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Heathrow 2008 and g3d.dll


Rafal Haczek

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Hi there,

well i'm fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. I was waiting this scenery to come out of the boxes a long time ago and here it is my dream comes true! but .... after my first installation with high resolution textures I got a CTD while flying the airport with a helicopter. I said to myself this is expected as I'm putting AI traffic to 90% plus some extreme display settings. I have chosen a time of the day when Heathrow is not busy (like midnight) and I was taxiing the airport on a cessna 172. I was really enjoying the scenery... so beautiful even by night!

Ok, now it's time to takeoff. The aircraft is Embraer 145. After taking off I requested landing from the ATC and I was assigned RWY 09R with BIG(plus a number) STAR. Everything was ok until the aircraft made a turn to follow the RWY course. One second after the scenery started loading.... a CTD and the error is g3d.dll "would you like to report the problem to microsoft"

No thanks, so far none of my problems have been solved by microsoft. I reinstalled with low resolution textures, the same problem. I felt disappointed and was afraid to be the only one with this problem. Until yesterday, I logged on to your forum to see if anyone else had the same experience. Yes it was the case then I took a long breath, I was fortunate not to be alone!

Well, may be we should wait some time to let the aerosoft team figure out the problem and provide us a patch. The sceney is fresh new and things like this happens with any addon. I'm sure the wait is rewarding!

Sorry for being long :wink:

Good luck aerosoft team

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Yes, we deffinitely have to wait for a full-size patch.

This problem is serious and still seems critical.

Trying to help I have made around 50+ flights to and from Heathrow, changing all possible factors.

Unfortunatelly the g3d.dll error keeps coming, especially on approach since some of my departures were safe (don't know why).

If there is anything else I can do, like being a part of our rough "assistance team" I am ready to continue testing and do my best like many other guys here I believe.

From what I managed to see on those rare moments at Heathrow 2008 it looks like a both beautiful and optimized scenery which has a potential to be a real hit for all of us.

Best regards,

Rafal

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Good morning everyone. I tried the 'inofficial' patch one and it didn't help. It crashed again. So I went back to the original .bgl files and Martin's AFCAD (which worked once yesterday) and no luck. It crashed again. :-(

As Rafal says, this looks like something serious that needs to be patched. I hope this will happen because Heathrow looks great. I can fly from it, but just can't return :-(

Let's hope this is fixable!

Best!

Gavin

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Hi all

Ok. Here is my first post and here are my results about this issue.

PC/FS specs:

Athlon XP 64 4000+ San Diego

Motherboard A8N SLi Premium from ASUS

1024MB DDR 400 (I need more 1024, I know...)

7800GT 256MB DDR3 Asus nVIDIA videocard

Direct X 9.0c and Windows XP SP2

FS 9.1 and EGLL 2008 with HIGH RESOLUTION TEXTURES

Sliders almost to the right at the scenery section, medium at the aircraft section, density/detailed clouds, antialiasing ON

Between 95 to 120 AI aircrafts landing/taking-off, on the ground, etc

More than 2000 AI to load and 400 sceneries to load as well

First conclusion: the FS didn´t crash any time, however.....................

- First flight: landing 9L, airbus 320 - ifdg model and PSS panel - suddenly very low FPS, down to 1 FPS and the simulator stopped a lot of times before landing, textures disappeared and only appeared some seconds are being on the ground

- Second flight: landing 27R, dornier 27 from aerosoft; since the speed is really too low I got some stutters and some textures disappeared but only one time or two; FPS were going down to 3 or 4

- Third flight: landing 27R, AFTER THE UNNOFICIAL PATCH installed with HIGH RESOLUTION TEXTURES; airbus 320 - ifdg model and PSS panel; just 3 stutters at the last 4 miles, NO simulator stops, no textures disappeared and minimum of 13 to 14 FPS at some places; at the ground I returned to 18 to 22 FPS

Second conclusion: problems occured with landings and never with take offs, but I got some stuttering while in the air, 5 or 6 miles after taking off 27L in the third flight.

All flights were done with day time, active sky ON with the weather getting some scattered clouds.

I need to get more 1024 memory, that I know. About this issue, of course it need to be corrected, but for a good machine but not the top at the moment like mine, it is handling the problem not so bad in my computer.

There is one thing that I corrected myself: the afcad has lots of taxi nodes that need to be added, otherwise you have aircraft colisions when they are waiting for taxe off. These nodes need to be added only on the taxiways conducting aircrafts to the TO runway which is 9R/27L, specially at the 27L side where lots of taxiway entrances exist. I corrected that myself and now I have good separations on the ground between all the big and small aircrafts while taxing.

By the way, and just to help, I have all the world wings installed into BAW AI aircrafts, namely A320, B747, B777, B767 and B757. I suppose that with lots of different textures to load, everything gets heavier... And also about AI aircrafts, I don´t know if the big jets are heavier in textures, but as you can imagine, 25 % of the aircrafts I have at EGLL are for sure A340, B747 or B777.

