A306F Multiple System Failures all at once!

[LRJETPilot90]

Okay, so I've seen this post before. I know that its been reported, but I had the flight from H*LL all at once, which is frustrating considering what I know you all are capable of. 
I was enroute from MIA to LAX (direct-to a waypoint) when my fuel burn went through the roof. The two fuel counters had a bunch of numbers on top of one-another, and I was down to 14,000lbs left when I started with almost 70,000 (more than enough for the route). This is NOT the first time I've seen this error, but I figured it was a one-off.
At almost exactly the same time, the overhead Pitch Trim and Yaw Damper switches kicked off, and the autopilot disconnected without alarm. The Attitude indicator froze, FMS/MCDU wouldn't do anything, and there was NOTHING I could do to recover the airplane.  Saving the flight and reloading rectifies the display issue, but the system freezes and you're left without working autopilot/gauges after a few minutes again. Take a look at the photo I've attached for reference.  My four hour and thirty minute flight is TRASH halfway through.

Minor Gripe: The ripples on the nose are too much. I was looking at photos close up of the nose, and the ripples definitely weren't as defined on the real aircraft. I understand the effect of pressurization over time on the skin of an airframe - the jet I fly is decades old. Its just a bit too much.

As I've mentioned before, I hold inibuilds to a fairly high standard. Your sceneries and airplanes have been top-notch until this point. I'll preface the following by saying that I have experience in the beta-testing field and as a professional pilot. I get it, you guys have a lot going on and it hard to chase down every bug. That being said, these bugs by themselves are a pretty major concern. When combined, it makes for a ridiculous experience on an airplane we paid good money for. After reading so many bug reports, it definitely seems like something worthy of PRIORITY. I am getting pretty close to shelving this airplane. 


 

 

[LRJETPilot90]

Edit for Clarification:
SU14
Navigraph Navdata
No Crash, Damage, or Icing enabled.
 

[LRJETPilot90]

[Mathlets]

I can confirm that behaviour. Unfortunately the a300 is currently unfit to fly for me. With Update 1.1.1 worse than it was before. Very frustrating. 

[pmplayer]

OHHHHH - please not, i did three flights with the last build ( 1.1.0 ) and i got the same thing ( fuel was almost emty, the plane did a circle and systems not working anymore ( AP and more ) and so i stop again flying..

Now i did a first flight and a same one i did before with the problem and it works very fine, no problems at all at this flight but it was only one flight and i will try more, but this sounds bad again..

cheers 😉

[richboy2307]

Hi thanks for the report. Logged.

We take all reports seriously and address issues that we can successfully reproduce to see what may be the cause.

Neither we, nor the testers personally encountered such issues in testing prior to release. However of course we can't test every different combination of setup/configuration out there so we rely on these reports to try and get to the bottom of these. Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[Matteo Spacca]

I picked the A300 for the Vatsim Cross the Pond next Saturday.....multiple fingers crossed.
BTW  @iniBuilds this product is amazing.....but this falling out of the sky/fuel/unrecoverable failures have been there since Day 1.

Matteo

[MarcusVT]

Yesterday I had a throttle problem. Autothrottle was working, but when I deactivated for landing, it went to iddle. No throttle input was being sent to the game. I could GA using AP. Then recalibrated throttle, cycled A/T several times and sudenly all came back to life.
BTW I was always arriving too high for landing and now I turn of A/T to control approach speed. Also set altitude constraint to AT and not AT or ABOVE, for final fixes so that I can arrive at proper altitude. I'm enjoying the plane but, if it is not a real plane characteristic, the VNAV should be improved.

[pmplayer]

52 minutes ago, MarcusVT said:

Yesterday I had a throttle problem. Autothrottle was working, but when I deactivated for landing, it went to iddle. No throttle input was being sent to the game. I could GA using AP. Then recalibrated throttle, cycled A/T several times and sudenly all came back to life.
BTW I was always arriving too high for landing and now I turn of A/T to control approach speed. Also set altitude constraint to AT and not AT or ABOVE, for final fixes so that I can arrive at proper altitude. I'm enjoying the plane but, if it is not a real plane characteristic, the VNAV should be improved.

As far as i know they still ongoeing to work on VNAV issues..

cheers 😉

[richboy2307]

20 hours ago, Matteo Spacca said:

but this falling out of the sky/fuel/unrecoverable failures have been there since Day 1.

I have been a user of this product just like you long before working for IniBuilds. Yet I have not experienced random/mid-flight issues like this even once since Day 1. The only crashes I experienced were to do with MCDU  (e.g. when DIR TO/Deleting a hold froze it). A lot of which have been addressed and continued to be worked upon.

This is not to say the issues you mentioned do not exist. What I'm trying to illustrate is that it is rare and difficult to reproduce. For every one of you facing such issues, there are tens of others who are not.

