Anyone know how to check for errors in aircraft???? :: Archived

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Alle,
I have an aircraft that causes my cfs1 to crash when :
1- I crash the plane
2-When I leave the session and go back to tthe ready room.
this happens to others as well and it happens to several types of operating systems. Noticed was that the background colors of certain window turned tan when this cfs1 game crashed, before they were white.
Has anyone seen this type of error? can it be fixed??

[NS38th_Aristaeus]

~S~ UHU
I have experienced the background color chnging to a tan color but not the crashes. This has only happened while on line and I just attributed it to the ZONE. Does this prob occure on and off line both?
I will try to find some answers and will get back to u ASAP.
~S~

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Aristaues!

yes, it happens both online and offline. I have used the mdl checker and it gives me an alll clear and well result. I have looked at the aircraft.cfg and canot see 2what may be causing this... but then again I am not an expert. I have looked for a detailed explanation of what ech lin means and have not found a suitable reference. I thank you for your hep and can hardly wait for more replies!!!
This plane handles well and looks wonderful. I am biased on its looks since I painted it.

[NS38th_Aristaeus]

~S~ UHU
I posted ur prob on my squad site and the following is a post fm our C.O. if u think it is a certain A/C causing this prob pls provide a link if possible here. ~S~
FM NIL

Hi Aris,

If he could give a link to the plane download, then it would be easier to look into, having the plane.

Will be speculation on what could be wrong and the procedure i would use would be to start eliminating things by exchanging groups of the plane with e.g. sound, panels e.t.c that i know are bug free. Then maybe you could be able to narrow down that the error is in the panel config e.g.

there are some file checkers out there for e.g. panels and dp files structure.

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Aristaeus,

I hope this link will work for you. I am not sure if it is a protected one.
www.joint-ops.com/Down...110-E1.zip

If this does not work. please let me know where to email the plane to!

[Uhu_Fledermaus]

Servus! Fritzle,

I downloaded the plane via the link you posted and installed it, did some flying around with it and all is fine here, no problem whatsoever with it, at least not that I could find.

framerates where in outside look around 100-120 fps and in cockpit view 78-90 fps, all guns worked and as said can't find a thing wrong with it.

The only option I can think of is that you have multiple folders reffering to the same type of aircraft..........and there is where, be it cfs and fs as well, get's into touble as it wants to load all stuff related to that particular aircraft it encounters and by that it needs ton's of resources and if it can't get the resources it hangs up on it.

So the only advice I can give you make shure you double check your aircraft folder, but also your scenerey folder, as the problem also could be that you have scenery bgl's with the same name in the scnery/all folder and also in a dedicated scenery folder, in that particular case cfs hangs itself up as well and you will suffer from all kind of wierd effects.

Hope it helps ya out,
rgds
fled

[NS38th_Nil_7]

~S~ all,

Tested the plane here and as long as you only fly one of the models and then exit CFS1 before trying the other one, then it works ok. Test was on a fresh CFS1 install with no addons.

If I switch to the second model which is in same plane folder, after having flown the first model then my WinXP crashes.

Sounds like Fledermaus is on the right track on what's wrong and solution could be to split the model out into two separate aircraft folders and it would probably be possible to switch plane without Windows crashing.

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Alle,
the issue that I find is when shot down or intentionally crasheing the bird into the ground. Nil 7...did you crash the plane? Which modle caused porblems for you?

We can get to the bottom of this. Fled, I have only stock scenery now...

[NS38th_Nil_7]

~S~ Fritzl,

I only did offline free flight.

After i tested again it seems like in fact it's not the change of model that makes winXP crash on exit, but the WinXP crash is dependant on wheter i smashed the plane into ground in game.

My tests:

1. Free Fligt, 1st model, smashed plane into ground. ---> WinXP crash on exit.
2. Free Fligt, 1st model, exit game without smashing plane. ---> WinXP do not crash.
3. Same results as above with 2nd model.

So it looks like it is in fact the smashing of plane that will determine if WinXP crash on exit.

I then set the COMBATFS.EXE to Win95 compability mode and all crashes of WinXP stopped. (Rightclick COMBATFS.EXE, pick compability and pick the Win95 compability mode).

Easy solution to the issue of WinXP crashing seems to be to use the Win95 compability mode. However later i tested again with my WinXp desktop reset to normal theme and after that the crashing started again so the compatility mode is not the final solution.

If you bring WinXP to crash and keep the tanned theme that appear, then it looks like the crashes of WinXP stops.

Splitting the two models out into two separate planes would probably still be the best solution.

My OS version is English WinXP Pro all patched up with SP2.

[Uhu_Fledermaus]

just small addition to my previous post on the subject.

I have set the cfs.exe to be treated as windows 98 allways had that set from the start, just completely forgot about that

and indeed best option is still to make two separated folders for those two aircraft, alltough I must admit that whatever I tryed I could not get my system to crash.

