4.232 & PMDG feedback

[Pete Dowson]

Files are on the way. I will try some flights with smoothing off and see if the crash goes away. Should I also turn off pressure/temperature smoothing?

Yes, all smoothing.

Pete

[jordanal]

Hi Pete & Kyle,

Kyle,

I will run the FP and metar you posted over in the PMDG forum now and see what appears on my end. This will be on the latest beta .237 with logging enabled. FSXsp2, ASXsp2 +Disable Graduated Visiblity +Disable Fog layer +Max Clouds = 20.

Regards,

Al Jordan

[Pete Dowson]

Files are on the way. I will try some flights with smoothing off and see if the crash goes away.I tried the same flight with the Level D 767 and results were similar. A couple of shifts that were manageable, and eventually crashed with the ntdll.dll exception.

I've flown from the FLT files you sent, with no crash. I note from this Log and the previous one you sent that the crash both times happened more or less in the exact same Geographical spot, somewhere North West of Boise, Idahoperhaps 30 nm away, maybe more? Something close to N44 40 12, W117 25 48.

Are all your tests which crashed following the same route? Could the crash be down to something in the scenery or terrain or textures/Landclass in that area?

I'm not getting crash reports from others with these last two FSUIPC releases (so far, at least), so I'm looking for plausible alternative explanations at present.

NOTE: I just noticed that one of my latest modifications, the addition of the wind smoothing thread, isn't disabled when you switch wind smoothing off. This might detract from the value of smoothing-off tests to see if FSUIPC is causing your crashes, though I hope not. After all it was crashing before I added that new bit.

Anyway, I'll fix that ready for tomorrow's inevitable update! ;-)

Regards

Pete

[cshark172]

Pete,

The crashes have been happening anywhere along a 282 mile stretch along the route, but that is the only flight I have been flying for about a week. I have had it crash right at the BKE VOR (N44 50.4 W117 48.4) all the way to the MLD VOR (N42 11.9 W122 27.0), Boise is along that line. Once, I made it past MLD before the crash. I also had crashes just N of San Francisco earlier in the week. Anyways, I did fly with wind smoothing off and completed the entire flight. But if one of you're additions is still on, I wonder what is going on? The winds were crazy between just before BKE and just after MLD, then everything was pretty normal all the way to DFW. I wonder if ASX is writing something strange to a weather station in that area. I have tried the flight with different dates and times and there is always a problem in that area. Right now, I am flying from Dallas to Philadelphia with smoothing off.

Kyle

[Pete Dowson]

The crashes have been happening anywhere along a 282 mile stretch along the route, but that is the only flight I have been flying for about a week. I have had it crash right at the BKE VOR (N44 50.4 W117 48.4) all the way to the MLD VOR (N42 11.9 W122 27.0), Boise is along that line. Once, I made it past MLD before the crash. I also had crashes just N of San Francisco earlier in the week. Anyways, I did fly with wind smoothing off and completed the entire flight.

Hmm. That is worrying. It is indicating a possible problem in my code. I will go through it with a toothcomb, checking where there might be a loose reference to an internal FSX variable which may have moved.

The problem is that if I add too many checks it affects performance. I tend to look for workable compromises. But I can't allow crashes!

I wonder if ASX is writing something strange to a weather station in that area. I have tried the flight with different dates and times and there is always a problem in that area.

I don't really think ASX can directly cause the crashes, though I suppose it could indicate a bug in FSX's weather processing. However, I'd expect it to be more widescprad and especially not suddenly start occurring when I add complex code!

Right now, I am flying from Dallas to Philadelphia with smoothing off.

Okay. Thanks. Best try such a different route with it on again too.

Best Regards

Pete

[jordanal]

Flying Kyle's FP now. Just passed MLD with no CTD yet. Getting some spurious wind fluctuations (+/- 100 ft or so) but nothing the AP can't handle.

Regards,

AL

[Pete Dowson]

Flying Kyle's FP now. Just passed MLD with no CTD yet. Getting some spurious wind fluctuations (+/- 100 ft or so) but nothing the AP can't handle.

Great, but what's a 100 ft of wind? ;-)

Pete

[jordanal]

Great, but what's a 100 ft of wind?

LOL, Well, I have general tail wind at around 40 knots. It'll quickly shift by 10 degrees or so, then I see the smoothing kick in and it continues for a couple more degrees. During this time, the ALT will change by 1 or 200 ft, the VNAV & AP compensate by adjusting pitch back to the targe ALT, thereby cuasing a change in IAS until it settles out. This whole process takes about 1 minute and has been repeating about once every 2 minutes for the past 100nm or so. Now about half-way b/w MLD and PITMAN in Kyle's FP.

