Parking Isolated error

[iblueyonder]

Hello,

I've been working for a few days now on a custom GSX Pro profile for my third-party scenery project (Flightbeam KPDX v2). I was experimenting today to see if I could get the profile to auto-load by putting it in my package folder and sending it to MSFS 2020. As part of that, I removed the original ini file I had been building from the APPDATA/Roaming/Virtuali/FSX/MSFS folder.

I couldn't get the profile to auto-load by putting it in the packages folder, and when I attempted to just put my profile back into the original APPDATA location, all my parking spots now report that they're isolated. I checked to make sure something didn't happen to my afcad file, but sure enough all the parking is still properly connected.

I'm not sure how to proceed. Can you help?

thanks,
Bill Womack
iBlueYonder

[virtuali]

Since SU10 came out, GSX uses the Navdata API to read the airport data (instead of the legacy method of reading the .BGL directly), so it won't look into the scenery package folder anymore, since it doesn't have any knowledge of where, exactly, the airport .BGL is or which package provides the data.

This means, GSX cannot automatically associate an airport profile to its .BGL, even if you have an afcad_path line in the .INI file, it won't be used anymore.

The profile MUST be in %APPDATA%\Virtuali\MSFS, and the only thing that connects the airport to the profile is the ICAO code, which also means it's your responsibility to be sure you don't have any duplicate profiles for that airport.

It's also your responsibility to be sure you don't have any conflicting sceneries because, when using the Navdata API, GSX will get everything from the sim, conflicts included. The most common cause of conflicts in MSFS 2020 is having forgot to run the Exclude 3rd party routine in the GSX Config page of the FSDT Installer, to be sure that GSX replacement jetway files has been Disabled for all 3rd party airports, because those will introduce a conflict (visible as duplicate parking spots in the map).

[iblueyonder]

Thanks for the reply. My problem persists, and...

1. The profile was working perfectly for days until I moved it from the %APPDATA%\Virtuali\MSFS directory where it originally resided. I have put the same profile back in that directory, and assured that there are no other copies of my scenery and literally no other GSX profiles in my MSFS 2020 installation.

2. The profile is most definitely in the right directory now, per instructions.

3. I have run the Exclude 3rd party function in the installer. Regardless, it's not the jetways that are my issue, but the fact that every parking position reports that it is isolated, even though it is connected to the airport network.

[virtuali]

1. The profile was working perfectly for days until I moved it from the %APPDATA%\Virtuali\MSFS directory where it originally resided.

This is normal, since after SU10, the %APPDATA% folder is the only place where airport profiles are found.

I have put the same profile back in that directory, and assured that there are no other copies of my scenery and literally no other GSX profiles in my MSFS 2020 installation.

This not normal, if the profile hasn't changed, and the airport hasn't as well.

2. The profile is most definitely in the right directory now, per instructions.

You can verify the profile is active in the airport customization page.

3. I have run the Exclude 3rd party function in the installer. Regardless, it's not the jetways that are my issue, but the fact that every parking position reports that it is isolate,

The reason to being sure you disabled the GSX jetway replacement file is not just to fix issues with jetways, but also to prevent a general scenery conflict, which will very likely result in a "parking isolated" message, because the isolated parkings are the duplicates ones which are only supposed to work with the bare default scenery.

even though it is connected to the airport network.

Are you sure you compiled it with the latest MSFS SDK and not, for example, using ADE ? The SDK build tool is way more restrictive, so it might catch issues that might not be visible otherwise.

Also, check if all your exclusions are correct and, if you excluded taxiways from the original scenery, you MUST recreate the taxiway network in your airport. We had some reports of some 3rd party airports that had this problem: the author excluded all taxiways but didn't create new ones so, effectively, all parking spots would be isolated.

[iblueyonder]

I have checked thoroughly everything I can think of.

I made sure to run the Exclude Third-Party scenery option again. It disabled the default KPDX jetways, as expected.

I made sure my profile was in the %APPDATA%\Virtuali\MSFS directory.