In the absence of being able to reproduce the issue ourselves or through our testers, we need more data to try and figure out what may be the cause. That is why we take these reports seriously, but need more detail and the cooperation of users to engage in troubleshooting on their end to help resolve.

What can you do? Troubleshooting such as :

• Do a flight without any other addons, only the A300 in your community folder, to see if there are other addon conflicts.
• Delete the contents of your "work" folder after a fresh re-install to ensure no corrupted data
• Make these flights in default "White" or "Inibuilds House" liveries to eliminate any "bad" livery files causing conflict

And when you do encounter the issue, report with:

• Screenshots/Videos of the failed systems or anomalies you notice
• Write-up of the things you did just prior to the crash (e.g. what you clicked, what you interacted with, what control inputs you gave etc)
• Route information & navdata used (E.g. Navigraph data -  KLAX/24R LADYJ4 CSTRO DCT DUCKE DCT LMT DCT MOXEE TMBRS2 KPDX/28L )
• Any extra things you noticed just before to the crash (e.g. momentary sim-freeze, abrupt winds change, sudden weather update etc.)

 

All this allows us to try and recreate your flight to see if we face the same issues or find common conditions across reports to try and nail the issue.
Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[richboy2307]

17 hours ago, MarcusVT said:

Yesterday I had a throttle problem. Autothrottle was working, but when I deactivated for landing, it went to iddle. No throttle input was being sent to the game. I could GA using AP. Then recalibrated throttle, cycled A/T several times and sudenly all came back to life.
BTW I was always arriving too high for landing and now I turn of A/T to control approach speed. Also set altitude constraint to AT and not AT or ABOVE, for final fixes so that I can arrive at proper altitude. I'm enjoying the plane but, if it is not a real plane characteristic, the VNAV should be improved.

As for VNAV, yes that is still a WIP and will come as part of a larger improved VNAV system.

For the Autothrottle, can you confirm when you notice this that the EFB throttle calibration page is still detecting throttle input? This sounds like an issue that was addressed in v1.1.1, wherein if you accidentally clicked the clickspot on the reverser's lever (on the pedestal) in-flight, it would limit the throttles to the reverser range. However because reverser's are locked in-flight, the throttle just appears "Locked" in idle position. The fix is to toggle reversers (via hardware button or by clicking the same clickspot). 

In v1.1.1 the clickspot of the reverser was disabled when airborne. Should only be clickable on the ground. Please confirm, thanks!
  

[LRJETPilot90]

9 hours ago, richboy2307 said:

I have been a user of this product just like you long before working for IniBuilds. Yet I have not experienced random/mid-flight issues like this even once since Day 1. The only crashes I experienced were to do with MCDU  (e.g. when DIR TO/Deleting a hold froze it). A lot of which have been addressed and continued to be worked upon.

This is not to say the issues you mentioned do not exist. What I'm trying to illustrate is that it is rare and difficult to reproduce. For every one of you facing such issues, there are tens of others who are not.

In the absence of being able to reproduce the issue ourselves or through our testers, we need more data to try and figure out what may be the cause. That is why we take these reports seriously, but need more detail and the cooperation of users to engage in troubleshooting on their end to help resolve.

What can you do? Troubleshooting such as :

• Do a flight without any other addons, only the A300 in your community folder, to see if there are other addon conflicts.
• Delete the contents of your "work" folder after a fresh re-install to ensure no corrupted data
• Make these flights in default "White" or "Inibuilds House" liveries to eliminate any "bad" livery files causing conflict

And when you do encounter the issue, report with:

• Screenshots/Videos of the failed systems or anomalies you notice
• Write-up of the things you did just prior to the crash (e.g. what you clicked, what you interacted with, what control inputs you gave etc)
• Route information & navdata used (E.g. Navigraph data -  KLAX/24R LADYJ4 CSTRO DCT DUCKE DCT LMT DCT MOXEE TMBRS2 KPDX/28L )
• Any extra things you noticed just before to the crash (e.g. momentary sim-freeze, abrupt winds change, sudden weather update etc.)

 

All this allows us to try and recreate your flight to see if we face the same issues or find common conditions across reports to try and nail the issue.
Your patience and understanding is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 I am not compensated by inbuilds in any way, shape, or form. I understand that it computer programming can be so fickle because there are infinite hardware/software configurations to try and plan for. The sample size of users experiencing the issues "may" be relatively small compared to the number of copies sold. What I do not understand is why the testing is being pushed off on the customer. I have a day job, flying airplanes. During my time off, I choose to load up an airplane and fly it across the country. I have done so without incident using other add-ons for years. I do not understand why this airplane is the exception. I'm curious to know how many people just put the plane down when this sort of thing happens and don't bother to report anything. The quality control has to improve.  I realize that it may not come off this way, but I mean this in the most constructive way possible - I genuinely want ini to succeed, because companies with your capabilities are great for the hobby. But I don't think dedicating multiple paid testers to trying to reproduce major (in consequence) outliers is too much to ask - have them test scenarios throughout a week testing phase putting the airplane through its paces. 

