Author Topic: Long lasting installation  (Read 2154 times)

blaunarwal

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Long lasting installation
« on: February 20, 2022, 04:00:59 pm »
When ever I install any FSDT product, the installer runs quickly through file distribution and then starts Prepar3D.exe and then it takes 30 minutes or more to create an entry in Prepar3D v5 Add-ons. I have a lot of simobjects and sceneries and it takes long to start the sim. I know, it is Lockheed Martins Prepar3D.exe that is so slow but why do you use it to add a scenery? Couldn't it be done just by copying the files to Prepar3D v5 Add-ons folder. Others can do this too. While I write this installation is still running and running ...

https://i.imgur.com/9XNLZTa.jpg

I just wanted to reinstall KMEM because I had canyons next to the taxi- and runways. That shouldn't take an hour but it does on my system. Defender is off and now finally the live updater is running.

Dan
« Last Edit: February 20, 2022, 07:33:51 pm by virtuali »

virtuali

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Re: Long lasting installation
« Reply #1 on: February 20, 2022, 07:58:55 pm »
When ever I install any FSDT product, the installer runs quickly through file distribution and then starts Prepar3D.exe and then it takes 30 minutes or more to create an entry in Prepar3D v5 Add-ons.

The part you found to be slow, is the ONLY part of the installer which is not running ANY FSDT code...

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I have a lot of simobjects and sceneries and it takes long to start the sim. I know, it is Lockheed Martins Prepar3D.exe that is so slow

Ok, so at least you know the problem is your Prepar3d starting too slowly.

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but why do you use it to add a scenery?

Because it's easiest and most reliable way to install a scenery.

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Couldn't it be done just by copying the files to Prepar3D v5 Add-ons folder.

Yes, by placing the add-on.xml in the Documents\ Prepar3D v5 Add-ons folders it will be discovered, but it won't be automatically activated. That means an extra step for you and, you don't have any idea how many users would just reply the wrong answer ( like the Trust question in FSX ), and called support asking why the addon they just installed didn't work, when it was just because they didn't noticed or didn't reply Yes to the activation question in P3D.

With that last step, that on a normal system doesn't take very long ( "30 minutes or more" is really unheard of, it's more like 20 seconds here, have you tried adding the whole P3D folder to the antivirus Exclusions ? ), we are using an OFFICIAL LM function that will save that extra step so, instead of seeing the question, the scenery will be already active.

That's not something we "made up", it's a proper function of the Prepar3d.exe that is there for that reason, so we use it.

If we didn't use it, and we wanted to achieve the same result, we might have tried to edit the add-on.cfg file directly, but we'd end up in the other points of failures, like user hand-editing the file, or other add-ons writing to that file. We have seen this FAR too many times in FSX ( in which those features are not available ), and you don't have any idea how many time it costed to OUR support, because users assumed "GSX didn't work", only to discover that a faulty installer of ANOTHER ADD-ON has corrupted the DLL.XML or the EXE.XML file. The favorite source of corruption caused by other bugged installers is the silent change of encoding from ANSI to UTF-8 coupled with "forgetting" to also change the XML header declaration, creating an illegal XML file that is basically lying about itself.

This was one of the topmost point of failures in FSX, and we didn't do anything wrong, it was caused by other installers that corrupted the file, and users making it worse by further corrupting it trying to fix it and THEN, finally, asking for support to US, to fix something caused by other defective installers.

That was FSX.

This is P3D, and thankfully, it has basically removed any requirement to TOUCH the simulator own configuration file. FINALLY! Now, nobody can blame anybody if the simulator own configuration files because corrupted or, at least, if someone is doing it, he might be put to shame because, in P3D, there's no need to do that anymore, and the Command-Line functions, which in your case are really abnormally slow, is the final step to have the installation completely automatic, WITHOUT touching ANY of the simulator own .cfg file, the add-ons-cfg in this case.

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Others can do this too.

I don't know what you are trying to imply here. We are using the most proper and safe method using a function provided by the simulator itself. It's not that we "can't do it", it's just that auto-discovery ( relying on the user correct answer to activate the add-on, and many confuse that terminology with the "license" activation ) is not really a 1-click automated install, and touching the simulator .CFG file is something that is not encouraged by LM, because they KNOW how much damage add-on installers touching the sim own .CFG file could do in FSX ( or older P3Ds, this method has been introduced with P3D V3 ).

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While I write this installation is still running and running ...

Technically speaking, the installation is not running, it's waiting P3D.exe to finish its job.

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I just wanted to reinstall KMEM because I had canyons next to the taxi- and runways

And chances are this won't change anything, because I think you might discover the problem is caused by OrbX.


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. That shouldn't take an hour but it does on my system. Defender is off and now finally the live updater is running.

I agree, it shouldn't take an hour to RUN P3D, because THAT'S your real problem, fact it's happening during the installation it's really not relevant to our installer. Unless you said P3D starts in 30 seconds when you start it yourself, and 30 minutes if it's started from our installer, but it's not the case here, isn't it ?

blaunarwal

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Re: Long lasting installation
« Reply #2 on: February 20, 2022, 08:53:35 pm »
It is like a prayer, never ever let something come on your products. Before you even read my post you already pushed away every responsibility of your products. When will you ever understand that not everyone wants to blame you for making your products. I was just asking for help.

