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virtuali

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Everything posted by virtuali

  1. They might have, which is precisely why we asked clarification to Microsoft, asking if such terms have changed and/or if we can also have the same permission to share. You cannot possibly know about this, but I assure you several other developers ( including some which are probably considered more "important" by the community ), have been quite ***ssed off by this. I'm just the one that is not keeping his mouth shout, as I probably should have...
  2. Of course I have: MS sent an email to all developers that have access to the SDK a couple of weeks ago, clearly stating we are allowed to discuss what we are developing, but we are NOT allowed to share any screenshots of products currently in development until August 18th.
  3. That's not the "First" airport, of course. It's just a developer that is ignoring his NDA...
  4. Not because all add-ons were sold through the software but, because the few that were, had an abysmal quality ( planes without a cockpit, really ? ) and there weren't any 3rd party add-ons, that was the real problem with MS Flight.
  5. Really ? This should take the crown for being the lamest excuse I ever heard for being lazy, and not conforming to the vastly superior add-on.xml method.
  6. The statement IS factually correct. GSX, running entirely outside the sim under its own separate interpreter ( Couatl.exe ) cannot crash the sim, this is not open to any interpretation. The only kind of crash that might be ( to quote a previous post ) TRIGGERED (not CAUSED) by GSX, are: - Bugs in the internal functions of the sim that are called following a standard Simconnect call made by GSX. This will of course happen just the same with any other add-on making the same call, assuming that one has a problem. - A crash caused by a simple memory exhaustion, which in P3D is usually VRAM exhaustion, but RAM exhaustion is still possible, for example if there isn't enough physical memory available AND there's not enough space on the swap file, either because the hard drive the swap file is located on is full, or because the user disabled the automatic handling of it or set a limit that too low. This also can occur at any time, memory is not an infinite resource, so it's wrong blaming a single add-on for being the cause of memory exhaustion, which is always a combination of your hardware, your settings, and the number of add-on running at the same time. If you have an 8GB card, with only 7 really available ( IF you have Windows 10 2004 ), and you are using several add-ons at the same time ( scenery, airplane, AI traffic, weather, etc. ) so you are already using 6.7GB out of 7 before even calling GSX, then you call GSX and get a crash because it required those last 300 MB available, how this could be GSX's fault ? Yes, using GSX "triggered" a crash, but you should never put yourself in such a iffy situation to begin with so, even if the crash was "correlated" or "triggered" by GSX, the real *cause* for that crash were the settings too high for that particular combination of add-ons and hardware. I could understand this kind of reasoning: "I cannot fly without my favorite detailed airplane, I cannot fly with reduced AI, I cannot fly with no custom weather products, I cannot fly with lower graphic quality, but I CAN live without ground services so, if I had to choose, I choose not to use GSX, because my resources are almost all used up for the other stuff" THIS is something I won't contest: it's your sim, and your choice ( personally, I will always reduce graphic quality way before having to renounce to something that offers extra functionalities, but that's just me...), you are free to use whatever combination you want but, please, don't say GSX "causes instability", JUST because you are not prepared to accept lowering your settings or not using other add-ons, because it's just not fair, other than factually wrong.
  7. If with "trigger", you mean it might expose a bug in a SDK function of the sim which didn't have any problems before and, thanks to GSX exposing it, will surely result in a fix, to the benefit of other 3rd party applications that use it, then yes, it can "trigger crash", just like the default ATC window can.
  8. It was only recommended in order not to have issues with very old add-ons that, not only installed "inside" the simulator own folder, but even try to *write* something there, like settings or databases that change, which is a very bad choice. Installing inside the sim wouldn't be so bad per-se ( although it can be messy and confusing ), but the real issue is when add-ons try to save something in their own folder which, if it happens to be inside the sim, and the sim happens to be installed in C:\Program Files ( which is specially protected by Windows ), UAC wouldn't allow it so, to prevent those add-ons from failing, it was usually suggested to turn off UAC. Or, alternatively, install the sim in a different place, one you should always have full permissions, something like C:\P3D, for example. Since 2006, when Vista came out, every Windows program should *never* try to write in its own installation folder, but rather use %APPDATA%\Myprogram or %LOCALAPPDATA%\Myprogram, for smaller settings and preference files, and %PROGRAMDATA%\MyProgram for larger data files that are global to the machine and not different from user to user. A program that complies with these specs will be unaffected by UAC settings, and it won't run any different regardless of the setting. But a program that doesn't, will probably require turning UAC off, or enable Adimistrator permissions explicitly for its link.
