10 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

is this the same for the 738 ?  thank you

Yes. 
 

7 hours ago, solito said:

Those files are present at my B737/700 folder, which I bought from PDMG, and have no problems with it, my problem is with B737/800 bought from MSFS Marketplace, and found that those files are not present at its folder. Should I have to reinstall it ?

 

Yes, I would try that. Unfortunately, I am not sure which files are encrypted or not in the Marketplace version. 

12 hours ago, JRBarrett said:

I think I know why deleting those files solves the problem for those affected. It is not the files themselves which are the problem. 

The issues that some people are seeing: yoke turned fully left and all systems inop, are a symptom that the 737’s DRM check failed. The aircraft was unable to verify that a valid PMDG license for that aircraft exists. I don’t know whether that license check is done locally or online, but for whatever reason, for some users it is failing in SU15.

Perhaps the license check subroutine is not running at all due to a bug, or (more likely) it is a timing issue — I.e. it is not completing before the rest of the initialization finishes.

I pretty sure that the license check is done after the aircraft is selected to load, and before the aircraft actually appears at the selected airport. During that initialization period, some developers display a text billboard highlighting various aircraft features, or semi-humorous messages, such as Fenix: “Did you know that over 1000 people fly on airplanes every day”. 🙂

The four files you highlighted are the WASM files which contain all the aircraft’s internal logic. Most of that is contained in the file with a DLL extension. The other files contain various configuration and other runtime information.

These files are created by a C++ compiler built into MSFS itself, using WASM source  code supplied by the developer in the aircraft’s installation directory. The files exist with any aircraft written in C++ using WASM. There are usually 4 files. Sometimes there are more than 4. The files are created (or re-created) under three scenarios:

1. When the aircraft is first installed.

2. When the MSFS executable file version changes.

3. If a user deletes them.

In the latter case, it is the same as if the aircraft has just been installed for the first time.

Once these files are created, they are not “touched” again by MSFS except as read-only. I doubt very much that these files are becoming “corrupted” or otherwise damaged between runs of the sim. That is not likely to happen unless the computer has a serious hardware problem with disc or SDD drive access. If the files were corrupted, MSFS would probably CTD immediately when the aircraft tried to load.

That is why I think the license check validation failure is a “timing” issue. IF the WASM files do not yet exist when an aircraft is loaded, the aircraft initialization routine calls the MSFS built-in compiler to create them. Otherwise, it skips the compilation step.

Compiling those files takes quite a bit of extra time. On my system, the 737 loads in 15 seconds if the WASM files already exist. If they do not exist, it takes almost 2 minutes. 

I suspect that the extra delay (waiting for the WASM files to be created) allows the license validation routine to run to completion for those affected the “twisted yoke” bug.

Fixing this is ultimately PMDG’s responsibility, but it may not be easy for them to do - especially if it does not happen on their own production computers. They would have to look closely at how their license check routine is coded, and where it “fits” in the overall initialization code. It would be much easier if they had at least one production computer affected by the bug, so they could test any potential “fix” before releasing an update to customers.

ive read your post a few times, thanks for writing such a detailed explanation.  fantastic.

Heres the rub in my opinion.  If I was a developer and I saw you type this,  I would (as the british say)  " bite your arm off" for you to be a beta tester as you clearly know your stuff.  As a beta tester you would surely be gold dust to a developer, id be begging to have you on the team.  Its like when you advertise for a job and a dream candidate gives you their CV,  

Yet in this age of quick sales, quick bucks, and unfinished products aimed at a market place of young gamers who go for gimmicks, 8k stuttery textures, and pointless people walking around terminals, over high quality products, most (but all devs) would probably ask the latest cool 19 year twitch streamer that can generate them a topn of sales (rather than a decent more polished product thats not marketed as well) to beta test for them over a guy like yourself who clearly knows his stuff.

Its no wonder ive not seen a decent polished addon in 10 years or so on all the platforms,   

Edited May 26, 20242 yr by fluffyflops

4 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Yet in this age of quick sales, quick bucks, and unfinished products aimed at a market place of young gamers who go for gimmicks, 8k stuttery textures, and pointless people walking around terminals, over high quality products, most (but all devs) would probably ask the latest cool 19 year twitch streamer that can generate them a topn of sales

Well said! Ironically these 'influencers /content creators' (they had to make these terms up) have time to 'walk' through an addon terminal and look at virtual sausages but 'not enough time in the day' to read a manual. 

20 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

Well said! Ironically these 'influencers /content creators' (they had to make these terms up) have time to 'walk' through an addon terminal and look at virtual sausages but 'not enough time in the day' to read a manual. 

