GSX is a problem with Fenix

[Adamski_NZ 952]

2 hours ago, Farlis said:

That is as long as Coatl doesn't crash again, which it seems to do regularly since the last update.

I get Coautl hangups on *every single flight* when pushback ends and it's waiting for a good engine start. It just sits there, waiting, in an endless loop. I have top restart Couatl from the taskbar.

[MDFlier 2,031]

4 hours ago, BWBriscoe said:

I'm having constant problems with GSX and the Fenix.

Now, I'm sat at EGLL gate 518, I've requested loading through GSX (jetway attached, doors open). Aircracft has been refuelled, but still eight minutes later, no sign of ANY passengers. Baggage has been loaded visually BUT it's not indicating any cargo has been loaded on the EFB.

10 minutes in, still no passengers...

Have you read this??? -> https://kb.fenixsim.com/gsx-integration

Just want to make sure that you are starting off with everything set up correctly before offering suggestions. I think most of us assume that everyone has seen the information and followed the instructions in it. If you haven't, then we're gonna miss something. 

[pete_auau 1,161]

4 hours ago, MDFlier said:

Have you read this??? -> https://kb.fenixsim.com/gsx-integration

Just want to make sure that you are starting off with everything set up correctly before offering suggestions. I think most of us assume that everyone has seen the information and followed the instructions in it. If you haven't, then we're gonna miss something. 

yes he  has, 

 

[Car147 2,279]

Working flawlessly here as well. All i do is jump into the aircraft on loading in, select GSX via the mass/load screen and let it do it's thing. never had an issue yet.

[rutrA 282]

I have a problem that the stairs never go up by themselves, I have to manually select operate by stairs from the GSX menu.  I tried to get rid of all add-ons to see if something else is causing this problem, I uninstalled GSX, reinstalled it, but the problem still persists.

[Car147 2,279]

10 minutes ago, rutrA said:

I have a problem that the stairs never go up by themselves, I have to manually select operate by stairs from the GSX menu.  I tried to get rid of all add-ons to see if something else is causing this problem, I uninstalled GSX, reinstalled it, but the problem still persists.

As soon as i  put the beacon light on, aux gen off, and remove cones ,   my stairs/jetway remove in preparation for PB

[techman 151]

GSX is pretty unstable by itself, even without the fenix. With several coatl-restarts per flight it doesnt make too much fun. And it comes with a performance cost. I got rid of it with Fenix B2 since the performance impact was too big for me.

Maybe SU15 will do it´s job - lets see how it performs then. 

[El Diablito 328]

No issues with Fenix and never have to restart Coatl. Flawless here also.

[virtuali 4,421]

1 hour ago, techman said:

GSX is pretty unstable by itself, even without the fenix. With several coatl-restarts per flight it doesnt make too much fun. And it comes with a performance cost. I got rid of it with Fenix B2 since the performance impact was too big for me.

We should solve the restart issue with the new auto-restart method we are testing right now, the first feedback we got from testers seems to be positive.  It's nothing secret: if you want to try it, we posted it on GSX Community channel on Discord, 

Just installing GSX won't have any performance cost. Of course there will be some performance cost if you are boarding lots of animated passengers and cargo on a dense airport but, clearly, it's not as if you need your full fps when you are on ground, particularly if you use the AutoFPS app, which will reduce other visual settings you don't need on ground, so you might not even be able to notice any fps impact. Which will go away as soon the most fps-consuming service (Boarding) ends.

In addition to that, you can reduce the fps amount of the Boarding by acting on the Passengers Density slider in GSX, so it's not as if you don't have options.

Edited March 20 by virtuali

[JYW 2,983]

14 hours ago, RJC68 said:

I am finding Couatl constantly crashes as well.

I remember binning the FSX version of GSX back in about 2007 because 'Coatl' constantly crashed.  I can't believe that this is still an issue and that Coatl still exists!

I'm not trolling virtuali or anyone else here BTW, this is absolute fact.  I don't use GSX for MSFS and when I first saw mention of Couatl it was a huge blast from the past and memories of constant nightmares with that external app.  I was genuinely amazed that it's still the weak link in an otherwise great product.

Check out this thread from 2013 !    I found similar threads going back to 2008 but not on AVSIM so didn't link them :-

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/419631-i-loathe-fsdts-couatl/page/2/

 

Edited March 20 by JYW

[techman 151]

What about performance when landing? I have faced stutters on final (especially on very short final) with GSX and don´t face them without GSX. And it seems logical to me that it loads itself at the worst point of approach.

