Hi
I'm a newbie to Intercity and I've been trying to log my first flight but a few minutes after takeoff the flight effectively grinds to a halt and it's a Ctrl-Alt-Del to Task Manager to kill everything. The problem only occurs when I use the ACARS which appears to be working fine initially, reading the data from the sim but then we suddenly come to a halt with screen freezing and controls not recognised.


Any suggestions appreciated.
Ian


My flight deck specs are:


FSX, Win 7, PC(i7 6700K, 16GB, GeForce GTX970, 250GB SSD, 2 x 1TB HDD)
Aircraft: Majestic Dash 8 PRO
Controls: Saitek Yoke, Quadrant, Rudder, USB Quadrant
Panels: Saitek Multipanel, Switch Panel, Radio Panel & BIP
Addons: FSUIPC (Full), Spad.Next, PF3 ATC (not using with ACARS)
Scenery: Orbx, UK2000


Notes: Dash8 Controls configured for 125Mhz
Spad.Next mainly used to configure switches using Majestic LVAR

Sorry to hear you're having problems, I appreciate it's very frustrating. However it's unlikely to be ACARS because it's standalone and doesn't do anything to FSX; ACARS only reads sim state variables through FS UIPC. How many times has this freeze problem occurred for you?

The symptoms described could be an OOM, are you flying somewhere/something new or with more scenery/weather? Running UK2000 Xtreme alongside Orbx England can easily exhaust FSX's 4GB memory limit in certain situations, so try to rule out OOM first; you could do this by doing an ACARS flight in an area without addon scenery and weather.

Chris does our ACARS coding so I'll ask him if he has any ideas. In the meantime, please let us know how you get on.

I can't see ACARS being the issues of the freeze as it doesn't actually do anything to the sim other than "pull" data from the sim at set intervals.


Could you try this but from a different airport and see if the problem persists? If so we will do some investigation as to whats causing the issues.


In the meantime if you are unable to fly with ACARS PM me or Chris L with with the following info and we will file manually:

   
• Flight No
• Engine Start-Up and Shutdown times
• (If you have flown online) a link to your VATAWARE (or similar) page

Could be the dreaded 8-minute freeze. If you still have sound but a frozen, unresponsive screen, just leave it for 8 minutes and make yourself a cup of coffee -- it will magically start up again. To avoid this happening, have a look at http://hifisupport.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/41/10/temporary-freezes-with-fsx. I personally swear by limiting cloud draw distance to 80nm.

All good now. Thanks for the suggestions.

[/size]A[size=78%][/size]fter updating FSUIPC to the latest version and applying recent updates to Orbx scenery and SPAD.neXt everything seems to be working fine with ACARS running. I've managed to log 3 flights  (ICX177, ICX190 & ICX375) using the Majestic Dash 8 with real weather via AS16 and PF3 ATC and ACARS with no problems. All flights were offline as I still building up my confidence and skill level to tackle VATSI[size=78%][/size]M[size=78%][/size][size=78%].[/size]

Thanks for getting back to us and glad it's fixed.