15 hours ago, Senchai said:

Deinstall, reinstall directly into community folder and viola, now it works. 

 

It will always load fine the second try. I don’t think it matters how it is installed.

Of you kept it linked it probably would have loaded either way on you second attempt.

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by Tuskin38

On 10/31/2021 at 3:11 PM, Phantoms said:

I followed this over off of the official forums and haven't had a problem since. Don't know if it completely fixed the issue, but so far since Friday I haven't had the problem.

 

My location was a little different than what they stated. I have Steam and found the content.xml at C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator and scenery files in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\SceneryIndexes. The rolling cache file you should have the location from the settings menu inside the sim for it (I manually deleted the rolling cache file, not through the sim).

I don't know if this completely fixed the issues as it happened randomly, but I've been loading fine since Friday night after doing this.

.As I stated, I think many people in this post have different issues and so far, knock on wood, this has worked for me. Loading hasn't hung on me since I did the above.

20 hours ago, Senchai said:

And i can just continue to report the same happening. Ive tried EDDH next, out of Contrail App Library with Addonlinker. Didnt load after reaching 100%. Deinstall, reinstall directly into community folder and viola, now it works. 

Thank you for the write-up, and reporting the above. I hope this is a persistent fix for you - I've had at least 2 occasions where something ridiculously unrelated fixed the situation for full 2 days and survived multiple reboots and power cycling, then suddenly it all was back to "broken".

If it persists, that would be quite interesting.  Unfortunately, if you were stupid enough - like yours truly - to buy your stuff on the Marketplace, moving content out of the OneStore folder is prone to cause trouble if it works at all (gotta investigate this more, maybe simlinks work). But if it works for you, that may indicate some odd problem involving folder permissions/ownership or something along these lines, and maybe something timing-critical in conjunction with that.

 

23 hours ago, Senchai said:

Atm it seems all of them lie beneath Photogrammetry cities. And all of them have a CGL file. Also (i think) all of them have a big filesize (~3GB). But i could be wrong, i didnt look yet to each of them but its true for at least half of em.

That are interesting observations. Re photogrammetry, that sounds promising but it's probably not it - as I mentioned in some other post, I can mitigate/intensify the problem a little by enabling/disabling airports and I can do weird stuff like "install a freeware EDER 220 km south of EDDV to make the problem appear in JustSim EDDV (no photogrammetry around EDDV or EDER).

Since you mentioned Simwings EDDH, that's the one airport we have in common, and the only airport that's really affected here . However it loads pretty reliably when I turn down "Offscreen terrain precaching" one notch and if that wouldn't be weird enough - I turn that down in the settings for VR.  Of course most times I load the airport in 2D and then switch to VR, yet changing the setting in VR and not 2D affects the problem.

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by Captain Nuts

4 hours ago, Tuskin38 said:

It will always load fine the second try. I don’t think it matters how it is installed.

Of you kept it linked it probably would have loaded either way on you second attempt.

nope, it didnt. That trick never worked for me. I can load into one airport and back to startmenu and load into the other.

40 minutes ago, Captain Nuts said:

moving content out of the OneStore folder is prone to cause trouble if it works at all (gotta investigate this more, maybe simlinks work).

No, not the onestore folder 🙂 Its LocalState\packages.

Lets say you install the Justflight Piper or FBW A320. Those place folders into LocalState\packages too. And they dont get removed when you deinstall. Those i had deleted.

It probably sounded as if i had to do that, but i just did it to have a really clean sim. Had lots of folders in there that i dont use anymore, like from the helicopters etc. Its most likely not needed but i just wanted to have a fresh start. I hope noone deletes stuff out of the onestore folder, as that isnt the best thing to do, as you said ^^

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by Senchai

Ah probably some communication wires crossed here,  I understood you (among everything else) deleted payware airports and installed them to the community folder instead of wherever they originally installed, which is something you can't do easily if you purchased the stuff off the Marketplace.

The LocalState\packages folder content may not be relevant at all for this, it seems to clean up itself anyway and contains only the 2 items currently installed (at least it does here, not sure how and when it gets cleaned up), all files with the timestamps of the installation day.

Edt: Yesterday I bought KHPN airport (meh) off the MP and it loaded fine, also after reboots etc. - today it first stopped loading in the way we know, on second attempt it actually crashed during loading (in Flightsimulator.exe).  That airport is fairly small (240 MB) but of course it sits in a lot of photogrammetry.  It's all just weird as hell.