[virtuali 4,421]

35 minutes ago, techman said:

What about performance when landing? I have faced stutters on final (especially on very short final) with GSX and don´t face them without GSX. And it seems logical to me that it loads itself at the worst point of approach.

I was never able to replicate this.

Nothing really happens in GSX when you touch down, even if you pre-selected a gate in flight, so GSX would ideally need to create its own vehicles when you land, there's explicit code that delay their creation until after your speed goes under 60 kts I think, so well after touchdown, precisely to prevent even this case of vehicles being created on touchdown, because you pre-selected a gate.  if you don't preselect a gate in flight, GSX vehicles are created when you decide to do so, that is when you select a gate after landing.

On final approach, instead, it really depends which distance. At some stage, GSX must call the Navdata API to load data about the airport, that's the one and only thing it does before landing, and it can't be done too early, (30NM out, for example), because there's a range after which even MSFS itself doesn't know that data yet, which is a few miles around the airport. The query about jetways, for example, doesn't return anything until the jetways themselves are loaded, which usually happens about 4-5 NM outside the airport center.

The center of the airport matters so, in very large airports, the DEFAULT "visibility" range in GSX, which is 3.0 NM out, might just be on the border of the final approach, because the distance is from the airport ref point.

And yes, you CAN tweak this visibility range, but if you make it too big, either you might go outside the range where even the Navdata doesn't have that data anymore, or you might overlap into the range of another nearby airport so, for example, if you are landing on some runways at KFJK, your actual position might be closer to KLGA reference point, so GSX might think you are landing at KLGA. And yes, it's a chicken-egg problem: before loading the airport, we only know the position of its reference point, if we wanted to be more precise, so we could recognize you *are* landing at KJFK, we would need data about the runways, for that we need to load the whole airport data first, potentially causing even more "stuttering", because we would hypothetically have to load more than one airport at once, to decide which one is really the closest one.

So yes, you can play with individual airport_visibility ranges, as discussed in the manual at Page 74, but the usual reason to do so, is to reduce them to prevent conflicts between airports which are too close, not really to increase it to make the "load event" as far as possible from the final approach, but it might work in some cases.

And of course, if this is really the cause of the stuttering, it's caused by Simconnect itself, since that's what a call to the Navdata is. There IS a way to prove this theory and would be re-enabling the legacy "airport cache" method, where instead of calling into Simconnect, GSX would just open the scenery .BGL. No, it's not a permanent solution, because Navdata is really mandatory now to make jetways working and of course Marketplace airports wouldn't work without it.

But it might be a good TEST to at least know that, on your system, the calls into the Navdata ( Simconnect ) might perform worse because is affected by other traffic over Simconnect (AI traffic injection, FSUIPC, etc.), if the stuttering doesn't happen with the legacy Airport cache method, at least you would know where to look for.

Edited March 20 by virtuali

[techman 151]

1 hour ago, virtuali said:

And of course, if this is really the cause of the stuttering, it's caused by Simconnect itself, since that's what a call to the Navdata is. There IS a way to prove this theory and would be re-enabling the legacy "airport cache" method, where instead of calling into Simconnect, GSX would just open the scenery .BGL. No, it's not a permanent solution, because Navdata is really mandatory now to make jetways working and of course Marketplace airports wouldn't work without it.

But it might be a good TEST to at least know that, on your system, the calls into the Navdata ( Simconnect ) might perform worse because is affected by other traffic over Simconnect (AI traffic injection, FSUIPC, etc.), if the stuttering doesn't happen with the legacy Airport cache method, at least you would know where to look for.

Good to know. I (normally) have FSLTL running and FSHud (more often replaced by Sayintentions). 

[Midnight Music 252]

19 hours ago, BWBriscoe said:

I'm having constant problems with GSX and the Fenix.

 

I don't understand the litany of problems here, I rarely have problems with GSX alone or with Fenix. Once in a while Couatl craps out, but it can be reopened. Are all our installations that different?

Lee

[sniper31 639]

I have been using GSX for MSFS since it's release, and it has been getting better and better with each update. And, for the most part is has worked well for me without issue. I have had times where Couatl stops working, and almost every time that has happened I had paused my flight for more then say 10 minutes. But, simply restarting it solved that. Other than that, works great for me. No problems with stutters, or smoothness problems. I have the GSX settings tweaked for my system, and after spending some time doing that, it has been hands off and problem free otherwise. I very much enjoy using it, and anytime I don't use it on a given flight, I miss it.