FSLabs general instability and poor software quality

[kholt 21]

I really do love the FSLabs A320 products….when they work.  The depiction of the Airbus aircraft is brilliant, but nevertheless the overall user experience is almost untenable.  Constant crashes and myriad bugs in the software makes it so unpleasant to work with.  It generally takes an hour or two of repeated trial to get a scenario to load properly.  If the scenario does load up correctly, then from that point on it seems very stable and reliable.  And it’s not just one issue.  It can crash in so many different ways and as the result of so many seemingly innocuous factors.   It’s just very difficult to get it to a usable starting state.  I don’t know how many others have these problems.  Maybe it’s just me.  

By way of contrast, the FBW and Fenix products in MSFS, and for the most part the Toliss product in XP12 seem relatively stable.  For example, I’ve never had FBW crash on me, even running the experimental version.

Is the “bugginess” of the FSLabs widely experienced and understood in the community ?  I am really curious, because my personal bug list for it is a mile long.  These aren’t arcane bugs in how complex Airbus systems are emulated.   I’m talking about “click this menu item and the sim hangs”, requiring going to the Windows task manager to kill the Prepar3D process.  Every day reveals new ways for me to crash the software.  As much as I love how it flies, the other products are just a better experience and at the end of the day more fun.

FWIW, I’m running all the latest versions in P3D v5.4 on Windows 11.  I’ve done several reinstalls from scratch and removed all plug-ins to try to improve the stability.  I’m a software developer and understand how to unpack these sorts of problems, but my conclusion is that FSLabs has a fundamental problem with software stability and quality.  Curios to hear what others think.

Edited December 23, 2023 by kholt
typo

[DavidP 1,413]

Haven't flown it for a while but I can't say I've experienced problems like that, sorry.

[MatthiasKNU 298]

Since the FSLab came out I have nearly 10000 flying hours on it - never had any major problems like you describe.

Why don't you contact FSLabs directly, I'm sure they can help you much better!

[srcooke 52]

No issues here, goto aircraft of choice.

[vonmar 123]

No problems like you mentioned:

WIN11

FSlabs A320

P3D4.5HF3 and P3D 5.4.9

[MatthiasKNU 298]

I'm sorry to hear that.

I just had a look in the FSLabs forum and found your problems - they are already trying very hard to help you, especially Norman. There's nothing wrong with that, and the comment about the saving scenarios is perfectly acceptable. 

I'm sorry, but I can neither confirm nor understand your statements here.

Edited December 23, 2023 by MatthiasKNU

[jcomm 5,939]

Fslabs 319,20 and 21 SL are among my preferred Airbus models across the 5 platforms I use airbuses with.

They're all quite stable and never got any CTD s with it? They're not as convincing flight dynamics wise as the Toliss on xp12, but I by dar prefer them to both the mfs fbw and Fênix...

Edited December 23, 2023 by jcomm

[VHOJT 178]

I have found them to be extremely stable and just as reliable as PMDG, Majestic etc.

Pretty much every flight I do is in the FSL Airbus and I can't remember a single time I've had an issue - this includes saving, loading etc.

Sorry to hear you're having an issue - I hope FSL can help you.  

Edited December 23, 2023 by VHOJT

[Bob Scott 7,721]

Sounds to me more like there is a problem with the OP's computer, e.g. an unstable hardware configuration, incompatible driver, file corruption, conflicting software, etc. 

When software works well on hundreds of other installations but not on one outlier, then it strongly suggests that the problem lies in something unusual going wrong in the problem installation.

One data point (faulty or otherwise) does not constitute a trend, and the long-running popularity the FSL 'busses have enjoyed in the FSX/P3D community pretty strongly refutes the inflammatory title of this thread.

 

[CO2Neutral 278]

I don't use or buy FSLabs aircraft these days since they aren't supporting P3D V6.x.  But with that said, make sure you enable the "Beta" option in their control center (Run As Admin) and verify you have all the updated versions installed ... especially the FSL Spotlights as that's a key tool for lighting their products.

Spotlights has been a tool that has caused issues with GPU drivers in the past, so I suggest you make sure your drivers are up to date.  Highly recommend you go the DDU route in OS safe mode manual install of drivers to clear out all old references to nVidia drivers.  Do NOT use any special NCP settings, that can cause all kinds of problems (leave as Global Defaults).

When you CTD, bring up the OS Event Viewer to ID what crashed and the error code/message.

[Zatoichi 45]

I experience some of what the OP describes. No CTDs but niggling things like after push back the a320 taxis in circles. Reload and it's fine.
 

[kholt 21]

Are you an experienced, professional software developer or electrical engineer?

Do you realize there are literally hundreds of processes that run on a Windows PC, and I have many dozens of software titles that run just fine on my computer and the ONLY one that crashes consistently and regularly is that from FSLabs?  "Unstable hardware" as you suggest does not exhibit such a symptom by always targeting the same identical process.  If you were a hardware/software engineer as I am of nearly 40 years you would understand that.

There is nothing "inflammatory" in the title of my post as I will explain.

