BN-2 Island "out of memory" issue

[JoTayhen 6]

Hey fellas, I'm hoping to get a little guidance here. I just purchased the BN-2 Islander from Flight1 and I really enjoy it. I love the simplicity of the a/c and its rugged, no-nonsense personality. I also very much enjoy the almost tactile feeling I get when I use the switches, avionics, etc. - the sounds are great! Here's my problem: I set up my first flight from my homebase (KCDN), took off and was 5 minutes into my route to KCAE when I received a "out of memory" msg. FSX crashed, of course. I suspect it is a memory leak of some sort or I need to adjust a setting somewhere but, to tell you the truth, I have no idea how to start troubleshooting this sort of thing. I believe my system is robust enough to operate this a/c and I also believe I have more than enough memory. I have posted a similar question on the Flight1 BN-2 Islander support forum but I believe my home here at AVSIM is more active. Besides, I know a bunch of you guys and I really feel good about your level of knowledge and experience - please do not take that to be any criticism at all of the Flight1 support forum - I just feel a little more at home here. As you all know, I fly several other addon a/c with no memory problems at all and so I believe it must be something that I need to address before I can enjoy my new Islander. Thanks for reading. Any suggestions would be most gratefully noted and accepted. Regards, John

[VirginAus737 0]

Have you got the highmemfix=1 in the .cfg?

[Paul J 349]

John - we need to know what operating system you're using - 32 bit or 64 bit.

[JoTayhen 6]

Hey Andrew - yes, I have the HIGHMEMFIX=1 entry in my cfg file. I actually am running a cfg file that was suggested by Bojote when I used his automatic FSX tweaking and tuning service. Hey PJ - good to hear from you again buddy! I am running windows 7 home premium (64 bit). You know, I am beginning to believe it was a combination of things. I had recently set my scenery settings up to make Orbix's PNW look as good as possible and was flying the Duke B60 turbine out of Port Hardy (CYZT) with no problems. I left the settings where they were and came back to KCDN to practice on the new BN-2 Islander because it is my home base and I am really familiar with the terrain, etc. Now I know I am "pushing" my system because I run 3 wide-screen Acers and 1 Samsung all on "windowed" mode with the windows synched. That eats a bunch of memory and performance but my system has always been able to give me adequate performance (14 - 40 fps depending upon where I am - except some of the really congested areas, KATL, KSEA, KSFO - you know what I mean). Proof of the pudding is - I can successfully operate the Dukes, Carenado's Centurion, the SF 260 - all without any memory problems. I am wondering if maybe this particular a/c requires a bit more memory and I have been "right at the edge" of my system's capabilities all along and never realized it. I know if I close one or more of those windows, my memory problem goes away. Also if I dial down the scenery settings I free up some space. The thing that puzzles me is I can successfully operate using these windows and the high settings in Orbix's PNW using the other addons and the scenery in and around my home base of Camden, SC is much less complex. I also have another problem with the new Islander involving difficulties starting the a/c but that is "off topic" and so I will post another topic to see if I can't get that straightened out. Thanks for your interest and your responses. I really appreciate you guys. John

[Paul J 349]

Mmmmm... ok - how much contiguous swap space do you have?

[JoTayhen 6]

You know, Paul - that's a darn good question. I searched "continuous swap space" and I found several very erudite threads that were way over my head. They also seemed to deal exclusively with 32 bit OS. I really have no idea. Sorry to say but you are dealing with an ignorant man here. I did understand - I believe - that I might have enough physical memory installed, it's just that my virtual memory settings might need to be adjusted. I'm afraid however, that's like asking me to pole vault 16 ft! Since I'm using a 64 bit system, I was concerned, reading those past threads, that they might not apply to my OS but, again, I really don't know what I'm talking about, Paul. Thanks for putting up with me! John EDIT: Paul - I was able to determine that my C: drive (which is the only one I have) is "system managed" and that the "total paging size" is presently 8,183 mb which, I believe is the entire amount of RAM I have installed. I also was able to determine that the "paging size" is set to be automatically determined by the system. Don't know what this means but hope it gives you some ideas. Thanks! John

