sim stops responding after 7 hours

[Nikolaj.Delaney]

Hi Pete,

I apologize for my tone, I don't mean to antagonize you or John and I simcerely appreciate the support.

I've simply been so frustrated with the issue. The worst thing is that I cannot identify the culprit, I tried rolling back and removing addons installed around the time it started happening but to no avail.

I am now trying unregistered FSUIPC. I am not aware of any Lua plug-in.

Addons:

EXE:

Chaseplane 1.2.44
ActiveSky
Couatl
SODE

DLL:
RAASPRO
Carenado Navigraph
PMDG Interface
IVAO Pilot Client
 

[Pete Dowson]

2 hours ago, Nikolaj.Delaney said:

but for the last 3 months this issue has been happening, and the only time it doesn't happen is when FSUIPC isn't installed.

I just happened to browse the P3D support forum, and I find that you posted about this problem there. Here's what you said on the 9th:

Quote

Short of going addon by addon and reinstalling P3D completely I dare to say I have tried every troubleshooting step I could think of including:

Not use ActiveSky
Not use Chaseplane
Default scenario, on the ground (no flight)
reset FSUIPC to defaults (this seemed to help)
disable FSUIPC
roll back to FSUIPC 6.0.9
update Navigraph Simlink
uninstall Navigraph Simlink
update VCRedists
update Windows
update Nvidia Drivers
update ActiveSky from Beta 7 to Beta 8
reinstall IVAO client
repair P3D installation

And, even more interestinlgy, a later post by Nunez12, someone with exactly the same problem, clearly says:

Quote

I do use fsuipc but I have tried without it and it’s still happening

Now in a later message in that thread you said

The problem first occured about 2-3 months ago during a long haul flight

I feel I must ask: what that your first flight attempted over 7 hours?

If not, what might have changed since things were okay. 3 months unfortunately is a long time later to try to remember such things, but that's certainly what is most important. things worked ... then they didn't. what changed? Did you ask yourself that nearer the time?

Pete

 

[Pete Dowson]

11 minutes ago, Nikolaj.Delaney said:

Addons:

EXE:

Chaseplane 1.2.44
ActiveSky
Couatl
SODE

DLL:
RAASPRO
Carenado Navigraph
PMDG Interface
IVAO Pilot Client

It might be useful to know from the other sufferers what addons they use, so that we can see if there's anything in common.

Pete

 

[Nikolaj.Delaney]

17 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

what that your first flight attempted over 7 hours?

No, I was doing long hauls frequently before, often over 12 hours.
 

19 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

what changed? Did you ask yourself that nearer the time?

I got a new joystick - the TCA sidestick from Thrustmaster. There also might have been a windows update. But no changes to the sim that I know of and it seems strange that a new joystick would cause this. 

Also to clarify: The issue happens after the sim runs for more than 7 hours. Doesn't happen if it's during a long haul flight, a series of shorter flights, standing on the ground not doing anything... passing 7 hours it locks up.

I'll add the list of add-on installed addons and antivirus exclusions tomorrow, as that is rather extensive.

Also I have the Prepar3D v5 addons folder on a Onedrive folder.

There's certainly a number of issues currently so I believe it might be worth trying a fresh install of the PC but so far I wanted to avoid this as I have a number of other important programs and uses for the PC.

[vieira12]

1 hour ago, Pete Dowson said:

Something is undoubtedly going on in your system, but John is at a loss as to what to suggest to determine what it is. Have something fail after 7 hours is just so out of any normal experience anyone can have with software, and nothing you've provided suggests any reasons that we can investigate. I applaud john for even attempting a 7 hour flight. it's more than I would have done!

There is one thing which may not have been suggested. You say it happens even with no assignments made in FSUIPC. Is that right? If so this does strongly suggest some action from something outside FSUIPC's code -- another application, possibly using FSUIPC, or a Lua plug-in possibly.

Try a test with FSUIPC installed and running but with FSUIPC unregistered. To do this just remove or rename the FSUIPC6.KEY file in your FSUIPC6.DLL folder. This will mean FSUIPC is doing nothing but requesting and receiving information from SimConnect and dealing with any user applications. So the next step then would be to identify every other add-on which is running, and try again without them, as far as possible. We then might need to do a process of elimination. List the add-ons for us, those running externally as EXE programs and those running internally internally (eg with DLLs or add-on extra Gauges). Whatever interaction is going on may possibly be narrowed down that way.

Pete

 

I am on a test at the moment ad so far so good 6 hours into it I have the feeling it’s cos of skyforce as it’s causing issues with simmconnect I can’t say for sure but it might well be that in my test I am only using active sky .pmdg 747. Aig for the aí traffic .and aí companion .chaseplane and finally 747 immersion . Once I am done I will post the log here if it happens again it’s strange but that’s what happens and it’s only after 7 hours and the aircraft needs to be powerd up for it to happen been summing for over 15 years and never seen this kind of stuff besides us 2 I know at least another 2 people with this issue I think the reason we don’t get more people reporting is how many do 7 hours flights or more ? Like you said you wouldn’t I don’t very often to be fair I hate long hauls but once in a while it’s nice thank you for looking and trying to help anyway 

[vieira12]

56 minutes ago, Pete Dowson said:

It might be useful to know from the other sufferers what addons they use, so that we can see if there's anything in common.

