Airports, Traffic, FPS Disappear - Simconnect Object Limit?

Tried KDTW-CYQB today using AIG traffic at 75%, and GSX without extra ground clutter. Aircraft was the Aerosoft CRJ. All AI aircraft and GSX vehicles initially loaded in fine at the settings I listed above.

Had to reset my GSX just before pushing back at iniScene DTW due to a GSX-related issue, which caused all GSX ground vehicles to disappear as they should. When couatl restarted though, all ground vehicles were invisible despite all GSX functionality working. To test further, I tried removing all AIG traffic and reinjecting. The traffic was now “ghost traffic,” meaning the simobject limit had been reached. Didn’t bother continuing with the flight.

So basically, I tried the same method as you did but unfortunately was not as fortunate. Disappointing to say the least.

I’ve had the same thing happening yesterday at KLAX. I also had to reset GSX (= reposition at another gate / reset position) before pushback and had te same effects, GSX and AI traffic (AIG) invisible. Arrival airport KASE was invisible, too, so was any VATSIM plane (connected after AIG became invisible). It seems like resetting GSX has something to do with it in those many-simobjects-situations, because this is the very first time I’ve had that happening (I regularly fly from big hubs and with GSX and AIG and it never happened). Maybe @Umberto67 can check if resetting GSX somehow does have something to do with this problem, and others maybe can confirm that this is something they’ve done too before this happened.

I hadn’t considered this detail significant enough to mention, but yes, I reset GSX on the OMDB-OOMS and KORD-KOMA departures I reported way upthread. I’m curious to know if this had an effect on the sim.

I think resetting GSX simply injects more SimObjects back into the sim, which probably contributes to reaching the limit. I have had this issue both with and without resetting GSX, so it is almost certainly not JUST a GSX problem but rather just associated with the fact that programs like GSX and AIG are injecting quite a few simobjects into the sim.

  • GSX, on its own, is NOT causing this problem.
  • AIG, FSLTL, on their own, are NOT causing this problem.
  • Highly detailed sceneries, on their own, are NOT causing the problem.

None of the above is doing anything “wrong”, other than just showing its own objects when it needs.

The problem is, the combination of all of them, can reach a maximum number of the objects the sim can show, before objects start to disappear, Simconnect start stop responding, and in some cases the fps would drop and even whole airports might disappear.

Fact you see some changes by repositioning GSX,doesn’t mean in any way GSX is causing this, especially because “Reposition” and “Reset Position” are totally different commands:

  • Reposition doesn’t reset anything, doesn’t destroy or create any objects, it JUST “moves” the airplane to a different position, usually by a small amount.

  • Reset Position" it’s equivalent to Restart Couatl,which means the previous session of the .EXE will close and a new one will start.

Doing a Restart, MSFS will detect the Client disconnection and, will automatically destroy ANY objects created by that .EXE, and this is done automatically without any need for the disconnecting client to code anything specific. If a client disconnects, cleanly or not ( if it crashed, for example ), ALL objects it created WILL be removed, no matter what.

This means it’s very possible that, the disconnection triggered by a Restart, which triggered MSFS to clean up all objects created by the previous GSX session, might have been enough to bring DOWN the number of Simobjects to a manageable level.

Again, the problem is the limit itself, not any specific application. An example:

Suppose the limit is 1000 objects, and before you even start GSX, the combination of the airport, all its default ground vehicles, jetways or anything else that is a Simobject, already places you at 800, if during a GSX session, the combination of passengers + luggage + all GSX vehicle bought the total momentarily to, let’s say, 1100 objects ( I’m making up numbers here ), maybe at that point the sim started to break up and show ghost objects, or became unresponsive to Simconnect commands.

Then you restart GSX, the sim will automatically clean up all its objects, the total would go down to 800 again, and possibly everything might be back. This is not always happening, sometimes the sim gets stuck and only a restart can help, I guess it depends how much you are over the limit.

Of course, exactly the same will happen if you stop an AI Injector: the sim will remove all the Injected AIs, and might also result in going back in a safe number.