To summarize my flight parameters from the other night (that resulted in the failures/issues previously listed), in the interest of cooperation:

-Screenshot of frozen systems was previously attached.
-AIRAC 2403 via Navigraph

-Fresh restart of MSFS

-Cargo Variant A300 (v1.1.1 w/hotfix via the inimanager) with this repaint: https://flightsim.to/file/67724/inibuilds-a300-600f-sky-lease-cargo-n501tr
-Cost index 100
-Real time with live weather

- Route:GLADZ3 BAGGS Y290 BACCA DCT ROZZI Y280 LEV J86 ELP J50 SSO J4 WLVRN DCT ESTWD HLYWD1

-Route/Weights imported via simbrief. Weights: EZFW-180,880lbs Fuel-67,134lbs

-Previous Actions: DIR To ELP at or around the CUZZZ waypoint. Changed cruise altitude in MCDU and ALT SEL to increase FL from 360 to 380 to "attempt" to compensate for excess fuel burn. Still would have run out of fuel just past ELP

-Connected to and flying on the VATSIM network

-Autopilot was flying at the time with "managed/profile" modes engaged. A/T engaged

-Airplane had been in cruise for hours without issue, apart from the excessive fuel burn

[kasen]

Hey, well, here I am again. I've spent a couple of days trying to give this plane more chances, but I think it's more of a hate than love relationship.

I've attempted three flights, none successful:
- Barcelona-Dubai, when I was about 200nm away, the plane just froze, only the steering worked, no lights, screens frozen... I had to land visually... 200nm from the destination.
- Dubai to Barcelona (first attempt): the flight went well until Italy, where the plane shut down and started turning sharply to the right, couldn't recover it at all, straight to the ground. Everyone died.

- Dubai to Barcelona (second attempt): the flight was quite good until around Sicily where the plane shut down again, mysteriously recovered at 10,000ft above the ground, continued normally but then, while landing, it shut down again, and to the ground, impossible to recover (everyone died).

Anyway, I still believe this plane should be in a version 0.3 and not a 1.X.X.

We've had tons of failures since December with literally falling from the sky... I'm enough for this to continue. I'm going back to the Fenix. I suppose, as in the other post, I'll try it again in 3 or 4 months. I'm absolutely exhausted.

[S.Sabel]

5 hours ago, kasen said:

Anyway, I still believe this plane should be in a version 0.3 and not a 1.X.X.

We've had tons of failures since December with literally falling from the sky... I'm enough for this to continue. I'm going back to the Fenix. I suppose, as in the other post, I'll try it again in 3 or 4 months. I'm absolutely exhausted.

Hello Kasen,

it's a pity that you have such problems with this airplane, but I think the problems are entirely due to your system, your installation and/or your input devices/key assignments.

I can only say that I have never experienced such a problem on any of my flights (see screenshot). And these are just the last flights I flew for VA.

So instead of throwing the money spent on this airplane to the wind, I would advise you to recheck your installation, key assignments, etc.

Greetings

Edited April 20 by S.Sabel

[NavyKing1992]

I have never experience those problems, either.

I am pretty sure, while we are flying, MS/Asobo does something in the background which cause some kind if problems. I do see sometimes some different behavior of the Sim.

within a couple of hours.

I do not think this problems are related to the A300.

Cheers,

Chris

 

[LRJETPilot90]

20 minutes ago, NavyKing1992 said:

I have never experience those problems, either.

I am pretty sure, while we are flying, MS/Asobo does something in the background which cause some kind if problems. I do see sometimes some different behavior of the Sim.

within a couple of hours.

I do not think this problems are related to the A300.

Cheers,

Chris

 

The common denominator amongst all who report this problem is the A300. I have not experienced this issue with any other add-on. Thats not to say that asobo doesn't have issues behind the scenes, because we know that there are issues with the base sim at times. I'm glad you and the person replying before you have not experienced the issue, but there are enough people experiencing the issue to warrant further investigation. Hopefully they'll get to the bottom of this issue soon!

[pmplayer]

Hi folks,
I would also like to mention my last experience of four flights (with V.1.1.1) here because I have never been able to finish four flights in a row without a crash.

The first flight was about 3 hours, flight 2 and 3 were about 4 hours and the longest was today from PANC to RKSI with 8 hours 20 minutes.
I had 3 flights with version V1.1.0 and all with a total crash, so I would like to mention that the update with this version seems to have had a very positive effect on my case - I can only say keep it up Inibuilds, I am very happy to finally be able to fly from A to B without completely failing.

