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Guest Bob I

Virtual memory leak - due to Landclass FS2004 scenery in FS2002?

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>I have a short test flight from KTIW to KSEA. With landclass>installed, FS9 will start to stutter badly a few minutes intoFly a faster acft and the flight will be over before the stutters start, as the flight should only last a few minutes at most even in slower acft. *grin*

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Dick,I've had this both with and without the no-cd crack. With Flight 1 C152 and with the default C172. With virtual cockpit and 2d cockpit.Here's my simplest scenario to date:- Install the Pacific Northwest Landclass- Stop and start FS9- Get FS9 into a window and start Task Manager alongside- Create a flight - C172 at Snohomish Co with fair weather- Take off and fly runway heading- Trim for level flight and just let her go- Watch the VM usage on Task ManagerWhat I see isn't quite steady growth, but sort of "bursts of steady growth." It starts at 200Mb +/- 10% and grows from there. Sometimes it's stable, sometimes it's growing, sometimes it even shrinks a little. But the overall effect is growth. To see that: - Put the aircraft in a shallow bank and trim so that it holds the turn. - Leave it circling in the area for a while.After 45 minutes, the VM usage was just approaching 400Mb. That's quite slow growth. When I'm actively flying - switching views - I've got to 1Gb in less than an hour.For the record, I've got traffic density set to 33% and weather evolution set to high. I've tryed turning them off, but it doesn't stop the memory growth.I'd be interested to know if you can confirm that you positively don't see this memory growth.Nick.

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Hi Nick.I have reproduced this effect with the FSGenesis Beta landclass. It is not a result of our methods of creating landclass. What I did was place the landclass BGL into a project's folder structure with twin sub-folders ( 'scenery' and 'texture' ). It goes into 'scenery'.Landclass BGLs should NOT be placed into this type of structure, as the twin 'texture' sub-folder causes problems. In FS2002, the sim will display huge solid colored squares when this is done. In FS2004, it will display the ground textures correctly, but the memory will be eaten up, and not returned until the sim is terminated.The problem is exaggerated when you force the sim to refresh the ground tiles. This can be easily done by changing the time of day by an hour and re-entering the flight. Do this several times, and the virtual memory space is used up. With the 'texture' sub-folder, the memory needs are increased dramatically, without that 'texture' sub-folder, the sim will return the memory. So the same rules apply for FS2004:NEVER have a twin 'texture' sub-folder paired with the 'scenery' sub-folder when using landclass BGLs.Dick

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OK, I confess I posted exactly the same question at both web sites. :) Yes, that seems to be working for me too. After putting the landclass BGL files directly into scenerybasescenery rather than creating an add-on folder for them, I flew for more than half an hour with no VM growth.Thanks Dave!Nick.

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Dick,Thanks for that! Getting rid of the empty "texture" folder does indeed get rid of the memory growth problem.That also explains why moving the BGL files into the base scenery worked, as there is no twin texture folder there.Excellent! Nick.

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Hi Nick."After putting the landclass BGL files directly into scenerybasescenery rather than creating an add-on folder for them, I flew for more than half an hour with no VM growth."Yes, because the sim then does not need to "look" for the textures. Here's a snip from the "scenery.cfg" file:[Area.001]Title=Default TerrainTexture_ID=1Layer=1Active=TRUERequired=TRUELocal=SceneryWorldRemote=The bolded line is what tells the sim to search the 'SceneryWorldtexture' folder first for textures.But if you have a local 'texture' sub-folder, it will search there first... that's what is causing the memory to not be returned. FS2004 was changed to allow landclass to be placed into any scenery folder and display properly, but the display engine was never told to let the memory go if a local 'texture' folder was present without the needed textures... it's a bug.Interestingly, if you copy the whole 'SceneryWorldtexture' as the local 'texture' folder, memory is fine.If a landclass contained only 5 ground texture classes, those texture sets could be in the local 'texture' folder with no memory loss. That allows the use of customised texture sets for small areas. But ALL the textures for the 5 classes used must be in the local 'texture' folder.It's all or none. I have used this in CFS2 to enlarge the "tropical" texture area of CFS2, which is too small in the default. Other than that example, I've never seen anyone take advantage of this possibility.Here's the link for CFS2Tropical:http://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?DLID=...wise&CatID=RootAreas as small as 4 LOD13 Areas can have a custom texture set for that one landclass. Why 4? Because a single landclass is assigned to groundtile vertices ( corners ) and are blended to the center of the groundtile at runtime... one vertex affects 4 groundtiles. But that's a different subject. Dick

