FSDreamTeam forum
Products Support => GSX Support MSFS => Topic started by: davidcherrie on January 05, 2025, 03:51:20 am
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As the title says, when enabling GSX Seated Passengers on add-on liveries, it stops the engines from spinning from the A380_EXTERIOR.xml.
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This also causes additional errors such as external fuselage door (D1L & D2L) meshes don't animate open.
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We suspect the problem is caused by the fact the airplane exterior doesn't have any LODs, so we need to create a new one copied, since it's not possible to attach anything on the last LOD level ( which in this case would have been the only one ).
The airplane could benefit quite a bit from having LOD levels, and it's the only plane that has that problem, since all the other supported airplanes come with proper LOD levels, so we don't need to create the extra dummy one.
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We suspect the problem is caused by the fact the airplane exterior doesn't have any LODs, so we need to create a new one copied, since it's not possible to attach anything on the last LOD level ( which in this case would have been the only one ).
The airplane could benefit quite a bit from having LOD levels, and it's the only plane that has that problem, since all the other supported airplanes come with proper LOD levels, so we don't need to create the extra dummy one.
It would be good then if you state in FSDT Installer that this will break the engine animations or pull the A380X from compatible add-ons if it doesn't work correctly.
This is the response from FBW:
GSX should not be touching files that are not theirs to begin with, especially without asking or informing us. And again this is why it is an open alpha, the files can and will change because they are unfinished. Additionally doing hacks like this makes our life harder not easier and will take longer to fix in the end. It also shouldn't be the job of their own users/customers to report this to us second hand.
I'd suggest you get in contact with FBW and sort this out.
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FSDT always had a history of arrogantly tampering with assets which are not theirs. For example, back in the FSX days, they were removing any other SimObject, which wasn't their own.
And now, they are tampering with the aircraft model files. Which is, for example, breaking the aircraft liveries, like with PMDG planes. If you will not revert back your seated passengers before exporting a livery, the livery will not be working for anyone without the GSX.
And all this without any warning whatsoever, left for the users to figure out. Extremely annoying, and I am surprised that not a single developer had chosen stronger way how to combat this.
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FSDT always had a history of arrogantly tampering with assets which are not theirs. For example, back in the FSX days, they were removing any other SimObject, which wasn't their own.
I really don't know what you are trying to say with your completely useless "arrogantly" adjective, which only showed your lack of understanding of the sound reason why Simobjects around the airplane are removed.
The objects that are removed by GSX are only Simobjects of the "GROUND VEHICLE" category (only!) which are in the close proximity of the user airplane because, of course, when GSX is called, is to be expected that other ground vehicles (usually default ground vehicles) should be removed.
Now, it happened that in some cases, some developers created parts of their airports as Simobjects, assigning them to the Ground Vehicles category even if they are not really ground vehicles but, for example, pieces of building or other details. Now, I won't question the reasoning behind flagging something that is not a ground vehicle as such ( the SimpleObject and Viewer types are usually best suited for that ), there might have been reasons behind this but that's not really the point, the point is that GSX cannot possibly know if something that is flagged as a Ground Vehicle is not really a Ground Vehicle, so the only option we have is to keep a "white list" based on the object title, so developers that required their objects not to be removed, always contacted us supply with a naming pattern that we added to the white list, without any particular issues.
And now, they are tampering with the aircraft model files.
You are making it sound as if we just modified user airplanes automatically without a warning, which is not the case. It requires the user to go into the GSX Config page and explicitly enable every airplane individually.
Which is, for example, breaking the aircraft liveries, like with PMDG planes
You are making it sound as enabling passengers on PMDG airplanes will surely break a livery. It's not. Every time somebody reported a problem with a specific livery, I always asked for a download link to check it.
In some cases, due to how the livery was made, we had to update the installer to take into account some specific ways that livery, and of course all these changes has been added to the installer as soon they have been reported.
But in other cases, I couldn't replicate any problem and the livery that was supposed to not work, worked perfectly here. Some of the possible reasons for this are either the usage of the Addon Linker for some liveries, which seems to prevent access to files that needs to be copied from the original folder, but it might also be antivirus interferences, which are preventing the installer to *complete* the patching.
If you will not revert back your seated passengers before exporting a livery, the livery will not be working for anyone without the GSX.
Not really. GSX only adds two attachments to model. If an attachment is missing (because the user doesn't have GSX), it will simply not show up. However, I think it's a good practice to disable Seated Passengers before exporting a livery to be shared, but this is something you are supposed to know if you want to share a livery and it's not GSX-specific, there are other add-ons that modify the airplane models, so you would have to disabled those too, if you want to share a livery.
