21 hours ago, rjquick said:

People always wonder why there are some that seem to have constant problems with the game while others rarely ever do. The fly on the wall sees them shutting the computer off in the middle of a flight because they have to go somewhere and don't want to wait for the shut down. The fly never talks though.

Exactly, this 👍

I see so many people that have problems with MSFS, with Windows, etc, whereas things usually run smoothly for me.  And it's obvious that some of these people simply don't follow safe procedures with software and computers.  But then again, I come from a software development background, and I know for the software projects I have been on in the past, you exit the software from the proper exit menu or exit button.  If you try to exit some other way such as an abrupt shutdown, the software I have worked on in the past may run into problems.  We tell the users that use our software, to exit the proper way.

Edited July 12, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

21 hours ago, rjquick said:

The fly on the wall sees them shutting the computer off in the middle of a flight because they have to go somewhere and don't want to wait for the shut down.

And that is likely quite different than waiting until the game is essentially in a wait state, not in the middle of a flight, which is how I proposed this question.  After all, power outages happen often enough for the developers to make sure nothing catastrophic happens in the event of a power outage, right?  Sure.  And we have one who regularly does this and has no issues, "I kill the sim all the time when I complete my flight; In fact, I think I rarely go back to the Main Menu unless I am going to do another flight right away. It has never caused a problem for me; the next time I launch the sim it proceeds normally...."

31 minutes ago, Noel said:

And that is likely quite different than waiting until the game is essentially in a wait state, not in the middle of a flight, which is how I proposed this question.  After all, power outages happen often enough for the developers to make sure nothing catastrophic happens in the event of a power outage, right? 

To be fair, for a mission critical software app, like medical software where a patient's life is at risk, or in my example of the NASA probe that broke up into pieces, the developers probably do have to account for abrupt situations like a sudden loss of power.

For a video game that is used for home entertainment, I don't think the same standard applies. So the chances of MSFS being corrupted from a sudden power failure, is probably much higher than for mission critical software.  Although with Safe Mode in MSFS now, I think the MSFS team have some sort of fallback when MSFS detects abnormal terminations (but just like Windows, I don't think you want to put Windows in a situation where you need to use Safe Mode).

Edited July 12, 20241 yr by abrams_tank

We have one witness in this thread who does it all the time w/o sequelae he's aware of.  I'll bet MS/A put in some protections to ensure the sim boots clean no matter how it terminates.  It's a big mature product and it's now 2024 and it would be in their best interest to make the app robust in the event of a power failure as possible.  I can see some corruption of the log book but heck mine's not worked right for most of the sim's life anyway.   

3 hours ago, Noel said:

And that is likely quite different than waiting until the game is essentially in a wait state, not in the middle of a flight, which is how I proposed this question.  After all, power outages happen often enough for the developers to make sure nothing catastrophic happens in the event of a power outage, right?  Sure.  And we have one who regularly does this and has no issues, "I kill the sim all the time when I complete my flight; In fact, I think I rarely go back to the Main Menu unless I am going to do another flight right away. It has never caused a problem for me; the next time I launch the sim it proceeds normally...."

That is like "I never change the oil or filter on my car and everything is fine". There are a lot of things like that you can get away with many times, but it doesn't make it a good practice and it may very well may bite you at some point. To then argue that "someone else did it and was OK" or "I've done it before and it was OK" is not valid.

It is particularly interesting for this to be a subject in Fight Simulation seeing that aviation accident reports are filled with stories of people doing very risky things (because they've done it many times before and got away with it) and it finally catches up with them.

It would be good idea to make a Flight Simulator Shutdown Checklist and be sure to follow it.

On 7/11/2024 at 3:50 PM, jrw4 said:

But wouldn't the next startup go through the "Safe Mode" dialog? Also might this not impact things like the logbook? 

Yes, when i "kill" MSFS, then this question comes up on next startup, also no entry in Logbook.

2 hours ago, rjquick said:

That is like "I never change the oil or filter on my car and everything is fine". There are a lot of things like that you can get away with many times, but it doesn't make it a good practice and it may very well may bite you at some point. To then argue that "someone else did it and was OK" or "I've done it before and it was OK" is not valid.

It is particularly interesting for this to be a subject in Fight Simulation seeing that aviation accident reports are filled with stories of people doing very risky things (because they've done it many times before and got away with it) and it finally catches up with them.

It would be good idea to make a Flight Simulator Shutdown Checklist and be sure to follow it.

That's a goofy analogy.  Don't forget we're talking about a game here, not check ride details for piloting.  What really matters here is exactly what the real risks are, and no one here knows this quite obviously, and so most err on the side of caution, "just in case".  That's understandable but doesn't answer the question if there's any significant risk beyond the logbook not capturing the flight.  It's highly relevant that one person does this all the time w/ no untoward effects--THAT, is far more valid than theoretical conjecture which is all this is based on guesses about best practices and what role they play. 

On 7/11/2024 at 3:41 PM, Noel said:

After completing as flight, I'm at the arrival gate and ready to shut down MSFS, it takes a good 90 seconds or so after selecting to return to the Main Menu, then to Desktop, to get to the point I can turn off the computer.  Does anyone routinely kill MSFS while at the gate to shut it down instantly, and if so, any bad effects from doing this?

Maybe we have different flight simulators, but here it requires 13 sec returning on the main menu , and 3 sec to close the app correctly. So, the real question is to know the reason why your flight sim requires 90 sec to shut down correctly.

4 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

So, the real question is to know the reason why your flight sim requires 90 sec to shut down correctly.