Only the really big bugs have been taken into account here, not the minor ones, just to clarify.

OK to be clear, 4 flights are not yet the world but now you can hope...

But i am a happy camper today, I thought already this would never be happen like this for me !!

cheers 😉

 

 

 

[KorEl]

Since 1.1.0 (30-3-24) no inflight problems for me too, including two 8hrs flights. SU 14, navigraph data, no FSUIPc installed . The only change I did since is using latest nvidia game ready drivers 552.12. 

Bug persisting  is randomly crashing the sim when loading the flight, this happens with the A310 also.

 

 

[richboy2307]

On 4/20/2024 at 1:44 AM, LRJETPilot90 said:

I am not compensated by inbuilds in any way, shape, or form. I understand that it computer programming can be so fickle because there are infinite hardware/software configurations to try and plan for. The sample size of users experiencing the issues "may" be relatively small compared to the number of copies sold. What I do not understand is why the testing is being pushed off on the customer. I have a day job, flying airplanes. During my time off, I choose to load up an airplane and fly it across the country. I have done so without incident using other add-ons for years. I do not understand why this airplane is the exception. I'm curious to know how many people just put the plane down when this sort of thing happens and don't bother to report anything. The quality control has to improve.  I realize that it may not come off this way, but I mean this in the most constructive way possible - I genuinely want ini to succeed, because companies with your capabilities are great for the hobby. But I don't think dedicating multiple paid testers to trying to reproduce major (in consequence) outliers is too much to ask - have them test scenarios throughout a week testing phase putting the airplane through its paces. 

Thanks for your report and constructive criticism!
 

On 4/19/2024 at 3:07 PM, richboy2307 said:

In the absence of being able to reproduce the issue ourselves or through our testers, we need more data to try and figure out what may be the cause.

But I believe you misunderstood what I wrote above.

We do engage in extensive testing internally, and do use a combination of internal and external testers for the same. While I can't share specific metrics regarding the testing process, rest assured that we have been taking measures to improve quality control, and do engage in testing of our products even post-release. My hiring specifically as a tester is just one such example of  the measures taken.

I have personally completed over 28 flights of various lengths on the latest version alone without such CTD issues (Yes I know, I am just a sample size of 1, doesn't mean much.)

Unfortunately, through this process of our internal and external testing across versions we have not till date been able to reproduce these issues. We will continue to fly our planes and test future iterations, but if we cannot experience the issue across any of the systems and persons involved in testing, then how are we to even understand the cause of the issue, let alone try to fix it? 

We fully appreciate our users are not compensated for testing. We also do not expect them to be testers of released versions of aircraft, but due to the circumstances above, and the nature of this issue we do not have a way forward without additional user cooperation from those affected. So to that end, thank you and everyone else who puts up their valuable personal time towards using and reporting problems with this product. 🙏
 

On 4/20/2024 at 1:44 AM, LRJETPilot90 said:

To summarize my flight parameters from the other night (that resulted in the failures/issues previously listed), in the interest of cooperation:

Thanks, this is just the kind of information we need in order to try and recreate the issue across systems. 

[richboy2307]

On 4/20/2024 at 6:00 PM, kasen said:

I've attempted three flights, none successful:
- Barcelona-Dubai, when I was about 200nm away, the plane just froze, only the steering worked, no lights, screens frozen... I had to land visually... 200nm from the destination.
- Dubai to Barcelona (first attempt): the flight went well until Italy, where the plane shut down and started turning sharply to the right, couldn't recover it at all, straight to the ground. Everyone died.

- Dubai to Barcelona (second attempt): the flight was quite good until around Sicily where the plane shut down again, mysteriously recovered at 10,000ft above the ground, continued normally but then, while landing, it shut down again, and to the ground, impossible to recover (everyone died).

Sorry for your bad experience. It would help us better if you gave more information of what you did prior to each instance of crash?
What you have written here is telling us what happened *after* the crash.  But in order to try to resolve the issue, we need more information on what you did just *before* it crashed.

For example, did you change something on the MCDU? Did you change an autopilot mode, or changed some speed/heading/alt data on the FGCP? Was there a weather update just before? etc

Thanks!

[MarcusVT]

Sorry for delay, but YES, when all was frozen the EFB could still detected the Throttle movement. And I think the issue wasn´t fixed because I remember the throttle wasn´t moving right after that.

Edited April 22 by MarcusVT

[pmplayer]

Just to reply back, ( i had bad problems from Version 1.0 until to 1.1.0 ) i did three other flights ( 3 to 5h ) and all oft them went well, seems pretty stable now with V.1.1.1 !

cheers 😉