Hypoxia issue in 1.5 beta

[FishBike]

A friend and I have been doing some missions where we're at higher altitudes for longer time (7.5 to 10 km for 30+ minutes) and have been seeing the blurry vision effect of hypoxia happening sometimes.

 

We have been really careful to ensure the cockpit is pressurized and have also tried cycling the three switches on the left horizontal panel (helmet vent, emergency oxygen, and 100% oxygen) during startup as we had thought that was helping. But it happened again today despite that.

 

We checked:

- Cockpit sealed

- Cabin altimeter shows 3,000m

- Oxygen pressure near the top of the gauge and flow indicator blinking

- Turning on 100% oxygen, emergency oxygen, and helmet vent did not clear the problem

 

Descending to 4km solved the problem immediately.

 

We were doing these flights for a long time in 1.2 without problems but seem to be encountering this in 1.5 beta. Is it a new bug? Something we are doing wrong in the startup that matters now? Has anyone else encountered this recently?

[Ohgr]

Try turning the cockpit heat on, works for me ;)

[statrekmike]

Try turning the cockpit heat on, works for me ;)

 

 

Do you mean the three position switch with the cold, warm, etc?

[statrekmike]

Okay, after doing a lot of searching in the cockpit and experimenting with different altitudes, I am still getting hypoxia effects even with good oxygen flow, good cabin pressure, the cockpit air conditioning set to "warm", and the helmet glass heating on.

 

Ohgr mentioned turning "cockpit heat" on but I have ZERO idea where that is located, even after searching both the manual and the cockpit.

[FishBike]

We did some further testing of this issue today and determined a few things about it.

 

The problem is reproducible, and the amount of time taken for blurred vision to set in varies with altitude. But not in the way you might expect. Below a certain altitude it does not happen (e.g. 5,000m). And also ABOVE a certain altitude it does not happen -- climbing up to 15,000m caused the effect go away!

 

Somewhere between those altitudes, the problem happens quicker at LOWER altitude. When my friend and I were flying at 10,000m we both got the problem at exactly the same time. When I flew at 9,000m and he flew at 10,000m, I got the problem sooner by several minutes.

 

We also tried turning on helmet vent, emergency oxygen, 100% oxygen, turning the cabin vent control on and off, and checked the pitot heat switches were on. None of this made any different, but climing or descending outside of the problem range of altitudes cleared it up quickly.

[statrekmike]

To add to FishBike's post, I observed some very interesting things during our test flight.

 

1,) The oxygen control switches don't work. You can turn on the 100% oxygen switch and the oxygen gauge does not deplete any faster, the emergency oxygen seems to exhibit similar behavior since activating it seems to have no effect on anything. It is safe to conclude that these switches don't work at all.

 

2.) Flying below 20,000 feet seems to work fine but flying between around 20,000 and 40,000 feet will eventually lead to unexplained hypoxia symptoms. Once you get above 40,000 feet, the effects go away and everything returns to normal. At this point, it is safe to say that the oxygen system is either not providing enough in the 25,000 to 40,000 ft bracket or that there is some kind of bug in the hypoxia system itself (will need to test this with other aircraft).

 

3.) Turning on pitot heat switches, cockpit air conditioning, helmet vent and similar switches do nothing to remedy this. Over the past couple of days, I have tried a variety of switch combinations to see if one specific thing works or if all work together and none had any effect on the above phenomena.

 

Whatever kicks in at 40,000 feet in terms of oxygen for the player seems to fix the problem, I don't know if that helps narrow down the issue but there it is none the less.