You recently hijacked my tutorial on Avsim to show the world your competence, but you would not use your competence to help me here. The whole answer was only defending your products, your installation procedure. Did I attack your way of installation? I only said others can do it without Prepar3d.exe. I mean such an installation takes me 30 seconds. It still takes endless time for me to install a FSDT product on my P3D system. It is not antivirus, I know about exclusions but defender was off anyway for installation, as I wrote. So tell me, what am I doing wrong? You say my system is broken somehow, it does not work like expected. What do you know, what I don´t know?

Memphis runs fine after a reinstall. I don´t know if ORBX has something to do with it. But you seem to know everything.

virtuali

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Re: Long lasting installation
« Reply #3 on: February 20, 2022, 10:51:40 pm »
It is like a prayer, never ever let something come on your products. Before you even read my post you already pushed away every responsibility of your products.

It's precisely because I DID read your post, that I gave you that complete and accurate description of the problem.

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When will you ever understand that not everyone wants to blame you for making your products. I was just asking for help.

The only one here who clearly misunderstood it's you. Nowhere I even felt you were "blaming" the product and nothing in my reply suggests that, I only wanted to EXPLAIN why things are done in some way, because YOU asked "why you don't do it like others do". There, I've explained WHY we don't do like the others do, you made a specific question I replied to it.

If you wrote something different like, for example:

"I KNOW your method of installing is the proper one but, do you have any idea hot to fix my P3D which is SO abnormally SLOW to start ?"

That would have sounded very different because, you just can't say my post was only "defending" our products, when you don't even realize yours WAS, in fact, attacking. That's what "why you don't do like the others do ?" really means. So I told you why. Because you asked for it.


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you recently hijacked my tutorial on Avsim to show the world your competence, but you would not use your competence to help me here.

Ok, I suspected there was something else going on. I haven't "hikjacked" anything and nowhere I said your tutorial wasn't useful. In fact, I STARTED that post with:

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Some historic perspective why this procedure is required

The subject there was YOUR procedure: I was vouching for it!

I just wanted to help people understanding WHY they need to do that, and what issues might possibly happen either, so they might eventually understand why, on some scenery, they lost their effects or jetways, worrying they might have done something wrong.


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The whole answer was only defending your products, your installation procedure. Did I attack your way of installation?

Yes, you did. You tried to pass our installer as doing something useless, which is why I explained why it's NOT and, in fact, it's the safest option, for most users.


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I only said others can do it without Prepar3d.exe. I mean such an installation takes me 30 seconds. It still takes endless time for me to install a FSDT product on my P3D system.

30 seconds for the whole installation no, we can't beat that so, the "others" are clearly better than us. But just for kicks, I tried installing a scenery ( PHNL ), asking to enabled it in BOTH P3D4 and P3D5. Timed the procedure from the moment the sign "Configuring Support software in P3D" appeared to when it ended and, it took EXACTLY 20 seconds for each sim so, 40 seconds in total added to the installation.

Could we make it faster if we added the add-on to the add-on.cfg directly ? Sure, but it's not worth risking all the horror issues we DID have with FSX, just to save 20 seconds on each install.

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It is not antivirus, I know about exclusions but defender was off anyway for installation, as I wrote. So tell me, what am I doing wrong? You say my system is broken somehow, it does not work like expected. What do you know, what I don´t know?

Where, exactly, I said "your system is broken" ? Nowhere, of course. You said you have a lot of sceneries and objects. Ok but, even that still can't explain such a dramatic difference between a normal 20-30 seconds and your reported 30 minutes and over. Just the GSX installation adds about 10.000 files to the Simobjects, but I still see just a 20 seconds delay to start P3D in configuration mode from the installer. Even if you had 5x the number of objects, it would still not explain that.

Have you added the antivirus Exclusions ALL folders that contains both Sceneries and Simobjects, whenever they are ? So, for example, if you have several drives containing add-on with lots of files, have you added all of them to the antivirus Exclusions ?

If you have multiple drivers, are these all SSDs, or you also have mechanical drives or, possibly, network drives as well ?

If you have mechanical drives, could be they might have turned down in sleep mode, so perhaps there's an added delay because they need to wake up ? That won't last minutes, of course, but I'm trying to think ALL things that might result in a startup slowdown of the simulator.

Do you have some cloud drives too ? MS OneDrive gives you the option to have your entire Documents folder on the Cloud, but it's not really reliable, up to the point that, some developers for P3D even said their add-ons work ONLY if the Documents folder is NOT on OneDrive.

Also, do you also have an abnormally long startup time when you start P3D normally ?


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Memphis runs fine after a reinstall. I don´t know if ORBX has something to do with it. But you seem to know everything.

There's always an explanation, as usual, even for those that don't know everything, but are willing to learn. Reinstalling KMEM put it automatically on top of the Scenery Library so, it's possible this was that fixed it.

Of course, it's not that I "made up" the problem caused by OrbX. I said that to save you from searching the forum, where the canyon walls issue has been discussed and yes, it was caused by something from OrbX, did it looked something like this ?

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,13614.0.html

That seem to match what you described as a canyon so, I was HELPING you here trying to understand the problem.