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JYAI KC-10A

Previews, discussions and support for projects by John Young.
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Jim
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Jim »

I'm sorry. My second line*** was incorrect. Fixed here.


KC10,6ARS,9ARS AND KC10 >> KWRI OK

KC10 6ARS 9ARS AND KC10 DUM >> KWRI CRASH <-- ***

KC10,6ARS,9ARS AND KC10,DUM >> KWRI OK

KC10 6ARS 9ARS AND KC10,DUM >> KWRI CRASH

plus

KC10 6ARS 9ARS AND KC10 >> KWRI CRASH

Jim
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

Jim wrote: 08 Sep 2021, 14:03
So start time does make a difference as well as lack commas for me.

Jim
If the sim can accept a given aircraft.cfg file configuration at one time, it should be able to accept it at another time, so long as all the entries are consistent in syntax and they are I believe. That's unless a contamination appears at certain times from another source like Matrix.

Remember, the date in the week (9th, 10th etc) will often fall on a different flight plan day of the week (Mon, Tues etc) in different years. I have done all my tests in 2021.

The fact that Jim is getting different results at different days would indicate contamination from another add-on, but he also said he had removed all scenery and traffic files, apart from the KC-10A's, so that doesn't seem likely in his case. Really weird.

OK, could we simplify the test please and ensure consistency?

Would users, especially P3Dv4.5 users with Hotfixes 2 or 3, install the aircraft.cfg file for your sim version that I posted today and go to Travis (KSUU) at 9 May 2021 at 18:56 UTC (Zulu). Does it load please?

Please also post your FS version number and whether you have Matrix installed.

John
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Jim »

Still weird here.

I did actually have MAIW_NA_AIRBASES & OBJECTS still enabled earlier, but have now completely disabled the Matrix add-on and still have a crash.

It takes a long time to undo a couple of years of add-ons :lol: I hope I can put everything back later!

I may take a break, as feel I'm at the point where I'll make more mistakes.

Oh, and a beer has been opened :wink:
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

I think that's part of the problem Jim - knowing what to disable in Matrix. I can't tell users that because i don't have or want Matrix.

I'm raising my glass of beer to yours as I write this, with thanks for your tests! They have actually been very useful.

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

Not having P3D means that I can't contribute anything concrete from experience.

The only thing that I can do is lookup on line the P3D SDK documentation and see what it says there. So using this here http://www.prepar3d.com/SDK/SimObject%2 ... 0Files.htm by scrolling down to look at the atc_parking codes section. The note there states :-
Refer to the example XML for the TaxiwayParking entry in the Compiling BGL document. The codes entered in the airlineCodes entry should match the text entered here. The ICAO codes do not have to be used, and can be as short as one character, as long as the text strings match, but for clarity use of the ICAO codes is recommended.
If mutliple parking codes are entered, separate them with commas.

Now these problems that are being discussed are getting into the realm of confusion due to 2 things being thought of as the issue and trying to alter both to find the fix. This is a recipe for disaster as any other Systems analyst will tell you. What you do is eliminate factors one by one until you find the cause.

So it seems prudent here to eliminate the atc_parking codes as an issue. The way to do this is to follow the SDK guide lines exactly.
So would everybody that has had an issue at one time or another please alter their lines to match the SDK i.e. :-
atc_parking_codes=KC10,6ARS,9ARS
No spaces and with commas.

Then test your packages again and report back as to whether you get crashes or not. This will remove this factor from the discussions. IF, and it only an if, it eliminates some users having difficulties then it would mean that at some point P3D has hardened its rules so that if they are not followed then crashes will occur rather than the old situation that the parms were just ignored.

It is likely that people that have crashes will still have crashes, but at least one potential cause will have been eliminated. If some people that had crashes no longer have crashes then it would seem to point to P3D rules being stiffened, either accidentally or on purpose.

To find a cause/solution you have to simplify the problem.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

Yes, that's what tests 1, 2 and 3 do Steve - they test the symptoms by adding one at a time. Only Jim has responded to that so far and with some very strange results.

