I got myself in the situation that it looks like one of my addons broke the aircraft landing and taxi lights, they are mere blobs instead of good looking 3d lights. Recognized this first in the FSR500, where the taxilight looks like a single torch light just pointing directly downwards to the tarmac, resulting in a round circle of light and now also with the landing lights on the PDMG 777, something is wrong, it results in a light blob on the fuselage just next to the landing lights, nothing like seen in the vids online. 

So one of my addons does it wrong, how can I find the bad guy without going the ultra-cumbersome approach of getting rid of 50% and then test and so on? Can I just go through the addons and see if they include something related to lights? What are the effect files or folders associated with landing lights? Or does anyone have another idea? 

Edited July 1, 20241 yr by AnkH

Hi Chris,

Are you using the MSFS Addons Linker? If you are not, I might suggest to use it to as you can toggle on/off add-ons and ease the process of elimination.

Just a thought.

Cheers

Just now, voleicare said:

Are you using the MSFS Addons Linker? 

Yes, I do, and I am aware of this, but the cumbersome part is the fact that loading up the sim takes so long, will be spending several hours just looking at the loading screen going down this route...

OK, I see what you saying. Is there a point in time where the issue came about? Maybe disable the add-ons you might have added since then.

I am not technical enough to go surgically and identity which add-ons is related to light effects. Sorry.

35 minutes ago, AnkH said:

So one of my addons does it wrong, how can I find the bad guy without going the ultra-cumbersome approach of getting rid of 50% and then test and so on? Can I just go through the addons and see if they include something related to lights? What are the effect files or folders associated with landing lights? Or does anyone have another idea?

"just going through the addons" is not the most efficient way I think. You could get lucky and find it quite soon, or you might not find the culpritt at all that way.
The 50% method doesn't take too long and is reliable, at least as long as there is a single addon causing the issue. I have over 800 airport addons and have used this method a couple of times and got results pretty quickly. It also solves the problem of how to keep track of all the sceneries you have examined already.

What I would do first is disable ALL third party addons by renaming the Community folder temporarily. If the issue is still there neither method will solve the issue. Then the issue is either a marketplace addon (these are in the Official folder) or a setting (e.g. in-sim or video driver) If you have messed with the usercfg.xml you might want to reset that either.

Don't use Addon Linker at first since you will need to confirm that the Community folder is empty anyway, so you might as well just rename it. You could either then use the 50% rule or check the most likely culprits first.

In fact, although I have Addon Linker, I found it much easier to just move the contents of the Community folder around, using folders like Community_disabled, Community_Good etc.
In three attempts you will already have eliminated over 87% of the addons. After that you can either continue or use your wits to pick most likely candidates from the rest.

I agree, you can spend more time looking for the easy way or get it done the hard way. The binary search goes through the list quickly. I also do it by renaming the community folder as a starting point.

Also, if it still doesn't work with a disabled CF that points you in another direction.

I noticed yesterday that my landing lights on the 777 are not showing at all, haven’t seen this on other aircraft, I wonder if I’m in a similar conflict situation?  Also flew the F28 and Fenix A320 with no such issues.

On 7/1/2024 at 4:50 PM, AnkH said:

So one of my addons does it wrong, how can I find the bad guy without going the ultra-cumbersome approach of getting rid of 50% and then test and so on?

We all have to go through this once. I recommend getting a good audiobook on YouTube (at least two hours), and starting by test-removing addons inside the Community folder, beginning with all folders with the letter "A" ...... 😉

Sorry but I don´t think there will be another way.

Oh one important tip, you need to empty the Community folder at least once, to verify that the problem is really one of your addons. Because nothing is as frustrating as spending half of the night by removing folder after folder to check where to problem is, only to find out it was a graphics driver or a sim problem in the first place.

Definitely remove your most recent addons and try it before going down the arduous task of taking off or adding back a few at a time.  It's happened to me more than once and most of the time it turns out to be a more recent addition.

Thanks guys, seems to be the only way to go the cumbersome route. How I get rid of the payware addons? those I do not have under the control of AddonsLinker sadly. Not going to uninstall all of those...

11 hours ago, AnkH said:

Thanks guys, seems to be the only way to go the cumbersome route. How I get rid of the payware addons? those I do not have under the control of AddonsLinker sadly. Not going to uninstall all of those...

The marketplace addons can be disabled by finding them in the Official Folder and moving them somewhere else temporarily, or you will need to disable them from within MSFS.

As for the payware addons that are in your Community folder; that's the reason why I do not use AddonLinker for these kind of troubleshooting. Moving the files around is quicker with the right file manager (I use Total Commander) and I find it is easier to keep track of the process.

It is really a simple process. It doesn't take much longer than the time it takes MSFS to start for 5-10 times. Having something to read or watch helps to keep pass the time.

4 minutes ago, orchestra_nl said:

Moving the files around is quicker with the right file manager (I use Total Commander) and I find it is easier to keep track of the process.

And that is safe? E.g. simply moving the PMDG 737-800 folder out of my community folder to test and back in again later ? This wont break the addon due to suddenly missing links in content.xml and other files? 

16 minutes ago, AnkH said:

And that is safe? E.g. simply moving the PMDG 737-800 folder out of my community folder to test and back in again later ? This wont break the addon due to suddenly missing links in content.xml and other files? 

I have done this process a few times (2 or 3) and it hasn't hurt anything sofar, whether these addons are using links (like OrbX) or install directly in the Community folder.
A few addons that are started outside of MSFS and depend on items in the Community folder (e.g. NeoFly or Better Bravo Lights) might complain but it doesn't create any permanent issues.

I use several folders to keep track on things:

• Community_DISABLED: this is the original Community folder that has been renamed and contains the addons that are not yet checked.
• Community_GOOD: I move addons that have been checked and did not trigger the issue in here.
• Community_BAD: I keep a copy of bad addons in here, just for future reference or troubleshooting. If they take up much space I could just keep the empty folder name, with a text file of  what was the issue and if/how I fixed it.
• Community_TEMP: this contains the addons that are suspect but not yet eliminated in the proces.

The process is just moving half the addons in Community _DISABLED to the Community folder. Then start MSFS and check. If the issue is not present, that batch is good so it gets moved to the Community_GOOD folder.

If the issue is triggered, I move half the addons to a Community_TEMP folder and try again and repeat the process until the TEMP folder is empty. By then you should have found at least ONE culprit. The BAD one goes to the _BAD folder, all the good ones are in the _GOOD folder and the unchecked ones are still in the _DISABLED folder. The latter are all moved to the community folder which should be now empty again, just to be sure there isn't more than one causing the issue.

Once you have found the culprit you can either try and fix the problem or alert the developer. I usually do both. For some issues there is a known remedy which really should have been fixed by developers already but most of them only fix issues after they have been reported, and some not even after reporting them.

@AnkH

Recently, I learned that LittleNavMap (newest version) indicated some bad coded scenery files when loading the Scenery Library. Maybe its worth a try.

Edited July 3, 20241 yr by Nemo

On 7/1/2024 at 8:50 AM, AnkH said:

So one of my addons does it wrong, how can I find the bad guy without going the ultra-cumbersome approach of getting rid of 50% and then test and so on?

This must be somewhat recent, no?  If so just remove the latest entries in blocks of say 5 at a time to get to the bad guy quickly.