A Livery can kill MSFS

[Bobsk8 12,750]

I learned something today about the effect a defective livery can have on MSFS, at least it did in my case. After a successful flight as usual in my DC6, I decided to set up a flight for the Seminole. I had downloaded a livery from Flightsim.to, and dropped it into the community folder after extracting it. I also decided to check to see if there were any updates for any of my market place add ons  in content manager, and there was one for the Key West airport I purchased months ago, so I installed that. 

Now I started up MSFS, and selected the new livery for the Seminole, and spawned it at KEYW to see what it looked like. As soon as I hit Fly Now, I got a CTD, which I haven't had in many months. I restarted MSFS, and the blue line that appeared while it was loading, moved extremely slowly, like I was on a hard drive instead of an SSD, After a couple of minutes of watching the blue line slowly creep along, finally get to the end, and that was it. Didn't get to the main menu screen to start a flight, just sat there with the blue line all the way at the end. I shut down MSFS, and tried the same thing, with the same result.  Now I figured a restart of the PC would solve the problem so  I restarted, restarted MSFS and same exact thing happened. 

Now I am starting to get really concerned. The only two things I changed were the Livery and updating the Keywest Airport. I thought, if the airport is the problem, this is not good, because I can't even get into the program to uninstall the airport.  So the only thing I can try is remove the new livery from the community folder, which I did. I restarted MSFS, and the blue line moved at normal speed, MSFS started up as normal, and problem solved. 

 

The reason I am posting this is because I learned that something as simple as a livery, ( which had been tested for SU6 according to the download site,) can cause a real problem in getting MSFS to run properly. This is another reason when I change things in a sim, I only like to change only one thing at a time, rather than two or more, so if one of the new additions creates a problem, it is really simple to roll back what I added. 

[ray hughes 165]

Bob if you fly the A320X from FlyByWire, their installer alerts you to a faulty livery when you use it.

It is a pity MS2020 doesn't have a similar feature built in. Excuse my ignorance in this - I have no idea how difficult that would be to implement within the Sim.

Ray

[Mike S KPDX 597]

I can not speak officially, but in my case - absolutely yes.

I recall when this happened to me I was somewhat amazed this could be the case but never really got a good answer as to why.  The fix was simple enough, remove the offending livery.

[Cognita 1,089]

Yes, we have to be careful especially with liveries. I saw one today advertised as 10K -- yes, 10K -- and decided to skip it, even though it was one I wanted.

[edpatino 1,965]

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

Now I am starting to get really concerned. The only two things I changed were the Livery and updating the Keywest Airport. I thought, if the airport is the problem, this is not good, because I can't even get into the program to uninstall the airport.  So the only thing I can try is remove the new livery from the community folder, which I did. I restarted MSFS, and the blue line moved at normal speed, MSFS started up as normal, and problem solved.

So, you didn't re-installed Windows this time?.

[Bobsk8 12,750]

Just now, edpatino said:

So, you didn't re-installed Windows this time?.

No, but I reformatted my SSD....LOL

[ryanbatc 12,859]

That's my livery - it's the only one I forgot to update when I batch updated all my Carenado stuff a little while ago.  It's not it a big deal ..(freezing your sim I mean) You just remove it from the community folder till it is fixed.  I added a fix to your post over at that site and will upload a new one when their site stops being slow hehe.

[edpatino 1,965]

11 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

It's not it a big deal ..(freezing your sim I mean)

Hi Ryan, yes, that's right, but just in case you already now is your livery!, LOL

Edited October 22, 2021 by edpatino

[Bobsk8 12,750]

15 minutes ago, ryanbatcund said:

That's my livery - it's the only one I forgot to update when I batch updated all my Carenado stuff a little while ago.  It's not it a big deal ..(freezing your sim I mean) You just remove it from the community folder till it is fixed.  I added a fix to your post over at that site and will upload a new one when their site stops being slow hehe.

OH OK. I posted on the download page the problem I had, but didn't want to mention which specific one it  was on my post, thinking that maybe it was just me that had a problem with it. 

[ryanbatc 12,859]

People are pretty responsive over there so I'd just say what issue you have (not deduct any stars until they can find a fix) and then rate your download after it's all resolved.  That one guy rating my Seneca paints as 1 star got past the long filenames bug apparently everything is a okay.

[ryanbatc 12,859]

@Bobsk8 I uploaded a new file with the fix....sorry for breaking your sim hehe!

https://flightsim.to/file/5787/red-stripes-livery-for-carenado-pa44-seminole

[Mace 1,929]

Just now, ryanbatcund said:

@Bobsk8 I uploaded a new file with the fix....sorry for breaking your sim hehe!

https://flightsim.to/file/5787/red-stripes-livery-for-carenado-pa44-seminole

That there is one dapper-looking livery Ryan.

So what causes the liveries to crash the sim?  Is it a fallback texture or something like that?

[ryanbatc 12,859]

5 minutes ago, Mace said:

That there is one dapper-looking livery Ryan.

So what causes the liveries to crash the sim?  Is it a fallback texture or something like that?

Asobo changed something again (seriously they change things back a forth a few times - I've seen it with repaints - there would be a dollar sign in front of something, then it's behind etc etc) - in this case, @Tim-HH found a tiny change that I missed - it was simple dropping the model.03 to just 'model' in the model.cfg.  I spent a lot of time looking for the issue but it took an expert repainter like Tim to find the real issue haha.

[monica6211 178]

I learned about this with SU5. Before then, I'd never experienced any crashes due to incompatible liveries. Then with SU5, I started experiencing the same thing. I soon discovered, through a lot of troubleshooting, that liveries can cause crashes with not just an aircraft you select to fly, but also with AI traffic that uses the bad liveries. So, sometimes you will have a livery in your community folder for some time without any issues, but once that livery is loaded with an aircraft in the area you are flying, that crash can happen at any time. If the sim is loading when it gets to a faulty livery, it can stop the loading completely, usually with a CTD, but not always.

[monica6211 178]

1 hour ago, ryanbatcund said:

That's my livery - it's the only one I forgot to update when I batch updated all my Carenado stuff a little while ago.  It's not it a big deal ..(freezing your sim I mean) You just remove it from the community folder till it is fixed.  I added a fix to your post over at that site and will upload a new one when their site stops being slow hehe.

How do you fix a livery? I know I have several I really like, but can't use, because they will cause the sim to crash.