I dont know if people have run into this same issue. But I did and it was a headache to resolve so I thought I’d put the sollution here for anyone else who runs into the same issue.
I was not able to get variable instances to display when installing a VF on Windows 10. This seemed to be because I had masters on axes above 1000. Simple solution to fix this, but lot of ttx-ing and troubleshooting to get there. Hope this helps someone!