Terrible FS9 error. Someone please help me out...

[Sephiroth7]

Alright... lemme describe the error. You see, I love watching replays of my take-offs and landings. Anyway, say I took off in any turbo-prop, retracted my gears, climbed to about 2000 and pressed pause. Next I would hit ALT to bring up the menu, select instant replay, and go back in time about 170 seconds (just so I could myself taxiing onto runway for departure, doing run-ups, whatever). Anyway, in the replay, the blades completely stop moving and I hear little or no engine noise whatever. Also, my gears stay about halfway out... So the plane starts rolling down the runway with no engines moving and it appears as if it was floating above the ground since the gear doesn't go down. I watch the entire replay, but I'm pretty let-down because it looks about as real as a fish going skydiving. When it gets to 0 on the replay and it is where it was at when I paused, when I unpause, engines crank up and gears go up fully. However, due to the engines coming back on, I lose some altitude and maybe crash if I didn't pause from a safe altitude. It's getting worse now. It used to only be with turbo props, but now I notice whenever I watch a replay of a jet take off, all the wheels go in except the nose wheel which goes half way up. And now it's doing it to my piston prop planes as well. This is really driving me crazy as I love watching replays... and it's even worse because when I resume flight, the engines are as if they were cut off. Someone please help me out!

[bugdozer]

It does this to me as well. As far as I can work out, certain aspects of the aircraft's appearance (like landing gear) that can be in 2 states will not switch between them without running the appropriate bit of animation. So if the replay starts with the plane on the runway, gear down, but ends with it in the air, gear up, then when it switches to the beginning again it thinks "hmm, the gear should be down" and has to run through the whole animation cycle before it puts them down. Sometimes, depending on what aircraft you use and the timing of raising/lowering gear, it can get confused and leave bits sticking out (add on planes seem to suffer worse than default ones, generally.)
The same effect can be glimpsed working in a different way if you crash at high speed and then the flight resets to ready to take off again - the flight restarts with engines up and they suddenly power down, and occasionally the plane seems to drop onto the runway.

[Sephiroth7]

So, is there any way to avoid this or am I just doomed not to be able to watch my take offs?

If someone responds and I don't respond anymore... I'm asleep. Happy new year everyone!

[Dijon76]

This may not help anything but try not pausing before going to replay

When you exit replay it is paused

[napamule2]

I believe John got it. You don't NEED to pause flight. Just press 'Alt' and then go 'Options\Instant Replay' then set time you want to view. Here are some hints.

(1). Don't know when latest flight started? Then enter '999' in time, then click 'Tab' key, or 'OK', which is wrong, of course, as you MIGHT have 240 seconds (4 minutes) BUT it FORCES FS9 to give you the total AVAILABLE time (in the form of an 'Error' message).

Want to reset 'start' time back to '0' seconds? Go 'World'\'Time & Season' and change the time by an hour, a minute, (or 1 SECOND! even) and it will reset. That way you don't have to guess what time is to that 'special moment' you want to got back and watch if total time available is 650 seconds.

(2). Click 'repeat' option, so you can do one review from tower, one from panel, and one with 'FlyBy' (MY favorite) type program. Just let it run, and switch view 'live' / 'on the fly', either way.

(3). To set/move the LOCATION of the tower (to get it closer, or from behind building or trees), press 'Alt' then go to 'World' then to 'Map'. There you will click the tower button (the other one is for AC-but that's another story) and press '+' to zoom in (ALL THE WAY) and with mouse grab tower icon, then drag it closer to runway/AC and set altitude to Airport Elevation (it's listed right there) PLUS 30 FT (for low view angle) to 111 ft (for high up view angle). Most towers might be around 5 story high (aprox 60 ft), so 111 ft should be high enough. I prefer 30 ft, providing I move tower closer. And if too far when in tower view, use '+' key to zoom in.

(4). If you choose the DEFAULT time of 60 seconds and it's not enough, you can immidiately hit 'Esc' key to canel replay, then hit 'P' key to unpause (and return to where flight left off. No need to wait until the replay goes to '0'. Stop it anytime. Then, immediately go re-start Replay, adding time (as FS9 saves a LOT of replay, although I never used it past 300 seconds (5 mins)).

(5). Be ready to give it throttle, as replay causes reduction to 50% power, and on some AC's down to '0%'. No fix for that. AS an alternative, you can use SLEW feature ('Y' key) and just lower AC to ground (use 'F1' (while in slew mode) for 'Fast Decent' then use NumPad '5' key to STOP decent. You can then use 'A' key for 'Slow Decent', down to touchdown. Hit 'Y' key to exit 'Slew Mode' and if you hit the 'B' key before touchdown, it will not fly off 3000 mph.
Hope this helps. Coy/Paste/Print this info out for future reference, and keep it handy. Makes life easier. I too LOVE replays. Cheers.
Chuck