Help: AI aircraft floating well above airport surfaces!

[Pete Dowson 558]

Up until the recent Barcelona release by Justsim I have been using the Aerosoft Mega Barcelona scenery, which is okay, but the buildings in the Justsim version are superior.

However, after installing it I had severe elevation problems. The gates around Terminal 1 seem okay, but there were humps and dips in the intervening ground, with aircraft buried almost all the way in some areas.

I tried searching for the culprit elevation BGL, by a long and tedious sequence of eliminations, without success. So, since P3D4.5 has now been released, I decided to uninstall P3D4 completely -- Scenery, Content and Client with AppData Local, Appdata Roaming, and ProgramData P3D4 folders renamed so new ones would be made. Then I installed P3D4.5 complete.

That all seemed to go well, but annoyingly didn't fix the issues a Barcelona. So I carried on trying other things, with no success. However, in the process I must have mucked something up completely, because now ALL add-on airports (well, all those I've visited so far using the Go To Airport menu) exhibit AI aircraft floating above the airport ground .. by about 10 feet!

This is true for Add-On.xml airport installations and for all airports enabled though the SCENERY.CFG file -- including my Orbx FTX European airports.

I checked some default airports too, and they are also a mess -- but only in Europe (I have no add-on airports outside "Greater" Europe. 

If I'd have known trying trying to fix Barcelona would lead me to making such a mess, I would have simply left it be and never go there! I just don't know what I've done which could lead to this mess.

So, I assume there's a serious mesh problem.  What layers / files are responsible for this? I have Orbx Europe installed and I assume this (or FTX Global) includes a mesh, but the problem is the same with all Orbx layers disabled.

I would like to avoid a complete uninstall of everything if possible. I've got most European add-on airports and it will be a week or so for me to get eberything re-installed (once i locate all the current installers and susequent update patch files, plus registration keys). I went through this process after my new PC was installed, several weeks ago, so I know how long it takes.

So, is there a quicker way of fixing this? What should I be looking for? Anyone?

[LATER]

I decided it just must be somehow related to the Orbx stuff, so I've uninstalled it all. I couldn't find the uninstall for FTX Cenreal, and none of it appears in the Windows installed products list, so I thend manually deleted all folders specifically FTX or Orbx, and searched the Registry and deleted it all there too.

Result ... no change!  The altitudes are still all wrong.

I am giving up for now. It looks like I'm faced with a re-format and re-install. Just uninstalling P3D4 and reinstalling didn't help, nor even going back to file backups. If there's no suggested solutions which work I'll have try a proper Windows system and P3D4 disk restore from my last backups, 11 days ago now. Not today though.

Pete

 

 

 

[kand 205]

long shot

Do you have ORBX vector installed? have you applied the aerodrome elevation corrections? 

[Pete Dowson 558]

43 minutes ago, kand said:

long shot

Do you have ORBX vector installed? have you applied the aerodrome elevation corrections? 

No -- I purchased it long ago and tried it but it wrecked performance on my 3 projector setup. So i've not tried it for a while. But then I read reports last week that it was a lot better since P3D4.4, so I went to install it, through FTX Central last weekend so I could see for myslef. 

FTX Central said downloading, got to a certain point. Hung for many seconds, then crashed. After that every time I ran FTX Central it went to the exact same point, immediately, and did the same again.

I raised the subject on the Orbx forum and got advice as to how to reset FTX Central to make it run. The "easy" way failed to make any change, the more thorough way allowed it to start, okay, but always after an error message box (OK worked).  But it still did the same if I tried to install FTX Vector, so I reset it all again (and so on, if I'd have carried on this way).

So then I tried downloading FTX Vector as a ZIP and selecting that install method. but after apparently reading and unpacking the zip, it said downloading again, and did exactly the same thing.

All this has been reported to Orbx with the Event Viewer crash reports and pix of the error message box, but they've not yet provided any solution. I don't know if they are even examining the data I supplied, as I would have thought that it would tell them quite a lot.

I decided to abandon any chance of trying Vector again, and put up with the error message.

It was later this week that I discovered these altitude problems. If these are due to the failed Vector install attempts, there's must surely be some remnant of it which could be found and removed. But I failed in that. There's certainly no Vector layer in the scenery list, and no files that I can find.

Anyway, I'm now most of the way through doing full system and P3D disks restores from my last backups, dated the 3rd April. I've only done a couple of new installs since then -- Justsim Barcelona, and Aerosoft Gomera. Plus Prosim and AddonOrganizer updates. So I'll be up to date again tomorrow and will then see if I've still got altitude problems.