Edited November 8, 20214 yr by Captain Nuts

It really still seems to work for me. But too short still to make any conclusions, maybe it breaks every minute..... And im very surprised myself.... Not sure what made the difference between activating an airport (that was installed months ago but constantly updated of course) via addonlinker and reinstalling it. I can just repeat the question if anyone knows of any other place where scenery info in any form is stored, besides content.xml, rolling cache, sceneryIndexes dat files and manual cache?

 

Btw, my packages folder absolutely doesnt clean itself 🙂 I had many things in there that i dont have installed anymore. Also the SimObjects folder is full of stuff. All the liveries i have ever installed have still a folder in there for example. But sure, this most likely doesnt have to do anything with it. I should have phrased it different. Im not native English, sorry ^^ Hard time sometimes to express myself....

Edit: I just saw that my manual cache has 26 GB?? But there is nothing when i go to the sim menu for manual cache. There are no zones. Is that normal, pre-allocated space or old leftovers? Anyone knows this?

Edited November 9, 20214 yr by Senchai

Last post from me if i dont find im proven wrong by my sim. 

Ive tried this now with 2 more airports, LFBZ from Flightbeam and KPDX from same dev. Both are contrail app addons. Ive tried to activate it again via addonlinker, same as above, loaded in 1 time, stuck at 100%, loaded in 2. time, 100% stuck. Tried a 3. time and again i was stuck.

Then i deinstalled it in contrail app and installed it directly into the community folder. It works now. Both the same. But i want to add that the fact where its installed may have nothing to do with it. I just installed it to there instead of an external library.

But this is imo quite a number of airports that i managed to get work now with this method. I dont know. I would simply try this:

- Rename the Community folder
- create a new one thats fully empty
- delete content.xml and if you wish caches etc. Maybe even those scenery indexes if one wants to be 100% sure
- Reinstall an airport where your 100% sure it wouldnt load on first try before. If possible anyhow choose community folder. If not it probably doesnt matter, ive installed 2 airports via Aerosoft One app to outside folder and they work too. I think the important part is to reinstall. Not move files from one folder to the other or something like this.
- turn off AI traffic of any kind (everything to off, realtime and offline AI) to make sure this isnt the problem
- start on this newly installed airport with an asobo plane

Would be really curious whats your result. And really, it could be well your completely wasting your time and it will still not work for you. Im sorry, in that case 🙂 Were all just beta testers ^^

PS: i made sure there is nothing wrong with the files in those contrail library folders.... i didnt see any issue, all files (on the first sight) were there. And the SSD is intact too. Also the contrail app folder is on the same SSD as the sim is installed. I have no idea why it didnt load when i didnt reinstall the airports.

For me, every addon ive installed is at another location now, compared to before. If that matters in any way, i really have no idea....All i know is that for what 8 or so addons now this method reliably works (for me). And that being said, this is for payware airports. If a freeware Asobo airport doesnt work it may have another reason. Or the same reason, i cant tell...

Edited November 10, 20214 yr by Senchai

15 hours ago, Senchai said:

Last post from me if i dont find im proven wrong by my sim. 

Then I hope we never hear from you again! 🙂 Please post if something changes!

Since you bought your airports off a different store I take it they all don't have an .fsarchive encrypted file in them (like EDDH, \Scenery\Bgl.fsarchive)?  

 

15 hours ago, Senchai said:

Would be really curious whats your result. And really, it could be well your completely wasting your time and it will still not work for you. Im sorry, in that case 🙂 Were all just beta testers ^^

Of course I'm curious too but so far I only tried moving my only (reliably, controllable) affected airport into the Community folder and that made no difference in function (IOW FS doesn't seem to care where in its internal search path it finds the airport) but also no difference in behavior, IOW it stopped loading it in the same scheme.

That scheme currently reflects much what others report - if I just start the computer and try to load EDDH, it won't load, then I close FS and try it again and it will load, it will always load if I change something ridiculous like letting FS rebuild the very same content.xml, before I start FS. 

Yesterday I changed the order of entries in context.xml and learned that the loading time appears to be indicative of the problem even when the airport loads - of course dabbling with the file made it load fine but that took only 40s like any other airport - otherwise EDDH needs either 80s or forever, and it didn't come to me that the longer loading time has nothing to do to the size of the airport.  So it seems the problem comes in a whole spectrum of intensities, from "one airport taking longer to load" to "no airport loads anymore".

2 hours ago, Captain Nuts said:

 🙂 since you bought your airports off a different store I take it they all don't have an .fsarchive encrypted file in them (like EDDH, \Scenery\Bgl.fsarchive)?  

I don't think so. But i didn't check yet to make sure.

