Another form of memory leak - FYI

[John_Cillis 2,406]

A couple of times I have posted that when scenery textures are placed low in the search hierarchy (such as in the Flight Simulator 9/texture folder vs. a scenery specific texture folder), I have observed a steady and pronounced memory leak in the simulator. It's been some time since I had seen this because I identified and moved all such textures to where they "belong".Well dang it if I didn't notice, after installing an add-on aircraft, that the same thing started to happen--especially when I switched liveries or switched views often. So bad to the extent that I burned up 250 megs of free memory (the aircraft had about 10 megs of textures in the common texture folder).Although it takes more disk space, I copied the textures in the common texture folder to each livery's texture folder and the memory "leak" went away.As always, your mileage may vary. But it may be one thing to look at when you have a memory leak you just can't seem to trace.Regards,John

[Guest zacharace]

John, thanks for the heads-up/insight. This might help a number of stumped troubleshooters (thankfully not me ;) )

[pgaudet 0]

So John where do they belong? You can't mean moving files from out of your /TEXTURE directory.Or do you simply mean in your scenery database to move certain things higher up the food chain (so to speak)?Thanks.Paul.

[John_Cillis 2,406]

In the case of files an aircraft calls up for a livery, for instance, they should be in that livery's texture folder.In the case of textures called up by a scenery bgl, they should be in that scenery's texture folder.The Flight Simulator 9/texture folder is the folder of last resort when a bgl or mdl calls for textures, and in my testing, when either pulls a texture from there that is when memory seems to bleed off.Regards,John

[tunnelcat 1]

Thanks for the good information. I'll be checking by setup of FS9 to look for any misplaced texture files. By the way, which payware aircraft did you find the texture misplacement with John?Kim

[John_Cillis 2,406]

"....which payware aircraft did you find the texture misplacement with John?"A couple, actually. Mind you the textures aren't misplaced per se'--just were put in a location that may cause a memory leak on some systems. In one instance, the aircraft was the Flight One 112A. In another, the Just Flight R-44 'copter. It was my install of the Just Flight copter that got me suspicious as I ran out of memory while browsing the liveries and doing view switches with the copter. All was fine once I moved the common textures, but again that is at the expense of disk space which is why some add-on providers use the common texture folder.Regards,JohnEdit:Just posted some screenshots on the Just Flight copter today. Aside from the problem I mentioned it's great:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...topic_id=273967

[tunnelcat 1]

I'd rather they used up disk space instead of causing memory leaks. You can always get a bigger drive if you want more space. Nice rivet detail on the 'copter'. Thanks again for the texture placement info.Kim

[psolk 3,040]

Guys,please be careful when you use the term memory leak...Per Wiki:"As is noted below, a memory leak has similar symptoms to a number of other problems, and generally can only be diagnosed by a programmer with access to the program source code; however many people are quick to describe any unwanted increase in memory usage as a memory leak, even if this is not strictly accurate."So just because you see increased memory leak does not mean that you have a program that has a "memory leak." I am sorry to be a pain here but the term memory leak is so freely and inaccurately used in the forums that we really need some clarification around when to use the term accurately opposed to increased memory usage...The only memory leak I have seen in FS is with an empty texture folder tied to a landclass folder. You can test this yourself and literally watch your memory erode until there is nothing left. THAT is a memory leak. -PaulPrimary RigLiquid CooledIntel C2D E8500 468X9.5 @ 4.45Asus Maximus Extreme2 gigs OCZ Reaper DDR3 @1400Dual OC'd XFX 8800GTX @ 2 gigsDual VelociRaptor 10k 3gb/s RAID-0Dual WD Caviar 500 gig Raid-0Single 150Gig SATA2 Swap Drive28 inch LCD 16XAA/16XAFDual 19 inch LCD'sPCPower and Cooling 1k Quad SLISaitek Yoke, Saitek Rudders, Go-Flight Flap,Gear and Trim Controlhttp://home.comcast.net/~psolk/3monitorsa.htmlBackup RigsIntel E6600 @ 3.2Asus P5N32E-SLI Plus3 Gigs Kingston Hyper XXFX 8600 GTAMD 4000 San Diego @ 2.72 Gigs Kingston Corsair XMS CL2XFX 7900 GTX Raid-0

[John_Cillis 2,406]

Thanks Paul for the advice,But....As a former WAN Admin and currently a Senior Development Engineer for a pretty substantial software firm I feel my use of the term is accurate in THIS instance."The only memory leak I have seen in FS is with an empty texture folder tied to a landclass folder. You can test this yourself and literally watch your memory erode until there is nothing left. THAT is a memory leak."That is EXACTLY the set of symptoms one also sees under the circumstances I outline. Want to see it? Take textures from a sophisticated aircraft or scenery add-on--it doesn't have to be all of them--and MOVE them to the common texture folder. In my examples, the interior and VC textures were placed there by the install kits.Pick an aircraft add-on with many liveries and switch views, switch between them, etc. Memory will bleed away until it is gone.As for scenery, pick a scenery add on such as a detailed airport. Move some of the larger textures to the common texture folder. MSFS will find them, but if the scenery area is large enough and you cross its boundaries enough memory will bleed away until there is none left.As I said in my initial post, perhaps this doesn't happen for everyone or they don't repeat the steps often enough in a MSFS session or have a long enough session to notice. But it does happen. At least in my shop's vernacular we would call it a "memory leak".Regards,John