50 minutes ago, sloppysmusic said:

Well said! Ironically these 'influencers /content creators' (they had to make these terms up) have time to 'walk' through an addon terminal and look at virtual sausages but 'not enough time in the day' to read a manual. 

a. The virtual sausages sell lot more copies than a manual does.  This is the issue with a simulator now geared at gamers (kids)

b If I was 19 years old would given the option of  £12 an hour at swissport to oad bags or check people in or £212 an hour without declaring it to HRMC, I know I certainly wouldnt be loading bags.  I know at my airline Ive recently over the last couple of years had to let quite people go part time on flexible working requests in order for them to be influencers.  

and finally back on topic. like @JRBarrett says it will be interesting to see what they do here, to have to navigate to that god awful file structure to delete files each time you want to use the 737 is going to cause a problem with the less tech savvy part of the "community"

people have struggled with switching out dlss files and clearing shader caches, not to mention everytime we had a "client and content" update back in p3d days it caused issues for some less tech savvy people.  

Or, they do what umberto and LM did for years with the broken bgl data issue that caused CTDS over Canada, blame each other and hope it goes away or work on a solution, 

  

 

Hopefully, PMDG will read this thread and figure out a solution for the problem, but I wouldn't count on it. For awhile, anyway, they will just claim that they don't see it on their systems. 

1 hour ago, Bobsk8 said:

Hopefully, PMDG will read this thread and figure out a solution for the problem, but I wouldn't count on it. For awhile, anyway, they will just claim that they don't see it on their systems. 

I don’t think it’s a “claim”. In all likelihood they don’t see it on their systems. Troubleshooting and fixing a bug that only affects a limited subset of users and can’t be duplicated in the production environment is probably one of the most difficult tasks in software development.

Something evidently changed in SU15 that can cause this issue to manifest on certain systems. It appears to happen during the initialization stage of the aircraft. Asobo did make changes in SU15 to improve the overall loading time of the sim. Perhaps those changes have introduced timing issues that affected the way PMDG’s initialization routines work. 

Probably the best they can do is to take a guess as to why the license check code might be failing under certain circumstances and make changes to the license check code to ensure that it runs to completion before the rest of the aircraft initialization code proceeds. Unfortunately if the timing issue is actually within MSFS itself, that could lead to something known as a “race condition” that might cause the loading process to freeze and never finish.

I’m sure that PMDG will investigate the problem, but there may not be a quick or easy solution.

 

I experienced the same problem for a fourth time this morning, although several other saved scenario loads have worked fine.

It is strange that I had no issues on the latest beta version. That is the same version that went live, and when I started seeing the authentication issues. 

7 minutes ago, JRBarrett said:

 

I’m sure that PMDG will investigate the problem, but there may not be a quick or easy solution.

 

I am sure they will, but it doesn't help their cause that they don't appear to acknowledge the issue(s) exist, and have existed well before SU15, although SU15 does seem to have made it worse.

Reading their forum some have it occur on load of the aircraft, many have reported it on approach, in my case it was in the climb phase (and pre SU15 - not flown it since SU15).

Does seem that multiple issues with the PMDG have ended with a frozen aircraft & sim still running. We've already had that caused by tablet bug & TA/RA bug, now whatever the cause of this/these issue(s). Can't think of it happening in any other aircraft. 

G

 

9 minutes ago, Gazzareth said:

Reading their forum some have it occur on load of the aircraft, many have reported it on approach, in my case it was in the climb phase (and pre SU15 - not flown it since SU15).

Freezing while the aircraft is already running (either in the air or on the ground) is a different issue. This is specifically about the license validation check failing on initial load of the aircraft which causes the yoke to be turned hard left with all systems inop. 

Any freezing of the aircraft once it has successfully loaded would not be a license check failure but caused by something else.

1 minute ago, JRBarrett said:

Freezing while the aircraft is already running (either in the air or on the ground) is a different issue. This is specifically about the license validation check failing on initial load of the aircraft which causes the yoke to be turned hard left with all systems inop. 

Any freezing of the aircraft once it has successfully loaded would not be a license check failure but caused by something else.

That's why I referred to them as issue(s). Although there has been nothing from PMDG I have seen that confirms the fail on load is a license check issue.

The only comments I have seen were along the line of "It must be your machine" or "We can't reproduce the issue".

If it is multiple issues that have the same result then that's a complete pain, although I'd certainly much rather have the aircraft freeze on launch than approach!.. One I can live with, the other gets it parked.

G

I for one will not be a first day buyer of their 777 just for this reason alone. If they ship it with the same license check software coded as the 737 then that is not good. I’d imagine they will have the same DRM type checks so this might not work out very well for those that are currently having this issue with the 737. Especially if they can’t replicate it.

Edited May 26, 20242 yr by B777ER

10 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

Its no wonder ive not seen a decent polished addon in 10 years or so on all the platforms, 

Hyperbolic Nonsense in my opinion.  Perhaps you should look again as there has been more than a few.
-B

Edited May 26, 20242 yr by btacon

13 minutes ago, btacon said:

Hyperbolic Nonsense in my opinion.  Perhaps you should look again as there has been more than a few.
-B

Name them?