FSX CTDs all over the American continent

Hello everyone, I'm having an issue with FSX in the American continent and I'm at my wits end.

 

Since the last few days I have been trying to spawn at airports in central and eastern NA. For

some reason, I get CTDs right after loading the flight completes. Instead of 'spawning', after

loading completes screen continues staying black, program switches to "Not Responding"

state for a couple of minutes until I eventually get a CTD. Western US works just fine, as

does the EU and every other region. The thing is that this does not leave any info regarding

the error in the Event Viewer. Downloaded AppCrashView just in case, still nothing. Tried

searching my 'Addon Scenery' directory, as well as Scenery/Global and World for any recent

changes, did not find anything suspicious.

 

I have a big list of addons installed, including GEX previously, then ORBX OLC and UTX. (Can't

think of any others that would have such a large scale impact on the FSX world). To note, I've

had these for quite some time and remember just a few months ago testing some addon airports

like KJFK, KBOS, CYUL, CYQX etc and remember everything working fine. Have not installed

anything America related in the last few months at least. I've been troubleshooting the sim

here and there for a long time, but this time I am just clueless. I can't even get near NA

central and eastern regions, not even Greenland. Tried more testing, turns out that the whole

American continent is producing instant CTDs. The only places that don't are the west coast

of the US (Alaska, Washington etc.) until down at NW Mexico. South America doesn't work

at all. The only thing I did a month ago that potentially could have messed with some files

was do some scans with IObit System Care and cleaned my registry.

 

I also did the following experiment: Spawned with the CLS 747-200 (relatively FPS-friendly)

at Boeing Field in Seattle, no issues. Attemted to take-off, climb to a flight level and just

head East (HDG about 100deg). Initially, all ok, as I started to close in on the problematic

region of NA, I started getting some very weird flickering within the sim, rest of PC was ok.

The closer I got, the flickering got more intense, and after about 1h30m of flight time, I got

a CTD again. I posted a relevant video on YT just in case anyone is interested to see what I

mean. As you can see, when the direction of view is towards the (probably) problematic areas,

flickering intensifies. Also when zooming in as well. Tried the same with Aerosoft F-16: No

flickering this time, but still get the same CTD, with the Captain Sim 727, same as with F-16.

Similar weird texture flickering occurs on other things as well and anywhere in the world,

not with this intensity though, (e.g. AI cars occasionally) so this may be a problem to

solve some other time.

 

After playing with the installed addons in the Scenery Library, my crashes now mainly generate

errors with the faulting module reported as being the ai_player.dll. Btw, I have AI aircraft

traffic disabled since I mainly fly on vatsim, I previously had WOAI but still problem free.

 

Also tried renaming the fsx.cfg, scenery.cfg and dll.xml, still no luck.

 

I understand this may be quite rare since I haven't really found anything similar around.

Any info would be greatly appreciated, probably from someone that has ran into this already,

thank you in advance. I will not have access to my PC for the next 20-ish days, waiting for

any suggestion to try out when able.

 

- Windows 10

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 1200

- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 550 (with boosted performance from 'AMD Radeon Software')

- FSX Gold Edition

- DX10 Steeve Fixer

- Many WOAI Aircraft Models

- ORBX Open LC 1.30

- ORBX Global 1.40

- ORBX Vector 1.51

- UTX

- ReShade with SweetFX

 

Link to video with flickering (the first minute should be enough to showcase the issue):

Might be an overheating issue with the computer. Or don't have "boosted performance" turned on.

I was afraid it may be related to the GPU, but still could not come up with a reason that the issues would be highly region-specific. Flickering has never been an issue like in the showcase video, preventing normal flight, anywhere else in the world (I fly in EU, never had such an issue). Will try running lower settings when able and see if the flickering goes away (in case there is no permanent damage to the GPU). The CTDs all over America though, I still cannot explain. Feels like a certain range of Longitude is a no-go.

In order to troubleshoot these CTDs, we need to see if there are any "Error" entries in Windows Event Viewer at the time of the crash.

 

Jorgen

In order to troubleshoot these CTDs, we need to see if there are any "Error" entries in Windows Event Viewer at the time of the crash.

 

Jorgen

Go to Start. Search for Events Logs. Open View event logs. Navigate to Custom Views and then Administrative Events and locate the error by FSX.

