PMDG777X will not taxi after successful pushback

[Richard McDonald Woods]

P3Dv2.5 with latest hot fixes.

After successful pushback, the wing-walker and the tug move away, but when I start to taxi, the ground bumps are heard, the ground speed shows the taxi speed realistically, but there is no visual movement of the aircraft from either the cockpit or overhead views.

I am stumped as to the cause of this. Any ideas

[pete_auau]

Installed the correct version for your system being  fsx or  p3d

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Solved :lol:

Because I had planned not to re-install GSX until at least UGCX had been released, I still had the FSX version installed which was incompatible with my new P3D2.5 installation.

Solution - Uninstall the GSX for FSX and install GSX for P3D. As simple as that! But took me many hours of mulling to identify the problem.

Great relief :excl:

Pete - you knew all along

[virtuali]

Solution - Uninstall the GSX for FSX and install GSX for P3D. As simple as that! But took me many hours of mulling to identify the problem.

Two FSX and P3D installations are entirely separate so, your FSX installation didn't had any impact on P3D, unless you tried to install an older FSX-only version of GSX into P3D using the P3D Migration Tool, which wouldn't have worked anyway.

The correct solution was to install the latest version of GSX, which supports natively FSX and P3D 2.5, and install it twice, once inside the FSX folder and then into the P3D folder, with every kind of migration tool disabled.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Thanks, Umberto

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Hi Umberto,

Sorry to say that I still have the taxiing problem after testing as many alternatives as I can

Could you give me some guidance in solving my problem, please?

I have tried many combinations of software to no effect. At present the problem exists on my P3D v2,5 PC with no antivirus software, no firewalls, no ASNext, no vPilot and no EZCA, and therefore I feel that my problem lies with the interface between P3D and GSX.

I attach some files which may help you.

Many thanks in advance,
Regards, Richard

[virtuali]

Sorry to say that I still have the taxiing problem after testing as many alternatives as I can

As you can probably see from the forum, nobody ever reported this problem so far.

If I understand the issue correctly, it seems the airplane hasn't been really "released" from its frozen state after the pushback tractor goes away, so you cannot taxi. Is that correct ?

I have tried many combinations of software to no effect. At present the problem exists on my P3D v2,5 PC with no antivirus software, no firewalls, no ASNext, no vPilot and no EZCA, and therefore I feel that my problem lies with the interface between P3D and GSX.

With "no ASNext", that seems to indicate you normally use this product. Are you SURE this is really disabled. This addon is known to cause issues because it sends so many commands to Simconnect that the communication channel becomes too crowded that other addons don't get a chance to communicate with the sim, so it's possible that commands will get lost or delayed.

This was confirmed by an user that reported delays in the communication of our products when using ASNext, which were immediately solved by switching to Opus.

I attach some files which may help you.

None of these files would be of any help, since the problem is not GSX, but something else which seems to prevent the correct communication between GSX and the simulator. GSX doesn't obviously use anything out of standard, and it communicates with P3D using Simconnect.

What GSX is trying to do, is to send the a standard Simconnect command to freeze the airplane at the beginning of the pushback, and an unfreeze command at the end.

The first obvious question: does it happen with any airplane ? And, how's your frame rate ? And, are the GSX vehicles moving smoothly or not ?

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Hi Umberto,
Yes, you are correct. The GSX pushback appears to go very smoothly. The tractor goes away until it disappears. Then, when I release the brakes, the ground speed indicator rises, and the ground rumbling sounds of movement are played, but the aircraft does not move through the scenery. So it does seem that the aircraft is not released from its frozen state.

Yes, I do normally use ASNext. In fact I have tried all combinations of my software that I can imagine using. With the problem currently, I am only using P3D v2.5, PMDG777X and GSX. So your question about SimConnect traffic overload cannot occur because I am not starting it. Over the last ~20 pushbacks the only consistent factor has been of the PMDG777X and GSX.

Even on my middle-aged hardware, I am achieving 25-30 fps and an unused VAS of around 1mb at EGLL. P3D is setup to use absolutely minimum graphical resources, and FSUIPC is used only for displaying the VAS measurement.

I have only the single PMDG777X software installed, so cannot try other aircraft. The 'free' aircraft of P3D v2 obviously do not use GSX, and they take off from their runways quite successfully.

Regards, Richard

[virtuali]

The 'free' aircraft of P3D v2 obviously do not use GSX, and they take off from their runways quite successfully.

Try the default Constellation, by placing the attached file in its own folder under Simobjects\Airplanes\JF_L049 before starting P3D.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

How the hell do you start the bird?
I have successfully pushed back but am now lost in all of this antiquity. And I can't remember how I stopped the engines in the first place.

[virtuali]

I guess you used the default CTRL+Shift+F1 keys to shut off the fuel valves to turn if off, so you must use the opposite command, CTRL+Shift+F4 to turn them back on, then press CTRL+E to automatically start the engine.

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Hi Umberto,
Sorry for the delay in replying. I had to update my Settings - Controls and then save them, so that I could restore to the P3D defaults to which you were referring.
The Constellation taxis without problems!

[Richard McDonald Woods]

Another day of utter frustration as I am still apparently the only one with this problem!

I have spend a lot of time today trying the taxi at EGLL (various gates) and OMDB (various gates) but still no movement against the scenery. I am not using either ASNext or vPilot during these tests, so no extra load on SimConnect.

Because the Constellation taxis correctly and there is nothing apparently wrong with the sceneries that I use (from a variety of developers), it appears that the problem lies between GSX unfreezing the PMDG777X specifically, at the completion of pushback when the tug and wing walker depart.

Do you have any further ideas on how this may be solved?

[virtuali]

Because the Constellation taxis correctly and there is nothing apparently wrong with the sceneries that I use (from a variety of developers), it appears that the problem lies between GSX unfreezing the PMDG777X specifically, at the completion of pushback when the tug and wing walker depart.

Do you have any further ideas on how this may be solved?

The issue is, nobody ever reported it before. Having removed ANext doesn't automatically exclude all possible causes of overload. In fact, the overload might well be caused by the PMDG 777, which is one of the heaviest FSX addons.

However, without anybody else reporting it, it's just a wild guess.

GSX, in this case, doesn't make any difference or assumptions on the airplane type, the freeze command is a 100% standard command using a 100% standard variable sent in a 100% standard way (through Simconnect), so any FSX airplane out there will respond to it.

The ONLY exception is the Majestic Q400, which DOES respond to a freeze command, but its own internal simulation doesn't fully match it, so we added a specific variable so that developers could know if GSX is pushing. But this is a very specific issue due to the fact the Majestic uses a non-standard flight modeling, so it doesn't always behave like a normal FSX airplane.

But this is not the case for the PMDG 777, which works straight away like any other FSX airplane in this regard.