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Installing FlightGear, scenery, aircraft etc. on Windows.

Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Fri Aug 03, 2018 1:32 am

Windows 10 (x84) bld 17134; HP z840 workstation, dual 8-core Intel Xeon E5-2620 v4 2.10 GHz processors (hyper-threading enabled) , 32 GB RAM, Nvidia Quadro M4000 Graphics card; 2 TB main drive 1.4 TB free, 2 TB RAID 10 drive used for A/V data editing storage (does not figure into FlightGear install or usage).

1. Installation appeared to run normally. (McAfee Internet Security virus checker turned off as recommended.)
2. Start screen with left-side panel gadgets appeared. I was able to change / set settings such as full screen operation, directories for downloaded content...
3. When I clicked the "Fly" gadget, a splash screen appeared with a message about configuring subsystems.

At that point FlightGear hangs, and alert appears flagging 8 files as encrypted ransomware, and one file (the main executable, I think) as spyware. The OS will not let the application run further than that. I have uninstalled FlightGear in case the warnings were factual rather than erroneous.

Is this a known problem that requires registry tweaks or other OS "hacks" to get FlightGear to run? I am unwilling to use applications that are not straight-up compatible with the OS, so...

Thanks for any info that can be supplied on this issue.
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby Thorsten » Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:04 am

From where did you get the FG version? You're the first user I know to report such issues.
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 4:43 pm

i agree with Thorsten... the only real problem i see is this supposed recommendation to turn off one's virus/malware scanner... ESPECIALLY if they are connected to the internet... it only takes seconds for something to get in and start infesting your programs... especially vulnerable are those being installed...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby enrogue » Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:36 pm

It *does* say in the Windows installer that it recommends you to disable the antivirus during install

It speeds it up but it's not really necessary (at least not with the 2 antivirus types I've used)

I would recommend an uninstall, full AV scan & try reinstalling with antivirus enabled

Also grab the current 2018.2.3 RC from here http://download.flightgear.org/builds/r ... 2.3-rc.exe

The main download page hasn't been updated due to a bug in sourceforge I believe
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:46 pm

yeah, i know it says that but that's is a really really really BadThing<tm> to do... i mean seriously bad... especially if you do not take steps to disconnect from the network while you have the AV turned off... gah! that makes me twitch worse than rolling naked in poison ivy or poison oak...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby enrogue » Fri Aug 03, 2018 7:04 pm

Not disagreeing with you there :)
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Fri Aug 03, 2018 10:43 pm

Thorsten wrote in Fri Aug 03, 2018 9:04 am:From where did you get the FG version? You're the first user I know to report such issues.


I downloaded it from https://sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear/ on 07/29/2018 at 20:00 PDT. I thought this was the official download site.

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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Sat Aug 04, 2018 1:23 am

enrogue wrote in Fri Aug 03, 2018 6:36 pm:Also grab the current 2018.2.3 RC from here http://download.flightgear.org/builds/r ... 2.3-rc.exe

The main download page hasn't been updated due to a bug in sourceforge I believe


Did that. First got the Windows Defender security screen advising "Don't Run", but I selected "More Info"-> "Run Anyway". The install appeared to proceed normally. For good measure I decided to warm-reboot before running FG. Machine startup took almost 6 minutes, but there were no errors in the event log. So I shutdown, waited about 2 mins, an cold-booted. Machine start time was closer to normal.

When I attempted to run FG, it took about 3 minutes before the opening screen appeared. I selected an aircraft (it wasn't selected as default although location was), and then "Fly". Long wait with little progress bar along the bottom loading / initializing subsystems, then downloading scenery / aircraft file, then loading scenery to a point where it hung. It just seems FlightGear is not compatible with either my hardware or the current version of Windows 10.

NOTE: tried to insert image of FG screen while hung with Task Manager showing "Note Responsive" and using about 8.5% CPU; image snipped after 10 minutes of waiting for FG to unhang itself. But I guess I would have to put the image on the web someplace since it won't just insert from my local machine. :^{

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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 2:27 am

yes, you have to upload images to a site like imgur and then provide a link to the image, not the resulting page, on that site... you have to put it in [img] tags...
eg:
Code: Select all
[img]https://somesite.invalid/pics/mypic.png[/img]

that's totally made up but the only thing different would be the URL in the img tags...

back to your actual posted problem, this sounds like scenery is being downloaded... sometimes it can take a while... especially if you're on a crowded or slow pipe to the 'net...

do you have terrasync enabled in the launcher to download scenery for you? which craft did you select? which airport?
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:10 am

wkitty42 wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 2:27 am:back to your actual posted problem, this sounds like scenery is being downloaded... sometimes it can take a while... especially if you're on a crowded or slow pipe to the 'net...

do you have terrasync enabled in the launcher to download scenery for you? which craft did you select? which airport?


