FS9 Crashing or Locking Up When Flying Into Idaho

My flight path runs from Everett, WA to Aurora, IL and when I get between 1½ and 2 miles of the Idaho border, FS crashes or locks up.

 

Some things I've tried and the result:

1. moved the plane in map view to about 10 miles along my flight path. Result: crashed.

2. tried to slew along my flight path. Result: crashed.

3. slewed down to near the Oregon border and then flew into Idaho. Result: no problem.

4. after step 3, I flew back up to my flight path and then flew west, back toward WA. Result: got about 20 miles from the WA/ID border and FS crashed.

 

It seems there's some problem with that area. My flight path runs just south of Milton's Minefield (ICAO: IDB) airport.

 

And before anyone asks, I've never fiddled with any of the airports in that area.

 

Thoughts?

Hi,

 

Try it with the AI slider at 0%. If no crash, then it's likely an AI aircraft texture.

 

If it still crashes, try unchecking the Active boxes of all your addon scenery in the Scenery Library and try the flight again. If no crash, then there is an addon scenery causing your problem.

 

Hope this helps,

Try it with the AI slider at 0%. If no crash, then it's likely an AI aircraft texture.

 

If it still crashes, try unchecking the Active boxes of all your addon scenery in the Scenery Library and try the flight again. If no crash, then there is an addon scenery causing your problem.

I was 99% certain it was an airfield in that region of Idaho because why would FS crash flying in that area but not in another? I also tried flying into that same region from different courses (southerly, westerly, and northwesterly) and every time I got within about 10-12 miles of a small group of airfields, FS would crash or lock up.

 

However, I tried your suggestions anyway. They had no effect. FS still crashed.

 

I re-enabled AI traffic and rechecked Addon Scenery. I then unchecked Western North America and now there's no problem. As I suspected, it's one of those small airfields in that region just south of Coeur d'Alene. I just flew from central WA to central MT with no problem.

 

I may be misremembering, but I would swear that I read here at FlightSim, many, many years ago, someone else had this very same problem in this same geographic region. I don't remember it being Idaho, specifically. But definitely somewhere in that region of eastern WA, ID, and western MT.

 

It doesn't surprise me, really. I use Airport Design Editor to make little tweaks here and there and I gotta say, Micro$oft did a shitty job with the details of a lot of airports; very sloppy work. Every one I go into has some problem with it: ILSs pointing in the wrong direction or placed in the wrong spot, aprons and buildings not adjacent, or duplicate intersections. I think I've seen just about every problem you can imagine.

So this is what I've also tried:

1. getting the names of the BGL files that contain the airports in that region and moving them to another folder. Fail.

2. opened the only major airport in the region (Coeur d'Alene) and compiled it with the same BGL file name as the original and C&P'd it to the Namw scenery folder. Fail.

3. moved my plane from N47° 28.54' up to N48°. Success.

4. moved my plane up to N47° 30'. Fail.

5. moved my plane down to N47° 15'. Success.

6. put the original BGL files back into the proper folder and moved my plane up to N48°. Success.

7. after #6, moved the plane down to N47° 15'. Success.

 

It appears there's a rectangle somewhere around the WA/ID border, that includes Coeur d'Alene that is impossible to fly through without FS crashing or locking up.

 

How bizarre. And I've wasted over 5 hours with this bullsh_t. :mad:

Edited December 15, 2019 by scott_295

Hi Guys,

 

This is just a shot in the dark but here goes anyway because I've had this same problem many years ago but in another part of the world.

 

My specific crash problem was caused by a faulty start position in the Afcad data of my destination airport and it was a previously planned flight controlled via ATC. The airport scenery itself was a third party addon and was easily fixed.

 

Maybe this information will help you to at least narrow down the cause of your "look alike" problem.

 

Good luck

Hans

I've had issues like that at certain areas and it was the scenery complexity slider. I lowered it and was able to pass through.

 

This was also default scenery and it was in South Africa of all places.

I've had issues like that at certain areas and it was the scenery complexity slider. I lowered it and was able to pass through.