The other way of testing is to ask users to install the new AFCADs that remove the inverted commas from the aircraft names and adds the commas to the parking codes. I have then asked everyone to Test Travis at the time of the first reported crash. That would meet the SDK standard and ensure consistency.

The problem there, so far, is that although 159 people have downloaded the FSX/P3D package, only 8 people have downloaded the new .cfg files.

I don't have the problem myself, but although I have an earlier version, I don't have P3Dv4.5 with Hot Fixes 2 and 3.

My P3Dv5.2 with Hot Fix 1 is fine, as is my FS9 and FSX, all with or without the commas at all the reported crash times.

There's only so much I can do to help people solve the problem, which is reported from only a handful of users and then predominantly those with Matrix, which is a potential cause of a crash at certain times with a defective aircraft not related to the KC-10A package. I don't have or want Matrix so I can't test that element myself.

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Jim »

Cheers Steve,
In my case I believe adding commas between the Travis parking codes fixes the problem.

Hi John,
The experiments were interesting and some results did dot make much sense, but then I have no idea how the sim reads the cfg file. i.e. what it does when it sees spaces instead of commas. (In comparison, a missing "/" in an addon.xml file can be devastating, though for an obvious reason :? )

Re. your last request, KSUU loads fine for me with your new cfg file at the time you gave. My hotfix2 version is 4.5.13.32097.

I did have one last go yesterday with (I believe) no other AI in the sim ex. the Travis+McGuire KC-10 flightplans and all add-on scenery turned off ex. your included sceneries for those air bases. However, with spaces instead of commas, I still had a crash at a known "bad time".

Thanks,
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

Thanks, Jim.
So that would seem to indicate a change behind the scenes at the later versions of P3D that mean that the format in at least that line must be followed as per SDK.

Early days though, we will see what others find.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by f4nutter »

as reported above the new (with commas) cfg fixed it for me :D
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

Well its not what I would a thread yet, but it appears to going in that direction. Thanks, Ray.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

I'm pretty sure I have boxed in the reason for the crashes in P3D.

Today, I uninstalled my P3Dv4.5.13.32097 and downloaded and installed P3Dv4.5.14.34698. That latest version of 4.5 includes the 2 hot fixes I think that a few people suspected, might be revealing the problem. It took 4 hours to do and test, but I can confirm that in a completely clean installation of 34698, the lack of comma separators in the parking codes does indeed cause a crash at Travis at the reported time. The quotes around the aircraft names caused no problem at all. To complete the exercise, with the separators added and the quotes removed, all worked fine over several tests.

P3Dv5.2 appears not to be bothered either way by comma separators in parking codes, or aircraft names in quotes. Neither is FS9, FSX and the version of P3Dv4.5 I had. I don't know why LM needed separators in the late versions of 4.5 but then appears to have reverted it in P3Dv5.

That's not to say that there is always the risk of a secondary cause with something rogue in Matrix, as Pete reported, but for now if I correct the uploaded files with the 10 Tanker and the aircraft.cfg SDK syntax fixes, posted above, I think all should now be fine with the packages.

Steve will kindly swap out the uploaded zips when I have done that tomorrow. In the meantime, my thanks to everyone who helped find the problem. I provide add-on packages for 4 sim versions, but it was really difficult to replicate the problem in a sim version I didn't have, until today that is.

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by f4nutter »

thank you for all the work you put into the hobby John.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

OK I have replaced both the FS9 and FSX/P3D packages with ones that include Johns mods that he has mentioned in this thread.

A little note here I think is in order to clear things up.
Every SDK from FS9 onwards specifies that parms for the atc_parking_codes parm should be no longer than 4 characters and multiple codes should be separated by a comma and no spaces e.g.
atc_parking_codes=6ARS,9ARS,KC10
If you stray from this published standard then you are open to errors occurring. I am talking specifically here to people, like myself, who make their own alterations to the .cfg file to fit their purposes.

Now, this is in contrast to afcads. Whether you use afcad2, AFX or ADE the parking codes there are obviously limited to 4 chars again but they must be separated by a space. A comma will be treated as a char so an afcad spot for the above example has to be :-
'6ARS 9ARS KC10' to meet the standard.