 

I'll show you an example of the error details :

 

Faulting application name: fsx.exe, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb14

Faulting module name: This is what is needed!, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x04f40000

Faulting process id: 0xb84

Faulting application start time: 0x01ce5e7b4fec05cd

Faulting application path: E:\FSX\fsx.exe

Faulting module path: unknown

Report Id: 85f639de-ca93-11e2-afac-00e04c054dc3

Faulting package full name:

Faulting package-relative application ID:

With all addons removed from the Scenery Library, I managed to get what I assume is still the same CTD, and was producing almost every time an error, with the same fsx.exe (obviously), same faulting module, the 'ai_player.dll', same exception code etc. With the scenery addons enabled, I get no event / error report. Here is the latest one from yesterday.

 

 

Error from Event Viewer:

 

Faulting application name: fsx.exe, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb14

Faulting module name: ai_player.dll, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb57

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x00037399

Faulting process id: 0x3aa8

Faulting application start time: 0x01d80a33f0443cd4

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ai_player.dll

Report Id: 5b3063d6-a1ac-4ea6-b0ea-daa34e6071b2

Faulting package full name:

Faulting package-relative application ID:

https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/showthread.php?272167-FSX-closing-crash-ai_player-dll

 

See if anything in this thread helps!

This exception code from the error report:

 

0xc0000005

 

is a so-called "memory access violation", meaning that "something" attempted to write to an area of RAM where it has no access rights.

 

Translated to your case, this is probably because aiplayer.dll tried to activate a badly programmed or incompatible add-on.

 

Jorgen

Hi,

 

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe

 

reading the ERROR text, the installation of FSX in "C:\Program Files (x86)" instead of

"C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe" could be the problem.

Hi,

 

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe

 

reading the ERROR text, the installation of FSX in "C:\Program Files (x86)" instead of

"C:\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe" could be the problem.

 

Install paths do not cause CTDs. And his install path is the default path for FSX.

Thanks everyone for your info, really appreciate it. Back in my PC, tried it again, still same error.

 

Faulting application name: fsx.exe, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb14

Faulting module name: ai_player.dll, version: 10.0.61637.0, time stamp: 0x46fadb57

Exception code: 0xc0000005

Fault offset: 0x00037519

Faulting process id: 0x17bc

Faulting application start time: 0x01d81999e052d417

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\fsx.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Microsoft Flight Simulator X\ai_player.dll

Report Id: 7655298b-60a5-4608-9049-c6df45087bae

Faulting package full name:

Faulting package-relative application ID:

 

I hope I won't have to reinstall FSX from scratch. (Or maybe just avoid America?)

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/486497-aiplayerdll/

Are you using the default aiplayer.dll, or did you get a modified one?

 

That was one possible cause for this, another could be an incompatible AI aircraft. Or maybe a bad flight plan?

 

Jorgen

Thanks again, I will try installing FSX on a new PC, grab some default files from there and see how it goes.

 

Q1: Can a bad AI aircraft cause CTDs all over a continent with traffic sliders set at 0?

Q2: How can a bad flight plan cause CTD all over a continent?

When testing I only select aircraft, location, time and weather. No AI traffic, no flight plan or anything.

 

Will try getting the ai_player.dll and maybe a few scenery files from a clean installation and will report back.

Default ai_player.dll, got the default NAMC, NAME, NAMW and SAME folders, still no luck. At this point I may as well give up and simply avoid America :(.

Found this reply from Peter Dowson (ignore the FSUIPC reference)

 

"No, FSUIPC does nothing to help or hinder AI_Player. Sorry. Usually crashes in that are due to corrupted textures in one or other of the AI aircraft being loaded. I've never known it to crash for any other reasons. Sometimes it's one specific aircraft livery and then of course only occurs when you are near enough to an airport or flight path of such an aircraft."

 

You may have to go hunting or just uninstall/reinstall FSX and start again?

I'm afraid that this is the only way to make it possible to fly in America. Since I've been tweaking FSX for years now, have a low-medium spec PC even for FSX and this is the first time I've ran into an issue that feels unsolvable, I may as well leave it as it is. I have tons of aircraft, textures, scenery and tweaks that would be lost unfortunately and would take lots of time to set everything up again, so I guess I'll have to live with it until a PC upgrade or something.

 

Once again, thanks everyone for your help