MSFS 2020 crashes with vPilot on PC [SOLVED]

[Bram vanMunster]

I don't have a incredibly expensive or high spec gaming rig, but most certainly well enough to play MSFS 2020 with. 
After practicing offline for a good while, I decided to launch vPilot and get some real world experience, as things outside the cockpit looked like the real world.

At times the sim wouldn't even load, and I got a CTD (Crash To Desktop). Sometimes this would also happen during flight, and of course preferably after a few hours and with the runway in sight. 
Knowing the fact flying for a while which end in a CTD does not get logged in your flight logbook, I started reading stuff, and I found a LOT... 

Scenery is of course very heavy on the graphics card, and unless you have one that has well above 4 Gb of vRAM you're screwed. I decided I could do 2 things. Get mad, or solve it. Solving is what I chose... Here goes!!!
 

1. Turn down the TREES in all scenery down to LOW. They are immensely hard on the graphics card. For some reason, that is the magic thing to start with. All the rest can remain on medium or even medium high or high, as you wish. 
2. Increase your "Rolling Cache" up from 8Mb to what ever you can spare. Mine is now set at 110 Gb but 50 Gb seems to be enough. What this does is cache the areas you have visited instead of loading it from elsewhere. You'll have less CPU and GPU loading time. The game loads faster and smoother.
3. What ever you do, do NOT let vPilot through your firewall by letting it connect unchecked, because you won't be able to hear nor speak ever again, it'll revert you to 'text only'. Also, do not port-forward vPilot because that has the exact same result.
4. If you increase vRAM (virtual memory for the graphics card) in your BIOS, do not exceed 64 Mb. You'll confuse your computer if you do, causing even more crashes.
5. Installing MSFS 2020 on a different drive than your C:\ is very possible. Just make sure you also have your vPilot and Rolling Cache there. If you choose to install it anywhere else than C:\ and not change the (install) paths of Rolling Cache or vPilot, you'll create extra stress on your system, causing it to crash. Before I changed this, I even saw explorer.exe crash on my other screen while in flight. It's horrifying... 
6. Rumors are you need well over 16 Gb of RAM, but you don't. I have 16 Gb RAM, and ever since I moved all paths to the same HDD, MSFS 2020 runs incredibly smooth. 
7. Rumors are you need a graphics card with well over 4 Gb of RAM, but you don't. I have only 2 Gb and having the time of my life. 

 

When all that is set up properly and the game runs smooth, load up a flight (at parking of course), load your flight plan and connect. I have vPilot, the MSFS map and VATSPY on my second screen and MSFS 2020 on my primary screen. After doing the above 7 points, I was FINALLY able to perform a 4,5 hour flight without crashes or disruptions. Yes, I was also able to land it! 

Hope this helps at least a few others that run into CTD's. Nobody likes to play offline alone. #teamVATSIM 

[Mats Edvin Aaro]

VATSIM doesn't run well with MSFS yet, there is a bug causing your fps to drop to unusable levels. There is a patch coming one of the following days that will fix this issue. 

Don't judge your computer's performance on how well it runs with vPilot now, wait until the patch comes out. 🙂 But good initiative!

[Ross Carlson]

14 minutes ago, Bram vanMunster said:

What ever you do, do NOT let vPilot through your firewall by letting it connect unchecked, because you won't be able to hear nor speak ever again, it'll revert you to 'text only'. Also, do not port-forward vPilot because that has the exact same result.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Most firewalls allow software running on your PC (such as vPilot) to connect to servers on the internet, without you needing to do anything. Even if you have your firewall set to maximum strictness, where it blocks all outgoing connections unless explicitly allowed, then you will definitely need to allow vPilot through the firewall in order for it to connect to the VATSIM traffic and voice servers. NOT allowing it through the firewall is what would prevent you from receiving or transmitting voice, or seeing other traffic.

And regarding vPilot having to be on the same drive as your sim, that is not the case. Having vPilot on a different hard disk will not cause a crash. Many people, myself included, have it set up with vPilot in the default location (AppData on the C: drive) and MSFS on a different drive.

Edited August 28, 2020 at 03:58 PM by Ross Carlson

[Bram vanMunster]

Quote

Having vPilot on a different hard disk will not cause a crash.

For some reason, that was the case over here... Now I'm no expert, but since I took vPilot out of the exceptions list, I suddenly heard everyone again...