Whether P3D HF2 has started enforcing SDK standards or it is a random glitch only time will tell.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

Thanks for doing that Steve.

I copied the Travis parking codes from the MAIW Travis AFCAD to the KC-10A aircraft.cfg file without adding comma separators, thinking that I was ensuring consistency. No problem was ever encountered in FS9, FSX and in P3Dv5 in doing that. What's the point of writing conditions in an SDK that are not enforced?

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

That is a fair point, John.
I suppose to be accurate it has to be said that before HF2 if the standards weren't met it just ignored them. So no harm was done.
Why after all this time L-M are hardening them without publicising it is curious. This it what makes me think that it may not exactly be a deliberate move on their part.
In previous versions of FS it would read the first parm and ignore everything after the 4th character as there was no comma. It maybe that now it reads the whole line but can''t parse it as it doesn't meet the standard. Pure supposition here on my part.

The point I was making above was to all users/packagers. To avoid weird stuff like this it is best to stick to the SDK standards rather than assuming something will work as it always did in the past.
I wouldn't like to see somebody make personalized mods to their installations, come up against this issue, then post here that the package by person A doesn't work.

Just one of those useful bits of info that all should be aware of. If we all learn it now then no time will be wasted in the future on this issue.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

A bit of wishful thinking perhaps, Steve. If Microsoft had made it easy to navigate the plethora of data in the SDKs, wrote in a language that amateurs could understand and were more consistent with the syntaxes, we might have designers wall to wall here. We tend to work with what we know works for the sim versions we have until it doesn't. Then we learn from it, or find another hobby.

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

Maybe you are right, John. Just because I didn't find it difficult to navigate doesn't mean it would be the same for all.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by John Young »

The added difficulty is not knowing what you are looking for if the sim is accepting what's been designed and not objecting to anything. That's not just the aircraft.cfg file, but across the board - scenery, terrain, traffic, effects etc. How can the designer identify what might be non-compliant when the sim is behaving perfectly? I guess you could read the life out of the SDKs, but familiarity will wane over time.

Anyway, it's not a huge problem. The FS9, FSX and maybe the P3Dv4.5, SDKs should all be stable now. Apart from the comma separators, the other error I made was not to keep my P3Dv.5 up to date so that it could detect the problem. So long as I keep that and my P3Dv5.2 installation current, I should be able to spot any problems in the future quickly and isolate the cause. I'm also not going to make packages as complex as the KC-10A's again, but then I said that after the Typhoons.

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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Firebird »

I think you are right there. I can only really talk about the aircraft.cfg files here. There seems to be an effort to keep the parms the same or similar to the ones defined for FS9. Sure they have added some new categories or even added some extra possible parm values but they seem to keep them as close as possible,

I think that this is partly done for the reasons you say. This adds into my thoughts that what we found here is an accidental outcome of a change rather than a deliberate move. It doesn't make sense to me to make a change like that in a HF. That is more like something you would do for a version change.

I would categorize this experience as an interesting case rather than anything else, at this moment in time.

Of course the tester in me wonders wants to make sure of what we think is actually true and reproduce-able with other installs.
If somebody who experienced this with HF2 wants to try a test with their Typhoons, for example, copy their aircraft.cfg for safe keeping and amend a base of Tiffs, that have multiple parms, to remove the commas and have spaces separate them.
If we are correct then that will also cause a crash in HF2. If it doesn't then it means that the package hit upon something even more obscure.

Of course very few people want to mince around like this stuff once they find something that works.
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Re: JYAI KC-10A

Post by Jim »

I have a fear of my computer going down and having to rebuild stuff all over again (I used to work with 8-inch floppy disks and had to keep backups of backups of backups :roll: ), so decided to keep a record of how to put it back as easily as possible. Unfortunately, my record is some Google maps that have now grown way out of control, but I do have an airport scenery marked there that I'd binned as it crashed the sim.

My curiosity took me back there today and I found out that AI visitors were the cause. Turns out that my sim version at least, doesn't like model names like 74.100 and 74.200.

Woo-hoo! I can now fly to northern Siberia without Gazprom AI ruining my day :lol:

It's all good...
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