineer and we have software crashes on Mars once in a while  :rolleyes:

 

16H flights with my 777, Vector + Global + Some airports, ASN, REX, Airports HD, GSX and never had a CTD. Does that make me special or maybe I took my time to setup the software just the right way?

 

For a soft developer you seem to give up pretty easy on something that it's not that hard to figure out.

 

AND btw I also develop games for various platforms which is why flying long hauls in the background is my fav thing

[Paraffin 2,197]

There appears to be a correlation between study level aircraft and their heavy resource usage with CTDs.  As we don't typically know everything going on behind the scenes, it could be a multitude of things that could cause the CTD.  I would have to side with the idea that the add-ons could be the cause, but that would take a lot of testing with other aircraft, including default ones to determine if it is the sim.  Now, if we are still talking about XP11, then we fall back on the fact that it is still beta, so the question of CTDs starts to become moot right now.

 

Well, this entire discussion is also assuming that every user has the same computer setup, and the same stability of that setup for running any kind of resource-intensive software, not just a flight sim. This isn't just about XP11's inherent stability, because it doesn't operate in a vacuum. 

 

If you're running a 7 hour flight on a general purpose computer -- i.e. not a dedicated "black box" totally stripped down just for flight sims -- then the OS is constantly loading processes underneath like systems management, additional software running scheduled checking for updates, actually downloading those updates, trying to pop up reminders, etc. It's a buzzing bee's nest of activity down there behind some user's flight sims. There may be a point where some process running outside the flight sim prevents it from getting some resource and you get a CTD. The same thing might happen if you ran a video or multi-channel audio recording app for a steady 7 hours.

 

So for long haul flights, you might need to start thinking of your computer the way audio recording and video recording pros do, as more of a dedicated system, stripped down to the bare bones with a minimum of extra processes running.

 

I'm sure many people here are already doing that, but others like me can only afford one high performance CPU/GPU for a general purpose computer. One option there, is to have a separate Windows boot config just for flight sims. I haven't had to do that yet, because XP10 and XP11 have been very stable for me, and my FSEconomy flights are never longer than 3 hours (max patience/free time). I have Steam, anti-virus sweeps, printer update checkers and a bunch of other crap running in the background when I fly, and XP11 handles it all just fine. But if I wanted to do long haul flights I'd consider it.

[Desaix 235]

16H flights with my 777, Vector + Global + Some airports, ASN, REX, Airports HD, GSX and never had a CTD. Does that make me special or maybe I took my time to setup the software just the right way?

 

 

You should spend some time teaching your tricks in the PRD/FSX forum then, it's plenty of OOM reports and complain about dangerous VAS usage, you will get plenty of gratitude and many would not be "forced" to look elsewhere.

 

By the way I never regarded OOM as a reason to move to XP, I had never got one in the other platform since I can afford flights of maximum 2 hours. As Wiler wrote when you load up XP11 with a good OSM data, photoreal at L17/18, fluidity, breathtaking lights well...old blurry sims are no more an option. No matter what system and aircraft and airport ultra high complex you put there I could not like it anymore.

 

But if you can you're lucky, you can enjoy both sims or even stay with FSX without any regret and make the most of your past investments which in most/all cases are quite relevant. you know, waiitng for 64bitGodot to eventually pop up.

 

P.S. Can some long hauls lovers tell me why they like long flights? I like startup, taxi, takeoffs, climb, descent, landing, taxi, switch off but cannot see any pleasure in a long autopiloted cruise of 2+ hours. Does this increase the thrill of landing for you? I read some saying I read a book, I watch a movie, I surf some sites so in this case what's the point of letting the AP doing everything?

[Paraffin 2,197]

P.S. Can some long hauls lovers tell me why they like long flights? I like startup, taxi, takeoffs, climb, descent, landing, taxi, switch off but cannot see any pleasure in a long autopiloted cruise of 2+ hours. Does this increase the thrill of landing for you? I read some saying I read a book, I watch a movie, I surf some sites so in this case what's the point of letting the AP doing everything?

 

It's not my thing, but one reason might be if someone likes flying a plane model designed for long haul flights in the real world, and mainly used only for those flights. The other reason might be if you're interested in the various ATC hand-offs on a long route (and are running software/Vatsim to simulate it), which is at least something to break up the monotony of cruise.

[wiler 394]

For me its special because Ive crossed the atlantic over 100 times and to simulate that myself was always a goal for me. And with the same flight plans from flightaware its just like the real thing. while over the atlantic i stepped away for a little bit but the sunrise over ireland and the british isles looked amazing and then into a foggy AMS which always happens. Most of this was default scenery, I have only done ortho tiles for my home base in the US. 

You should spend some time teaching your tricks in the PRD/FSX forum then, it's plenty of OOM reports and complain about dangerous VAS usage, you will get plenty of gratitude and many would not be "forced" to look elsewhere.

 

By the way I never regarded OOM as a reason to move to XP, I had never got one in the other platform since I can afford flights of maximum 2 hours. As Wiler wrote when you load up XP11 with a good OSM data, photoreal at L17/18, fluidity, breathtaking lights well...old blurry sims are no more an option. No matter what system and aircraft and airport ultra high complex you put there I could not like it anymore.

