Nice Smooth Flight - Restart Sim and CTD ???

[TacomaSailor 191]

Had a nice smooth uneventful flight from KSAN Rwy 27 in the stock C-172 (G1000).  I had seven mods installed including LVFR KSAN.   Ended flight with smooth landing again at KSAN

Then added SD Water Fix mod to the community folder,  I again take off from KSAN Rwy 27 but experience CTD at about 100' AGL / 30-seconds after pressing Ready to Fly

I remove SD Water Fix from community folder and restart sim - but now EVERY flight from KSAN Rwy 27 ends with a CTD anywhere from prior to the takeoff roll to 200' AGL.

I then remove everything from the Community folder and can again successfully fly off KSAN Rwy 27 with the C-172 (G1000- with NO mods in Community.

I then put everything I had initially in the Community folder back into it (EXCEPT SD Water Fix) can again successfully fly from KSAN Rwy 27.

What does all that mean? 

Edited September 29, 2021 by TacomaSailor

[RobJC 2,069]

1 hour ago, TacomaSailor said:

What does all that mean? 

It means Asobo has some serious gremlins to sort out. 

[fogboundturtle 2,708]

or mods dev have gremlins to fix. It's not always Asobo's fault you know.

[Republic3D 1,229]

The water fix might change something that gets loaded into local cache, then stays there even when the mod is removed, but upon loading the sim a couple of times it might be purged. 

Do you use local cache and how big is it?

[TacomaSailor 191]

I was not trying to directly implicate SD Water Fix - I do not think it is the source of the problem.  

This situation of a bunch of mods working OK and then adding one more causes a CTD - removing that one new one does not resolve the problem - then removing all and restarting the sim results in a good flight - then adding all the ones back in that led to the CTD resulted in a smooth running sim. 

For example - I have 10-mods in the San Diego area running smoothly.  I add the KMYF mod and get a CTD.  I then remove the KMYF mod and still get a CTD - then remove (random choice) another mod and the sim works OK.  Add back in KMYF and sim works OK.  Add the randomly chosen mod back in and sim works OK.

This is getting to be very frustrating!  The sim works wonderfully for my low level GA flights and the scenery is spectacular.  But, adding one more mod, which works fine by itself or with another combination of mods, results in a CTD.  I then have to spend a lot of time rebuilding the mod list (all of which worked OK together previously) to find a sequence that does not result in a CTD. 

 

[TacomaSailor 191]

The water fix might change something that gets loaded into local cache, then stays there even when the mod is removed, but upon loading the sim a couple of times it might be purged. 

Do you use local cache and how big is it?

NO Local cache  
75GB rolling cache

[RaptyrOne 1,398]

Possibly one of two things - as suggested already, either the water fix or something else, has loaded up in the Rolling Cache and removing it from the Community Folder does not mean it has been removed from the Rolling Cache.

Alternatively, something has loaded into RAM. For this reason, a good idea to restart the PC after making changes to be sure you eliminate this as a potential cause.
 

The water mod might not be the culprit by itself ( I don’t know it) but it sounds like it might make global changes to the sim and this might not play well with other mods you have.  

[Republic3D 1,229]

1 hour ago, TacomaSailor said:

 

 

NO Local cache  
75GB rolling cache

Okay, rolling cache was what I meant.

 

 

29 minutes ago, RaptyrOne said:

Possibly one of two things - as suggested already, either the water fix or something else, has loaded up in the Rolling Cache and removing it from the Community Folder does not mean it has been removed from the Rolling Cache.

Alternatively, something has loaded into RAM. For this reason, a good idea to restart the PC after making changes to be sure you eliminate this as a potential cause.
 

The water mod might not be the culprit by itself ( I don’t know it) but it sounds like it might make global changes to the sim and this might not play well with other mods you have.  

I agree with this ^

[Republic3D 1,229]

You could try the solution from this thread:
 

I know you're looking to find the logic behind the problem, but it might point you in the right direction.

[RobJC 2,069]

1 hour ago, TacomaSailor said:

I was not trying to directly implicate SD Water Fix - I do not think it is the source of the problem.  

