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North-East Canada CTDs

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MatthiasKNU:
Hi guys, Hi Umberto!

Maybe there is already a topic here regarding this issue, but I could not find it.

I - and many, many others - have CTDs in the area between Greenland, Newfoundland and Canada. The CTDs are happening on every flight over this area.
It is reproducable, it is happening with all kind of aircraft. I already tried really a lot, without FSUIPC, with Default Aircraft, with and without scenery addons, with and without Weather Addons...

I am having these CTDs for years, but now I have found the cause.
It MUST have to do with the Addon Manager or the couatl.exe.
I know that you have often written that the couatl.exe itself can't crash the sim. I believe that.

The fact is, without the couatl.exe running no CTDs are happening. If now the couatl.exe, the addon manager or something complety different is causing these CTDs, I don't know.
I've read that it might be related to SimConnect. If so, is there any change to get rid of these CTDs?

I tried it more than 10 times, and without the couatl.exe I could always end my flight.

But now I would like to fly to LAX, YVR, IAH, CLT, JFK (which are airports I really don't want to miss!) and so on, but... without the couatl.exe running, these airports are not running, too.

Now I have a few questions:
- Are you already aware of this problem in the northeast of Canada?
- Is there any possibility to run the FSDT airports without the couatl.exe? (I am quite sure it is not, because of the activation, which is stored in the addon manager, but asking costs nothing  ;D; If it should not be public also gladly by PN!)
- Is it in your power to avoid this CTD?
- If the last two questions are answered with no: Do you have any advice for me for flying from Europe to the FSDT-Airports in the USA/Canada?

Thank you very, very much in advance!

Kind regards

Matthias

virtuali:
This issue has already been discussed several other threads and yes, I can only repeat and confirm Couatl, by itself, CANNOT CRASH THE SIM. This is really not something opened to any discussion.

However, it's still possible that an operation started by it, can cause SOMETHING ELSE in the sim to crash and, since all previous reports seems to indicate some place in eastern Canada, I think the only possible cause of this, is some issue with a strange airport NAME in that area.

When you are flying in an area, GSX/Couatl are not doing anything, except asking the sim, in the background, a list of airports close to you. This is started from GSX, which sends a request to the Addon Manager, which in turn sends the same request to the sim, since in order to do this, we interface with the built-in functions of the GPS, since through Simconnect we cannot get everything we require.

So, technically, is the Addon Manager (which is a .DLL), which "caused" the sim to crash but, of course, it's doing it following a request from GSX (which runs under Couatl), so you are easily mislead it's Couatl which is crashing the sim, something it really cannot do, since it's an .EXE, so it has no access whatsoever to the sim.

Now, we arrive to the next issue, if it's really an Addon Manager fault, or is something even more internal to the sim, which might crash BY ITSELF, just because something is asking for an airport which has a wrong/unusual/corrupted name in that area. If I could check the area precisely, it would be very easy to check if the crash it's really an Addon Manager fault, or it's just the sim which is crashing when asked about the airport, so it could happen with every other addon that ask for nearby airports in the same way, for example with its gauges, if they interface with the default GPS in the same way.


That's why, whenever someone reported this issue, I always asked for the EXACT location, but so far, nobody has ever able to supply anything more precise than a generic "somewhere in the north-eastern Canada" so, please, if you want to have a chance to contribute to the eventual solution of this issue, try to get the exact Lat/Lon coordinates of the location that cause this crash. Even if it's a bug of the sim default airport data, maybe we can find a way to defend from it.


--- Quote ---- Is there any possibility to run the FSDT airports without the couatl.exe? (I am quite sure it is not, because of the activation, which is stored in the addon manager, but asking costs nothing
--- End quote ---

This has been explained so many times:

we don't use Couatl JUST for the activation, that's only maybe 1% of its features. Our sceneries are not just sceneries, they are Python SCRIPTS, which require an interpreter to run, which is obviously Couatl, which allow us to do things nobody else can do (see our new O'Hare preview to get some idea), without taking ANY processing power from the sim, since Couatl runs externally to it, so it can use whatever spare free CPU cycles you have in one of your multi-core processors, which would be the case if we tried to do a scenery-helping .DLL (which slows down the main thread), like other developers did. And the *WHOLE* GSX runs entirely inside Couatl.

MatthiasKNU:
Hi Umberto, thank you very much for clarifying.

That sounds reasonable, that it's because of a faulty airport name.

I am tracking my flights, so I CAN provide exact coordinates of some CTDs.

#1: N58°42.69' W56°55.10
#2: N60°22.60' W59°48.95'
#3: N54°35.01' W52°50.98'
#4: N58°2.20' W55°23.83'

I hope this information helps to find the issue!

If there is any more information you could need to find the problem, just let me know!

virtuali:
Sorry for a bit late reply, but I finally found some time to test your report and, I'm afraid I'm a bit clueless. I went to each of your locations, and there was no crash I could reproduce.

Also, most of them were far from any airport, except one which was fairly close to Nain airport ( CYDP ), but I tried landing there too, and there were no issues at all.

I think there must be something related to issues with the navaids or airport database, possibly coming with some 3rd party addon I don't have, perhaps a corrupted .BGL or containing invalid data.

Do you have any addons that might have updated the airports or the navaids in that area ?

MatthiasKNU:
Not problem, thank you very much for testing!

I have no addons in this area. None. The next addon would be BIKF or CYUL/KBOS.
Even with the default P3D, without any addons except GSX these CTDs occur.
To be honest, I am quite clueless, too.

I really tried a lot to find the cause of these CTDs

But you are right, when "jumping" to these locations, it works. But when flying from Europe to America, then it crashes.
Also when flying from the US to Europe  these CTDs do not occur or do not occur as often.

By the way, I've read your post at AVSIM, just an idea:
The CTDs may be caused due to the query of the next airports/navaids in this area.
Is it maybe possible, to just try a GSX version without this functionality? (As far as I know the feature to pre-select an airport came just 2 years ago (or so).)

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