 

But if you can you're lucky, you can enjoy both sims or even stay with FSX without any regret and make the most of your past investments which in most/all cases are quite relevant. you know, waiitng for 64bitGodot to eventually pop up.

 

P.S. Can some long hauls lovers tell me why they like long flights? I like startup, taxi, takeoffs, climb, descent, landing, taxi, switch off but cannot see any pleasure in a long autopiloted cruise of 2+ hours. Does this increase the thrill of landing for you? I read some saying I read a book, I watch a movie, I surf some sites so in this case what's the point of letting the AP doing everything?

[kneighbour 32]

And I'm a NASA engineer and we have software crashes on Mars once in a while  :rolleyes:

 

16H flights with my 777, Vector + Global + Some airports, ASN, REX, Airports HD, GSX and never had a CTD. Does that make me special or maybe I took my time to setup the software just the right way?

 

For a soft developer you seem to give up pretty easy on something that it's not that hard to figure out.

 

AND btw I also develop games for various platforms which is why flying long hauls in the background is my fav thing

I suspect your Mars story might be fictional - a CTD on Mars would be cause for a few questions about your programming ability and perhaps a job re-evaluation. Even on earth they are extremely rare, and at least in my programming environment, cause for great concern. If you have never had a CTD in FSX or XP, then I would suggest that you are indeed special - probably even unique. As I said, in my 40 years of programming, I don't think I have ever seen one in my software. But that is in my business software, not gaming software, so it could be different. But the principle is the same - you are meant to trap errors and handle them.

 

And not sure why you thought I "gave up pretty easy"? Nothing could be further from the truth. If you think that the causes are easy to find then you will be a godlike figure on these forums and I encourage you to go over to the subforum on the ORG that focuses on these things.

 

I never fly with the default aircraft, so I suspect the problems might be with the addons more than XP itself, but who knows. The scenery crashes I can lay at the feet of XP as that should never happen. Indeed, this is one of the problems as an aircraft developer is often loathe to admit to a problem (even if one exists) as it is so easy to point to XP or other plugins as being the problem.

[PaulGR 168]

I suspect your Mars story might be fictional - a CTD on Mars would be cause for a few questions about your programming ability and perhaps a job re-evaluation. Even on earth they are extremely rare, and at least in my programming environment, cause for great concern. If you have never had a CTD in FSX or XP, then I would suggest that you are indeed special - probably even unique. As I said, in my 40 years of programming, I don't think I have ever seen one in my software. But that is in my business software, not gaming software, so it could be different. But the principle is the same - you are meant to trap errors and handle them.

 

And not sure why you thought I "gave up pretty easy"? Nothing could be further from the truth. If you think that the causes are easy to find then you will be a godlike figure on these forums and I encourage you to go over to the subforum on the ORG that focuses on these things.

 

I never fly with the default aircraft, so I suspect the problems might be with the addons more than XP itself, but who knows. The scenery crashes I can lay at the feet of XP as that should never happen. Indeed, this is one of the problems as an aircraft developer is often loathe to admit to a problem (even if one exists) as it is so easy to point to XP or other plugins as being the problem.

 

Never said CTD

As for software issues in NASA's stuff here's one example that you can google in 5 seconds..:

http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/6/12109326/nasa-mars-curiosity-rover-software-problem

 

There's no perfect software especially when you need to implement some sort of interaction between two different modules. Never was and never will at least till AI takes over and fixes itself. Obviously if you have 500 lines of code you can flush the bugs but that's not exactly advanced programming so common sense when using phrases like "never" should be implemented

 

My advice? Take some time, figure out the issue and enjoy tubeliners to the fullest

[KrisJ 43]

Tommorow i will do NZAANZCH long haul. Planning it all week

[tonywob 4,770]

I'm currently making a detailed flight plan for  EGEP -> EGEW  . About as much as my misses will let sim me over the weekend 

[out 769]

TheLES SAAB  340 blows away any turbo  prop on p3d in my opinion even the mjc dash8

 

Now as I am a big fan of Majestic's Q400, but also a big fan of Saab 340 in real world, would you mind telling me in what aspects the LES SAAB 340 blows away MJS Q400?

I am asking simply because you have inspired me with these words. I miss a quality Saab 340 in FSX and this itself might be a reason for me to finally try XP.

 

Thanks in advance.

[wiler 394]

check out some videos on you tube. I know that this bird has been treated with great care since I worked at an airline that flew 340A s. Nearly every aspect is replicated, the sounds are fantastic and the bird handles extremely well. One of the reasons why I came over to xp was to get the saab because it has a special place in my heart. 

Now as I am a big fan of Majestic's Q400, but also a big fan of Saab 340 in real world, would you mind telling me in what aspects the LES SAAB 340 blows away MJS Q400?

I am asking simply because you have inspired me with these words. I miss a quality Saab 340 in FSX and this itself might be a reason for me to finally try XP.

 

Thanks in advance.

[tonywob 4,770]

If there is one plane I want on X-Plane it's the Majestic Q400. I have both this in FSX and the Saab and I think they are equally as good.