Pete

 

My add ons used are 

chaseplane 

pmdg 747

747 immersion 

active sky beta 8

gsx

sode

aig traffic 

aí companion 

no on-line flying 

I don’t use antivirus and I have turned off windows defender as well to make sure it’s not that also I have checked the usb devices and the power management settings as well 

[John Dowson]

I've performed various tests over the weekend on P3Dv5 and windows 1909 and 2004, with and without various add-ons (ActiveSky, Chaseplane, OrbX, A2A), and cannot reproduce this issue, even with P3Dv5/FSUIPC6 running for over 24hours.

Looking at  the thread for the same issue over on the LM forums (https://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6312&t=139856&p=228300&hilit=freeze+after+7+hours#p228300), it seems that some people are also experiencing this issue without FSUIPC6 running.

Therefore I really don't see how this can be related to FSUIPC, and must be something internal to P3D, maybe on the SimConnect interface there.

Reading the various reports, its also not clear what the actual symptoms are when this occurs. Some people report loss of flight controls, were others also report loss of mouse and keyboard functionality.

I think the way forward on this one would be to get LM to investigate this, so I would suggest that you use that LM thread (link above) and try and clarify the issue and how to reproduce there.

Sorry I can't be of more help, but I really can't think of anything else I can do with this issue.

John

[John Dowson]

It could be that this issue is created by an old bug relating to the total  number of connections used by simconnect clients - this is an old issue known in FSX and has been confirmed over at FSDeveloper. ( Discussion, An improvement in the same thread). To check if this is the cause, you could try modifying the maximum number of clients (MaxClients) in the SimConnect.xml file. You could first try reducing this to see if you can provoke this issue to occur earlier, and if this works then you can set to the maximum value which seems to be 255.

John 

[vieira12]

20 minutes ago, John Dowson said:

It could be that this issue is created by an old bug relating to the total  number of connections used by simconnect clients - this is an old issue known in FSX and has been confirmed over at FSDeveloper. ( Discussion, An improvement in the same thread). To check if this is the cause, you could try modifying the maximum number of clients (MaxClients) in the SimConnect.xml file. You could first try reducing this to see if you can provoke this issue to occur earlier, and if this works then you can set to the maximum value which seems to be 255.

John 

Where are them files located please Jonh so I can modify the values please it has been ok for the last few weeks since I have disabled skyforce as I have seen somewhere that it was causing issues with simmconnect 

[John Dowson]

It goes in %APPDATA%\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v5 -see https://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv5/sdk/simconnect_api/configuration_files/configuration_files_overview.html, and for an example: SimConnect.xml file: https://prepar3d.com/SDKv5/sdk/simconnect_api/configuration_files/simconnect_xml.html

[Nikolaj.Delaney]

On 11/4/2020 at 3:56 PM, John Dowson said:

It could be that this issue is created by an old bug relating to the total  number of connections used by simconnect clients - this is an old issue known in FSX and has been confirmed over at FSDeveloper. ( Discussion, An improvement in the same thread). To check if this is the cause, you could try modifying the maximum number of clients (MaxClients) in the SimConnect.xml file. You could first try reducing this to see if you can provoke this issue to occur earlier, and if this works then you can set to the maximum value which seems to be 255.

John 

Hi John,

 

this could actually make sense. I'm also using REX Skyforce cloud textures and the "in sync engine", but not the weather engine. Most tests so far have been okay but without the IVAO client running, which also draws from Simconnect. It could be that that just pushes it over the threshold.

Thanks!

On 11/4/2020 at 4:18 PM, vieira12 said:

Where are them files located please Jonh so I can modify the values please it has been ok for the last few weeks since I have disabled skyforce as I have seen somewhere that it was causing issues with simmconnect 

Did you uninstall Skyforce completely or just stopped running the application?

[vieira12]

3 hours ago, Nikolaj.Delaney said:

Hi John,

 

this could actually make sense. I'm also using REX Skyforce cloud textures and the "in sync engine", but not the weather engine. Most tests so far have been okay but without the IVAO client running, which also draws from Simconnect. It could be that that just pushes it over the threshold.

Thanks!

Did you uninstall Skyforce completely or just stopped running the application?

No all you do is choose what you want to install and don’t run when the sim is running that stopped my issue all together 

[Nikolaj.Delaney]

2 hours ago, vieira12 said:

No all you do is choose what you want to install and don’t run when the sim is running that stopped my issue all together 

I shall see if that does it. Thanks!