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Guest Milamber

I confess I'm not entirely sure what you are talking about here. I'm talking about when you say "But if you have a local 'texture' sub-folder, it will search there first... that's what is causing the memory to not be returned." I don't have texture sub-folders where Landclass is installed because in fs2k2 I always heard that could cause black squares to be displayed. I also assume that others don't have texture sub folders either so how does that affect the memory leak? Not an attack on what you say I just don't understand. As to putting LC in the base scenery directory the only issue I can think of is if two LC files cover the same area. Which whould take priority? If I had them in sepparate folders I could arrange the priority with the scenery library. How could this be accomplished if they are all in the base directory?

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Hi Milamber,rhumbaflappy isn't saying that you have to put the landclass in the base scenery directory.He's saying that if you put them somewhere else, you shouldn't create a texture folder unless you also provide all the textures needed for the landclasses you use.In short, I think you are in agreement.I now have my landclass in add-on scenery folders without any memory leak, and I'm a happy camper again.Nick.

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Hello all,- How do I know which bgls belong to Land Class and which bgls belong to something else in my inflated FS2002 that I've been building up for 6 months? I installed many free custom areas and airports that have a twin structure inside (Scenery and Texture), how do I know which of those contain LC bgls and should be put in the main Scenery folder instead? What could be a proper maintanance in my situation to avoid Land Class bgls/texture related problems?- How do I know if all the necessary textures for LC bgls are present or only some are present and others are missing?- Can I just dump all the bgls that I find in FS2002 into FS2002scenery folder, or there may be overwrite problems?- From now on how to install Land Class add-ons into FS9? Should I just dump all the custom bgls into scenery/base/scenery? What if overwrite conflict occurs at some point when I have many custom land classes?Thanks.Dirk

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Guest Bob I

HI,If I understand you correctly, I can put new/old FS2K2 scenery BGL files into the ADDON SCENERY/Scenery folder in FS9, just like I did in FS2K2, but to stop leakage, I remove the Texture folder from the ADDON SCENERY structure. Is this right? Thanks.Bob IAlias=Layabout

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One more question to that:Can I put Land Class custom bgls into a folder that I give a name and then this folder to scenerybasescenery folder? This way I'll have it more organized and don't care if all the corresponding textures are present or just part of them.

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Hi Dirk.Usually landclass BGLs have an "LC" in the name somewhere, or they have a bunch of numbers ( which describe the LOD5 area used ). BGLs can also be loaded into MS's TMFViewer, and landclass files identified easily there.As far as Textures? NO ONE has released landclass BGLs with a customised texture set... everyone uses the defaults. That makes it easy. I just pointed out it is possible... but I'm probably the only one warped enough to actually do this. :)There has been some discussion about "conflicting" landclass Bgls. I have never seen this, but priority might be controlled by using a naming convention where zz_landclass.bgl gets laid on top of zz_Landclass.bgl for the same LOD 5 area. I would need to check this. There certainly is a priority established when landclass BGLs are ordered with the Scenery Library.How to add landclass to FS2004? I have a project folder named LandClass, with a scenery subfolder. All landclass BGLs get dumped into the scenery subfolder, and the folder is added to the Scenery Library. This folder structure is: 'C:Program FilesMicrosoft GamesLandClassscenery' ( right next to the main 'Flight Simulator 9' folder ).Dick

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I have fsglc_us.bgl (full registered version) installed in FS2004in the default directory the FSGenesis installer uses, which is..FS2004scenerySo far, have not found a problem but I rarely fly flights that last more than 1-2 hours. Eric


rexesssig.jpg AND ftx_supporter_avsim.jpg

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Something else major has changed in FS2004 which just kills FPS.It would appear FS2004 is using the FS2000 engine..Anyhow, I can't use FS2004 smoothly, and will be sticking with FS2002 because of performance issues. I see no point in spending more money upgrading my system to a 3.0Ghz machine just to see a little increase in FPS, for a poorly coded game (FS2004). So many people have posted performance problems with 3.0Ghz machines, which should not be the case...Two Screen shoots, one of FS2004, and FS2002. If I were to add clouds to FS2004, I'd get better performance using a slide projector..Just a little disappointed with FS2004, but very happy to still have FS2002...:-wave

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