This situation of a bunch of mods working OK and then adding one more causes a CTD - removing that one new one does not resolve the problem - then removing all and restarting the sim results in a good flight - then adding all the ones back in that led to the CTD resulted in a smooth running sim. 

For example - I have 10-mods in the San Diego area running smoothly.  I add the KMYF mod and get a CTD.  I then remove the KMYF mod and still get a CTD - then remove (random choice) another mod and the sim works OK.  Add back in KMYF and sim works OK.  Add the randomly chosen mod back in and sim works OK.

This is getting to be very frustrating!  The sim works wonderfully for my low level GA flights and the scenery is spectacular.  But, adding one more mod, which works fine by itself or with another combination of mods, results in a CTD.  I then have to spend a lot of time rebuilding the mod list (all of which worked OK together previously) to find a sequence that does not result in a CTD. 

 

First, you are not alone. This stuff has been happening to a lot of users since SU5. If you look at the NXi mod, I was having CTDs consistently loading flights, yet many other people reported that it was fine for them with the same ac, same flight, etc. WT looked into it after I shared a bunch of log data, and the answer was that there was a timing problem in the core engine. They were able to fix that problem by adding some extra checks, but it took trial and error between myself and the developer to eliminate that bug. Imagine how many more bugs like that exist? Could be related to multiplayer, AI traffic, weather, ATC, etc. 

The bug goes something like this...

1. NXi mod calls engine to get map data. This starts in a new thread. 
2. Some other resource calls for the map data. For some reason multiple requests are sent, and the first request gets lost.
3. NXi mod calls to get map data but nothing exists now, as a new request deleted the first one - so CTD. 

Asobo needs to address this problem in the core engine, and it relates to how threads are managed. Nothing we can do at this point except wait for a patch. I turned off multiplayer, AI Traffic, Azure text to speech features to try to mitigate this. And I only enable add-ons I am going to use that session. BTW, I used the add-on linker to check for conflicts in my add-ons, and none were found. 

Edited September 30, 2021 by RobJC

[kaosfere 3,115]

6 minutes ago, RobJC said:

They were able to fix that problem by adding some extra checks, but it took trial and error between myself and the developer to eliminate that bug.

A simple scenery mod is unlikely to cause the same kind of problems, fortunately.

The advice from @Republic3D is good.   Remove all your mods, reset your rolling cache, and try again without anything installed.   That has cured a number of similar problems for me.   If that doesn't work, and you do find it's a particular combination of mods, run the fixer tools in Addons Linker.  (And, if you find that that helps, let the devs of the things it fixed know so they can get their stuff in order. 🙂 )

It is entirely possible for two mods that work fine on their own to conflict when they run together if one of them is not configured properly.   Read the comments in the thread linked above for more on that.

[RobJC 2,069]

9 minutes ago, kaosfere said:

A simple scenery mod is unlikely to cause the same kind of problems, fortunately.

The advice from @Republic3D is good.   Remove all your mods, reset your rolling cache, and try again without anything installed.   That has cured a number of similar problems for me.   If that doesn't work, and you do find it's a particular combination of mods, run the fixer tools in Addons Linker.  (And, if you find that that helps, let the devs of the things it fixed know so they can get their stuff in order. 🙂 )

It is entirely possible for two mods that work fine on their own to conflict when they run together if one of them is not configured properly.   Read the comments in the thread linked above for more on that.

I was getting CTDs with nothing in my community folder and only the NXi mod installed (through the marketplace). I did not use rolling cache but deleted it just for good measure. My installation was vanilla. 

[TacomaSailor 191]

OK - thanks for all the good ideas.  I will look into the other threads and possible work arounds.  This stuff is fascinating for me because, in a prior life when dinosaurs roamed the computer room, my professional life was thread management (they were called TCB and SRB back then) on multiprocessor and eventually multiple machine configurations.  Being an old dinosaur wrangler, I never thought I would be getting into thread management issues after 20-years retirement.

Another solution I could use is - find the 20-mod configuration that works, shows all the airports I want, all the planes I fly, and all the scenery I like and then DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING!

The problem is you guys keep making such beautiful mods that I can't help adding them to my stable configuration cause they add so much to the sim.

Edited September 30, 2021 by TacomaSailor