[vieira12]

7 hours ago, Nikolaj.Delaney said:

I shall see if that does it. Thanks!

Just let me know if it does Nikolaj please and then I can report it on their forums I think there’s more people having this issue the reason they are not reporting is that not a lot of people do 7 hour flights or more plus there’s a lot of people not using rex at the moment as it’s not p3dv5 compatible thank you once again to jonh and pete in helping in this matter 

[Aviator1979]

I also had this issue in all versions of p3dv5 since the beginning and not using Rex Skyforce anymore seems to stop the simconnect loss after 6,7, .. hours in flight, will test more. Can anyone confirm?

[John Dowson]

There is a known issue in the SimConnect SDK since FSX that affects P3D (all versions) and also MSFS. It occurs when the number of SimConnect clients is exceeded, and tends to happen after long flights when using several simconnect clients (as they often close the connection and re-connect when the connection stalls).
I haven't got time to dig out the references now, but there are various posts in this forum where I have explained the issue, given references and also how to improve (by increasing the max number of allowed SimConnect clients in a SimConnect config file).

John

[Aviator1979]

14 hours ago, John Dowson said:

There is a known issue in the SimConnect SDK since FSX that affects P3D (all versions) and also MSFS. It occurs when the number of SimConnect clients is exceeded, and tends to happen after long flights when using several simconnect clients (as they often close the connection and re-connect when the connection stalls).
I haven't got time to dig out the references now, but there are various posts in this forum where I have explained the issue, given references and also how to improve (by increasing the max number of allowed SimConnect clients in a SimConnect config file).

John

Strange that in p3d4 which i still use, this issue not occurs, im flying very long legs with no problem, only p3d5 is affected.

 

Thanks sir John, happy days to u, greetings

 

 

[John Dowson]

8 hours ago, Aviator1979 said:

Strange that in p3d4 which i still use, this issue not occurs, im flying very long legs with no problem, only p3d5 is affected.

It may be worth activating SimConnect logging anyway as this may show some errors when it stops responding. You can also determine the number of SimConnect connections used when this occurs, which would confirm or otherwise if this was the issue. It may be that with P3Dv4 there are less re-connects done by any SimConnect clients.

...and have a Happy Christmas!

John

[Aviator1979]

Hello mr Dowson, i tried to logging but  it gives no output, can u check my simconnect.ini file that i send in attachement, i used the same that was in my doucuments p3dv4 files folder,thanks.

SimConnect.ini

[John Dowson]

Quote

[SimConnect]
level=verbose
console=0
;RedirectStdOutToConsole=1
;OutputDebugString=1
;file=c:\simconnect%03u.log
;file_next_index=0
;file_max_index=9

You have commented-out the relevant lines with the ';' character - try:

Quote

[SimConnect]
level=verbose
console=No
RedirectStdOutToConsole=No
OutputDebugString=No
file=C:\simconnect%03u.log
file_max_index=9

John

[Aviator1979]

a ok thank u sir John, the simconnect issue seams to be solved by updating some products, thanks very much for your time and reply, greetings

[John Dowson]

8 hours ago, Aviator1979 said:

the simconnect issue seams to be solved by updating some products

Which products did you update? It may help others that are also affected by this issue.

John

[Aviator1979]

9 hours ago, John Dowson said:

Which products did you update? It may help others that are also affected by this issue.

John

Hy John, i updated fsuipc (was older version), rex skyforce for p3dv5 (suspected), installed the simconnects redists from p3d5, active sky also updated, gsx update and pmdg did also a micro-update

sincerely

[Aviator1979]

Hello sir John and Pete, the simconnect lost problem is back in P3D5.1 after 6 hours in flight, i try to replicate it now with simconnect log enabled. The file become very large (3gb atm), can u see or conclude something already if i post the log file or do i wait few hours more untill vpilot and my controls input etc dont responds anymore ?Thanks in advance.

 

ps how do i post it if im only allowed max 4.88mb upload?

[John Dowson]

10 hours ago, Aviator1979 said:

he file become very large (3gb atm), can u see or conclude something already

No. Thats expected - it  will get very large. There is no point in posting any log if you haven't experienced the issue yet.
And I am certainly not interested in seeing a log that big!
To see if its a simconnect issue, you need to search the file to see if there was a simconnect error  that occurred at the time you lost control. search for the string 'error' or maybe 'i/o error'.  If you find one, then you then search and count the number of client connections/disconnections,  as that is known to be an issue. Did you increase the maximum number of clients allowed for SimConnect?

Also, check you FSUIPC6.log file to see what errors were reported, and also if there are any messages relating to stalled data or reconnection. You can also count the number of client connection/disconnections logged, to see if that is the issue. If it is, there isn't much you can do except to try and prevent clients re-connecting. Maybe show me your FSUIPC6.ini file to see if we can change the stall-time/reconnect settings to see if that makes a difference.