Am I Suffering In Silence? Or is it me....

[Lon Duncombe 83]

When I get frustrated with P3D and my neverending quest to get all my addons to play nice I switch to DCS for a break.  I know DCS is primarily a combat sim with limited scenery but the modelling is superb, fluid and error free and I find enough of a challenge just to master the various aircraft..  I've spent the last month trying to land their study level F-18 on an aircraft carrier.  Very immersive.  DCS has never crashed on me in over 4 years.

 

Lon Duncombe

 

[regis9 4,014]

2 hours ago, Adrian123 said:

Everyone is going to experience different reliability. To diffidently say this is and that is subjective opinion imo..In regards to CP11, I see just as many CTD's, poor performance incompatibility etc at the Org. Specially and mainly due to the constant flux XP is in. I personally don't have any issues with either type of sim. No fanbouy of either also. Get a trial of each and try it.

I can only speak to my experience, and in my experience XP11 objectively gives me less issues.  Not to say that will be the same experience for everyone.

I happily use both sims.

Edited February 4, 2019 by regis9

[Chuck Steinmetz 6]

On 2/3/2019 at 4:39 PM, Ray Proudfoot said:

Keeping firm control of layering in scenery.cfg is always good.

I'm sensing this topic hit a nerve - I too have learned a lot.  Ray - when you note 'Keeping a firm control of layering in scenery.cfg' could you expand on that?  Or if there is a post that digs into the topic you are aware of could you share as I don't want anyone to have to take time to explain what has already been done.  

Also

22 hours ago, w6kd said:

Checklists are a tried and true way of methodically managing complexity...a way of making sure you look at the important things every time  They're a great way of learning from all those little mistakes, rather than continuing to make them over and over again, which really does detract from the joy of a flawless simulated flight.

Regards

This is a great idea - in real world pilots live by checklists.  I have a series of notes that I follow but I'm not that organized to the point where I have them all in one place.  I'll start my list - if you would be willing to share it would be a great starting point for me and others (note - you already shared some great tips in your post).

I just posted over on the FS DreamTeam forum about frustration that I have w/ Couatl crashing.  I'm not bashing them - I like their products - but that is one that I find to be inconsistent.  But to fair I haven't taken the time to report and get feedback which I now will do.

So my head is back in the game - thanks to everyone for speaking up - I just have to find the time!!  We have a great community of people that offer help to so many we've never met - much appreciated.

Chuck

 

[Hypofx 10]

I think the simple rule worth to follow, don't overload your sim with tons of add-ons dont chase FPS but FLY 🙂 , totally useless to have a full Australia or USA when you are flying in EU. Fly high IFR you don't need the same stuff than for VFR. I also only have those planes I'm flying at the moment, 2-3 max, and with only a few liveries. useless to have 23 airplane and 54 liveries when I'm flying the same VA and Same plane 🙂 I have ORBX Base, and OpenLC and only airports ( where my VA flying) .

[Ray Proudfoot 8,959]

6 hours ago, Chuck Steinmetz said:

I'm sensing this topic hit a nerve - I too have learned a lot.  Ray - when you note 'Keeping a firm control of layering in scenery.cfg' could you expand on that?  Or if there is a post that digs into the topic you are aware of could you share as I don't want anyone to have to take time to explain what has already been done.

Chuck, without knowing how much you know about scenery layering I don't want to tell you things you may already know.

3rd party airports always come top of the list when viewed in a scenery library utility. How you arrange your airports within that group doesn't really matter but I like to keep all FSDT, UK2000, Taxi2Gate grouped together so I can identify them quickly. They don't need to be ordered that way for them to work properly in P3D. It's just my tidy mind.

Next group is those that change coastlines and enhance terrain. Ultimate Terrain USA being a clasic example and ORBX scenery. Those should come after airports but before all the default P3D entries.

Lastly comes the default P3D entries that include continents and the default world textures.There are multiple entries with obscure names. Right at the bottom you have default world scenery which should never be touched or reordered.

The golden rule is 3rd party airports should always be the top-most entries but the ordering of them within that group isn't critical.

LATER: I should have mentioned that some airports that follow the L-M SDK are installed as add-ons and won't appear in Scenery Library. That is a whole new area which I won't go into now.

Edited February 5, 2019 by Ray Proudfoot

[simbol 5,820]

System stability is all about Equilibrium, stability refers to the disturbances a system faces. If there are few disturbances or small disturbances, then the system is relatively stable. If there are many disturbances or large disturbances, then the system is relatively unstable. In other words finding system stability is a state of a system which does not change so the results can be accurately predicted.

So the more add-on's / plugins you add to your simulator, the amount of variables altered on your system will increase making it potentially unstable, just simple maths.. now this doesn't mean adding add-on's is bad, but it is important for add-on's to follow compliance with platforms via SDK best practices as otherwise all the source code implemented by the platform itself cannot account for the variable changes in the system, ending with the system equilibrium becoming broken.

In the case of Prepard3D it is highly surprising the amount of add-on's that are not using the provided Lockheed Martin SDK best practices and guidelines, there is an assumption that anything that was developed for FSX must work for Prepard3D since the SDK is the same, but the true is that both platforms have been drifting apart for so many years that you could say now the P3D SDK is a total different animal.