According to WeatherSet2, there is a wind-layer at 38999 44k 272T; I am trying to keep FL390.

Update: Without a major wind change, the IAS just bottomed out to .74m and kickin' in the stick-shaker. Now it's having a hard to accelerating back to the target IAS.

Update2: Decided to see if the wind layer and my current FL390 were causing the fluctuations; I then decided to descend to FL380 about 70nm from the BINKI Intersection. Large, quick, wind-shifts of more than 80 degrees experienced soon after leveling out at FL380. Wind-smoothing didn't help here. Large rolls by LNAV to compensate. Experienced about 4 of this shifts but seems to have settled out for now.

Regards,

AL

[Pete Dowson]

Large, quick, wind-shifts of more than 80 degrees experienced soon after leveling out at FL380. Wind-smoothing didn't help here. Large rolls by LNAV to compensate. Experienced about 4 of this shifts but seems to have settled out for now.

Seems that all this effort has been a waste of time so far then -- those events are exactly what I set out to conquer, and we are still getting them. And I don't understand why. I cannot repro them at all. :-(

This is such bad news after things were looking so good. I could cry! :cry: :cry: :cry:

Pete

[cshark172]

Those symptoms sound just like my experience, without the crash, but my last two flights (1 with PMDG, 1 with LDS) were pretty smooth until the crash. I just completed KDFW - KPHL with no problem--wind smoothing off. That is two complete flights without a crash. I will give it a shot tomorrow with the smoothing on and see what happens. What is wierd, is I had no wind shifts at all on the KDFW-KPHL flight with smoothing off, but climb and descent were pretty rough.

Kyle

[jordanal]

Well I made all the way into KDFW without a CTD. But I'm sorry to report that the VNAV descent was lacking wind-smoothing. 10-25 degree fluctuations were common and then smoothing and intermixed with 45 to 90 shifts every so often. This was with a live ASXsp2 feed with a starting metar of 3 Feb - 2000Z. Let me know how else I can help.

Regards,

AL

Just to make sure we are seeing eye to eye...

[General]
History=7U8FVKZ727EQRC6LING1K
GraduatedVisibility=No
LowerVisAltitude=0
UpperVisAltitude=25000
UpperVisibility=10000
MinimumVisibility=0
MaximumVisibilityFewClouds=0
MaximumVisibility=0
MaximumVisibilityOvercast=0
MaximumVisibilityRainy=0
SetVisUpperAlt=No
VisUpperAltLimit=0
ExtendMetarMaxVis=No
OneCloudLayer=No
CloudTurbulence=No
CloudIcing=No
GenerateCirrus=No
SuppressCloudTurbulence=No
MaxIce=-4
MinIce=-4
UpperWindGusts=No
SuppressWindTurbulence=No
WindTurbulence=No
SuppressAllGusts=No
MaxSurfaceWind=0
WindLimitLevel=200
WindDiscardLevel=400
WindAjustAltitude=No
WindAjustAltitudeBy=2000
WindSmoothing=Yes
WindSmoothness=-2
WindSmoothAirborneOnly=No
DisconnTrimForAP=No
ZeroElevForAPAlt=No
ThrottleSyncAll=No
WhiteMessages=Yes
ShowPMcontrols=No
SpoilerIncrement=512
MagicBattery=Yes
RudderSpikeRemoval=No
ElevatorSpikeRemoval=No
AileronSpikeRemoval=No
ReversedElevatorTrim=No
ClockSync=No
ClockSyncMins=5
ClearWeatherDynamics=No
FixWindows=No
OwnWeatherChanges=Yes
TimeForSelect=4
LoadFlightMenu=No
LoadPlanMenu=No
PauseAfterCrash=No
ZapSound=firework
ShortAircraftNameOk=Yes
TCASid=Flight
TCASrange=40
AxisCalibration=No
DirectAxesToCalibs=No
ShowMultilineWindow=Yes
SuppressSingleline=Yes
SuppressMultilineFS=No
AxisIntercepts=No
WeatherReadFactor=2
WeatherRewriteDelay=10
ProcessGlobalWeather=No
SimConnectStallTime=1
AdvDisplayHotKey=192,8
FixControlAccel=No
ZapAirRange=1.5
ZapGroundRange=0.25
PressureSmoothness=20
TemperatureSmoothness=100
SuppressWindVariance=No
TurbulenceRate=1.0
LogSimC=2DC8-2DE8,3470-3490,0580,2DF8
Debug=Please
LogExtras=67
LogWeather=Yes

[Alias]

Update2: Decided to see if the wind layer and my current FL390 were causing the fluctuations; I then decided to descend to FL380 about 70nm from the BINKI Intersection. Large, quick, wind-shifts of more than 80 degrees experienced soon after leveling out at FL380. Wind-smoothing didn't help here. Large rolls by LNAV to compensate. Experienced about 4 of this shifts but seems to have settled out for now.