Pete

 

[F737MAX 5,531]

That's disappointing Pete, looks like I'll have to go through the same process - a complete Windows and P3D re-install.

Out of nowhere recently, I have certain airports already installed and all brand new airport scenery installs displaying big elevation errors at the airport scenery - see pics below.

That's just one example.
 

1 hour ago, kand said:

long shot

Do you have ORBX vector installed? have you applied the aerodrome elevation corrections? 

I don't think it has anything to do with Vector AEC - tested all sorts of settings with it both on and off.
Very frustrating issue.

EDIT:

Just discovered my problem was caused by the following entry in the Scenery.cfg file being missing:

[Area.001]
Title=Default Terrain
Local=Scenery\World

Hurrah!  Back to normal, no massive re-install required!

Pete, is the 'Default Terrain' entry missing from your Scenery.cfg file also?
 

Edited April 12, 2019 by F737NG
Problem resolved

[Pete Dowson 558]

10 hours ago, F737NG said:

Just discovered my problem was caused by the following entry in the Scenery.cfg file being missing:

[Area.001]
Title=Default Terrain
Local=Scenery\World

Hurrah!  Back to normal, no massive re-install required!

Pete, is the 'Default Terrain' entry missing from your Scenery.cfg file also?
 

No, that was there. Anyway, my restore from a backup has completed successfully and I am about to switch on the PC this morning and take a look. Fingers crossed! If it is still wrong then it's a dead end, because things were okay when I did the backup!

The only thing I'm not sure of is the ground vs airport elevation at Barcelona. That may have been there before -- not been to Barcelona for a long time. I only looked AFTER installing the Justsim LEBLV2 -- it was the Aerosoft one before. So i'll check that before installing LEBLV2 this time.

Then I'll install the few things I did install since the backup, and do a fresh backup before updating to P3Dv4.5.

Pete

 

[ARCO 245]

Pete, I had exactly the same problem a year ago after adding a new scenery which for some reason inserted a bgl. into the wrong world scenery folder at the very bottom of my list above the Default scenery. I did not spot this immediately and started replacing my scenery folder with older versions which I had saved, one by one getting backward, I could identify the culprit file. This happened again later with a FT Amsterdam alt file went again into the wrong world folder, moving it into the BASE folder resolved my issue (note that FT made a new installer recently addressing also this issue). Like you, for unknown reasons several other sceneries were affected, and rectifying this airport filing also resolved the issue for the others without doing anything else. I hope your backup already solved your problem, but in case it did not, may I suggest you look at your scenery > world > scenery folder?

Good luck!

[Pete Dowson 558]

2 hours ago, Jean-Claude said:

I hope your backup already solved your problem, but in case it did not, may I suggest you look at your scenery > world > scenery folder?

Thanks for that. The restore from the backup worked fine, and everything is looking good. I've re-installed everything I had previously installed before trying FTX Vector, and it's all good. I'm not trying Vector again -- I'm now convinced that the failed attempts to install that were responsible for the mess I ended up with this week! It's the only possible candidate now.

I'm currently making new backups before installing P3D4.5.

Pete

 

[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

Pete,

Consider carefully before installing v4.5. Chris of Fulcrum Yokes came to the Heald Green meeting today and he's having lots of problems with v4.5. Very slow load times with ORBX VFR Southern England and fps in some places were well down on v4.4.

Glad you've made some progress.

[MDFlier 2,031]

On 4/12/2019 at 9:00 AM, Pete Dowson said:

Up until the recent Barcelona release by Justsim I have been using the Aerosoft Mega Barcelona scenery, which is okay, but the buildings in the Justsim version are superior.

However, after installing it I had severe elevation problems. The gates around Terminal 1 seem okay, but there were humps and dips in the intervening ground, with aircraft buried almost all the way in some areas.

I tried searching for the culprit elevation BGL, by a long and tedious sequence of eliminations, without success. So, since P3D4.5 has now been released, I decided to uninstall P3D4 completely -- Scenery, Content and Client with AppData Local, Appdata Roaming, and ProgramData P3D4 folders renamed so new ones would be made. Then I installed P3D4.5 complete.

That all seemed to go well, but annoyingly didn't fix the issues a Barcelona. So I carried on trying other things, with no success. However, in the process I must have mucked something up completely, because now ALL add-on airports (well, all those I've visited so far using the Go To Airport menu) exhibit AI aircraft floating above the airport ground .. by about 10 feet!