[Illegitimi non carborundum 4]

JohnThis OOM has very little to do with your physical RAM or paging file (aka virtual memory) but to do with the virtual address space (VAS) which needs to have contiguous space for FSX (plus addons to load into). With a 32-bit app like FSX SP2/Acc/Gold it loads into a maximum of 4GB of VAS in a 64-bit OS, but if that becomes fragmented or depleted you will see OOM's. Phil Taylor said this:So how is this helping with the “Out of Memory” error?In the "Out of Memory" case, 2 things can be happening to cause this issue:1)the app is running out of contiguous blocks* in the 2G process address space (read 4Gb for a 64-bit OS)2)the app is running out of virtual address space period (http://blogs.msdn.co...ress-space.aspx)(even 1MB fragmented may cause an OOM) I do not know of a method to measure how much contiguous space is present so hopefully Paul J can tell us how to do that.VMMap from sysinternals measures quite a few parameters re virtual memory but I can't see that it can measure contiguous space in the VAS.If you can have a look at the event viewer to see if there is any error message when you got the OOM.OOMs are difficult to fix but usually lowering the settings can help.RegardspH

[Paul J 349]

I prefer to have a couple of page files, John: one on the 200 gig OS drive, and one on my 1-TB "Stuff" (E:) drive. FSX is on a third drive (F:) at 500 gig. Both are Custom, max & main at ~8165 each. The OS system-managed swap file tends to get fragmented quite quickly, and Windows has never been good at managing it, with any of their OS's. The only answer to that is a constant defrag app. like that offered by DiskTrix. All memory - including the swap space should be kept as clean as possible all the time. If data is broken up because of a lack of contiguous space then the system slows down. With FSX any little thing I can do to help the overall process - I do it. You're right, Peter - there's nothing off the top of my head that can tell you how much contiguous (RAM) space there is, but it can made that way by starting something like Ken Salter's "Alacrity", which can "defrag" your memory a couple of times, then making it contiguous prior to launching your app. In my case - it stops a slew of services, like 'Computer Browser' , 'Background Intelligent Transfer' & the print spooler and so on; it then moves out as many pages of working processes it can - to swap space (disc), and then does the defrag. It then starts and monitors TrackIR5 (in my case). After this is complete - I run a 12 choice batch file which deletes fsx.cfg, puts another in its place, then launches Shade, then FPSLimiter02, then FSX. Running at 4.8 with 8 gigs of ram it never oom's, black screens or crashes.

[JoTayhen 6]