That is to say: just because you see something happening in relationship to doing something in a certain program ( like restarting GSX ), doesn’t mean the program itself was the cause of the overall problem: it’s just a side effect of the real problem at hand, which is:

  • the sim will break once the maximum overall object limit is reached.
  • the limit is usually reached by a combination of product used together.
  • it might be possible to exit from that situation, by taking advantage of the automatic clean up MSFS is doing when ANY clients disconnects, that is Exiting or Restarting ANY of these clients that created the extra objects.

I’ve already listed all the possible things you can do in GSX to keep its own contribution to the overall object limit in previous posts, I’ll repeat them again:

  • Go into the “Config” panel of the FSDT Installer, disable “Ground Clutter” and click the Update/Check button again, to install a lightweight version of the GSX Jetway replacement files, which contains just Jetways and nothing else, so they won’t increase the overall number of object compared to default ( 1 default jetway will be replaced by 1 GSX jetway ), AT DEFAULT AIRPORTS

  • Lower the GSX “Passenger Density” slider. This affects the maximum number of passengers you can see at the same time on screen. Yes, it will make Boarding/Deboarding slower but, the number of objects created by GSX will be lower as well, lessening the issue.

Of course, you can act similarly on the OTHER add-ons that all contribute to the same problem, for example lowering the maximum number of generated AIs. Again, since everything contributes to the overall number of objects, and nothing in single-handedly responsible, the most effective way to deal with this, would be act on everything, when possible.

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“This means it’s very possible that, the disconnection triggered by a Restart, which triggered MSFS to clean up all objects created by the previous GSX session, might have been enough to bring DOWN the number of Simobjects to a manageable level.”

Well but that’s not what happened. Restarting couatl did not bring down the number of simobjects, restarting couatl actually started the situation. See I had GSX services going on, AIG traffic at KLAX, all visible, then I had to reset GSX / restart couatl and suddenly GSX and all AI traffic became invisible. Now this should not have happened according to your explanation, since the couatl restart would have removed and readded the same amount of objects, not changing the total number. But what if that “cache” of simobjects does not get cleared by disconnecting the client as it’s supposed to, instead adding GSX (or AI traffic) over and over again on top? I’ve seen similar bugs with caches in other situations. Are you positive that this cache behaviour you describe is actually working?

Obviously none of this would be GSX fault, we are talking about a possible MSFS simconnect bug.

Possibly not a “bug” per se, but as others have mentioned possibly a holdover from the heavily VAS-limited days of FSX. Needless to say, I’d love to see this issue “gone’d” by the next Sim Update, but I’m not getting my hopes up.

Yeah, it would be good to know if this will be addressed. Have any of the developers been able to take another look at the simconnect object limits since many of us here have provided additional information?

I hope this doesn’t sound rude, but this is an absurd issue. It’s as if the developers don’t truly understand how flight simmers, especially those flying commercial aircraft, trying to simulate real world ops use the sim. I haven’t changed anything in my sim over the past few months and out of nowhere, almost every flight since last week is coming into an empty airport, no buildings, no textures, no AI and ■■■■■■ performance. I even lowered the amount of AI injected by both AIG and FSLTL.

It can’t be that hard to increase the SimConnect object injection limits. Between this issue, the terrible weather injection problems since the last update and powerpoint slide show performance on long hauls, I’m ready to retire from flight sim. The lack of answers from the developers doesn’t help, either.

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With SU12 introducing some SimConnect fixes and additions, has anyone had any repeat occurrences of the airports and traffic disappearing since updating?