I have 100 Mbps (down) by 10 mbps (up) cable internet. Before it hangs, it occasionally shows a 9Kbs download speed (seems way to slow). It seems a little weird that downloading should cause the problem to go "Not Responding". Also, I forgot to mention the little cycling bar at the bottom of the screen stops in the second-to-last position when "Not Responding" pops up in the FG window header. Resource monitor shows almost no incoming network traffic, and no process with network activity that looks like an FG module. So I tried manually downloading and placing the grids of scenery I think I need for the default location (hard to tell from the small size of the map on the web) but FG still goes through the downloading motions, then hangs during "Loading Scenery".

Aircraft is the default C-172P, location is the default Hawaii PHNL. In the settings, "Download Scenery Automatically" is on. I check the download location identified in settings, and the folder is empty. I don't see any explicit reference to TerraSync, so I am assuming the auto download setting controls it from this version of FG, correct?

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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:27 pm

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:10 am:I have 100 Mbps (down) by 10 mbps (up) cable internet. Before it hangs, it occasionally shows a 9Kbs download speed (seems way to slow).

remember, you have no control over all the routers between you and the remote server you are connected to... you also have no control over how large their pipe is or how they may choose to limit bandwidth usage ;)

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:10 am:It seems a little weird that downloading should cause the problem to go "Not Responding".

not really when you think about the pipeline between you and the server getting overloaded and the traffic just not making it from there to your system...

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:10 am:Also, I forgot to mention the little cycling bar at the bottom of the screen stops in the second-to-last position when "Not Responding" pops up in the FG window header. Resource monitor shows almost no incoming network traffic, and no process with network activity that looks like an FG module. So I tried manually downloading and placing the grids of scenery I think I need for the default location (hard to tell from the small size of the map on the web) but FG still goes through the downloading motions, then hangs during "Loading Scenery".

well, yeah, this sounds like the classic downloading problem we've seen for a long time... sometimes it works great and other times, not so great... i've had the remote server get blocked on my network because something in the data triggered our intrusion detection system... it wasn't anything bad but just something that happened to trigger one of our IDS rules... a bit of editing and a white listing or two and we were back in business...

we've also seen this type of downloading problem when there's an unknown proxy between you and the remote server... sometimes they don't refresh their cache and can cause uglies like this to crop up... at one time it was amazing to find that most active AV/malware used a local proxy to scan your web traffic... some did it by injecting their proxy into the dll flow while others did it by altering your browser settings to point to your localhost and their proxy running on some port...

on downloading the tiles and placing them, where, excatly, on your system did you place them? FG has two places for scenery... they are not to be written to by end users... one is the default scenery for the default airport... PHNL in this case... the other directory is for terrasync use... terrasync will maintain the files in its directory... it will add files that have been updated and it will delete files that it doesn't see on the server... you can create additional scenery directories for your use, though... those you can do what you want in as far as editing scenery goes... all the data in the scenery directories is merged together in the final scene you see on your screen(s)... your personal scenery directories just need to be added to FG's scenery directory list for them to become active... that can be discussed later, though... there is a pattern to follow :)

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 5:10 am:Aircraft is the default C-172P, location is the default Hawaii PHNL. In the settings, "Download Scenery Automatically" is on. I check the download location identified in settings, and the folder is empty. I don't see any explicit reference to TerraSync, so I am assuming the auto download setting controls it from this version of FG, correct?

yeah, "download scenery automatically" is the terrasync setting... PHNL should have come with your FG so you don't need to download the scenery for it... you will need to download scenery if you go anywhere outside the Hawaiian islands, though... that scenery would be either auto-downloaded into the terrasync managed directory OR if manually downloaded, you would put it in your private scenery directory...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm

Thanks, wkitty42, for the lengthy response.

After posting I went digging about a little more and found that apparently the TerraSync download did complete, placing two grids worth of data in appropriate sub-folders of C:\Program Files\FlightGear 2018.2.3\data\Scenery. (When I said "the folder is empty" I was only looking at C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\Scenery Downloads.) So I downloaded the appropriate scenery grids and unzipped them to C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\Scenery Downloads then re-attempted to run FG. Again it hung at the "Loading Scenery" stage, and after 40 minutes in the "Not Responding..." state, Task Manager showed FlightGear using between 16% and 17% of the CPU (26 threads, 13 cores), a little over 1.7 GB RAM, zero disk, and zero network.

The scene grids I downloaded and unzipped produced similar sub-folders and size as those that appeared to have been downloaded by FG "automatically". So it appears I was mistaken thinking that it was hung by the download. It seems more likely that it is hung well into the loading of the scenery or perhaps getting the scenery displayed through the GPU. I also checked the application and system event logs and there are no recorded entries of problems until I use Windows to close the hung FG application.

Are there any other log files that FG might create that I can look at for hints at what is hanging FG?

