PMDG DC-6 [04JUL21] Possible CTD or FPS loss due to misconfi

[Waldo Pepper 1,953]

Posted by PMDG,

https://forum.pmdg.com/forum/main-forum/pmdg-dc-6-cloudmaster-forum/138481-04jul21-possible-ctd-or-fps-loss-due-to-misconfigured-3rd-party-liveries

Quote

[04JUL21] Possible CTD or FPS loss due to misconfigured 3rd party liveries

Today, 09:36

 

All,

It was brought to our attention that there are 3rd party liveries for the MSFS DC6 that have the "isAirTraffic" option set to 1 at the aircraft.cfg

From the SDK document "If this is set to TRUE (1) then this variation is considered to be optimized for use as a parked plane, or as part of air traffic. If set to FALSE (0) then it won't be used for these things."

"Setting the isAirTraffic flag to TRUE (1) allows the game to use that variation as a parked (grounded) passive aircraft, and potentially as a part of the "Real Online" air traffic. If a plane variation is marked as isAirTraffic, it should be an optimized variation with a lower level of detail, and therefore it should also be marked as "isUserSelectable=0"."

This setting must be set to 0 in the DC6 repaints otherwise it can cause CTD's or massive FPS loss when such a model is spawn at the airport or in the air.

If you have any 3rd party liveries that has this setting to 1 on the aircraft.cfg then we recommend to change it to 0 and inform the painter to fix this.

Thank you.

Last edited by Reynolds Number; Today, 10:05.

Chris Makris (Olympic260)
PMDG Technical Support
http://www.pmdg.com

 

Edited July 4, 2021 by Waldo Pepper

[Todd2 2,104]

Interesting I have a lot of liveries but the only DC-6 paint I see spawn at airports is the Buffalo airways livery.  I just changed the isairtraffic to 0 lets see if that helps.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Todd2

[Stoopy 1,571]

Yep I have, shall we say, more than a few liveries also and the ones in my collection that needed this configuration change are listed below.   These also align with specific DC-6's that I've seen sitting at gates from time to time.

FWIW none of the ones by Jan Kees Blom needed correction.

• PMDG DC-6A Fuerza Aerea Argentina   (oddly, the matching DC-6B livery in the same download was OK)
• PMDG DC-6A Buffalo Airways (C-GBFL)
• PMDG DC-6A 53-3240 Air Force One
• PMDG DC-6A Conner N55CA
• PMDG DC-6B Luftwaffe 1303
• PMDG DC-6A 1-28425 Air Force One
• PMDG DC-6B Aerolineas Argentinas
• PMDG DC-6B Mexicana
• PMDG DC-6B Swissair
• DC-6A Surinam Airways

Edited July 4, 2021 by Stoopy

[regis9 4,014]

I just had two Buffalo ones that were culprits, every other livery I have (including third party) was installed through the Ops Center so I assume that install process took care of any errant isAirTraffic=1 entries.

[RaptyrOne 1,412]

Personally, and with all respect, I think Chris Makris has it wrong. The isAirTraffic flag in the aircraft.cfg file is currently ignored by the sim.

I have tried it to prevent Spitfires being shown as AI using this switch and it does sweet nothing.

I agree it should work in theory but as of now, it does not work.

I have posted this opinion on the PMDG forum too.

Edited July 5, 2021 by RaptyrOne

[Reader 2,021]

1 hour ago, RaptyrOne said:

Personally, and with all respect, I think Chris Makris has it wrong.

In fact then, he is entirely correct but the SDK, which he quotes verbatim, is wrong, in as much as what it states is not what takes place

Edited July 5, 2021 by Reader

[Andreas Stangenes 1,628]

So this is quoted from the PMDG forums regarding this issue:

 

Quote

 

Originally posted by RaptyrOne View Post

I don’t think the isAirTraffic switch even works in the sim, so setting 3rd party liveries to 1 or 0 will make no difference. The sim ignores this. I have tried with both settings and still get AI spawning where they choose. There are many others with the same experience.

 

 

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Chris M.: The sim knows to use the 6 as AI if you set in the options to have non Generic AI models. Then the sim will populate the world with whatever planes you’ve got installed including the6 and this will not cause any issues as these are correctly modeled based on the SDK.

The issue is this flag should not be used at all from painters. It is causing issues and have been confirmed from multiple users. This is against the SDK. Painters must follow what SDK says and not doing whatever the think is correct. This is the main point

So my takeaway is that not being able to ignore custom aircraft when spawning multiplayer or AI aircraft is not the same issue as "isaitraffic=0". I dont know what the difference is, but it means that the current function in the sim is a bit unintuitive, and that we dont really have a function yet that allows us to control what multiplayer or AI uses to spawn in as yet. 

It's the livery layer of this process that causes issues, and is why it must be set to zero. It doesnt, however, give you any control over the base/default model being used. 

Edited July 5, 2021 by Andreas Stangenes

[RaptyrOne 1,412]

4 hours ago, Andreas Stangenes said:

So my takeaway is that not being able to ignore custom aircraft when spawning multiplayer or AI aircraft is not the same issue as "isaitraffic=0".

Yeah, my take too… the sim looks at your settings in the Options settings for AI traffic. If this is set to use generic’s, only default generic aircraft will appear as AI. If it is set to non-generic, then it will also include add-on aircraft with better models and downloaded liveries. However you still can’t use isAITraffic=0 to tell the sim not to use that particular aircraft as an AI. That function seems to be broken. You either have ALL your add-one displaying as AI or NONE of them.

What Chris M is saying implies that the sim is in fact looking at isAITraffix = x but probably not in the way it is supposed to. This is of course all assuming (and it is a big assumption, based on other forum chatter) that this switch is indeed intended to allow individual aircraft to be allowed or prevented from displaying as AI traffic.

So in summary, the switch does not work as intended, but if devs use it in liveries, it causes issues.