Missing airport buildings JFK V2

[Osirith]

Hi all,

bought JFK v2 a few days ago, install went well and applied patch to v2.1 also.

I just noticed today that some buildings are missing. I am not able to tell if those buildings were there after install and disappeared since, or if they never were there. I tried a full install again of JFK v2 + patch but no visible effect.

As I did install a few other addons since JFK, difficult to tell if something important as changed. Last product installed : ORBX FTX Global (but as it is only texture changes, should not have this effect).

Here is a screenshot :
http://chrbonnet.free.fr/fsx/fsd_kjfk_missing_buildings.jpg

Thanks for your help.
Chris

[Osirith]

Ok, back with some more testing...

It's quite strange. I made a flight test taking off from KJFK, several buildings missing on airport (see pic above,  center of pic, right part of pic and more far, extreme left side of pic). I made a short fly above manhattan and back, and the missing buildings were there now... All buildings in airport perimeter wre now there if I checked well.

Another flying test, restarting FSX, take off from KJFK, same missing buildings. This time I just made low level circlings paths above the airport, and after some time (maybe 20-30 seconds), 2 buildings popped up... Last building missing appeared too but maybe after 2-3 minutes of circling... Unable to find a good explanation about this...

[Osirith]

Another try...

This time I called the menu option "Restart Couatl", no better result the first time, but the second time I called "Restart Couatl", the missing buildings all reappared...

So issue partly solved as it seems that if I call enough times the Restart Couatl menu item I will be consistently able to make the buildings reappear...

However it will be nice to find a permanent fix to this issue.

If anyone has an idea about it...

[virtuali]

It's difficult to discuss about a fix, since the problem is surely caused by something else. Clear proof of this, it's exactly that is fixed (randomly, and that's the key thing) by restarting Couatl, so the problem is likely either just memory (standard or VRAM) corruption, caused by too high settings AND/OR too many add-ons installed for that area, OR another product that is taking too much bandwidth for Simconnect commands, not giving a chance to our software to talk with FSX.

By restarting Couatl, you probably get a chance to let objects to be created while Simconnect was momentarily available and not too clobbered down by other add-ons. We had a similar issue with KDFW a while ago, when used to UT2 with too much traffic: those AI models were so many, that UT2 calling all of them in a short time, didn't left any time to other add-ons to talk with Simconnect, and this resulted in random missing or misplaced buildings.

That's just a guess, but it seems to be the most likely, according to your report. If the scenery or your installation had any kind of problem, you wouldn't see any buildings OR, by restarting Couatl, you would always see the same buildings missing, over and over.

[Osirith]

Thanks for your reply and explanations...

That makes sense. I use a lot of add-ons and those that use SimConnect could fill the available bandwidth. And UT2 could be a cause, I have it, and traffic set at 50%, which is quite high (many planes) for a large intl airport. I will try once with UT2 off to see if there is any change.

Note however that it is the first time I encounter such problem. My understanding is that you use Couatl script to protect the add-on (make it appear or disappear depending on licence key installed or not). "Permanently" installed airports does not suffer from such behavior (I don't think that the building display is controlled through simconnect for other addons not using such licensing mode).

Regards
Chris

[virtuali]

My understanding is that you use Couatl script to protect the add-on (make it appear or disappear depending on licence key installed or not).

That's a very common misconception, and we discuss a bit on our FAQ page but, it seems that nobody is really interested in that, and only see the "protection" part, which is the less important part of what the Addon Manager+Couatl do for a scenery, which ALL requires buildings to be created programmatically.

Some things the Addon Manager+Couatl programs do, are indicated in this post of mine on Avsim:

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/413434-fsdreamteam-kiah-first-previews/page-2#entry2722197

"Permanently" installed airports does not suffer from such behavior (I don't think that the building display is controlled through simconnect for other addons not using such licensing mode).

Yes, of course, they don't suffer if Simconnect has clobbered (but other add-ons will, so you want to fix that issue in any case), but don't that those features either. The protection is not really the issue: we would use programmatically-created objects anyway, even if we had to do a freeware scenery.

[Osirith]

Thanks for the additional reply and info. I understand better the use of Couatl (I was thinking that it was used mainly for protection and animated parts).

And I must say that so far, JFK v2 is the most FPS-friendly mega-airport I own, and I have maybe 10-15 large airport add-ons. The fact that you dynamically load objects only when needed depending on hour or season, rather than stuffing everything in memory at once, is really showing on my FPS counter 

[Osirith]

Update : Tried setting Ultimate Traffic 2 at 0% traffic, then launched FSX and take-off from JFK. Still same problem until I restart Couatl, even with 0 AI planes around... Should be something else taking all Simconnect power...

[virtuali]

Update : Tried setting Ultimate Traffic 2 at 0% traffic, then launched FSX and take-off from JFK. Still same problem until I restart Couatl, even with 0 AI planes around... Should be something else taking all Simconnect power...

You might try disabling all other add-ons using Simconnect, one by one, and see if it makes any difference. Just to into your DLL.XML and EXE.XML files in %APPDATA%\Microsoft\FSX and set the <disabled> parameter to True for every module, except bglmanx.dll (in DLL.XML) and Couatl.exe (in EXE.XML)