fixed AI F-14 Game freezing/not responding

[pixie]

I'm glad I've found this topic. 

Like almost everyone else here, I've got the usual freeze when flying back in the bubble of the supercarrier at the end of the mission. I'm running Liberation MP with a dedicated server on a separate PC.

I also fly Liberation with a virtual squadron and this crash has never happened once. I could not figure out why until today... we simply don't have F14 around.

The next step is pretty obvious, restart the campaign without the fourteens 

 

 

Edited November 26, 2022 by pixie

[Chief_Biv]

I am getting the game freeze playing the two official single player campaigns in the f-14. It is repeat problem on certain missions and always when returning to the carrier after being cleared RTB. It happens in Cage the Bear missions Cargo and one other. It's now happening in Operation Regorger Mission 4 MigCap. I am using the SC.

[Goliathus]

It happens to me all the time when flying the F-14, and it is obviously connected somehow to the Supercarrier bubble because it always happen near the carrier. 

In the last few days this issue occurred even when I flew in the F/A 18, but it was a mission where were plenty F-14 in the air too. It never happened before to me in the F/A 18. 

Maybe there is something interfering between the SC module and F-14.

[Nocke217]

I don't believe its the Supercarrier. I am having those F14 related crashes, but do not own the Supercarrier. But yes, it might be related to F14s being nearby any carrier.

[WWSmith]

I've most often had it happen in the F-14 when I'm far from any carrier, sometimes over 100NM away, but that isn't to say that there wasn't an AI Tomcat near the carrier at the time. I've given up trying to troubleshoot it. Back on November 1, Iron Mike posted that Heatblur had finally been able to replicate the freeze in the debugger, but there's been no news since. I was thinking of buying the Hornet during this sale, but then I found this thread, and I see some people have had freezes with the Hornet, too. Were those of you who've seen freezes in the Hornet able to fix the problem by disabling the Tomcat module?

Edited November 25, 2022 by WWSmith

[rmk80]

Yes, I can fly any other module without freezes as long as there are no F-14s in the missions. 
 

if they are present, the game freezes no matter the module I’m flying. 
 

Disabling the F14 module did not change this behaviour. 

Edited November 26, 2022 by rmk80

[pixie]

On 11/20/2022 at 12:54 AM, pixie said:

I'm glad I've found this topic. 

Like almost everyone else here, I've got the usual freeze when flying back in the bubble of the supercarrier at the end of the mission. I'm running Liberation MP with a dedicated server on a separate PC.

I also fly Liberation with a virtual squadron and this crash has never happened once. I could not figure out why until today... we simply don't have F14 around.

The next step is pretty obvious, restart the campaign without the fourteens 

 

 

 

update : no more Tomcats, and no more crash, Liberation is now rock solid.

[Flappie]

Freeze reproduced. I'll try to help ED and HB as much as I can.

[Magic Zach]

Hello, I've been having very bad freezing with the past DCS update.  The game will freeze entirely, but not crash.  This only occurs when I change views (the F-keys).  This is actually making DCS really frustrating to use currently.

[boerdi]

Another data point

OB 2.8.0.33006

Aircraft: F/A-18C (freeze happened in cockpit, no F viewing)
Server: Hoggit's Georgia at War
On my way back to the Roosevelt (night, CASE III)
Distance to carrier: 25 nm
AI Tomcats present: Maybe? (first phase of GAW where I suspect that AI Tomcats are present in the mission file but not "active")

Detailed log attached

DCS minidump created by Process Explorer (Google Drive folder) -> DOWNLOAD

dcs.log

[boerdi]

I should have landed on Bandar-e-Jask...

New entry:

OB 2.8.0.33006

Aircraft: F/A-18C (freeze happened in cockpit, light F viewing to see if carrier deck is clear)
Server: Hoggit's Persian Gulf at War
On my way back to the Washington (day, CASE I)
Distance to carrier: 6 nm
AI Tomcats present: Yes (duo of AI Tomcats doing CAP around carriers)
Other carriers present: Stennis, Kuz

Detailed log attached
I also attached a "control" log of a round on GAW without freeze (flying inland in the F-16 far from the carriers...)

DCS minidump created by Process Explorer (Google Drive folder) -> DOWNLOAD

dcs.log dcs - control - viper gaw no freeze.log

[Flappie]

Thank you, but now that we have a short SP track in the hands of the devs, I guess there's no need for more proof.