 

This was also default scenery and it was in South Africa of all places.

That's really interesting. I'll have to fly that section again and lower the complexity slider to see if it works. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Mine is currently set to "very dense". What was yours set to and what did you change it to? If you can remember, of course.

Hi Guys,

 

This is just a shot in the dark but here goes anyway because I've had this same problem many years ago but in another part of the world.

 

My specific crash problem was caused by a faulty start position in the Afcad data of my destination airport and it was a previously planned flight controlled via ATC. The airport scenery itself was a third party addon and was easily fixed.

 

Maybe this information will help you to at least narrow down the cause of your "look alike" problem.

 

Good luck

Hans

Thanks for the suggestion. I'd guess it's more likely the problem CRJ_simpilot had. The reason being that I could fly to a certain point before FS crashed. And I could move my plane around in map view and fly with no problems until I got near that region again. I even moved my plane about 75 or 100 miles beyond and continued on my flight path (on autopilot) with no problem but when I turned around, flew back toward that region, and got within 10 or 11 miles, FS crashed. There's something hinky about that region of scenery.

That's really interesting. I'll have to fly that section again and lower the complexity slider to see if it works. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

Mine is currently set to "very dense". What was yours set to and what did you change it to? If you can remember, of course.

 

Mine was set to very dense and I changed it to dense I think. After I got out of the area that was problematic I put it back to very dense.

Mine was set to very dense and I changed it to dense I think. After I got out of the area that was problematic I put it back to very dense.

Hey, that worked!

Glad I could help.

 

It seems like there is scenery in FS that once rendered from its complexity causes the Sim to error out.

Glad I could help.

 

It seems like there is scenery in FS that once rendered from its complexity causes the Sim to error out.

Thank you sir!

 

BTW, I was flying near that area but not exactly the route from before and thought I'd be safe when I turned down the complexity. It still locked up. So I tried again a couple more times turning the complexity down to "normal" and then "sparse" and it locked up both times. :rolleyes:

Have you tried different times/seasons? Do you have the 9.1 update? I live 50 NM North of that airstrip in the real world and I flew thousands of flights in FS9 around there back in the day and never encountered any unexplained sim crashes.

 

That really does sound like a corrupt AI texture though, I've had that happen myself. There used to be a program you could run that would log all disk activity IIRC, was it "FileMon", I can't remember? Anyway it would log which files were being opened on disk at the time of the crash, I think that's how I nailed down the AI texture. Maybe it would give you a clue what's happening in Idaho.

 

Oops, quick search reveals FileMon was replaced by ProcMon.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/filemon

you should not have crashes caused by scenery with only default scenery being used. occasionally an addon scenery will also have you replace default files in order for their scenery to work. one time i was having crashes around vancouver or seatac or portland, somewhere west coast and the offending scenery file was an addon airport in norway or sweden or somewhere in that area of the world. so if your having crashes with only default scenery enabled double check that your default scenery folders have only default files in them

Read what Jim Robinson said. Almost 99% of the time these issues can be tracked back to a corrupt file of sort or the other. We've all experienced them and they suck as it tends to happen towards the end of our flights. You should never have to reduce sliders of any sort to overcome what should work in the first place.

 

Mitch

There used to be a program you could run that would log all disk activity IIRC, was it "FileMon", I can't remember? Anyway it would log which files were being opened on disk at the time of the crash, I think that's how I nailed down the AI texture. Maybe it would give you a clue what's happening in Idaho.

 

Oops, quick search reveals FileMon was replaced by ProcMon.

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/filemon

Interesting. I'll make note of that. Thank you.

 

you should not have crashes caused by scenery with only default scenery being used. occasionally an addon scenery will also have you replace default files in order for their scenery to work.

That's the thing; I've never downloaded any addon scenery.

 

Read what Jim Robinson said. Almost 99% of the time these issues can be tracked back to a corrupt file of sort or the other.

That I don't doubt. But which file is corrupted is the $64,000 question. I'll look into Mr Robinson's suggestion.

 

 

Thanks for you help, fellas.