Pete,

this happened to me too, I can't give you much details unfortunately, I can only tell you I was flying some circuits over Gatwick but indeed the shifts were unpredictable as Jordanal said, and HDG mode was unable to keep the track. I was using ASX.

I could cry too... :cry:

Lorenzo

[Pete Dowson]

Well I made all the way into KDFW without a CTD. But I'm sorry to report that the VNAV descent was lacking wind-smoothing. 10-25 degree fluctuations were common and then smoothing and intermixed with 45 to 90 shifts every so often.

Strange, that's the exact reverse of the experiences of MELKOR in the other main active thread. with his tests it is always smoothing on descent but he gets the wild fluctuations on ascent.

Unfortunately MELKOR has no logs for me yet. But I see you had my full logging enabled. Can you ZIP up the FLT files and the Log and tell be roughly what FS time it was then the shifts occurred, please? Send to petedowson@btconnect.com. Only the files. We'll keep the discussion here.

I'm uploading 4.238 later today, with some code tidied up and made more protective, though I don't think there's likely to be much different in how it smooths. I can't see any answers yet. It is annoying not being able to reproduce the problems here.

Regards

Pete

[Julean]

Hej

Now I am into this crashing fashion to. I have both Rex environment xtreme and Active Sky X.

All the best

Jens Michlas

Frederiksberg, DK

[Pete Dowson]

Now I am into this crashing fashion to.

I've no idea what any of this is about, but I don't think it belongs here, and I will not support such an old version of FSUIPC in any case.

Regards

Pete

[Julean]

Good Heavens

And old fsuipc?

Well now you put me into reinstall fsuips, because I allways have your latest version installed.

And Thank you for your great work.

All the Best

Jens Michlas

Frederiksberg. DK

[Pete Dowson]

And old fsuipc?

Yes 4.232 is over a year old now. The minimum supported version is 4.40, and there's a 4.428 available in the Updates in this Forum.

Apart from this, your message merely contained a picture of some sort of APPCRASH which appears to have no relationship to anything of mine, and no word of explanation! I am not psychic, I cannot read your mind (especially from a distance! ;-) ).

Regards

Pete

[Julean]

Sorry

But during the years I more or less have come to have that impression. 8)

I didn't pay any notis to the 4.232 but just the Appcrash and the same specified numbers. So I tought that when I could find a error just like mine then an explanation of this error could be found.

If each error is specific it would be wonderfull with an error catalogue.

Thanks

Jens

Dk

[Pete Dowson]

But during the years I more or less have come to have that impression. 8)

Sorry, what impression?

Please don't keep attaching large useless pictures. You can find the version numbers of any of my programs simply by right-clicking on the module, and selecting Properties-Version. For FSUIPC the version number is shown on screen, and it the Log file. Theres never any need to do things like take pictures of folders on your disk.

I didn't pay any notis to the 4.232 but just the Appcrash and the same specified numbers. So I tought that when I could find a error just like mine then an explanation of this error could be found.

The error is a very commonly used part of Windows and really shows nothing useful related to anything else other than that you were running FSX at the time. A high proportion of crashes from any program would give the same sort of details.

This thread was almost entirely about the interaction between FSUIPC4's attempted wind smoothing and the behaviour of the PMDG aircraft. The crashes were specific to one person and related to scenery I think. Either way they were resolved a year ago.

You need to determine what is causing the error specifically on your system. Use a process of elimination. Try not running one thing at a time. If you have plenty of add-ons it could be any one of them, or just a combination. Perhaps it is associated with something you are doing? Perhaps it is simply a corrupt file.

But you say nothing, you describe nothing of what you are doing, nor how long you have to fly before it happens, nor whether it happens all the time or just once a week. You just append some rather less than useful pictures to the end of a 12-month old thread which appears to be completely irrelevant, referring to 4.232 and wind smoothing on the PMDG aircraft as it does.

If you have a problem and think it is anything to do with any of my programs then start a new thread with a more appropriate title and explain clearly WHAT is happening, WHAT you are doing at the time, and what you have installed. Also please explain why you think it might possibly have anything whatsoever to do with anything of mine.

And try the latest update for FSUIPC4 (in the Updates announcement above) before this, in any case.

Regards

Pete

[Julean]

I will do that

Thanks

Jens