And all this without any warning whatsoever, left for the users to figure out.
No single airplane file is touched UNLESS the user goes in the Config page and do it himself first.
IF we did this "without warning" as you are trying to suggest, it would have saved us a lot of support of user wondering why they don't see seated passengers even if they have a supported airplane installed, because most of the time, they just don't know they must be manually enabled first. But, precisely because it's not right altering files in the sim without warning, they are NOT enabled automatically.
Extremely annoying, and I am surprised that not a single developer had chosen stronger way how to combat this.
Because all developers of the supported airplanes are just happy to have their airplane supported, and they are assuming their users DO understand that, when they enable Seated Passengers, the airplane model file is being altered, something that is of course clearly explained in the manual, and it's the reason why we can't support Marketplace airplanes, precisely because the file we need to modify is not accessible.
But that's besides the point.
The point is, Seated Passengers are clearly an highly wanted feature, and the only way to achieve this, in MSFS, is to modify the airplane model. Same as many 3rd party products like add-on instruments, tablets, etc. They all require the airplane model files (either the exterior or the interior) to be patched so no, GSX is not by any means the first or the only add-on that needs to modify the airplane model files.
Of course, this requirement would immediately go away if MSFS had an "Attach API" similar to Prepar3D. There, we could have added seated passengers to any airplane programmatically, without touching the airplane files.
If we had an Attach API in MSFS, we could:
- Add Seated Passengers to any airplane, on the fly, with no need to modify it's model.
- Support Marketplace airplanes as well.
- Open up the ability for users to edit all seat positions and share the airplane profile, so every airplane could be supported by users sharing files without having to do it ourselves, and having to support each airplane individually, having to update the installer to recognize new airplanes.
But unfortunately, the ability to Attach objects to other objects, which IS available in Prepar3D, it's just not possible in MSFS and, of course, we suggested it on the MS/Asobo Dev forum years ago, but it didn't get much traction so, we don't have any other choice than patching the airplane model, or just not having the feature.
Which again, is OPTIONAL.
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So if GSX breaks the FBW A380 and there is no fix for it, then why is the add-on available or users aren't warned that it will break the aircraft before installing?
If you are unable to fix it, I would suggest adding (Experimental) next to FBW A380 in the menu to avoid all the blame towards FBW and livery creators. All my liveries now have a disclaimer to not use GSX otherwise it will break the aircraft but still people don't read.
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Very well. Then tell me, where exactly are the users notified about GSX altering the model.cfg in the individual liveries? I see no warning whatsoever in the FSDT Installer's Seated Passengers section, nor the Seated Passengers section of the manual. Especially with regards to the livery creators.
Secondly, you are not correct. Because, for example, when exporting the PMDG livery, the only file which gets packed from the model.XX folder in the livery's folder, is the "model.cfg". It skips all the other files (quite understandably, because it's not expecting them). And since the model.cfg is the only file packed, there are no other files from the livery folder it's referencing, most notably "PMDG_NG3_800BW.xml"
So, whenever a person installs such livery, and doesn't have the GSX, it will result in a livery with a broken model.
And if you would have properly tested this, you would have known/noticed! And this applies to ANY livery done the by the PMDG's native way, and exported via the PMDG Operations Center.
You are not correct, Umberto. And I have just tested it with our livery, and I can confirm it.
And lastly - "I really don't know what you are trying to say with your completely useless "arrogantly" adjective, which only showed your lack of understanding of the sound reason why Simobjects around the airplane are removed.
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The point is, that you were tampering with the objects which are not yours, and therefore actively disrupting the functionality of other addons, and the addon developers had to actively contact you to remedy this. If you do not understand the absurdity and arrogance of that, I think there is no point in discussing this specific point.
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Very well. Then tell me, where exactly are the users notified about GSX altering the model.cfg in the individual liveries? I see no warning whatsoever in the FSDT Installer's Seated Passengers section, nor the Seated Passengers section of the manual. Especially with regards to the livery creators.
In the manual, of course. Quoting from Page 10, where the Seated Passengers is first presented:
in order to attach the Seated Passengers on the airplane, we need to modify the airplane own Behavior XML file
Also here, at Page 98:
for Seated Passenger to show with their texture, the TEXTURE.CFG file for each Livery variation of a supported airplane must be patched by the FSDT Installer
So yes, we explain in the manual some airplane files will be patched. If anybody has a problem with it, he can simply not use them. Again, they are NOT enabled by default, nothing that doesn't belong to GSX is patched automatically.