One other thing - I also found a TerraSync sub-dir in C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\ that wasn't there before the final attempt to run FG, and it appears to have all the data from one of the two grids I downloaded manually and that appeared "automatically" in C:\Program Files\FlightGear 2018.2.3\data\Scenery. So I don't know if all this data redundancy is indicative or or causitive in this problem.

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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Sun Aug 05, 2018 12:25 am

you can increase your logging to debug level by adding
Code: Select all
--log-level=debug
to the launcher's Additional Settings box in the Settings tab... then in your c:\users\uid\documents\flightgear directory, you should find fgfs.log and possibly fgfs_0.log... the _0 one is the one for the previous session... these logs can get very large but they are relatively easy to read...
Last edited by wkitty42 on Sat Aug 11, 2018 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wkitty42 » Sun Aug 05, 2018 12:36 am

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:Thanks, wkitty42, for the lengthy response.

you're welcome... sometimes i get on a roll ;)

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:After posting I went digging about a little more and found that apparently the TerraSync download did complete, placing two grids worth of data in appropriate sub-folders of C:\Program Files\FlightGear 2018.2.3\data\Scenery.

this should be what came with FG when you installed it... especially since it is in one of the ""protected"" installation directories...


wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:(When I said "the folder is empty" I was only looking at C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\Scenery Downloads.)

that's fine... i think that's where the scenery goes to start with if you use the launcher's download scenery option...

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:So I downloaded the appropriate scenery grids and unzipped them to C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\Scenery Downloads then re-attempted to run FG. Again it hung at the "Loading Scenery" stage, and after 40 minutes in the "Not Responding..." state, Task Manager showed FlightGear using between 16% and 17% of the CPU (26 threads, 13 cores), a little over 1.7 GB RAM, zero disk, and zero network.

yeah, FG is not multi-threaded and doesn't use multiple cores at this time... it certainly looks like it was stuck in a loop somewhere... now another question, this is all happening after you click the launcher's [Fly!] button, right?

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:One other thing - I also found a TerraSync sub-dir in C:\Users\<my UID>\Documents\FlightGear\ that wasn't there before the final attempt to run FG,

yes, this is where the terrasync downloaded scenery goes...

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:and it appears to have all the data from one of the two grids I downloaded manually

not quite... only the stuff that terrasync downloads goes in there... if you use the launcher's manual scenery download and install option, that goes in another directory akin to your personal "myflightgear\mysceneryoverrides" that i've spoken about before...

wmc wrote in Sat Aug 04, 2018 11:48 pm:and that appeared "automatically" in C:\Program Files\FlightGear 2018.2.3\data\Scenery. So I don't know if all this data redundancy is indicative or or causitive in this problem.

the only reason there is redundancy now is because you've tried to download the scenery that you should already have so it goes in other places depending on how you download and install it... the redundancy is not indicative or causative... the eternal hang is definitely indicative... let's see what that debug log shows... you'll probably need to paste it to pastebin (limited paste length for free accounts) and provide a link to it... either that or make it available via dropbox or similar service so one of us can download it and take a look to see if we can see where the fault lies... i live in the debug logs on my system and my startup scripting keeps the 10 newest logs and rotates out the older ones as they expire ;)
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: Flightgear 2018.2.2 Won't Start

Postby wmc » Sun Aug 05, 2018 3:04 am

Yes, the hang happens after clicking the "Fly" button.

After messing about some more with it, I'm pretty sure it is a display issue, possibly an incompatibility with the NVidia Quadro M4000. This card was designed more for engineering and professional media creation (multi-stream 4K or UHD video, multichannel hi-res audio etc.) and may not be as "game friendly" as their GeForce line.

The reason I think it is a display problem is that, if I select Rembrandt rendering instead of the default, FG runs until a menu bar appears (File View Location....), a green "Cabin temperature between...." message and a ghosted image of the C-172 left-seat view on the runway ready for T/O shows "under" the splash screen that appears after you hit the "Fly" button. Its as if the splash screen opacity drops to about 70% and FG hangs in the process of fading the screen out to reveal the opening cockpit/scenery view.

GPU usage is at 0, and .8 of 24 GB of display RAM is in use at the hang point.

I had an older game in the past that acted similarly but simply going to Programs and Features ->Turn Windows Features On or Off->Legacy Components and enabling DirectPlay fixed it. No such luck with FG. I did run dxdiag and DirectX 12 is installed and appears free of issues. So I suspect FG is just incompatible with this display card since manipulating the rendering settings changes how far I get toward actually starting to fly.

Anyway, thanks for the help. I guess I'll have to keep looking for a Flight Sim that runs on my system since it seems to be incompatible with FG (and since Microsloth disabled their own Flight Simulator and Combat Flight Simulators over their row with Rovi / Macrovision... :^{

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