  9. GSX CANNOT crash the sim, and cannot cause "instability". There's a known issue in P3D V5 that affects the usage of the standard semi-transparent window that can be used either by the default ATC, but also by any other add-on that uses the Simconnect text menu which results in a CTD with a VCRUNTIME.DLL error logged in Event Viewer. The issue is not easy to reproduce, and we think is somewhat related to DX12, because that menu is originally made in Scaleform ( a derivative of Adobe Flash, for UI ), and at a certain point is must interact with DX12 ( it used to work with DX11 in P3D 4.5 ), and considering how tricky, complex and different DX12 is, I guess something is still not 100% reliable with that menu. On LM support forum, there's a very long thread in which multiple users confirmed the infamous VCRUNTIME crash, with no add-ons and no GSX active, just by using the ATC menu for enough time. Some reports here: https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopi ... 49#p222053 https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15#p222128 https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopi ... 15#p222337 Maybe you don't remember but, we had a similar ( although it didn't make the sim crash, but made GSX almost unusable ) issue with P3D 4.1. The menu system was broken in one of those builds of the sim, and you couldn't even choose an entry reliably and, of course, even then, people started to believe if was "a GSX problem", just because GSX is the most popular application that depends on that menu. Of course, FUD spread wildly until...LM of course fixed it in a point release. Just to be clear: - The Simconnect menu is a standard Simconnect API call, which can be used to create either a menu, but also a message in the top green line: https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/sdk/simconnect_api/references/general_functions.html#SimConnect_Text It hasn't changed in years, so the code to call it is exactly the same, regardless if the sim is FSX, P3D 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. Any application using it doesn't have to do anything different depending on the simulator used, and it's a complete Black Box to developers. Even if the sim might use different technologies underneath ( XUI on FSX, Scaleform on P3D ), this is completely irrelevant to the client application so, if a code works in FSX or P3D 4, it should work in P3D V5 and there's nothing that is supposed change just because it's P3D V5. It's not as if we are using an outdated or legacy method: we are using THE only method to create a menu, which is supposed to work. And yes, of course, we reported this to LM a while ago, send them a copy of GSX to test ( I'm fairly sure GSX is not the problem, but I AM thorough ) and are waiting for some feedback.
  10. GSX both supports positional 3d audio, and it also models a different attenuation depending if you are in the VC or outside the airplane. And, it makes a difference between "in cockpit" and "outside world" sound which means: - When you are in the VC, "in cockpit" sounds will sound louder. They also don't have any 3d positioning, because they are supposed to play in the pilot's headphones. An example of these sounds are the pushback or de-icer voices. "outside world" sound will sound attenuated, but with full 3D positional audio, calculated starting from your eyepoint position and rotation in relationship to the sound source in the 3D world. The fuel truck pump, the catering cart passing over the raised platform, the engine sounds, are all example of "outside world" sound with full 3D information, which also moves with the object the sound source it's attached to. - When you are in another ( outside ) view, "in cockpit" sounds will still sound the same, but outside world sound will sound louder so, you might have the impression the in-cockpit sounds became more faint, but they aren't, they are only competing with louder sounds from the outside, which includes not just GSX, but also the other sounds of the sim, which are also louder in an outside view ( engines, or apu, for example ) The ideal audio setup for GSX would be a surround system, even 5.1/7.1 headphone, because you will be able to hear exactly the direction any sounds comes from, which makes them also way clearer to differentiate.
  11. Which language you are referring to ? The US voices are made by a professional voice actor and sound just fine to me. Previous version might have been easier to hear, because they were made with text-to-speech, so they are extremely compressed (they lack any nuance of the real human voices ) and designed to be heard even with crappy speakers but, of course, people complained they sounded "robotic", so we listened to users, paid a professional voice actor ( several of them, for different accents, even if *some* of them are not professionals, but the US English surely is ), and of course...is impossible to make everybody happy, again.