Because, for example, when exporting the PMDG livery, the only file which gets packed from the model.XX folder in the livery's folder, is the "model.cfg". It skips all the other files (quite understandably, because it's not expecting them). And since the model.cfg is the only file packed, there are no other files from the livery folder it's referencing, most notably "PMDG_NG3_800BW.xml"
So, whenever a person installs such livery, and doesn't have the GSX, it will result in a livery with a broken model.
As I've said, if you DISABLED Seated passengers BEFORE exporting a livery (which it's should be fairly obvious is what you are supposed to do that), all modifications to it will be rolled back with all files going back as they were before, so the export will work like it always did.
But again, you are missing the WHOLE POINT here: do you think the Seated Passengers is not working for you they way it's done. Just don't use it, is THAT simple!
The point is, that you were tampering with the objects which are not yours, and therefore actively disrupting the functionality of other addons, and the addon developers had to actively contact you to remedy this.
The one and only that had this issue, were those developers creating Simobjects flagged as GROUND VEHICLES which are NOT really Ground Vehicles. If something IS a Ground Vehicle, why GSX should NOT remove them when called by the user ?
If you have something like an airplane that has its own ground vehicles which you prefer to use instead of GSX, it's so simple: don't call GSX!
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Umberto, instead of continually going back and forth with this guy, if you cannot fix your add-on then can you please make it extremely obvious in the FSDT Installer that the A380X GSX Seated Passengers doesn’t work properly and will break the aircraft. That’s all we are asking.
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if you cannot fix your add-on
There's nothing to fix to begin with.
then can you please make it extremely obvious in the FSDT Installer that the A380X GSX Seated Passengers doesn’t work properly and will break the aircraft.
There's no need to do that, because the FSDT installer is not breaking the airplane and seated passengers works, see here, everything works, including doors and engine animations:
If they are specific liveries that gets broken, all I ever asked is a download link so I can test them and either explain WHY they don't work and/or possibly update the installer to support a possibly different way that livery is made, which has been done multiple times each time a problem in the installer is reported and replicated, assuming IS a problem of the installer.
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This is something to fix. Any livery that isn't the default plane, your add-on breaks.
If you'd like a specific livery then here is one of mine and any other livery you download will break from your add-on. I have made over 150 different liveries for different add-on aircraft and they all work fine, except FBW A380 and you know why.
https://flightsim.to/file/83828/fbw-a380-qantas-airways-2016-vh-oqa-8k-4k
The onus is on you and your product, not FBW or us livery makers. If you can't make it work with 99.9% of users out there, then the aircraft shouldn't be a GSX Seated Passenger compatible aircraft and until you can fix the issue on your end.
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The onus is on you and your product, not FBW or us livery makers. If you can't make it work with 99.9% of users out there, then the aircraft shouldn't be a GSX Seated Passenger compatible aircraft and until you can fix the issue on your end.
Is that not why he said this:
If they are specific liveries that gets broken, all I ever asked is a download link so I can test them and either explain WHY they don't work and/or possibly update the installer to support a possibly different way that livery is made, which has been done multiple times each time a problem in the installer is reported and replicated, assuming IS a problem of the installer.
Kind of hard to fix an issue if he can't reproduce it in the first place.
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The onus is on you and your product, not FBW or us livery makers. If you can't make it work with 99.9% of users out there, then the aircraft shouldn't be a GSX Seated Passenger compatible aircraft and until you can fix the issue on your end.
Is that not why he said this:
If they are specific liveries that gets broken, all I ever asked is a download link so I can test them and either explain WHY they don't work and/or possibly update the installer to support a possibly different way that livery is made, which has been done multiple times each time a problem in the installer is reported and replicated, assuming IS a problem of the installer.
Kind of hard to fix an issue if he can't reproduce it in the first place.
Scroll to the top with his first message. He knows exactly why no liveries work and blames FBW because there is only one model and no additional LODs.
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I can confirm that with the following livery:
https://flightsim.to/file/83953/emirates-2005-2023-a6-euv-flybywire-airbus-a380x-8k
Set to 4k version and doing a full cold & dark start, with all steps: catering, refuel truck, boarding & cargo loading then finally, pushback while starting engines 2,3,4,1, the problem is present (no engines spinning).
Just tested that right now.
Hope this might help to found a solution.
EDIT 11:23 am
Just tested again with option "Seated passengers in 2020 Steam" set to OFF and engines spin normally.
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I can confirm that with the following livery
Does this means you don't have any issues with other liveries, or maybe the standard FBW livery ?
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I can confirm that with the following livery
Does this means you don't have any issues with other liveries, or maybe the standard FBW livery ?
The only livery it works on is the default aircraft because it has no dependencies, you know this. Every other livery, your add-on breaks. Not sure why we are going around in circles.
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Looks like somebody found a solution.
https://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,32803.0.html