I’m using FSLTL and am still seeing considerable amounts of Removed by MSFS engine, this indicating that somehow someway the limit is getting hit. Funny to say but I don’t remember this EVER being an issue in FSX except for lack of parking at an airport. I am currently doing a real time late flight from Los Angeles to China and am just about over the Bay Area where things are dense. Per the FSLTL window I am seeing two options: Removed out of range and removed by MSFS engine. The first makes sense just like everything else that has always existed in the same way within FS. As you fly or the reality bubbles boundary from the center of your aircraft moves, objects and traffic are them removed or become ‘irrelevant’. That boundary exists at about 160NM from the center of where the user is if you gauge that from how far out you can see weather being injected. The other option of MSFS removing AI simply because the limit of what simconnect can handle is getting reached “again this was never an issue in FSX” is really annoying. New flights are constantly being added or removed based on the fluidity of the traffic but yet for some reason it seems that the items are not truly being cleared out of the active list. One other explanation for this could be that data such as trees/buildings/etc. are counted and objects utilized by simconnect. If that’s the case then it leaves a very small window of room for what outside addons can take advantage of the limited limit, such as AI, vehicles, etc… I ALSO suspect this is exactly why when using MSFS’s live traffic you only get AI spawned about 15NM from the user. Being at LAX and looking at Littlenavmap with MSFS traffic, you’ll see there’s no other traffic outside of the immediate LAX boundary. For being such a new age sim there are so many little oddities and issues that exist that were already learned from or never existed before. It’s like all of the knowledge from the last 20 or so years was completely disregarded.

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Yes, I’ve seen ‘Removed by MSFS engine’ at the airport I’m spotting from. I thought at first maybe AIFlow was causing it and it would settle, an hour later most of the landing AI were deleted on touchdown, right at the point where the brakes kick in, probably as it transitions to the taxi phase. There shouldn’t even need to be a hard limit as long as the radius limit is in place, just like FSX.

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Did some offhand Googling and found a new setting change I have yet to see how it affects things. I have my historic set to 0 as I don’t care for static or non active/live traffic. The other setting as well is the absolute max parked. Apparently this ties into the historic setting. 1 historic means 10 and 2 means 20 and so on and so on. The absolute parked will take a percentage of that and place aircraft. That value can be changed from 0-100 or no for no limit. I put everything to do with parking to 0. Also I can stand to tone down the vehicle and airport people stuff it that helps. Needs to have an airport vehicle density of 1 for tugs and pushbacks to work. Other than that I can’t think of what else to change. Traffic is light right now as it’s almost 3 am here so any testing will have to be done when there’s more traffic. Not that I would but I would hate to on principal to have to switch over to FSX if I wanted any form of AI sanity. That or remove the MSFS engine completely and use PSX which I have in the past with perfect results. But there’s something about tracking the ATC interaction that is hard to give up.

Oh indeed, I’m with you. I do sometimes miss the simplicity of FSX ha. Yes, PSX looks good and is a technical marvel to be honest but I want the ATC interaction (inaccuracies aside) to have that living world feel. If we can get the long touchdown and injection limit problem fixed, as well as opening up the 3rd parties to do the rest, I’ll be more than willing to accept it. Let Asobo focus on the the bigger fish as AI traffic is a complete rabbit hole.

The only gripe I truly have with ATC dates to FS2002. The ATC system of FS2002 was perfect. No skipped transmissions. ATC would issue an instruction and then the aircraft would reply before it moved on. So no more multiple instructions and then only 2 get read back. This was lost in FS2004 onward. Also from FS2002 on there weren’t these lags that we have now where there’s a 5-10 second break between instructions read back. Realistic or not, in heavy airspace that doesn’t work. MS/Asobo could learn and fix a lot from looking back to their previous products. They have all the answers.

Take a look at DAL27. Every time it gets injected MSFS removes it. Not sure why. Am now over Russia someplace and it’s 3 am local time so minimal traffic. Sad.

I have all the extra clutter turned off in GSX and AIGTC and still find that if I depart from a busy airport such as EGLL or LEMD that nothing loads at my arrival, which from the sound of it is because too many objects breaks SimConnect. My current work around is just to not depart from busy airports - if I want to use a complicated scenery, it has to be as a destination only until the issue is fixed.

Doing a flight and testing out the new changed settings. This looks promising. So far no removed by the MSFS engine.

I did a test flight last night and there was not airplanes visible upon arrival at the original departure airport (return flight)! FSLTL was showing that things are working fine but I could not see any airplane! Unfortunately this issue was introduced with SU10 except that before SU12 planes were stacking up on top of each other! Now you just don’t see them! I got lucky a few nights ago and it worked that night but after that I get the same results with AIG TC and FSLTL. No AI planes returning to an airport.

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Unfortunately this issue is still occurring. It is most apparent when flying in and out of FSDT’s KORD for some reason. Not sure why.

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