  12. Which is EXACTLY how GSX works, normally. There are 18 different sounds for Boarding, and 16 different sounds for Deboarding and, of course, they ARE chosen at random. The OP replaced only ONE sound, which is the loop that is supposed to be very short ( 20 seconds ), that ONLY reproduces the sounds of seat belts in the background, it doesn't have anything to do with the voices, which are the 18+16 wav files named "Airplane_???boarding_hello*.WAV". but doesn't mean GSX only has "one sound", it means he replace it only one and, by replacing it with a 5 MINUTES wav file ( which upped your RAM usage from 880 K from 60 MB, fortunately Couatl runs *outside* the sim, but this is still ram that is used... ), and because is that long, the first "Hello" couldn't get a chance to be played, at least for the first 5 minutes, because GSX will first play the loop sound, but it will start playing the "hellos" only after that the seat belts loop played at least once ( obviously intentional, so we don't start with the hellos before some background noise is made ). Now let's see some math: Since there are 18 different sounds for Boarding and 16 for Deboarding, and each time a passenger pass through the door, there's a 10% chance a *random* Hello sound will play, if you are boarding, let's say, 200 Passengers, you are supposed to ear, on average, 20 Hellos in total, taken randomly from a list of 18 so, chances to see the same sound too many times over the course of the operation are not very high. We can of course increase the number of variations, and possibly decrease the chance from 10% to even less ( is it realistic that a crew will greet less than 1 passenger every 10 ? ) but I guess nobody will ever be happy, if you use GSX a lot, ANY number of variations WILL get old after a while so, what would be a good chance ? 1 out of 1000 ? People will say "GSX is bugged", because they boarded 400 passenger and didn't hear ANY hello ( "it worked before, I swear..." )
  13. The sim is STRUGGLING trying to keep up with your too high settings, so it's TRYING to move away stuff from VRAM to RAM, to prevent an hard crash of the video driver. This if the "Texture Streaming" option is enabled, which does exactly that, but it's not 100% foolproof, if there's a sudden and fast increase of VRAM, it might not be able to do that, and ( of course ) if you have only 16GB of normal RAM, forcing the sim to struggle to keep up with your insanely high settings, is increasing the regular RAM consumption more than normal, and of course all this juggling between RAM and VRAM DOES have a cost in performance too, even when it's not crashing. If you use more reasonable settings, so that you have more VRAM free, you'll notice your RAM usage will go down as well, and you might even get away with disabling the Texture Streaming option, for a further increase of fps, at a greater risk of crashes if you are not careful with your settings. Ideally, you should tune your settings in a very complex area and, if you are able to prevent a crash there, with Texture Streaming disabled, you might be reasonably sure it will work well with no crashes almost everywhere.
  14. You should post this on FSDT forum. And yes, you CAN attach log files, just zip them first.
  15. It will still your graphic card that will generate the image, the CPU doesn't really matter, in the way that it won't work any differently in the Quest vs the Rift. And, you need a very high quality 3m/10ft long USB-C cable, like the 79$ one sold on the Oculus store. If resolution is important to you, I'd look into the Rift S, instead. Don't know about the price in your location but here in Switzerland, the price difference between the Quest and the Rift S is not much higher than the price of the cable you need to use the Quest as a Rift.
  16. There's no need to do that. GSX is automatically disabled when you are flying higher than 10k feet and/or faster than 250 kts. And even when it's active, it won't do much other than checking your position in case you need to pre-select a gate in flight for a nearby airport. Since GSX runs completely externally to the sim ( it's written in Python, so it runs entirely inside the Couatl.exe program, which is a Python interpreter ), it won't take any memory or take cpu cycles from the simulator compared to when its disabled from the menu. The only reason you might want to disable it from there, is if you find a problem on a certain airport that for some reason cause an error, which still won't affect the sim but might be annoying to see, and by disabling you remove the errors while waiting to sort them out. So, the option is there only for troubleshooting, not regular use. Generally speaking, GSX never does anything on its own, it's always you that must call it first, with the hotkey.
