Frozen displays and cockpit functions on approach

[Meese 5]

I came in on final runway 27 at EHAM yesterday, everything normal on your everyday 1,5h hop, dropped the gear and started retracting flaps (in that order, I needed to shed quite some energy), verified that retardation was sufficient for me to gamble on a 500' stable call, got the runway in sight at about 1700' AGL and started to set up for manual flight. I have FD toggle bound to ctrl+F and ctrl+shift+F for the left and right hand side switches, making it easy to bump down to stick and rudder when needed. As I turned them off, I noticed I had been clumsy and possibly hit G while either holding down ctrl or shift (not both since that's TOGA, and not only G since the gear remained firmly down). I saw no ill effects, and continued on a visual approach, only glancing at the IAS now and then. Approaching 1000' I wondered why my speed didn't bleed off anymore. At about 800' I started to feel the tell tale signs of mushing, added power, inspected my PFD and saw that nothing was moving. I added more thrust, scanned all my screens and noted that all of them were stuck. At this point I was already in TOGA-pos with my throttle, planning to level out below the clouds at around 1500'-2000' to troubleshoot and then do a visual circuit once I got my instruments back. Simultaneously I noticed a delay in response between flight control inputs and control surface reaction, and sure enough, every input had between half a second and two seconds of delay, in the moment it felt highly irregular, though the situation might be it was the same and my low level flight with a spring loaded logitech stick tricked my brain.

I found no fix however, cycling views and tabbing in and out. I didn't bother with any fixes beyond what could be done with key binds I knew, as I was not willing to give up trying to land this thing. Finding this thread, I figure manipulating the gear could have yielded results, as the instant the ground switch triggered, everything popped back into action.

What followed was a 20 minute flight over Amsterdam with one attempted landing and one.. landing... ish. I've flown the NGX on my installation of P3D v4 since v4 came out without issue, so this one was quite the surprise. If anyone knows which modules has to stop speaking with what to cause this, I'd be very interested to know. I don't suspect I'll recreate this anytime soon. I'll add a video of the flight here, started recording a few moments after the missed approach. It's not worth sitting through the entire length, it's just me doing disoriented turns over Amsterdam city with funky flight controls and frozen instruments. Keep in mind taking a look at this video, I do have a significant delay between stick input and resulting action, I do not normally fly quite this bad. Also note the second and final landing, where I land, take off and land again as when I hit the ground, the PMDG stuff came back online, and my stab trim suddenly remembered all those nose up inputs I had done during the flight (full nose up). 

https://youtu.be/tXUxgECNvLc

 

 

 

 

 

 

[vonmar 123]

"dropped the gear and started retracting flaps (in that order, I needed to shed quite some energy),"

Landing?

[downscc 1,327]

Brief pauses are very common in P3D and there are many hypothesis as to cause.  I buy the notion that loading of scenery objects is done by code not optimized for multi tasking.  Regardless, these are the norm for now.

There is no need to turn FD off for manual landing, only need to disconnect the A/P and might as well keep FD around as another tool for your use.  You never mention your Vref and speeds flown and casually remark that the speed is not in your scan.  This can be a real problem.  Teach yourself some good habits,  the description of this approach is full of examples of poor pilot techniques.

[Guest]

I'm afraid I can't help. Haven't ever seen that problem and not in P3D World quite yet.

But you had me on the edge of my seat with that description of the flight. 

You should write thrillers!

[Meese 5]

Vaughan: Extending flaps, my bad! 

On 4/6/2018 at 7:45 PM, downscc said:

Brief pauses are very common in P3D and there are many hypothesis as to cause.  I buy the notion that loading of scenery objects is done by code not optimized for multi tasking.  Regardless, these are the norm for now.

There is no need to turn FD off for manual landing, only need to disconnect the A/P and might as well keep FD around as another tool for your use.  You never mention your Vref and speeds flown and casually remark that the speed is not in your scan.  This can be a real problem.  Teach yourself some good habits,  the description of this approach is full of examples of poor pilot techniques.

Thanks, but this was not a stutter issue, rather a cockpit not functioning issue. I'm aware of how FDs work and that there are a number of a philosophies surrounding their usage during manual visual approaches, and the various airlines have different ways of handling this in their SOPs. Personally I turn them off, perhaps recycling the F/O one for cues if I feel a go around may put me heads down quicker than I'd like. I can admit to several bad pilot habits in my simming (I try to squash these as they can affect my real life flying, of course), but I don't think you've understood my narrative at all as your reply has nothing to do with anything I've written. If you're still confused as to what the topic is, you can watch the first minute of my video and pay attention to what the cockpit instruments are doing (or rather, not doing). Thanks anyway for your input! 

Jim: Haha, thanks! I thought this peculiar incident deserved an attempt at an entertaining narrative, though I'm not quite sure I'm going to make a living off my typewriter just yet!