This is true for Add-On.xml airport installations and for all airports enabled though the SCENERY.CFG file -- including my Orbx FTX European airports.

I checked some default airports too, and they are also a mess -- but only in Europe (I have no add-on airports outside "Greater" Europe. 

If I'd have known trying trying to fix Barcelona would lead me to making such a mess, I would have simply left it be and never go there! I just don't know what I've done which could lead to this mess.

So, I assume there's a serious mesh problem.  What layers / files are responsible for this? I have Orbx Europe installed and I assume this (or FTX Global) includes a mesh, but the problem is the same with all Orbx layers disabled.

I would like to avoid a complete uninstall of everything if possible. I've got most European add-on airports and it will be a week or so for me to get eberything re-installed (once i locate all the current installers and susequent update patch files, plus registration keys). I went through this process after my new PC was installed, several weeks ago, so I know how long it takes.

So, is there a quicker way of fixing this? What should I be looking for? Anyone?

[LATER]

I decided it just must be somehow related to the Orbx stuff, so I've uninstalled it all. I couldn't find the uninstall for FTX Cenreal, and none of it appears in the Windows installed products list, so I thend manually deleted all folders specifically FTX or Orbx, and searched the Registry and deleted it all there too.

Result ... no change!  The altitudes are still all wrong.

I am giving up for now. It looks like I'm faced with a re-format and re-install. Just uninstalling P3D4 and reinstalling didn't help, nor even going back to file backups. If there's no suggested solutions which work I'll have try a proper Windows system and P3D4 disk restore from my last backups, 11 days ago now. Not today though.

Pete

Sounds like you forget to set the altimeter on your PC.

[Pete Dowson 558]

1 hour ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Consider carefully before installing v4.5. Chris of Fulcrum Yokes came to the Heald Green meeting today and he's having lots of problems with v4.5. Very slow load times with ORBX VFR Southern England and fps in some places were well down on v4.4.

See the other thread on 4.5 FPS.

In my case the performance is lower by about 20% -- only noticed in the heavy load places where my 30 fps limit keeps it down in any case.  Also there are small pauses rather than stutters and otherwise super smoothness. Not sure which I prefer if I had to face this choice (which I suppose I do, really).

I don't use ORBX VFR scenery, only FTX Europe. so it isn't Orbx, and load times are no different. I still have an incredible sub 80 second "ready to fly" load time at UK2000 EGCC compared to 10 minutes before my new PC was built. :-)  That hasn't changed.

The 4.4 vs 4.5 problems are only down to the Client, so it is quick to go back and forth between them. There's no downside to that. so try it yourself if you're wanting to update your FSL Aircraft.

Pete

 

[Pete Dowson 558]

1 hour ago, MDFlier said:

Sounds like you forget to set the altimeter on your PC.

Oh, yes? And how exactly does my altimeter setting manage to make AI aircraft float above the ground or sink into it? Didn't you read my problem report?

Altimeter settings only affect what altitude you read on the altimeter. They don't actually change anything else except maybe your Autopilot controlled altitude (which doesn't apply when you are parked at the gate).

Anyway, it is resolved as I think you can read above -- it was definitely a crashed FTX Vector install, but in the end necessitated a full system and P3D restore to recover.

Pete

 

[MDFlier 2,031]

well... It was supposed to be a joke. I wasn't talking about the altimeter on the aircraft as that obviously wouldn't help. But since everything was at the wrong elevation, maybe setting the altimeter on the computer would help. Oh well...

[Ray Proudfoot 8,927]

3 hours ago, Pete Dowson said:

See the other thread on 4.5 FPS.

The 4.4 vs 4.5 problems are only down to the Client, so it is quick to go back and forth between them. There's no downside to that. so try it yourself if you're wanting to update your FSL Aircraft.

Pete

I shall read through that one but for now, I’m staying with 4.4 until a definitive statement is made by LM as to whether a further update is required. What isn’t broken doesn’t need fixing.

I don’t have any 64-bit FSL aircraft more’s the pity. Just the PMDG737 and a 32-bit Concorde gathering dust. ☹️

[Pete Dowson 558]

2 hours ago, MDFlier said:

It was supposed to be a joke.

Oh, sorry. Didn't get it! 😞
(Still don't really .. you mean lowering the PC?)

Pete