Couatl engine hasn't started - How to report a problem

[Escriba]

Hello

With me is not always happen this, very few times it works.
I attached my file

[wilkart]

GSX hasn´t started .

I also used the SPAD.neXt to manager my radios. and appears that exist sometimes conflict between them . Thank you

[sidfadc]

I posted my log file on page 17.  Any chance I can get some help.  Since purchasing this a week or so ago I would say 80% of the time Couatl.exe doesn’t run, even killing it in task manager and running it from desktop doesn’t help.  I can see the process in my task manager.  Exe.xml has the correct entry pointing to the correct path.  Like I say couatl.exe does start with the sim but when I hit the GSX button in the sim it says it’s not running.  Incredibly frustrating.

[AfflictedSim]

Heres another time, loaded up a new airport with no previous spawn before and no custom GSX profile. I Started GSX and the error came up, waited 10 minutes, and no cache had been generated yet. Yet, when looking in the windows pop-up bar, couatl said it had 'successfully generated airport cache'.

[sidfadc]

Right I've posted my log on page 17 but after some extensive eyeballing of what's going on this is what I think is happening

Problem statement
9 times out of 10 when I load up at the Gate and try to open GSX from the menu I get the "couatl script engine is not running/started"

So here is what I'm observing.....
Once loaded at the gate If I look in task manager I don't see couatl.exe - I've seen the other thread about exe.xml not firing up processes but this doesn't seem to be the issue on my system because both the Fenix and FSUIPC are triggered by exe.xml and these load just fine?

Anyway I just run couatl.exe from the desktop icon provided by the GSX install and lo and behold I see it running as a process in task manager

In the sim I click the GSX button again, same error "couatl script engine is not running/started"

At this point if I look in the taskbar I can see the couatl icon but when I hover over it, it just says "couatl sys tray" - at this point trying to launch GSX is futile with error as above.

Soooo further investigation shows when I kick start coualt.exe manually this triggers the creation of the log file couatl.log
C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Roaming\virtuali

However its very small in content and implies GSX is loading (not loaded).  Now this is the interesting bit, if I simply wait after about 5-10 mins the icon in the sys tray will say "airport regeneration complete" or something like that.  If I check the log file again its absolutely massive and appears to have scanned all my airport scenery paths amongst other things.

At this point GSX works!

OK great....kind of.  The annoying thing is when I land at my destination and fire up GSX via CTRL-ALT-F12 I see the GSX menu but the spinning circle of doom with a "GSX is loading please wait" - it never does.  The only way I can get GSX at destination is to kill the process, restart and wait 5 mins.  Not ideal on vatsim after just vacating the runway!

So I'm kind of clueless as to what the solution might be.

I have GSX installed on my C drive which is an SSD - which is only 120GB and I typically only have the OS installed here.
My Sim is installed on a D drive (the old spinney fashion) - is this a factor?

I must add I've seen comments about the fact if you remove/add scenery this will always trigger cache regeneration (which I admit I do a lot because there are always updates from devs particularly flightsim.to and I like to keep things up to date) but I've also seen comments saying the regeneration should take seconds not 5-10 mins?

I have about 250 airports freeware/pay - including the premium deluxe airports.  Does the regeneration depend on amount of additional scenery in \Community folder??

Oh and one more thing, I have uninstalled/reinstalled to trouble shoot and I have made a habit of running the Offline installer at the end of the process.

Either way I'll be honest I spent every day since I bought GSX about 2 weeks ago trying to trouble shoot and this is best way I can describe my issues but I'm no further on.

I would appreciate some help and support.

[virtuali]

However its very small in content and implies GSX is loading (not loaded).  Now this is the interesting bit, if I simply wait after about 5-10 mins the icon in the sys tray will say "airport regeneration complete" or something like that.  If I check the log file again its absolutely massive and appears to have scanned all my airport scenery paths amongst other things.

At this point GSX works!