Besides these two problems (the last one very easy to solve), I give 4,9 stars for this scenery. If the first issue gets corrected, then I will give a 5. :lol::lol::lol:

harpsi

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People on FS newsgroup report this:

I have not tried to fly _into_ Heathrow with the scenery, but I do experience CTDs when trying to switch to EGLL from any other airport ("Go to airport ...") with any add-on plane on the ground or in flight, or even with a default plane while in flight. Clearly there are some issues....

Pity poor Oliver's just gone on holiday. Wonder if he's logging in here whilst away! (Best not - he is on holiday after all).

Consensus seems to be to wait until the problem is sorted out before making this your default EGLL.

M.

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Eheh. Fortunately I don´t fly too much to England. To have a good scenery in connection with EGLL you need the VFR photographic scenery. One hundred AIs at London Heathrow, VFR scenery, AES, a very high demand aircraft like pdmg and so on, detailed clouds, and much more things are enough ingredients to crash the simulator, unless you have a very powerful machine. It is a pity but this is an old problem which is even worse with FSX as far as I know. Developers are making very good sceneries but we stop all the times into this kind of issues. Really a pity!

harpsi

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Hi,

Ok. I´m back on this. A pity that it doesnt´t help. The CTD I had seen myself is not reproducable. I saved the flight, even nearly every step using "Autosave", but it does not repeat.

2 Questions:

Does anyone of you had an CTD WITHOUT using ActiveSky?

I dont have it installed, maybe I should?

Does anyone of you had a CTD WITHOUT using AES?

Just to sort it out.

I´m going now to make some BGL files that were not tweaked to reduce the autogen border referred to the airport. Maybe that´s the trick. Also I´ll provide a new AFCAD.

Sorry for all that mess. None of our testflights on several PC´s ever produced a G3D.dll error.

Thorsten

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2 Questions:

Does anyone of you had an CTD WITHOUT using ActiveSky?

I dont have it installed, maybe I should?

Does anyone of you had a CTD WITHOUT using AES?

Just to sort it out.

In short, yes and yes.

I have now logged over 60 flights to EGLL from LFPG with the Aerosoft LTU A321, Posky 747-400, Level D 767-300ER, Lago Maddog MD-80, PMDG Beechcraft 1900C, default 737, default Lear 45, default Cessna 172 and digital Av Piper Cheyenne. I have tried everything from FS9 and Heathrow only to everything to the firewall.

All flights but 4, with the Cessna, ended with a CTD while on long final just after turning onto the rwy heading at about 10nm. The Cessna flights where rough with slow loading textures and frame rates dropping to 7 or 8 at around the 12 to 9 nm range. Once on the ground all was OK.

My guess is that something is overwhelming the FS9 engine and when using higher speed aircraft, FS9 can't keep up with the demand.

I'm going to try disabling each texture and bgl one by one to see if I can find the offending file or files.

Dell XPS710 H2C

Intel® Core2 Quad CPU @ 3.192GHz (4CPUs)

4 GB RAM (only 2.814GB is recoginzed)

2 x 750GB HDs RAID 0 for a total of 1.5TB HD space (only 12% full)

OS is MS Win XP Pro (5.1, Build 2600)

DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)

2 x Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX 768.0 MB cards (SLI enabled)

Dell 2407WFP (Digital) set @ 1920 x 1200 (32 bit) (60Hz)

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I have not had this issue at all, mind you I have only done short flights (LFPG and EDDK). One in the LVD and another in the PMDG 747.

I'm not using static aircraft and I'm using the low res textures. One flight was with Active Sky the other without.

I have my fingers crossed.

Maybe a video card driver issue?

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Another thing crossed my mine. Render to texture ticked on or off?

It's probably something idiotic like that.

I know you can get G3D.dll CTD errors when you use DX3 cloud textures and have render to texture unchecked. It needs to be checked to prevent the errors, maybe a texture in EGLL is causing this?

Also, I removed the static plane textures from the texture folder (I don't use static planes). Not that it has anything to do with it.

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@sekhet

Thanks for that clear answer. A good idea to delete file by file. maybe you con also do this "block wise",

delete 10 files at the same time. When the error is gone try to find the one of the ten :-)

Before you start: In a few minutes I´ll upload a new patch2 (containing the changed fils of inofficialpatch1 as well). Simply override the files in the Heathrow2008/scenery directory. Hopefully this time...

Thorsten

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I have been adding and eliminating the following factors during my testflights:

- AI traffic (I have my own traffic consisting of many models, e.g. PAI, TFS, EvolveAi, Aardvark, etc)

- clear sky, default fair and ASv65 weather

- being offline and online

- sunrise, daylight, sunset and night time

- with and without UK2000 EGKKK

- default C172 as well as PMDG 737NG, PMDG 744, FT 737 and LVL-D 763

- approaching 09L/R and 27L/R

- tuning ILS as well as not

- initial AFCAD plus the Oliver and Thorsten made ones

- different resolution

- antialiasing off and on

- anisotrophic filtering off and on

What I did not test because I don't want to uninstall is the use of:

- FSUIPC

- Ultimate Terrain Europe

- Ground Environment Pro II

- some exchanged autogen buildings and trees textures, plus low res clouds

What I cannot change since it is my hardware is the graphic card (Radeon 9800 Pro)

note: I tried both the latest and earlier drivers - no difference on this

Conclusion: I never get the crash on departure.