2 hours ago, Captain Nuts said:

Of course I'm curious too but so far I only tried moving my only (reliably, controllable) affected airport into the Community folder and that made no difference in function (IOW FS doesn't seem to care where in its internal search path it finds the airport) but also no difference in behavior, IOW it stopped loading it in the same scheme.

Never tried moving. Theoretically moving should be the same as installing. But seems theory is not here to help us with this problem, no idea where it went to for holiday  🙂

2 hours ago, Captain Nuts said:

That scheme currently reflects much what others report - if I just start the computer and try to load EDDH, it won't load, then I close FS and try it again and it will load, it will always load if I change something ridiculous like letting FS rebuild the very same content.xml, before I start FS. 

Maybe its a different problem then because I never had that experience. On none of those airports. If one didn't load then it didn't load, even after the 5th time.

I've checked the console already but can't find a hint...

Anyway, it's still working for me.

2 hours ago, Captain Nuts said:

Yesterday I changed the order of entries in context.xml and learned that the loading time appears to be indicative of the problem even when the airport loads - of course dabbling with the file made it load fine but that took only 40s like any other airport - otherwise EDDH needs either 80s or forever, and it didn't come to me that the longer loading time has nothing to do to the size of the airport.  So it seems the problem comes in a whole spectrum of intensities, from "one airport taking longer to load" to "no airport loads anymore".

Yes,  sometimes it sounds we have a different problem, other times it appears to be the same...

I just know this is what happened to me too, whenever I added the link of one of those problematic airports all the other take longer to load.

But again, after reinstalling it this effect was gone.

41 minutes ago, Senchai said:

Maybe its a different problem then because I never had that experience. On none of those airports. If one didn't load then it didn't load, even after the 5th time.

Well, that's just the current behavior with the number of applied workarounds.  I can "synthesize" the "never loading, ever" behavior easily by simply installing 1-2 little airstrips, I can also aggravate the problem to an extend that one more airport (EDDV) stops loading reliably and another one (EDMA) becomes "intermittent" and likewise, improve the situation to some extent by removing all freeware airstrips or disabling some random payware airport.  It's manifesting itself in very narrow and "controllable" ways on my system, that's how I could examine it pretty thoroughly and prove that it's not depending on some specific add-on.

What all reports I deem having this particular issue have in common is...

- All users report that the app doesn't stop responding and can be closed w/o the help of Task Manager.

- A number of ridiculously unrelated workarounds can be applied to fix the issue for one session, which of them helps varies and there are cases where none of those help anymore but disabling 'Online Functionality' does.

- Most users report some strange randomnesses in the manifestation, but some report that nothing loads even after a complete FS reinstall w/o 3rd-party content.

A theory is that this issue was created by SU6 trying to fix the older issue with FS completely stopping to respond when trying to load some airports, which happened at some "hotspot regions" for many, either the US West Coast or the UK. The only (unreliable) workaround for that was spawning at a nearby airport, then at the airport in question, which works to some extend for the current issue as well, just like you could fly to the affected airports w/o problem. SU6 fixed this problem for me and many others, that's why I think they are not the same issue but closely related.

Edited November 10, 20214 yr by Captain Nuts

Yeah, probably different problem. Because i had at least 6 sessions by now and all still works. As long as i dont add one of the old installed airports by moving it instead of reinstalling. Because then this is exactly whats happening. The sim will stop to load on 100%

Anyway, i hope you find your problem 🙂

Edited November 11, 20214 yr by Senchai

3 minutes ago, Senchai said:

Anyway, i hope you find your problem

Yeah me too, also I'd love to have FS working properly again. :)

The randomness is absolutely mind-boggling:

2 days ago, I made sure the FS process and directories are excluded from Windows Defender scans (I thought I did that long ago, but apparently I didn't) and rebooted the computer.  In the following 1.5 days FS loaded EDDH right after reboot in 40s, I even threw all my "problem aggravation" airports into the Community folder, downloaded 2 free little Oregon airports and tried them and I was almost tempted to declare the Defender exclusions to be a fix....

This morning EDDH didn't load anymore, so I deleted all the stuff from the Community folder again - still no dice.  Turns out that now I can't load ANY airport anymore, even when I turn off Online Functionality! I have read that others have the problem that bad and I thought this has something to do with the overall add-on load but it seems this is also entirely random.  I'm curious when and how this situation changes again.  I hope it does, because since the problem keeps being ignored by Asobo, that may as well be the end of my foray into MSFS.

I've been having this issue this week. My educated guess that it could be something with live time or live weather sync. If I select custom time and weather seems like flight loading successfully. After that I switch time and weather back to live.