Interesting CTD Find I Made Today

[StormILM]

With all the recent talk about the CTD issues with the IFE F-35, yesterday I updated my Nvidia Drivers and got the newly updated F-35 and oddly all hell broke loose in terms of my having multiple CTD's with various aircraft models that had never had issues before. I rolled back my Nvidia drivers to as many as three backwards and the issues persisted and then other odd issues popped up. I was at a loss as nothing I did (including the driver rollbacks or updates plus using the FS2020 Repair Function) seemed to help. Prior to now, the couple of F-35 related CTD's occurred at the close of the flights, as soon as I would end the flight, the program would abruptly close and on restart, I'd get the warning about the CTD and the choice of starting in either Normal or Safe Modes. With all other aircraft and sceneries, no a single CTD and mostly stable performance.

After all the aforementioned updates yesterday, the CTD's then began to happen at the end of the flight loading (as soon as the bar showed the progress was complete nearing being in the cockpit on the runway). I gave up and restarted in Safe Mode, the sim loaded and worked perfectly with the stock aircraft. I then began the long task of deleting and then reloading a handful of addons at a time in the Community folder (I keep my Community folder fully backed up). After hours of reinstalling and testing each addon, I found the odd culprit: It was the We Love VFR - Region 2 folder & contents. I have no idea what in that folder or why it is conflicting with certain addon aircraft but whatever it is, the matter seems to have been agitated by recent model updates and possibly the video drivers as well? Makes me wonder how many of these addons are conflicting with one another?

[Sundog]

Good catch, I hadn't thought of that. I'll have to do that in the future, play with the community folder contents.

[StormILM]

Added note: The We Love VFR - Region 2 file came from Flightsim.to which before now seemed fine, no major issues at all. This makes me wonder just how many files that are out there are falling behind the compatibility curve with FS2020 updates and possibly any combination of Microsoft updates? While this file removal helped me, it may or may not be an issue for other users. It's all a bit bewildering to my ever aging MK1 Not-So-Super-Computer and weakening eyes that miss more now than ever. lol.

[DennyA]

No issues with We Love VFR R2 here, so it's likely conflicting with something else you have installed.

Highly suggest getting MSFS Addons Linker and breaking your add-ons into regions:

https://flightsim.to/file/1572/msfs-addons-linker

I have mine organized so I can load worldwide add-ons, and then just load the country/state/province I'm flying in. Makes for faster loading (especially if you also manage liveries, etc.) and far less chance for conflict.

So when I'm flying, I have worldwide stuff like We Love VFR, SuperSpud's carriers, the various object libraries used by sceneries and my add-on planes, but I might just load, say, Washington State and British Columbia and the liveries for the planes I might fly.

You can save settings (such as "all planes" "no add-ons/sim update" "Pacific NW" "Eastern European airports") so that you can easily load sets of items you frequently use together.

Makes the sim MUCH more stable and fast-loading. Takes a while to set up but then you have your folders and settings built and updates are super-easy. Much easier to find old add-ons to replace with updates, too.

[StormILM]

DennyA, thanks for that info. I have downloaded that program and will give it a try soon.

[Tom Clayton]

The We Love VFR package is essentially two things - a small library of tower models placed according to charts, and a set of effects. Generally speaking, it's the effects that are going to have more impact as far as conflict, at least as far as I've seen. If worse comes to worst, maybe delete the effects and leave the towers?

[PuffinFlight]

Ha, I can now write here, awesome
Essentially what Tom wrote is right. To everyone having any problems that may be connected to We Love VFR I'd recommend downloading "no effects" version. It's the same as normal one but without smoke and steam (and soon fire) effects for chimneys and cooling towers. You'll find it in the same place as normal version.

I had some reports on CTDs few months ago that were caused by wonky nvidia drivers, but since then I had nothing major reported. Remember to always report things like this so I can at least try to diagnose it

[keithb77]

Wouldn't be without some VFR love

I think the problem is that MSFS creates a virtual file system at run-time, overlaying all of the add-ons together, which is mostly a good thing but does allow for overlaps and conflicts.
I'm creating a couple of Discovery flights in the UK, and was surprised to see that the POIs for each are also present when flying the other.

[StormILM]

Ha, I can now write here, awesome
Essentially what Tom wrote is right. To everyone having any problems that may be connected to We Love VFR I'd recommend downloading "no effects" version. It's the same as normal one but without smoke and steam (and soon fire) effects for chimneys and cooling towers. You'll find it in the same place as normal version.

I had some reports on CTDs few months ago that were caused by wonky nvidia drivers, but since then I had nothing major reported. Remember to always report things like this so I can at least try to diagnose it

Just after I saw and replied to your PM, Nvidia has released a new updated driver. There is no question that the driver change caused the conflict with your package on my sim/system. I am going to reinstall and test both versions ASAP (effects and non-effects). I know it's very frustrating staying on top of all these changes the Sim, Drivers and various other updates bring.

[PuffinFlight]

In case of overlap scenery add-ons work quite well witch each other and with the main sim. Even adding literally millions of objects didn't cause any issues for me. Conflicting scenery usually just don't use exclusions, but it has nothing to do with this case.
On the other hand effects can be quite tricky. Issues with drivers, Asobo changing file locations between patches so we have to update our effects, even changes to effects logic. Also we don't know if they ever planned such excessive use of effects like mine. I do limit effects amount (I think it's 15 effect sources in 20k radius). That's why I prepare "no effects" version to at least have ability for user to test if effects are the issue.

@StormILM that's for taking your time to test it.