I get it on arrival, usually some 9-12 nm from the rwy threshold

Hope my details may help somehow.

Best regards,

Rafal

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All users who like:

Here´s the second patch. Simply override Heatrhow2008/scenery files,

doesn´t matter if you tried the innofficialpatch1 or not as this testpatch2 in cummulative and overwrites all changed files again.

PLEASE BACKUP YOUR HEATHROW/SCENERY DIRECTORY BEFORE as the patch2 contains additional BGL´s. If the test fails you must not figure out which ones.

What was altered:

- The AFCAD is a bit "light" now, so i removed some parking spots to see if this could be a reason.

- Additionally I removed Tweaks which allowed the autogen to show a bit closer to the airport. And I used other exclude files (dont worry that they are named FSX*.bgl. Doesnt matter.

Patch2:

www.data4image.com/testpatch2.zip

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I´m going now to make some BGL files that were not tweaked to reduce the autogen border referred to the airport. Maybe that´s the trick. Also I´ll provide a new AFCAD.

But why do you change the afcad? The only thing that can be changed in order to get a better performance is an afcad with less positions which means less aircrafts. But then you can stay with the same afcad and you reduce the number of aircrafts inside the FS, moving the sliders to the left, something like 50 % or even less. Maybe the unoficial package except the afcad file is enough. Just an opinion. For the rest, I think the files are quite OK. :lol:

harpsi

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I have not had this issue at all, mind you I have only done short flights (LFPG and EDDK). One in the LVD and another in the PMDG 747.

I'm not using static aircraft and I'm using the low res textures. One flight was with Active Sky the other without.

I have my fingers crossed.

Maybe a video card driver issue?

I/ second to that - no problem at all.

Installed stuff.

UT Europe - with all options at full.

ASV6.5 with FS Enviroment

GE PRO.

Custom made AI Traffic with tons of AI.

UK2000 EGKK with my own AFCAD.

1st flight - Level D 767 EDDF-EGLL, landing on 27R with VC - I had stable 17-20FPS.

2nd flight - PMDG 738 EHAM - EGLL, landing on 27R with VC - 13-15 FPS.

My system - CD2-E6700 (2.67), ASUS P5W, 2GB RAM, GF7900GS with 256MB on board, XPSP2,

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G3D.dll error has been always linked with corrupted textures - usually "bad" DTX1 format. I had the same problem with Imaginesim KDTW and Overland RJBB. Perhaps, it's better to check texture by texture to see what may cause the problem

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@Dimon: Nice hint

@RAFAL: Could you delete all Heathrow2008/Textures (keep the directory, simply move them to a directory OUTSIDE FS9 ? And report if the CTD still happens. Perhaps it´s really a corrupted texture.

Thorsten

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2 Questions:

Does anyone of you had an CTD WITHOUT using ActiveSky?

I dont have it installed, maybe I should?

Does anyone of you had a CTD WITHOUT using AES?

Just to sort it out.

Q1 - I always use Active Sky.

Q2 - I don't have AES on my system

I haven't tried the 2nd patch yet - will do so soon.

Thanks for giving up your free time on a Sunday to try and help us. Much appreciated!

Gavin

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My problem was that I couldn't go from the default ksea to egll without getting the ctd error. Only worked with the default cessna. I have installed this latest patch but kept the original simwings afcad. All is fine now. I can now move to egll from ksea. Going to a test flight to try also

Gerry

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Hi all, I just tried a fourth PC (a 1 year old laptop, single core) with FS2004 and PMDG737. Low Texture set,

original EGLL retail download.

I started with the original Seattle default flight. changed to 737PMDG and than "go to airport", choosed EGLL as suggested. I was hoping to provoke the error.

But no chance. everything went well, no problem. It´s really strange.

Lets wait for the results of patch 2 before I´ll make further investigations.

Gerry´s posting has a little bit hope for all of us.

Thorsten

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Just to report that I got the very same CTD issue. I was flying LH4772 DUS-LHR (I'll repeat the flight with the PMDG 747 once the issue is solved) was turning finals from heading 125 (standard FS vectoring, I was using the Fiftynorth 737) to 09L when in my case, the screen completely froze a few minutes before the actual CTD. I'm also using AES 1.91. My specs:

ASUS A8N5X Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Mainboard

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego

Kingston ValueRAM DDR400 (PC3200) 2GB (2 x 1GB)

MSI NX6600LE-TD256ESP Geforce 6600LE 256MB PCI Express

Creative Labs Soundblaster Audigy 2 Z5

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB SATA

Western Digital Caviar WD800BB 80GB IDE

Western Digital Caviar WD1200BB 120 GB IDE

Microsoft Windows Vista Business

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004 (Version 9.1)

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