There are no other sceneries for KPDX on my system except my own.

The airport parking/taxiway network was created entirely within the MSFS 2020 developer tools (no ADE), and compiled using the latest SDK. This same taxiway and parking network worked perfectly in GSX Pro a few days ago, using the same version of the sim and GSX.

Now, all my parking spots in GSX Pro report that they are isolated. I spent a couple of days creating the profile, and I would hate to have to re-create it from scratch, especially as I was set to deliver my RTM version of the scenery to my testing team today. Is there any way you can think of that I could copy my old profile data to a new profile to get things working again? This has become a major blocking issue.

[virtuali]

Now, all my parking spots in GSX Pro report that they are isolated. I spent a couple of days creating the profile, and I would hate to have to re-create it from scratch, especially as I was set to deliver my RTM version of the scenery to my testing team today.

The issue is, the airport profile doesn't have ANY information about the parking connections, which of course you can clearly see by looking at the .INI file directly: there's nothing there about the taxiway paths and their connection to the parking spots.

The only thing that tells GSX how each parking is connected to the taxiways, is data coming from Simconnect through the Navdata API, that's why I don't think your profile has a problem, but for some reason different data is coming from the sim to GSX since the last time the profile worked, suggesting a scenery conflict.

Are you sure you never seen a message from GSX in the scenery customization page telling you that some (or even all) parking spot didn't match ?

This is normal if the scenery configuration in the sim (again, what GSX is getting from Simconnect, we don't know anymore which from which .BGL/BGLs this data is coming from) has changed, so different parking spots are coming from Simconnect compared to what we had in the profile, suggesting you either have a scenery conflict, or you are just using a different scenery. This might happen if your scenery was disabled at some point, then you enabled again. Common case when testing. But when you saw that message, GSX would have asked to create a new profile from scratch, or save a new one with just the matching parking spots, so you could continue customizing the "new" scenery.

To make it even clearer: GSX has no way to know if you just installed a new scenery, or you reverted to a default one, or you have a conflict. From its point of view, they are basically the same situation: the list of parking spots coming from Simconnect doesn't match the one in the active profile. The only difference is a slightly different message if SOME parking spots are not matching (so you are offered a choice to save a new file with the matching ones only), or NO parking spots matches, so the only choice is to create a new profile.

[iblueyonder]

I'm not sure what else to do here. The thing I want very much to avoid is spending another day re-creating my profile from scratch, only to have GSX throw errors again.

This morning, I tried a different approach. I removed my old profile and let GSX build a new one for KPDX. I only did a quick customization on the concourse B gates. I moved to each parking space, hit "customize parking" and when the editor loaded, I hit enter to accept all the defaults. I did this for each B parking position, of which there are 11. Then I quit the sim and copied my old profile information for each parking spot in B to the appropriate entry in the new config. When I loaded the sim again, GSX loaded the information I had copied for each space with no problem.

Thinking that I had found the solution, I did the same procedure for the C, D, and E gates. When I loaded the sim again, ALL of my gates reported as isolated. I am apparently misunderstanding something basic here.

[virtuali]

Thinking that I had found the solution, I did the same procedure for the C, D, and E gates. When I loaded the sim again, ALL of my gates reported as isolated. I am apparently misunderstanding something basic here.

You haven't told me if you saw any message from GSX about mismatched parking spots at any time during that procedure, which was very likely not required because, as I've said, your profile was fine, the problem was data from the sim wasn't correct and/or changed since the last time the profile worked.

As I've said, takes from data Simconnect and the profile doesn't know ANYTHING about taxiway connections but, of course, if the data doesn't match the profile, and GSX will report it as an error, suggesting to either fix or completely redo a new profile for the new data. But a new profile, even if "matches", cannot possibly solve issues caused by conflicting parking spots (maybe NOT in your scenery!!) that ARE in fact isolated. And they usually are, because of a bad exclusion, like removing all taxiways without creating new ones.