Ideal Flight Accessibility phase 2

[Steve Waite]

The only thing IF does, as you all know, is start P3D from the command line passing in the flight file as the argument, just as we do when we select an fxml from within Explorer and choose Open with P3D from the menu.

The sim must be able to start from a .fxml file without crashing, so this suggests that the sim is still at fault in some way and I would presume it remains non-stock. This comes up from time to time due to a faulty installation of an add-on.

The best thing to do is delete all the folders properly and install P3D fresh. When the sim starts correctly from the Fly! button in IF we know for a fact the sim is good. From that point we can install add-ons.

When the sim can be indexed and the sim can start with the fxml then we know the sim is working OK. In these cases it is Ideal Flight that is showing us the sim has an error condition that must be resolved.

This is what I would do:

1/ Install P3D fresh in new folders.

2/ Run Ideal flight, ensure the index is ok and that the sim can be started from IF.

3/ When that is working add the modify allow permission on the LM folder Users group with explorer before installing any other addons.

Generally it is some permissions issue in P3D addons that cause problems. However, very often, users attempt to avoid those issues by installing P3D in a private folder. That method is not so good because the folder is owned by the user, not the system. That can cause issues with some addons that install files into P3D for example - which is a major problem inherited from FSX style addons.

[Orinks]

Not sure what he did but he was able to get it resolved. Apparently his IF crashed on his last landing, but that could be a number of things. Perhaps a memory alication problem since we run a lot of addons.

What are some upcoming changes in IF?

[Steve Waite]

How do you mean IF crashed? It is very unlikely IF crashed, rather, I would say the sim did not finish properly and IF could not resolve the problem. There are logs that can tell us what happened so it would be more reasonable to say what the logs reported.

[Steve Waite]

Not sure what he did but he was able to get it resolved. Apparently his IF crashed on his last landing, but that could be a number of things. Perhaps a memory alication problem since we run a lot of addons.

So looking at your enquiry about memory. A memory problem would most likely Blue Screen the PC. Windows won't run out of memory until the virtual RAM is used up and you will see a Windows notice of it before that happens.

In terms of memory use IF uses about the same as one Explorer window.

In terms of what IF does - it does not do anything to the sim. The sim sends information to IF and IF waits for it. If that does not appear then IF will wait and eventually time out. If you end the sim and have to wait for IF that will mean the sim has failed to end properly, pointing to a fault in an addon. This is common on P3D and the sim will leave a process running. You can see this when you start the PC and P3D starts on it's own, that's because there was a P3D process running when the PC closed down, pointing to an addon error.

IF is basically a program that shows you when the sim is faulty.

[Steve Waite]

I have uploaded the latest versions of Ideal Flight and are now available from the Download page on the site. http://www.codelegend.com/idealflight/download/default.htm

These versions will soon appear in the Flight1 wrapper.

Development of Ideal Flight will continue as usual.

Thank you all very much for such excellent contributions, help and support during debugging and development of Ideal Flight.


This concludes the developments of Accessibility phase 2. Please feel free to request the most desired accessibility functions.