Latest Update using Default AFCAD **SOLVED**

[SAV1]

Hi,

Despite previous forum posts stating that the problem has been fixed in the latest live update; clearly it hasn't.

I've just done a live update and GSX is reading default AFCADs instead of the ones of the installed addon scenery.

Can this be fixed? Not quite sure why an update should be released at all if it is going to break things tbh...

Thanks.

[virtuali]

The latest update doesn't change anything, because there was nothing to change. GSX always read the correct AFCAD before, and it still reads it correctly now.

We had a version that didn't read it correctly, when a scenery was installed as subfolder of a main one called "Scenery" and contained another "scenery" inside, but this has been online for less than 24 hours, and was immediately fixed.

The latest update cannot possibly have made anything worse or better, since nothing in the latest update could possibly affect the way GSX reads a scenery AFCAD, which is always under the same rules:

- The scenery should be on an higher layer than another one for the same airport

- The scenery should have an AFCAD which is not too big too be rejected, and the size over which a .BGL is considered to be oversize can be configured, as explained here:

http://www.fsdreamteam.com/forum/index.php/topic,17221.msg121243.html#msg121243

- The scenery .BGL is not corrupted, missing, with 0 lentht size, etc. otherwise it will be rejected

- The scenery is properly installed in the Scenery Library, either using an add-on.xml ( in P3D4 ) or in the scenery.cfg, with the scenery.cfg not being corrupted and/or not containing illegal characters, errors, etc.

- The scenery AFCAD hasn't changed due to "renaming", since renames inside a folder won't always change the folder last changed date, so GSX cannot detect the file has changed. In this case, a "Restart and Rebuild Cache" option would help

[SAV1]

Ok let me make the situation a bit clearer:

Firstly, I haven’t updated my GSX for a few months, not since I purchased the product in fact (sometime during the Summer). So updating today was the first update for me.
Secondly, my scenery library has not been touched and everything was fine before the GSX update, and the sim still detects the right parking stands according to the scenery too. It is just GSX reading a default BGL file (because I can see it at the top of the GSX settings window). So there is clearly a problem with the latest version.

One last thing I’ve tried is to just download a fresh installer from the website and run that; but the problem still exists.

I am certain the problem isn’t my end as there have been absolutely no changes to the scenery library whatsoever.

[virtuali]

First, be sure the latest update reads the correct AFCAD with no problems, otherwise we would have been flooded by similar reports by now.

So, in order to know why it doesn't do that on your system, a more precise report is required:

- Indicate which simulator you use

- It's not clear if GSX *always* reads the default AFCAD, no matter the airport, of if it's happening only with some specific scenery

- It it's happening only with some specific scenery, please indicate which one it is.

You can try enabling Logging in the Troubleshooting section of the GSX Settings, and choose "Restart and rebuild the airport cache" in the Couatl menu.

After the cache has been rebuilt, if the correct AFCAD is still not used, exit the sim and check the log file at %APPDATA%\Virtuali\Couatl.LOG, ZIP the file, and Attach it to a post, so I can check it.

[SAV1]

Sim: P3D 4.5
Scenery - was UK2000 Guernsey and Bristol (as I flew between the two, problem didn’t exist there before).
Tried restarting & reloading cache already.
I’ll have to get a log file uploaded when I have a sec. There must be some underlying problem somewhere though; since this has happened to people with recent updates... maybe I’m the first to report it of this latest version...

EDIT: there is no log file in that location. What I have noticed is that in C:\ProgramData\Virtuali\Couatl\prepar3dv4 there is a scenery.cfg file which is incomplete (stops halfway through an entry). I tried replacing it with the scenery.cfg from P3D and it didn’t work at all. Not sure if that is a factor?

[jiequinn]

I am also having the same issue which I have emailed about I too have also followed the troubleshooting which has not made any difference.

I have emailed with the details already and sent the required information to umberto hopefully it's a simple fix I spent hours last night trying to fix it

[virtuali]

EDIT: there is no log file in that location.

Please double check again the location of the Log in the GSX Troubleshooting page of the GSX Settings page. I gave you the default location,  but if you changed it, it can be anywhere. Once you check the location of the log, you should Restart and Rebuild the cache, so the Log can be produced.