[Aqua_HeaD]

I have had a long brake from DSC and it is now nice to hear that I am not alone regarding all those crashes. I have been struggling a lot since I changed my GPU from my RTX 2080Ti to my sons RTX 3080 that I am now testing at my desktop PC. I have just been trying two of the instant missions (Free Flight and Carrier Landing) in the F18 so far and I have random crashes every time. It can sometimes be after 2 minutes and sometimes after an hours flight and I have no clue at all what causes those crashes. I thought in the beginning that it had something to do with the RTX 3080 but I am almost sure it is something in DCS since the card can run any type of benchmark/stresstest and also overklocked without any isses . My RTX 2080Ti seems to work fine in DCS those short period I have tested it so far in the same missions.

[rmk80]

So did the fix make it into the OB today?

[Flappie]

Yes, it did. I tested the fix and I could not reproduce the issue. I'm looking forward to reading your feedback.

[rmk80]

26 minutes ago, Flappie said:

Yes, it did. I tested the fix and I could not reproduce the issue. I'm looking forward to reading your feedback.

Ah great, thx for confirming! I will check and see if I can reproduce the freezing

[boerdi]

Cautiously optimistic.
Will visit the carrier "hot zones" on the mentioned servers to see if normal play is back on the menu.

The freeze bug has (had?) one positive effect: To stay away from carriers, I delved deeper into F-16 and A-10
(with zero freezes while outside the dreaded "carrier bubble")

Edited December 16, 2022 by boerdi

[WWSmith]

I just test-flew the F-14 mission "Bone Strike," which has so far frozen 100% of the time for me at some point between the RTB call and the carrier. Here's my report on the fix:

[Flappie]

Thanks for your feedback. Roll the credits!

[boerdi]

Still cautiously optimistic
No freeze after a good handful of sorties in "carrier corner" on Hoggit's PGAW

Edited December 17, 2022 by boerdi

[rmk80]

Well, after some intense flying since the OB with the fix I haven’t had any freezes anymore! Very happy that this issue that had been bugging me since April has been fixed. 

A true Christmas present

[Jayhawk1971]

Had the same (= same symptoms) freeze-crash again, when playing the "Fear the Bones" campaign, mission 8. That's the mission that always gave me troubles regarding freeze-crashes (the other missions in the campaign that I've reflown since 2.8 went without a hitch, also "Zone 5" is fine).

Normally the game froze after the first engagement going feet wet, right about when a scripted radio message (and/or related event) was triggered. This time it was shortly before that first engagement, again right when a scripted radio call was triggered.

Symptoms are: game freezes, and I get the SteamVR window saying "waiting....". A DCS window with a crash-log option ("send to ED") popped up.

There has got be some sort of connection.

Anyway, I've attached the crash log. I realize that my system is at or below the bare minimum specs, but other aircraft and other campaigns I've tried (with or without Tomcats) give me no trouble at all since 2.8.

I did mess around with page file a little after the crash (set it to have windows handle it for my fastest drive, which is also the location of DCS), but have not gotten around to testing it yet.

 

dcs.log

Edited December 25, 2022 by Jayhawk1971

[Flappie]

Your game files seem to be corrupted:

2022-12-25 02:44:30.095 ALERT   WRADIO (Main): Error in wMessage::buildSpeech(), event = wMsgFlightDepartingStation: [string "./Scripts/Speech/phrase.lua"]:343: assertion failed!
stack traceback:
	[C]: ?
	[C]: in function 'assert'
	[string "./Scripts/Speech/phrase.lua"]:343: in function 'number_'
	[string "./Scripts/Speech/phrase.lua"]:405: in function <[string "./Scripts/Speech/phrase.lua"]:404>
	(tail call): ?
	[string "./Scripts/Speech/common.lua"]:1321: in function 'make'
	[string "./Scripts/Speech/common.lua"]:3285: in function 'make'
	[string "Scripts/Speech/speech.lua"]:188: in function <[string "Scripts/Speech/speech.lua"]:174>

 

Please try a "slow" DCS repair.

[Jayhawk1971]

Thanks, will try! 

[Jayhawk1971]

Hi Flappie,

I did a slow repair, flew the mission again, still got the exact same freezing issue, at the exact same point in the mission. Going through the log, it seems I still have those corrupted files. 

What I did after the slow repair is what I always do after an update:

• Clear metashader 2 and fxo folders
• Delete the VAICOM entry in the export.lua (to let the app rewrite the entry)
• delete the SU-27 model in SceneVR.lua (Scripts -> DemoScenes)

This time I also updated VAICOM Pro to 2.8.1 before starting DCS and running the mission.

 

dcs.logdcs.20221226-032033.crash

Edited December 26, 2022 by Jayhawk1971