Windows XP pro dutch version with all the updates there are SP2 etc etc.
P4 2,8 Ghz running as 3,08
Asus P4C-800 "deluxe"
2 Gig's RAM Corsair 3200 pro
320 G of hd's
ATI Radeon 9800 pro vidcard

another thing that comes to mind is what is running in the background with XP, I know it's a lot of stuff and that goes on resources, so for example you have 512mB of RAM, and the system stuff allready uses 250 of it, you can estimate for shure that you will be running out of resources when adding other stuff to run around.

then there is another issue, and that is what Vidcard, is it DX 9c compliant ? do you run DX 9c.

are you up to date with all service packs for the OS

How big is your swap file

I know there is a proggy out there that kills all not needed processes in XP for fs 2004, can't remember the name for it, but shure someone here knows that proggy.
when I start my puter at the end of the day there are only 22 things running in the background , when I leave XP to do it's thing it's close to 40.

just thinking out loud here and trying to get the culprit to surface.

hope it helps

fled

[NS38th_Nil_7]

~S~ all,

The error is somehow related to the dp files of these planes. Exchanged the dp file content with code for the Hurricane and crashes of WinXP stopped even when not running in any compability mode.

I run latest Directx 9.0c here and 1 Gb memory with 2 Gb page file. Video card Ati Radeon 9700 Pro, 128 Mb.

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Alle, and thank you all for the advice, and techniques. The .dps are where I am going to start my attack. I noticed that when I open themin the dp editor DPEDIT 1.00 one of them generates a .mdl rread error. I presume that this os because of the .mdl reference to the .dp and perhaps the mdl is calling out the bf110e1.dp and the file i am looking at is the bf110e1n.dp.
I also noticed that this editor I am using sometimes causes errors. What is a better editor to use? I have noticed he folllowing:
System names disapear, and tailgunner doenst work all of the time.
sometimes I cant even get the MGs to fire at all.
I have a reasonable idea of what I am doing and it appears that the editor is not doing what I want....LOL

Please let me hear your suggestions to the editor choice.
I wish to make a Bf 110 g-4
2x Mk108 cannon in the nose lower 135 rounds pper gun
2x Mk 151 cannons in the nose upper (300 rounds port and 350 rounds starbord)
2x FF MG cannons for the Schraegemusik (quantity unk, help please)
tail gunner removed...

is it possible to assign a different trigger to the 2 different cannons?
can I designate one set to be fired when I use the bomb relese example only?

Please advise
and thank you all very much again for your help

Uhu_Fritzl65

[NS38th_Nil_7]

~S~ Fritzl,

I don't have much experience on the structure of the dp file, besides a CFS2 plane i made for online aerobatic smoke, where i had to eliminate the effects of guns and cannons in order to use the gun and cannon trigger to control the colored aerobatic smoke online. A completely different story which you can get an impression on here:

ns38th.com/blackangels...sindex.htm

You should be able to use the following as triggers:

-Gun
-Cannon
-Rocket (probably wont work online)
-???? an unknown trigger (probably wont work online)
-Torpedo (probably wont work online)

I'm afraid that this leaves you with only two triggers to use if you wish the plane to work online, but you could experiment on that. In principle i beleive you should be able to trigger one cannon with the gun trigger and another cannon with the cannon trigger, but if you wish to have guns as well, then you are still short of triggers if the rocket, ??? and torpedo triggers don't work online. It could also be that the CFS1 game engine doesn't handle the ??? and torpedo trigger at all and that these are for CFS2 only.

There is a newer version of the editor you refer to. If you do a search on www.flightsim.com you should find it. (You need to register to be able to login to the downloads section of that site)

I have too little experience on the structure to help you tracking exactely why the errors and crash of WinXp occurs with this plane. Maybe www.cfcforums.com/foru...ay.php?f=7 is a good place to look for more qualified help if you trust that the problem has been narrowed down to the dp files.

You Could also try contact AER squad who is building WW1 planes and hear if they can refer you to one that will be able to help:

www.aer.ip3.co.uk/

[uhu_fritzl65]

S! Nil7
I have posted at SOH.
I cannot get into the other (aerodrome site)
I have recreated the dp from scratch using dped ver 1.10., I checked the HELP pull down menu and there it states cfs2. the dp which i create seems to be stable at first but shortly there after it causes weapons to not fire, and then when the plane crashes cfs crashes. OR cfs crash after retrning to the ready room. OR cfs crash when trigger is pulled.

Is there anyone who is an expert on the editing of dp?
Is the Editor that I am using causing these anomolies? Remember it states cfs2 in the Help pull down.

[NS38th_Nil_7]

~S~ Fritzl,

If you pick the main page link on the Aerodrome site, then you will get to a working page and from there to this contact page:

www.aer.ip3.co.uk/contact.htm

AER_Beefy is pretty often present on the CFS2 Zone during European evening hours so that might be a possible approach as well.

Dped 1.10 was released back in time to support CFS2 in addition to CFS1, so i don't think that the errors are caused by the editor itself.

You might also find some dp specialists on the Netwings.org forum:

www.netwings.org/cgi-b...=DCConfID1

Try to exchange the content of dp files with the content from the default Bf110 dp and see if not the crashes of WinXp stops. From there you could start to build up the dp and add one by one the things you wish to add and then test in between to ensure that the crashes don't start again. The plane works here when i exchange the content of dp with the content from the default Bf110 so there must be some kind of flaw related to the present dp of the JO plane.