Uncommanded GSX Behaviour

[Relayer2112]

I'm having some trouble with GSX, really since launch. I'm currently using the offline installer build from 07/09/22. I get a lot of uncommanded behaviours when using GSX, typically when clicking the toolbar button to display the menu.

The most common example is when parked at the gate, clicking the toolbar button results in GSX requesting deboarding, then the menu hanging. I have also had it occur when selecting a gate to taxi to, it often calls the follow-me car. At the moment, my 'failure rate' with GSX is roughly 50% of flights will have some kind of uncommanded behaviour. All have occurred with either the Fenix A320 or PMDG 737. I have not tried GSX with any other aircraft.

I have attached a log showing the most recent flight, from EDDK-LEBL using the Fenix A320, . I already had to restart couatl at the beginning of this flight as it had an uncommanded call for the fuel truck. You can see in the log file that after landing, it calls the follow-me car. This was not commanded by me, and happened when clicking the toolbar button. The toolbar menu then hung and would not display any options. I taxied to a gate, and tried again. This then slewed me slightly, but the menu remained hung with no options visible.

A restart of couatl seems to take about 10 minutes, but often solves the issue - however, this adds a significant amount more waiting around until GSX is ready to use again. At the moment, I feel like I spend more time restarting GSX than flying.

[virtuali]

I suggest waiting for the next update, due today, which will change the menu system completely, and should fix the issue of commands apparently received automatically ( it was your or some add-on sending a key command while the menu was open, which should be not possible anymore now )

The real problem is restarting taking 10 minutes, this is really unheard of.

Have you an insanely high number of add-ons ? If yes, I suggest adding the whole Community folder to the antivirus Exclusions, that might cause a slowdown. Also, the upcoming update has more areas that surely are not sceneries which will be automatically filtered so, even with many add-ons, the airport cache regeneration should be faster.

Also, note that the airport cache is only supposed to be regenerated when you add or remove a new scenery, not always.

[Relayer2112]

I'm glad to hear the menu system will be changed.

With regards to restarting couatl, I just timed it just now. From pressing 'restart' to 'airport cache has loaded successfully' took 7:30, and it then rebuilt the cache which took until 11:00 total time. I do not know why it rebuilt the cache, as it was while the sim was running and thus no scenery was added or removed.

There is a fair amount of stuff in the community folder, about 1300 folders in total, of which about 1100 are airports. I guess that depends on your definition of 'insane'. It is added as an antivirus exclusion.

[virtuali]

ith regards to restarting couatl, I just timed it just now. From pressing 'restart' to 'airport cache has loaded successfully' took 7:30, and it then rebuilt the cache which took until 11:00 total time. I do not know why it rebuilt the cache, as it was while the sim was running and thus no scenery was added or removed.

That's really the first time I ever heard of so long regeneration times, it's usually measure in seconds, like 20-30 seconds, with logs I get from users with lots of sceneries topping at 90 seconds at most.

And no, it's not normal it would be regenerated just for a Restart but, maybe, with 1300 areas, it's possible there's a corrupted file somewhere, which might force the process to restart every time.

[Relayer2112]

Okay, it looks like the reason it regen'ed the cache was because the simbrief downloader added a file into the Leonardo Maddog routes folder. Probably something that should be excluded. The cache regen itself took 200 seconds, which is...yeah, I can live with that I suppose, it's 1300 areas after all. The bigger problem is the 7 minutes or so it took to even get to the point where the cache started regenerating. I'm not sure what's going on with that at all. I'll add some more antivirus exclusions to make sure there's no other GSX related folders that are somehow being scanned. I would attach the logfile but it's too large and it won't let me. Here's the relevant bits anyway:

[virtuali]

Please don't quote the log, but always ZIP it, without removing anything, and attach it to a message.

In any case, the next update will automatically skip any area with the "-aicraft-" or "Simobjects" words, so it should be a bit faster.

The bigger problem is the 7 minutes or so it took to even get to the point where the cache started regenerating.

Now this is a completely different issue, I understood it took 10 minutes JUST to regenerate the cache, which is still too long, but I guess possible, maybe with more than 1300 areas, but 7 minutes to even reach the point where the cache start to regenerate, is really wrong and nobody ever reported it before.

Are you sure the whole Addon Manager folder has been added to the antivirus Exclusions ?

[Relayer2112]

Yep, it's definitely excluded in the AV. I have since also excluded the Virtuali folders in ProgramData and AppData, and made sure the actual MSFS directory. I've restarted again, this time it took 8:40 to go from 'restart' to 'airport cache loaded', this time with no need to regen. Loading the cache seemed to be what took the longest, the bit between "airportCacheOptimizeSearch enabled, excluding files larger than 20000000 bytes / Airport cache loaded successfullyLogfile attached" is where it spent the vast majority of the time.

[virtuali]

The only thing suspicious here are these areas:

ListDirs INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE \\?\C:\Users\RT Computing\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\flyto-lgkr\*
ListDirs INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE \\?\C:\Users\RT Computing\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\cmdesign-eppoortho\*
ListDirs INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE \\?\C:\Users\RT Computing\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\cmdesign-eppo\*
ListDirs INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE \\?\C:\Users\RT Computing\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache\Packages\Community\arima-airport-libd-bari\*

Here, Windows is telling GSX there's a problem accessing these files. Maybe there might have been others, even without an actual error shown, that caused similar errors, and their handling might cause the slowdown.

Loading the cache seemed to be what took the longest

Well yes, loading a larger cache will be slower than loading a smaller one, but it should never take longer than creating it! During the cache regeneration, airport .BGL are opened and catalogued, it can't be faster than loading the cache when it's already made.