Black avionics screens after update

Mmm, … i had the apu running, as it is happening that engine 1 turns off if not… maybe is related.

I may have found a temporary fix for this bug. I’ve found that if I change all of my realism settings from what they are to something else, and then immediately back to what I normally use, (in my case this would be hard mode). I don’t have the problem anymore. After doing this before every flight I have been able to fly without any incident. So far I’ve flown 3 times in the C172 g1000, the M20R, and the G36 all on flights over an hour and had no issues at all. Hope this helps someone and that the devs can permanently fix this sooner rather than later.

Well for what it’s worth – and it’s not worth much – I unbound all of my keyboard controls except for four or five essentials, then left the Caravan parked on the departure runway with the AP armed and Shadowplay capture running. Came back after 20 minutes or so to a dead AP. According to the Shadowplay video it happened around the 4 minute 30 second mark. Simply turned itself off.

I then started thinking about the electrical systems bug reported elsewhere that causes the ammeter to read backwards (opposite needle on the steam gauges, negative numbers on the MFDs). I got to wondering whether the meters might be correct and it’s the simulated systems that are drawing current when they should be providing voltage.

So my next flight was in the steam 172 with the Alternator Master switch off, giving +30 amps on the ammeter. This theory was proven spectacularly wrong when things started dying one by one and couldn’t be restored with any amount of switch toggling. Last contact from ATC was a demand to enable the transponder (I wish!) before the radios died. To be fair it made for a very exciting final ten minutes of flight – I was over a familiar area so eyeballed my way to the airfield using landmarks and roads which was very cool – but having this happen every flight will become very tiring very quickly.

Curiously, just before one of the 172’s system failures, while I was looking at the Alternator Master switch and wondering whether to turn it back on, I saw it toggle back on by itself just as some of the avionics failed. My POV (TrackIR) was not centred on the switch itself, nor was the mouse pointer anywhere near it (although it was the last thing for which I got a tooltip as I floated over it a second or so prior). No keys are bound to it. I have all pilot assists turned off. I have no idea what toggled this switch.

My latest gut feelings are thus: my theory about errant inputs is almost certainly a red herring, or at least if there’s anything to it it’s an internal problem and not one caused by false keyboard inputs. What I’m steering towards now is the electrical bus problem being slightly more complex than a reversed needle on the UI, combined with the possibility that there are simulated electrical failures built into the game that are not yet enabled (at least I can’t find them in the UI if they are) but are being triggered by the ammeter issue.

The main spanner in the works on this theory is that people have seen switches physically toggling in the cockpits. I’ve seen it myself with the Caravan light switches and the 172 Alternator Master. And surely a simulated electrical failure would not simulate the switches being moved? Then again, with the odd bugs this game has thrown up, anything’s possible.

For the record, here’s a recording of the bit where the Alternator Master switch re-enabled itself (I don’t have enough forum privileges to embed it).

You can see that this coincides with the MFD and other instruments switching off and/or resetting, and the ammeter dropping from +30A to -30A. And I just noticed on watching it back that the backlight for the clock came on just before the switch toggled, also unbidden. It’s all connected somehow. I just can’t figure out how. I just hope MS / Asabo do so before I drive myself even more potty trying.

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I’m going to try this tomorrow after work, as it’s a bit too late for a thorough test now. Believe me, I will be praying to every deity I can think of that you’re right. And it’s one of the things I’ve not tried yet, so I’m crossing my fingers (in case the prayer doesn’t work)…

No mach to knots in 787 either, and the autopilot gauges (speed, heading, altitude etc) are all dark

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Ground traffic causing issues? https://old.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftFlightSim/comments/iw6mis/plane_exorcisms_or_how_i_seem_to_have_reduced_or/

I did try disabling AI air traffic, completely forgot about ground traffic. I also remember thinking that it only seemed to happen over populated areas, thinking it was something to do with more airports, VORs, things like that, causing conflicts with the avionics. Never thought about ground traffic. Going to give this a go

Edit: I also happen to have Ground Traffic cranked right up the past few days since the glass cockpit FPS fix was implemented into the game, allowing me to have more detail.

Edit 2: This would also make sense as to why Squirrel hasn’t been getting it until he went into a multiplayer session. Assuming he has ground traffic disabled, suddenly going into a session with all those aircraft around him. Everyone was complaining of instrument errors during the stream.

Testing it right now.

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You´re right. this could be the solution…

After 2x40 min. flights, I had no avionic failtures

Yep, looks like this could be the answer to everything. I’ve gone further than I ever have done before in the past few days without problems in the King Air since disabling all air and ground traffic. Still on the same flight (Biggin Hill to Newcastle) that I started this test with. Tried this same route several times earlier in the day, errors within 20 minutes each time.

Edit: When this flight’s done, I’ll start slowly working traffic back in to see what the limits are.

Didn’t work for me Bonanza G36

Tryng that reddit fix right now… so far , so good… fingers crossed

Flight completed, landed with no issues after 1 hour 6 minutes. Mind blown.

Edit: I’m now going to attempt an A320 flight between LA and San Francisco but with Live Air Traffic enabled. All other traffic (and multiplayer) disabled or set to 0. I’m wondering if this issue is also why people can’t start the A320 from cold & dark? I don’t know how to myself, so if anyone here does, try it with all ground traffic off.

I have Live weather/time and multiplayer planes enabled, no issues so far (no logic behind multiplayer “keys” transported over the internet), but IA planes and online “real” traffic , disablabed (the planes that are “drived” localy) disabled, so far so good

Wow, I hope we aren’t forced to wait like a month for a fix… this kind of grounds most of the MFD systems enabled aircraft unless you want to just do “seat of the pants” flying.

I just realised one of the other things I’ve changed during my issue free flights was turning off multiplayer and live traffic. On the one flight where the MFD failed I had live traffic and possibly multiplayer enabled and was approaching a busy airport area :thinking:

Well the logic for me is multiplayer aircraft, it’s all glass cockpit and includes instrumentation which is what is causing the conflict with my aircraft. So I’m working traffic in bit by bit, starting with Live Traffic - the post says the main issue is aircraft at airports, or large amounts of aircraft in one place. If it causes a problem, then I’ll leave it disabled and add it to my bug report.

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Yeah, that’s probably it. I’m testing that right now between LA and San Francisco, peak time, loads of traffic.

Edit: Fine so far, but I’m expecting that once I get close to San Francisco, that’s when things will start happening. If not, then perhaps multiplayer, cars/boats/ferries and even stationary ground aircraft scenery has more of an impact. We’ll see.

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So far no problems with
Multiplayer: “All players”
Air Traffic: “OFF”
Weather: “Live”

Flight completed with Live Air Traffic only, no issues. Going to test with cars/boats/ferries now.

G36 had the MFD shut off four times in about 45 minutes. The MFD eventually restarts and the time needed to restart seems to vary by quite a bit too. Sometimes less than a minute other times five or more minutes. The navigation in the PFD does keep working, makes things a bit more interesting in IMC.

Hmm. It could be worth creating a Testing Event. Get a bunch of people on the same server at the same airport, same aircraft and have person A plays with switches. Everyone else just sits there and monitors the switch that person A reads out. If a switch changes state by itself in another aircraft that person pipes up.

Picking an airport away from normal traffic…

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