Good point. Sometimes it does take a long time to end the flight. I haven't timed this, but it could be 90+ seconds. Every now and then I get impatient and "kill" the sim using task manager. Upon next start I'll be greeted by the safe mode option. Other than that, I don't think I've noticed anything. 

So why does it sometimes take so long to go back to the main menu after a flight? I've always assumed that it's related to the complexity of the scenery/aircraft and perhaps also number of addons loaded. 

1 hour ago, Cpt_Piett said:

Good point. Sometimes it does take a long time to end the flight. I haven't timed this, but it could be 90+ seconds. Every now and then I get impatient and "kill" the sim using task manager. Upon next start I'll be greeted by the safe mode option. Other than that, I don't think I've noticed anything. 

So why does it sometimes take so long to go back to the main menu after a flight? I've always assumed that it's related to the complexity of the scenery/aircraft and perhaps also number of addons loaded. 

For this reason I don't like to run a lot of addons in the background: in the worst case I have the Fenix A320, FSLTL, or the FBW simbridge if I fly the FBW A320.

This thread has gone on for a while but it seems the question is straightforward: does shutting down MSFS before returning to the main menu cause issues for the sim.

As one person said, only those who coded it know exactly what is happening when the sim transitions from the flight to the main menu, however, in general, the "x" is attached to any standard window by Windows and clicking it simply sends an external message from Windows to the Program asking it to close. These are well understood procedures for those developing programs. The software, in this case MSFS, should have a procedure to receive this message and respond, executing any necessary steps to close the program safely. For most programs it is the same internal procedure whether you "close" or simply hit the "x" but it is not possible to say for sure that Asobo has designed it this way. However, given that it is a Microsoft program and follows basic design characteristics of Windows -- it has an "x" and allows you to use it -- I would be surprised if this causes some substantial issue.

All I can contribute, is that I do this regularly -- once the aircraft is at the gate or parking spot and shut down unless I am planning another flight immediately I go to the "x" and close the simulator -- and I have not experienced any issues that matter to me. I have tried to think carefully about this and while I have been asked whether I want to boot into safe mode a few times out of hundreds of closes using the "x" from the running sim; these were most often after a power outage, which, unfortunately for me, where we live are not that uncommon.

I will confirm as someone pointed out if you are using a third-party aircraft that uses state saving then not exiting to the main menu will cause problems to the state of the aircraft when you return, this is most notable in the Comanche that I assume is waiting for some communication during the return to menu to tell its external application to save settings. So if you are concerned with state saving then this is a consideration. Other third-party software could be affected negative ways but again I have not encountered this -- except for state saving in the Comanche -- but I can appreciate it is a possibility. Although, any well written program has procedures for unexpected terminations, a fairly common occurrence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

Maybe we have different flight simulators, but here it requires 13 sec returning on the main menu , and 3 sec to close the app correctly. So, the real question is to know the reason why your flight sim requires 90 sec to shut down correctly.

If we used the sim exactly the same way then sure that is the real question, but we most likely don't, as others here report it can take up to or more than 90 seconds, and for my experience it's about 70 seconds to get back to the main menu, and another 20 or so to get to the desktop.  My sense is it has to do w/ how complex the scenario is.  For me, it's always complex airliners and most often complex terminals, whereas for some here w/ only GA it can be much quicker.

To put my question in personal context, since starting MSFS at its launch, I estimate I've done 365d * 3.8y * 2 flights/day on average (I'm retired!) * 90 seconds per flight....comes out to 249,660 seconds or 4,161 minutes or 69 hours of waiting to get to the desktop.  It's too short an interval, 90 seconds, to go off and do something especially when I'm going to shut the PC down.  Hence, this post....

29 minutes ago, Noel said:

If we used the sim exactly the same way then sure that is the real question, but we most likely don't, as others here report it can take up to or more than 90 seconds, and for my experience it's about 70 seconds to get back to the main menu, and another 20 or so to get to the desktop.  My sense is it has to do w/ how complex the scenario is.  For me, it's always complex airliners and most often complex terminals, whereas for some here w/ only GA it can be much quicker.

To put my question in personal context, since starting MSFS at its launch, I estimate I've done 365d * 3.8y * 2 flights/day on average (I'm retired!) * 90 seconds per flight....comes out to 249,660 seconds or 4,161 minutes or 69 hours of waiting to get to the desktop.  It's too short an interval, 90 seconds, to go off and do something especially when I'm going to shut the PC down.  Hence, this post....

My question is: what's causing your 90 sec shutting down your flight sim? is it possible to avoid this? is it a real problem caused by one or more bad developed apps? I'm using complex airlines too, but I don't have GSX, just to mention one of the most used addons. Not all the flight simmers having a lot of addons have this problem. The option to kill the flight sim is not acceptable in my opinion, especially if you have a lot of more and more complex addons and relative background apps, because sometimes things go wild and you have to loose your previously saved time reinstalling the flight sim, the complex addons and the background apps.

10 hours ago, Claudius_ said:

The option to kill the flight sim is not acceptable in my opinion, especially if you have a lot of more and more complex addons and relative background apps, because sometimes things go wild and you have to loose your previously saved time reinstalling the flight sim, the complex addons and the background apps.

Of all the things to potentially worry about that’s computer-related, “killing” the sim vs shutting it down the proper way is way down on my list. It really has not caused any issues so far, but I’m not going to dismiss the possibility that it might cause sim files to become corrupted. Don’t think it’s possible that other apps are affected though.