What I have noticed is that in C:\ProgramData\Virtuali\Couatl\prepar3dv4 there is a scenery.cfg file which is incomplete (stops halfway through an entry

Yes, that's clearly the cause of the problem. It's likely one (or more) of your sceneries has an illegal add-on.xml, so they have been skipped. The change is required, because in older versions these would have caused a crash, now the program won't crash anymore your sim, but it will skip the affected area, so the default AFCAD will be used for it.

I really need your log to know that the area was.

[virtuali]

I have emailed with the details already and sent the required information to umberto hopefully it's a simple fix I spent hours last night trying to fix it

I received and replied to the email. No need to spend hours all night, you only had to spend 2 minutes to create the log, as I asked, which I received early this morning.

[SAV1]

Ok well I had absolutely no crashes before either, so I don’t think it is an addon ‘problem’. Not sure what you’re implying by ‘illegal’ though?

I’m going to try filling in the rest of that scenery.cfg and see if that does it. Otherwise I will endeavour to locate a log file (though I’ve not changed any settings in this respect, so it ought to be in the default location).

So far there seems to be a lot of accusations towards the customer for getting something wrong or changing it, which isn’t entirely fair. Perhaps there is indeed a problem with the latest version? Since, as you can now see; I’m not the only one...

[SAV1]

Resolved this - there were some unrecognised characters on an entry in my scenery.cfg, so when GSX loaded the scenery.cfg file into it's own location in ProgramData - it cut off at the unrecognised character. This is still peculiar as the previous versions never did this, but I've renamed the entry and all is well.

I'd suggest anyone else experiencing this to check.

[virtuali]

It would have been best if you posted your scenery.cfg before you fixed it, so we could add some code to prevent this from happening.

[SAV1]

From an old cfg backup - this is the line it didn't like:

Title=Obstacles et Rep�res VFR - France - Real

(It stopped at the P of Reperes - Purely because nothing seemed to detect an 'e' with grave accent, so it showed up as an erroneous character. Yet before this latest GSX version; it didn't have a problem with it).

[renkouchuan]

Unfortunately, after I finished the latest update released on Nov 28, I got the same issue. Before that I had flights every day and all the things are fine. I didn't change anything but only updated. The problem seems like the GSX can not recognize all the add-on afcad but only default ones. For the airport which doesn't exist before installed such as Beijing Daxing, there's even no service can be called out but only with a warning said that afcad can not be found. I tried 3 times re-update and a super clean re-install, nothing works.

[renkouchuan]

Resolved this - there were some unrecognised characters on an entry in my scenery.cfg, so when GSX loaded the scenery.cfg file into it's own location in ProgramData - it cut off at the unrecognised character. This is still peculiar as the previous versions never did this, but I've renamed the entry and all is well.

I'd suggest anyone else experiencing this to check.

That's the solution, bro! I also fixed it by copying all the rest of lines from ProgramData\Lockheed Martin\Prepar3D v4\scenery.cfg to ProgramData\Virtuali\Couatl\prepar3dv4\scenery.cfg. Seems the original cfg is broken after the update so it stopped at a certain line. Airports below that lines are all not recognized by GSX. Even the issue is temporarily solved, I still think we have to figure out why it happened.

[virtuali]

Seems the original cfg is broken after the update so it stopped at a certain line. Airports below that lines are all not recognized by GSX. Even the issue is temporarily solved, I still think we have to figure out why it happened.

The scenery.cfg was corrupted BEFORE the update. What the updated FIXED is that, in some cases, a corrupted pathname in the scenery.cfg or in the add-on.xml, would cause a CRASH and, since this the Addon Manager and it's a .DLL, a crash would crash the sim too. We fixed this issue with a scenery from UK2000 that had its add-on.xml corrupted, up to a point that not even Internet Explorer itself could show its structure, like it normally does for legal XML files.

What the update did, is to be more careful for files encoded in the wrong way (usually because they have been opened manually or altered by faulty installers or faulty 3rd party products that changed or break the encoding) and does more checks and, if a file is not 100% legal, it will just SKIP the Scenery Area, instead of putting the simulator at risk of crashing. This would of course result in GSX using the default AFCAD for the affected area.

But until somebody could send me a ZIP file with the scenery.cfg ( or the add-on.xml for the suspected scenery ), it's impossible to see if it would be possible to still use those problematic files, without risking a crash and without having to discard the area.