  17. This has been explained before P3D V5 was released: http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,23304.msg155949.html#msg155949 And the day it was released too: http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,23351.0.html Those posts are sticky and can be read by anyone without any need to register or post.
  18. so, it's just 6.24$ to free yourself from this torture, with the following advantages: - FSX:Steam is compiled to use a later VC++ runtime ( 2013 ) compared to the 2005 SP1 version used by FSX. This will reduce the chance for conflicts with other apps, or the old runtime itself might perform badly or crash or just stop to be supported by Windows. - FSX:Steam uses A BIT less system RAM. No, it's not nearly enough as if it were a 64 bit app, so you'll still have to be very careful with possible OOMs, but it's better than the regular FSX - FSX:Steam works with default Steam multiplayer without any add-ons, while the standard FSX default multiplayer stopped working years ago when Gamespy closed - FSX:Steam has been recently updated with a new version, which MS will use to gather some data about what users do with it ( that will help with the next MSFS ), but at the same time they fixed some longstanding bugs that were there for the past 13 years, and restored Live Weather too: https://steamcommunity.com/games/fsxsteamedition/announcements/detail/2549529393507642734
  19. Surely worth spending if still using the old DVD version, which might not install anymore, assuming you still have a DVD reader ( my last PC with a DVD drive it's an old MacBook Pro 2009 )
  20. No, he clearly said he REFUSED to do that, because he's convinced he should be able to run P3D V5 with all sliders to the right with an 8GB card, using multiple add-ons, some of them clearly labeled as Beta, and if he can't, it's surely must be because of GSX.
  21. Again, you are really something. You posted your early video in which the crash was caused by the sound card, because we can clearly hear your audio stuttering moments before the crash, as soon as you change the volume. That's the same thing one of your Facebook friends tried to tell you, in the post you used as "evidence" of the community behind you...
  22. You called me "i-g-n-o-r-a-n-t developer" on our forum. Being a customer doesn't give you the right to offend. Your last video didn't show a sound card problem. Instead, it show ( YOU showed it in the Event Viewer!! ) a crash of your VIDEO card driver, which is entirely normal considering your insanely high graphic settings with an 8GB card. Everybody knows that doing that with P3D V5 is asking for trouble. I'd say it's possible you are not getting a crash with another product that has a visibly lower graphic quality ( textures and animation, and does only pushback ) than GSX, so I would expect it might use a bit less of VRAM, and that might just be enough to save your skin. Of course, you would probably have achieved the same result with GSX just by lowering your settings a bit.
  23. You are really something... You came here asking the "community" for help, and everybody said the same thing ( which you are wrong ), so you reverted to a random Facebook post to "prove" what ? People comment all kind of nonsense on Facebook, that doesn't make it right. Without even mentioning someone in the very post you copied told you it was your sound card crashing the sim.
  24. Perfect. You FINALLY admitted the problem might be caused by something ELSE than GSX. But opposite to you, I won't make the mistake of saying it's "their fault". It's NOBODY's fault if you don't understand you cannot use P3D V5 with an 8GB card with all sliders to the right and 90% of VRAM taken, without risking a crash. There's nothing else left to say, really. It's abundantly clear to everyone that you are clutching at straws, because your flawed argument has been completely disproved, in text AND in video. I'll repeat it again: GSX works flawlessly with P3D V5, with an highly detailed airport using an highly detailed 3rd party airplane. And yes, I'll redo my test as soon I'll get back the PMDG 747 ( of course, PMDG users can chime in confirming they use GSX normally with V5 ) And no, I will NOT download your scenery. Sorry, but that's too much to ask for and what will prove anyway ? I don't think a normal scenery could crash the sim unless, of course, you are short on VRAM because of your settings so, again, ANYTHING can crash the sim, at any time.
  25. The video proves exactly the opposite: there's NOTHING wrong with GSX and VRAM. With an 11GB card, the sim can safely use more memory than with an 8GB card, because with 90% of the VRAM taken, the sim is STRUGGLING to make space for all the things it needs. It's not a problem using lots of VRAM. In fact, the more VRAM CAN be used, the faster the sim will run. But if you are too close to the limit ( because your settings are too high for your hardware ), you are making the sim do extra work trying to find a free contiguos chunk of memory, eventually leading to a crash.
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