Author Topic: Weekly trouble with GSX...  (Read 1106 times)

FSPilot96

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Weekly trouble with GSX...
« on: February 20, 2022, 10:46:08 am »
Hello dear GSX Community,

I have been the owner of the addons GSX and GSX-2 for a very very long time, I was satisfied until half a year ago, and for 6 months I have had at least 1 x crash every week, which is demonstrably due to GSX.

I don't want to attack the developers here and devalue their work, I know that certain things take time, but I think that GSX, what we have right now is really outdated...

What bothers me about GSX currently is that either Coutl or Sode smears or everything has to be readjusted after updates...
When an update (from GSX) is due, the P3D sometimes goes flute, and without the updates you can't get GSX started. And lately, unfortunately, the bugs are piling up, either the GSX recognizes the gates incorrectly (sometimes it does not recognize itself at all), or does not recognize that there is a gate there, although there is a jetway there... (and to this day I don't know how to change that, although I've watched a lot of videos, or read through the posts here) but you just don't get smart from it, because what you have to set is just cumbersome....

Personally, I think that despite the updates, it always looks the same as it did a few years ago...
Today you can be pushed by MSFS in Hamburg or Munich on Yellow, Blue Line, and with GSX you have to set so much again so that this is also possible... It just bothers...
The boarding sounds can't be deleted either, they're really cruel... (I'm constantly trying to DELETE the folders, but with each update you will be reinstalled 1)
If you want to set something, it takes a very long time for it to work, and if you shoot yourself GSX, you usually have to run the updater again....
My question here would also be how GSX imagines the future... Is there anything else being done for P3Dv4? Or will we focus only on MSFS for the time being... At some point I have to look for a new program (which is very reluctant...), but I don't feel like looking for the error every time and then reading through 1000 forums...
I would ask you how you feel about this. Maybe we can collect some ideas for the developers here, or just discuss, maybe I'm wrong.

Ps: Since the last update, the passengers spin with me, like right now in Malta... The unloading vehicles also no longer drive properly...

Best regards,

virtuali

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Re: Weekly trouble with GSX...
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2022, 11:48:55 am »
I have been the owner of the addons GSX and GSX-2 for a very very long time, I was satisfied until half a year ago, and for 6 months I have had at least 1 x crash every week, which is demonstrably due to GSX.

No, you haven't, as explained so many times by now, GSX CANNOT CRASH THE SIM. It's running under an external .exe and, by definition, an external .exe CANNOT crash the sim, this is not really opened to debate.

You can be easily mislead "GSX crashed the sim", but it's usually the other way around. The sim crashed for another reason, Couatl *will* crash because the sim cut the communication with it abruptly, you'll see Couatl.exe crashed in the Event viewer, so you assume it caused the crash, when it was in fact suffering from it.

Another common cause for a crash, is a known BUG in the simulator ( P3D5 ) which hasn't been COMPLETELY solved yet, related to the Simconnect menu sub-system.

LM is having an hard time fixing this entirely, with P3D V5 they tried to move away from the legacy Scaleform ( which derived from Flash ) and move to a more modern Html5 system, which had lots of stability issues, so with 5.2 they went back to Scaleform. In 5.3 they were back to Html5, but it wasn't until HF2 that *most* ( NOT ALL! ) stability issues has been solved.

The still not 100% stable menu is one of the most common cases of the sim crashing and, because YOU open the menu to call GSX, you are mislead again thinking "GSX caused a crash", when in fact the sim menu that still has issues. LM is still looking into it, they even recently asked for a copy of GSX to try, so we can only hope it will finally fixed.

In P3D4, the menu uses Scaleform, which is a legacy technology derived by Flash, later acquired by Autodesk to do nothing with it so, it's basically dead, that's why LM tried to move away for it, and it ALSO has its own stability issues, like crashes with VCRUNTIME.dll, etc. Since everything related to Flash has been basically killed by the industry, it's possible an OS update might cause the issues getting worse over the years and while I understand you can be easily mislead thinking "It's a GSX bug, I opened the menu and the sim crashed", it's not something we can do much about it.

Hint: the menu system in FSX is made in a completely different way ( it's an UI component derived from Xbox ), and NOBODY ever complained about FSX crashing or freezing after opening the GSX menu. And that's on a 32 bit sim that is inherently more at risk of crash, because of the limited memory. But the only thing that can cause a crash in the sim and mislead users of a GSX bug, it's way more stable in FSX.


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I don't want to attack the developers here and devalue their work, I know that certain things take time, but I think that GSX, what we have right now is really outdated...

No, it's not. It's the opposite of it: it's constantly UP-dated.


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What bothers me about GSX currently is that either Coutl or Sode smears or everything has to be readjusted after updates...

That's precisely the reason because it IS constantly updated with new features. P3D5, for example, has a different .BGL format than P3D V4, and of course MSFS has a different one too, each time a new sim come out, we need to adapt to the new features. Both P3D5 and MSFS allows for sloped airports, this has a big impact on the way vehicles move so, again, they require lots of changes at the basic level.

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When an update (from GSX) is due, the P3D sometimes goes flute, and without the updates you can't get GSX started.

That's mainly because the antivirus/firewall are so bugged that, something "new" is inherently untrusted, even with digitally signed TWICE.


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And lately, unfortunately, the bugs are piling up

No, they aren't. We are finding and removing old bugs which nobody seems to have noticed in fact.

