rcd saves seldom (but sometimes) work

[Guest DaveMSP]

Love RCV4. Wish I could get flight saves to work consistently.Using FS2002 and have reinstalled latest FSUIPCv3.53 and Autosave.All is well and Autosave always captures the .FLT, .WX and .RCD in the mylfights folder just fine. When saving a flight using the ; key or the CTL+SHIFT+; the .FLT and .WX files are always saved in FS2002/flights/myflights(with or without my file naming respectively) but the .rcd is nowhere to be found. On rare occasions, using just the ; key all three files will be saved with the file name I create. This success only happened on two of the dozens of times I've tried. I have read all the posts about .rcd and I believe that I've done everything OK since .rcd do get saved occasionally. Perhaps the fact that Autosave always saves the .rcd and the ; key rarely, but sometimes works is a clue that someone could use to give me a little help. Would appreciate it.Dave@KMSP

[Guest Douglas Thompson]

Dave,What's your Pause On Task switch set to?

[Guest DaveMSP]

Pause On Task was checked with X. Anticipating the next step,I turned Pause On Task off and tried some saves.What happens is that if I do a single save, then quit RC4, I get the rcd file (along with FLT and WX files)Great! If, however, I do several saves without quitting RC4 then only one of the saves produces an rcd file, and it's not always the last one saved.Maybe I don't understand the saving process correctly, but I assumed that consecutive saves during a flightplan would have all .rcd saved without having to quit and restart RC4 each time. I could be wrong.At least with the Pause On Task Switch hint I am able to save one flight per RC4 session which is better than none.Thanks for your help. Can you do consecutive saves during a single RC4 session and get all the resulting .rcd files?

[jd 57]

we do dozens of saves per flight, when we are testing. maybe run out and get the latest fsuipc (3.558, i think is still the latest). link is pinned at the topjd

[Guest DaveMSP]

I believe I have found the problem and have a work-around.After verifying that Pause On Task Switch is turned off and installing the latest FSUIPC v. 3.6.0 (4/29/2006)I discovered that each time I save a flight using the ; key with RCv4 running, the .rcd file is indeed saved with my file name, HOWEVER, the Autosave program will delete that .rcd file when it deletes the oldest Autosavexxx.rcd if the two file actions are happening close together in time. In other words, I have Autosave running with default settings to save the flight every 60 seconds using an AutosaveXXX.rcd filename. It appears that Autosave and RCv4 do not sync up, so if Autosave is deleteing the oldest Autosavexxx.rcd at the same time I am doing a ; save, Autosave deletes BOTH .rcd files!To work around, I have changed the Autosave.cfg file in the FS2002 folder so that I no longer do an Autosave every minute. Didn't need that anyway. I now just Autosave a single set of files every 3 minutes called "Restart 3 Minutes Ago". This minimizes the possibility of Autosave and ; saves occuring close together. The edit of Autosave.cfg looks like:[user]Interval=60Files=0AlsoSave=Restart 3 Minutes AgoAlsoInterval=180Not perfect, but it's a cheap fix. Perhaps P. Dowson can work it out in a future FSUIPC update.

[jd 57]

glad that mystery is solvedjd

[Guest DaveMSP]

For the record, here is the discussion that I have had with Peter Dowson on the subject. It suggests that .RCD files suffer from the Autosave file and filename surviving and not the users ; saved file/filename. It is clear that FSUIPC/Autosave are NOT deleting the users saved .rcd file, just that RCv4 is saving one and not the other. (Note that Peter suggests consecutive user saves in quick succession could suffer the same fate where one .rcd is saved and the other is not.)In regards to my claim that Autosave is deleting the file created by the user with the ; key Peter says:"No, that cannot be happening -- AutoSave only ever deletes one file of each type every time it causes a new FLT to be saved, and the filename part is identical in each case. In addition, since it cannot possibly know what filename you are using in your ; request and it only ever deletes files by explicit full filename, what you are saying cannot happen. I think possibly you are misinterpreting the results of a clash where Radar Contact is told of the save for the ; command from you so close to being told of the AutoSaved save that, although it knows there have been two saves (because of FSUIPC's count of saved flights), it doesn't have time to retrieve the filename of the one before it is overwritten (in FSUIPC's readable memory) by the filename of the other. It would be pot luck whether this results in the user-saved or AutoSaved copy being lost. There's really nothing either AutoSave or RC can do about such a coincidence. The same could actually occur if you used ; twice quickly in succession, or even more slowly at a time when RC was very much tied up with its wave concatenation or has some other problem processing the data fast enough. Regards, Pete"Peter,Thanks for your analysis and confirmation that autosave will NOT delete any files other than the oldest autosave files. That makes perfect sense and is very reassuring. We agree that there seems to be a timing factor during which there is ambiguity as to which filename will be saved for an .rcd file (autosavexxx.rcd or username.rcd).I don't understand why the same ambiguity does not occur with the .FLT or .WX files. It is a mystery to me why the .RCD filenames often clash whereas .FLT/.WX files never do.Autosave always creates/deletes the appropriate Autosavexxx.FLT and Autosavexxx.WX files. Likewise, a users ; saved flight always produces the user named .FLT and .WX file but only the .RCD file suffers from being overwritten because of the timing. Losing the users name on the .RCD file can cause a sim pilot much unwanted house keeping of the /myflts folder.I haven't seen many posts on the forums complaining about it though. It is easy enough to work around, but is frustrating to the newbie trying to follow RCv4's fantastic tutorials which require many user saved flights.Thanks for your attention on this one.Dave

[Guest HUMPERS]

I unchecked the "pause On task" button & found the Autosave cfg file in FS9 but after editing it(as advised above) & trying to save thwe changes i am told that "Access is denied to FS9" So unable to make changes?Help! PleaseRod

[jd 57]

you probably have to have fs9 shutdown to save the .cfg filejd

[Guest wrutteruk]

Hi I have just started going throught the great tutorials and came across the same problem of only 2 out of 3 files being saved.After trying different methods of saving I have discovered that if you save without pausing the sim then the save works as it should.Don't ask ne why this is but I hope it helpswrutteruk