When I was a young engineer I had my first working version of a new product I had solely developed.   I was anxious to show it off to the CEO of the company.  I invited him into my office, and as he entered without saying a word, he sat down at my desk and put the palms of both hands onto the keyboard and held them there for several minutes.  My software eventually crashed from the endless key repeat, and with that, he got up out of the chair and walked out of my office again without saying a single word.  He didn't need to.  I got the message loud and clear.  An end user, no matter what stupid thing he/she might do, should not be able to crash a software application without so much even as an error message.  The company he founded was never going to release such a product to the customer.  I learned that "quality" software should never crash under any circumstance.  Period.  An application that crashes at every whim without so much as an error message is poorly written software.  Now you can make all the excuses you want to, but those of use who know what quality software is know better.  Quality software does not crash.  At the very least, it should display an error message with an error code useful to a developer before exiting.  Sure, nothing is perfect and perfect quality is an aspirational goal, but crashes should never be considered acceptable and a developer who blames the customer when it happens is not representative of a quality vendor.  It would have gotten me fired from that company, and rightly so.

I'm glad that others don't experience the same problems I do.  That was the sole intent of my post - to find out if these problems were widespread or not.  Why?  Because if they are widespread I would give up trying to make it work and find another suitable product.  If I'm the only one experiencing them, then I will continue at least for now, in the absence of developer support, to hopefully identify a workaround or otherwise isolate the cause of the problem.  After all, I love the product - when it works.

Merry Christmas,

Keith

Edited December 24, 2023 by kholt

[mwa05 108]

Hi Keith,

I still maintain my P3D5.4 installation including my FSLabs A319/20/21 however I have not flown a flight in P3D since October 2022 according to the log.

I have just fired up P3D and selected the JQ A320 and pre-flighted it, pushed back, engine start and then exited the program. 

So it still works and is serviceable as I expected as I said, I still maintain it.

The reason for the pre-amble is I went through quite a time a few years ago having constant CTD’s with the FSLabs and I had to sort it myself as I never really got any useable assistance at the time however I would also acknowledge that this was pre MSFS and P3D was THE sim and this was a new product and I was but one voice asking for help.

In the end, what solved it for me was updating runtimes. In fact this recently fixed an issue I was having with MSFS.

So, my recommendation is to download https://www.techpowerup.com/download/visual-c-redistributable-runtime-package-all-in-one/ and run the batch file, reboot your computer.

Caveat, this solved my issue however, doing the above will not harm or damage your computer, so it is a no loss try, the worst outcome is the problem will not be solved however you will not be worse off as the files are all the latest Microsoft issued runtimes.

Kind regards and Merry Christmas,

Mark

 

[kholt 21]

17 hours ago, MatthiasKNU said:

I'm sorry to hear that.

I just had a look in the FSLabs forum and found your problems - they are already trying very hard to help you, especially Norman. There's nothing wrong with that, and the comment about the saving scenarios is perfectly acceptable. 

I'm sorry, but I can neither confirm nor understand your statements here.

Well unless I missed it, Norman hasn’t offered a single suggestion as to why this is happening, so I cannot understand your statements here.-p

On the other hand, there was a guy who thought that maybe FSLabs was crashing P3D because all that really was happening was perhaps I kept “pausing” the simulation with the P key or whatever and didn’t know it!   I guess he doesn’t understand what the term CTD or “crash” means.  He probably just got his first computer a few days ago.   But at least it was a suggestion, so I’ll grant him that.

Not sure why you seem so personally offended by the fact that I am having stability issues with this product and have voiced some frustration with that fact and the lack of help from FSLabs.  Norman asking questions like “what aircraft do you see when you launch your freshly installed P3D?”. Is there supposed to be any answer other than Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning?  I mean, if he is wondering whether I am actually running P3D or some other flight sim, then OK, maybe that was his point, but not sure why I should value that as “help”.  Or was it intended as a vision test to tell if I could even “see” what was happening on the screen and know whether the sim was running or not?  No, I recognize this pattern.  Ask enough exasperatingly stupid questions and stall for time until eventually the customer just gives up and quietly gies away.  It’s a proven customer support strategy and it almost always works.  I am intelligent enough to recognize this for what it is.

[kholt 21]

48 minutes ago, mwa05 said:

Hi Keith,

I still maintain my P3D5.4 installation including my FSLabs A319/20/21 however I have not flown a flight in P3D since October 2022 according to the log.

I have just fired up P3D and selected the JQ A320 and pre-flighted it, pushed back, engine start and then exited the program. 

So it still works and is serviceable as I expected as I said, I still maintain it.

The reason for the pre-amble is I went through quite a time a few years ago having constant CTD’s with the FSLabs and I had to sort it myself as I never really got any useable assistance at the time however I would also acknowledge that this was pre MSFS and P3D was THE sim and this was a new product and I was but one voice asking for help.

In the end, what solved it for me was updating runtimes. In fact this recently fixed an issue I was having with MSFS.

So, my recommendation is to download https://www.techpowerup.com/download/visual-c-redistributable-runtime-package-all-in-one/ and run the batch file, reboot your computer.

Caveat, this solved my issue however, doing the above will not harm or damage your computer, so it is a no loss try, the worst outcome is the problem will not be solved however you will not be worse off as the files are all the latest Microsoft issued runtimes.

Kind regards and Merry Christmas,

Mark

 

Thanks Mark, I will definitely give that a try.  I hadn’t thought of this.

Keith