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either the GSX recognizes the gates incorrectly (sometimes it does not recognize itself at all), or does not recognize that there is a gate there, although there is a jetway there...

That's always because there's some conflict between sceneries, so GSX is not reading the correct AFCAD. It's easy enough to check this.


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and to this day I don't know how to change that, although I've watched a lot of videos, or read through the posts here) but you just don't get smart from it, because what you have to set is just cumbersome....

On the contrary, it's incredibly easy. Just look the name of the AFCAD used by GSX. If it's not the one coming from the scenery, it's a conflicting one. If you can, remove it, if it's needed, just be sure the scenery you are using is on an higher levey on the Scenery Library. With P3D4/5 you would likely need to use Lorby's scenery organizer, since it's not as easy as if was in FSX to control layering.

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Personally, I think that despite the updates, it always looks the same as it did a few years ago...

I don't know what do you mean with "few" years ago. If you are referring to visual, the latest VISUAL update was made in mid-2019, when MOST ( but not all ) objects were converted to PBR, and this was MASSIVE and FREE update.

Not all objects have being converted to PBR, most notably passengers, because they must be as light as possible ( PBR object takes 3x texture memory, hence VRAM, making it less stable under P3D ).

We are of course redoing ALL the objects for MSFS, and it's likely lots of this work will go back to P3D as well, provided the sim will finally sort out all the remaining stability issues with crashes due to DX12 memory handling, which still not entirely fixed.


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Today you can be pushed by MSFS in Hamburg or Munich on Yellow, Blue Line, and with GSX you have to set so much again so that this is also possible... It just bothers...

I don't know what you are trying to say here but, the only thing you can say about MSFS Pushback is exactly HOW FAR BEHIND is compared to GSX in P3D.


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The boarding sounds can't be deleted either, they're really cruel... (I'm constantly trying to DELETE the folders, but with each update you will be reinstalled 1)

That's because you don't know about the DONTOUCH file, which prevents a folder to be updated. We don't advertise it much, because we still think it's WRONG wanting to prevent something to be updated and lots of "bugs" you seem to complain about would become worse if we can't even sure users have the correct version of the files.


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If you want to set something, it takes a very long time for it to work

I don't know what do you  mean with "something". An airport customization ? Are you trying to say it takes a long time to create an airport customization, which is usually needed because the scenery has a bad AFCAD ? Yes, of course, it would be best if all AFCAD out there would made properly, with proper vehicle paths, proper vehicle parking spots placed in realistic positions so vehicles would have an easy time reaching the airplane, as it is in real life but, there's not much we can do, other than ALLOWING YOU to do that. And yet, you complain it takes "too much time"...

Would you rather have NO customization options ?

An easy example, the recent passenger waypoints. Sure, it takes time to add them to an airport but, how could be made any differently ? And users are ASKING to be created in the 3rd dimension too, so passengers will be able to go inside terminal interiors and climb stairs. This will obviously make the customization even MORE time consuming: the waypoint system we have for passengers is ALREADY in 3D, passengers are already able to climb/descend, we intentionally limited to the 2D plane because we assumed most user would find it too time consuming. Yet, it was the first thing that has been suggested...

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, and if you shoot yourself GSX, you usually have to run the updater again....

Please clarify what to you mean "If you shoot yourself GSX", and we'll discuss IF you need to "run the update again".

The need to run the update often is normal for the FIRST DAYS after a major release, and this one had more changes that it LOOKS, because it's the first release that already contains lots of changes due to the need to support both P3D and MSFS at the same time so, we expected to have some issues initially but, of course, when users make PROPER BUG REPORT, each and every bug is always fixed, when a proper report with proper reproduction step is made, so a bug can be confirmed.

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My question here would also be how GSX imagines the future... Is there anything else being done for P3Dv4? Or will we focus only on MSFS for the time being...

There's still lots to be done for P3D. It's really bizarre you are asking this, as if you feared we might sometime "abandon" P3D, which we don't have any plans for now. Facts we have been doing only MSFS AIRPORTS in the past year, doesn't have any effect to GSX in P3D.

Again, really strange you are asking this SO SOON after a MAJOR free update for P3D!


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At some point I have to look for a new program (which is very reluctant...), but I don't feel like looking for the error every time and then reading through 1000 forums...

No need to "reading to 1000 forums", when the one and only place were you can get ACCURATE info on GSX it's here. So, it's only one forum.

This is your 2nd post ever here. Your other post was months ago, asking how to fix a problem with a 3rd party scenery that seemed to have issues even from the SODE menu itself, so it clearly wasn't anything that had anything to do with GSX, yet you have been replied to anyway, asking for further details, but you never followed it up.

If you took more time trying to UNDERSTAND how things really works ( your other post is exemplary of this ), maybe you'll change your view about that the supposed "GSX bugs" are not really bugs, but sometimes are caused by external factors, in your first post, if even SODE didn't see the correct gates, it clearly had nothing to do with GSX, but the scenery had issues with its own AFCAD or you had another AFCAD in conflict, so that's the "real" cause, not a GSX bug, but a scenery bug or a conflict that, unsurprisingly, affect BOTH GSX and SODE.


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Ps: Since the last update, the passengers spin with me, like right now in Malta...

They surely don't and nobody else reported this. Of course, if you made a proper report, with proper reproduction steps, we might have a chance to look at it.


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The unloading vehicles also no longer drive properly...

The sentence doesn't mean anything without some clarification.
« Last Edit: February 20, 2022, 12:05:20 pm by virtuali »