That's concludes the issue. GSX ALWAYS WORKED, it just it took way longer than expected to create the airport cache.

OK great....kind of.  The annoying thing is when I land at my destination and fire up GSX via CTRL-ALT-F12 I see the GSX menu but the spinning circle of doom with a "GSX is loading please wait" - it never does.  The only way I can get GSX at destination is to kill the process, restart and wait 5 mins.  Not ideal on vatsim after just vacating the runway!

Here, instead, is not normal you should wait again, since the airport cache should be remade each time, but only when something in the configuration of sceneries changes, like if areas are added/removed/disabled/enabled.

I have GSX installed on my C drive which is an SSD - which is only 120GB and I typically only have the OS installed here. My Sim is installed on a D drive (the old spinney fashion) - is this a factor?

Well, of course it is! By installing the sim in a mechanical drive, you have hampered *everything* in the sim that requires disk access. And since everything in the sim basically access the disk, your MSFS install is really crippled by using a mechanical drive.

Just to give some numbers, a good mechanical drive has a transfer rate ranging from 100-150 MB/Sec, a SATA SSD is around 500-600MB/sec, and NVME drives are at least 2000-MB/sec, with the latest ones reaching 5000MB/sec easily.

And it's not just the transfer rate, the seek time is also massively different, from about 9-12 msec on a mechanical drive to 0.08/0.12 msecs on SSDs, and this matters a lot when, instead of large files ( where transfer rate is important ), we are dealing with lots of smaller files.

I have about 250 airports freeware/pay - including the premium deluxe airports.  Does the regeneration depend on amount of additional scenery in \Community folder??

Sure it does.

Either way I'll be honest I spent every day since I bought GSX about 2 weeks ago trying to trouble shoot and this is best way I can describe my issues but I'm no further on.

Your last report seems to indicate GSX never had any issues to begin with, it was just hampered by your slow hardware.

HOWEVER, this won't be an issue anymore very soon, because when we'll release the update to use the new Navdata API that came with SU10, and will allow us to get the airport data directly from Simconnnect, not only we'll be able to use Marketplace encrypted airports but, the Airport Cache will be gone!, no need to have one, if the simulator can just tell us where the parking/taxiways/runways are.

It shouldn't take too long, we already have a version working in test right now, we are just working around the SDK limitations to find Jetways, since they are missing entirely from the new API, so we need workarounds to identify them.

[sidfadc]

Thanks for your reply but I don't think it's fair or accurate to say because I have the sim on a HDD I have "crippled my system".  My system works just fine thank you and not once has the sim been hindered by being installed on a mechanical drive with every addon freeware or payware I use. 

I think it's more accurate to say your design choice has led to a very slow process on a mechanical drive highlighted by the fact you are soon to release a new version to bypass this issue altogether (in conjunction with new functionality from Asobo).  I would also like to ask where on your support documentation or FAQs does it say IF you use a mechanical drive these problems are expected because I can't see it?  Maybe I missed this. 

This thread alone is 18 pages long......I wonder how many other people are reporting "couatl is not running" when in fact it is but because they have "crippled their system" with a HDD it takes forever to actually do anything.  Maybe a sticky is in order??

[virtuali]

Thanks for your reply but I don't think it's fair or accurate to say because I have the sim on a HDD I have "crippled my system".  My system works just fine thank you and not once has the sim been hindered by being installed on a mechanical drive with every addon freeware or payware I use. 

Yes, you have, and you system is not really "working fine", you only happened to notice now but, if you keep installing stuff, you eventually realize how much it was underperforming, as soon you'll upgrade to a proper SSD.

Which I'm sure you'll have to, eventually, if only because placing the MSFS Community folder there, with hundreds of thousands of files causing an insane number of seeks ( =mechanical movements ), will only make it reach its (already shorter) end of life faster that it would have been with a more standard usage type.

I think it's more accurate to say your design choice has led to a very slow process on a mechanical drive highlighted by the fact you are soon to release a new version to bypass this issue altogether (in conjunction with new functionality from Asobo).