Now do things developed for FSX works on P3D? mostly yes, but by backward compatibility mode so the results can be "unpredictable", and for this reason Lockheed Martin clearly recommends to use the P3D SDK compiler and libraries in order to develop add-on's for P3D. Add-on's should follow the SDK guidelines as well, for example if the platform owner (Lockheed Martin) is asking add-on's to do not touch / edit original simulator files and use the recommended steps via the add-on.xml method, then these guidelines should be followed, if the platform owner is asking add-on's to use minimum Visual Studio 2017 and .NET 4.7.2, then this should be followed, and so on...

Those guidelines are there in order to ensure system stability, unfortunately in my personal experience I have found very little add-on's actually following LM guidelines, it is crazy to find out that many add-on's are not even using the LM SDK, so it is not unsurprising to find users having unpredictable results with their simulators as the rules of equilibrium are not being followed.

Just my 2cents.

Simbol

 

 

Edited February 5, 2019 by simbol

[virtuali 4,421]

8 hours ago, Chuck Steinmetz said:

I just posted over on the FS DreamTeam forum about frustration that I have w/ Couatl crashing.  I'm not bashing them - I like their products - but that is one that I find to be inconsistent. 

And as I explained in our forum, Couatl is one of the addons that simply CANNOT crash the sim.

Yes, it might crash itself, but the worse it can do if that happens, is that something running under it (for example GSX) will not work anymore, but the sim itself will be safe because, as an external .EXE addon that runs out of process from the simulator, Couatl simply doesn't have the means to crash the sim.

The only addons that have the theoretical ability to crash the sim, are in-process .DLL, which means every addon that has modules with a .DLL (including our own Addon Manager, of course, but nobody is complaining about it these days, since the 64 bit version is way more stable and simple, since it doesn't have to deal with the various Simconnect versions, it only work with P3D4 and that's it), and each and every airplane Gauge out there which is not written in XML. Those are the only modules that can crash the sim.

And of course, missing/corrupted files can crash the sim, especially corrupted .BGLs, textures, sounds, AI textures, scenery textures, etc. Developers usually don't supply corrupted files, and when they do, it's will be so easily reported (unless nobody use that addon), that these issues are fixed almost immediately. But files can end up corrupted locally for many reasons, like the PC crashing while the program was running, hardware issues, driver issues, overclocking, bugged hardware drivers, a virus, a spyware, an antivirus trying to fight what it mistakenly assumes it's a virus, the list is endless.

[Bob Scott 7,721]

13 hours ago, Chuck Steinmetz said:

This is a great idea - in real world pilots live by checklists.  I have a series of notes that I follow but I'm not that organized to the point where I have them all in one place.  I'll start my list - if you would be willing to share it would be a great starting point for me and others (note - you already shared some great tips in your post)

Sure...this is what I use, though it's specific to my setup, but it gets the idea across:

P3D Normal Flight Setup

Server and client computers--at desktop
FSDT LiveUpdate--run if not already run today
Get/set weather in ASP4--DEPT/DEST winds, QNH to flt plan sheet
Parking spots and active runways from ADE to flt plan sheet
Flight plan--run and export to acft
  -- ETE, route, FL, ZFW, Fuel to flt plan sheet
  -- If QuantumLeap use planned, cull out intermediate wpts
Flight plan--load in ASP4
PAOM—DEPT/DEST sceneries activated for flight, clear indices
Start WideFS on client
Radar Contact -- load flight plan and configure
RemoteCDU/VAInterface--start server/iPads (PMDG acft)
Start P3D
EFB client side--load FP and configure STAR/approach

 

[Chuck Steinmetz 6]

15 hours ago, virtuali said:

And as I explained in our forum, Couatl is one of the addons that simply CANNOT crash the sim.

Yes, it might crash itself, but the worse it can do if that happens, is that something running under it (for example GSX) will not work anymore, but the sim itself will be safe because, as an external .EXE addon that runs out of process from the simulator, Couatl simply doesn't have the means to crash the sim.

 

Thanks virtuali - just to be clear I didn't identify that the product crashes the sim - just that it will disappear or the airport will stop working.  That being said virtuali offered me some very good advice over on his forum on how and where to report errors that occur w/ FS Dream Team products - an excerpt is below and the full thread can be found here-http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,20353.0.html.  Before this I wasn't aware of the process and the more the developers can see issues that come up the better the products can be for all of us.

The more common one, is the one with the error log, which is impossible not to see, and it give you the option to either restart Couatl or see the error log. Even if you missed it, the error log is recorded here:

%APPDATA%\Virtuali\Couatl.ERR

Also, it's possible to enable a more extensive logging that happens even if there are no errors, by enabling logging in the Troubleshooting section of the GSX Settings page, and this will record the last session in the %APPDATA%\Virtuali\Couatl.LOG file.

 

[sddjd 117]

Came here out of curiosity based on yet another ctd. You're not suffering in silence, nor is it you. While "Couatl is one of the addons that simply CANNOT crash the sim" removing the coutal-based scenery WILL eliminate the crashing issue. Similarly, it wasn't couatl causing the north Atlantic crashes, though a couatl patch addressed the problem for most (no end of arguments about how it was really couatl revealing a flaw in p3d and so not a couatl issue....). 

Just wrapped up a 5.5 hour flight to HNL to see the airport come into view, start loading the buildings, hang, spinning wheel, crash.... definitely no way it could be the HNL scenery tho. 

Of course it's all a smear campaign against couatl... so much so that other scenery designers are indicating "no couatl required" in their sales pitches.🤡