Having to maintain an airport cache is not a design "choice". It was the only way to read the airport data so, it's not as we had any choice.

Do you think it's "slow" now, imagine how slow it would have been if we had to re-scan all your airport files each time you went into an airport! That's why it's called an airport "cache": to speed up something.

I would also like to ask where on your support documentation or FAQs does it say IF you use a mechanical drive these problems are expected because I can't see it?  Maybe I missed this. 

It's not as if we "invented" this method now: it work and will still work perfectly fine with FSX and P3D and nobody with a mechanical drive ever came here complaining we should have warned him about the cache regeneration time, and I'm fairly sure there are way MORE FSX users ( considering GSX came out in 2012! ) with mechanical drives than MSFS users.

This thread alone is 18 pages long......I wonder how many other people are reporting "couatl is not running" when in fact it is but because they have "crippled their system" with a HDD it takes forever to actually do anything.  Maybe a sticky is in order??

The thread is 18 pages because users only see the effects, not the cause, so many different issues are mix-up here that are not related to that.

But again, we'll release the update that will work with the new Navdata API soon enough, maybe we could even do a public Beta during this weekend so, it's not only not worth discussing it anymore, it's not even worth investing time in a new Sticky thread.

[seawing]

Hi!

I am now struggeling for weeks with this issue and I am getting desperate ...

From my point of view GSX is looking for a directory K:\\Addons\\Packages/MSFS/fsdreamteam-gsx-pro/html_ui/InGamePanels/FSDT_GSX_Panel/menu

However, the file is installed in K:\Addons\Packages\fsdreamteam-gsx-pro\html_ui\InGamePanels\FSDT_GSX_Panel\menu
But having un-installed and re-installed several times, it never lead to any change. Even with the offline installer running last.

Seawing

[Moridin]

I just loaded into EFRO payware with the PMDG 737-800 and GSX was just giving me a spinner. Couatl was started in Task Bar. Had to restart couatl like 6-7 times for it to start working.

This happens to me on every flight since the last update. It was fine on the older builds.

[virtuali]

I just loaded into EFRO payware with the PMDG 737-800 and GSX was just giving me a spinner. Couatl was started in Task Bar. Had to restart couatl like 6-7 times for it to start working.

As explained so many times, it's possible it was regenerating the airport cache for some reason and, during that time, you can't use the menu. You don't have to restarting it 6-7 times, it's just that maybe, in one of these tries, you wait longer, long enough to let it finish loading the cache.

This happens to me on every flight since the last update. It was fine on the older builds.

Nothing in the latest update can possibly have changed anything the way that menu works. But in the next major update, we'll have the ability to remove the airport cache altogether, so the startup time will be way faster and there wouldn't be any issues associated with it.

[enbafa]

I had the same problem with not starting the couatl engine when touching the GSX icon in the simulator. I have installed the log file as recommended by FSDT. The examination shows wrong or double links for several airports installed outside the community folder. After correcting the links GSX now starts and functions normally.

Enrico

[Moridin]

So when I restart couatl via the Restart option from the Task Bar icon, after a few seconds it shows the "Airport cache" message when I mouse over it. But since the last update, after a restart, it will not display this and waiting even 10 mins doesn't help. Looks like it just hangs. In MSFS I just get a spinner and nothing else.

[virtuali]

So when I restart couatl via the Restart option from the Task Bar icon, after a few seconds it shows the "Airport cache" message when I mouse over it.

The cache regeneration is made in another thread so, it's not always guaranteed it's really finished when the Tooltip is updated.

But since the last update, after a restart, it will not display this and waiting even 10 mins doesn't help. Looks like it just hangs. In MSFS I just get a spinner and nothing else.

I'm sorry, but I cannot reproduce it. But, since we'll release the update that won't even use the Airport cache anymore very soon, it's not worth investigating issues related to it anymore.

[SWAPilot]

KLAS FlyTampa