Peter and Paul - thank you both! I have reduced my settings back to a more moderate environment. I also have a program that I saw was recommended as a relatively good defrag tool.( it is named Mydefrag) and I use it regularly. Since I reduced the settings I have not had the error to re-occur. I do use also a program called Game Booster 3 which appears to close some processes so FSX doesn't have so much competition for CPU and memory usage. I would love to have your opinions about them and whether or not I should consider other, more effective pgms in their place. Paul - I notice you use TrackIR5. I wonder if you could answer a question for me. I am also interested trying TrackIR5 however I have been reluctant to move ahead because I believe I saw where it will only work on a single monitor. Is that correct? As I mentioned above, I use a total of four monitors however usually only the three wide-screen Acers are used to represent the VC view, the fourth is used to display the radio stack and/or GPS. I know I could purchase something like TH2go for the three monitors and I tried that once but I found you had to purchase the much more expensive model if you wished to run those three monitors in 1920X1080X32 resolution. The standard version of TH2go (still relatively expensive) did not allow for a resolution of that magnitude. I wonder if TrackIR5 would work using the three Acer monitors in "windowed" view mode when those monitors are all synchronized together using the FSX command to do so? Right now I can load a flight, create 3 separate views and place each view on the appropriate monitor, adjust each view to represent a VC spanning all three monitors and then tie those view together using the FSX command to do so such that all three monitor views pan together when I use the hat switch on my CHH yoke. Finally, Paul - can you tell me about what kind of load your TrackIR5 represents on your system? I realize every little "do-dad" I add to my system comes at its own cost in terms of memory usage and performance. I really appreciate your advice and counsel, my friends! Thank you very much! John EDIT: Another question (and boy, am I taking advantage of our friendship now!) I would love to get an explanation that I could apply to FSX regarding the Windows Task Manager. Here goes: Under the "performance" tab, I see two general categories - "Physical memory" and "System" As I type this, not running FSX, here are my readings: Total - 8183, Cached - 1927, Available - 6211, Free - 4482 and, of course, the Cached, Available and Free numbers all vary slightly from time to time Under that is something called "Kernel Memory" and, in my case, the readings are: Paged - 243, Nonpaged - 72 When I am running FSX the "Cached" and "Available" memory readings are much closer and the "Free" number drifts downward to something quite low. I have always felt that this is an indication that FSX is absorbing about all the available memory in my system, especially when I am asking it to load photoscenery or something like Orbix's PNW or a complex a/c. I now hear you folks say that Virtual memory is much more important than the actual installed Physical memory. This statement makes me wonder if looking at the Performance tab in Windows Task Manager is misleading - especially to someone, like me, who is very unsophisticated and is assuming that when he sees the "Free" memory numbers approach zero he is in trouble. Could someone donate enough of his valuable time to explain these numbers to folks like me and also put us straight as to how to look at this performance tab in a way that would make sense as we are running FSX? I don't believe I am the only dull one who honestly needs some "hand-holding" here. I suspect some others would benefit along with me (or I hope so, at least!) By the way, I have HT turned off because I read here that FSX does not take advantage of HT and I could keep the temps down if I turned it off. If I am incorrect in that regard, please let me know and I will turn it back on. I did some searching here and found recommended Affinity Mask settings for both HT on and off. Thanks very much for your patience Fellas!

[Paul J 349]

Hi John; Wow.. You've written a book! I'm going to trust that others will jump in here, too, as there are folks here eminently more qualified than I, in the pc world. My expertise is in old motor-bikes!

good defrag tool.( it is named Mydefrag) and I use it regularly. Since I reduced the settings I have not had the error to re-occur. I do use also a program called Game Booster 3 which appears to close some processes . I would love to have your opinions about them and whether or not I should consider other, more effective pgms in their place.

Never used MyDefrag, John, so I can;t comment, but I did use GameBooster - the ealy version, which was free. It 'seemed' ok, but they updated it, put lots of advertising into it, and then started charging for it. I found Ken Salter had revamped his old software and renamed it "Alacrity" - and it was free, so I dumped Gamebooster. There are lots of posts surrounding this software - not all good:http://forum.avsim.n...__fromsearch__1 TrackIR5...

I am also interested trying TrackIR5 however I have been reluctant to move ahead because I believe I saw where it will only work on a single monitor. Is that correct?

I'm using TripleHead2Go, John, with 3 19" monitors, giving a FOV of some 170-odd degrees. 3840 x 1024, and with TIR5 - it's just like sitting in the 'pit, but honestly - someone else needs to answer this. Four single monitors and a hat switch - I've never touched. Regarding load on the system - none whatsoever. I can tell you that I will not fly anything which is not fully functional from the 3D VC screen, and TIR - along with EZCA - are essential components of my hobby, and cost doesn't enter into it. Golf is expensive: R/C aircraft are expensive: a new jacket is expensive: So TIR is 160 bucks.. spread out over the almost ten years since I purchased it.... peanuts. I'm not going to stop flying FSX tomorrow! (I hope this helps)

I have HT turned off because I read here that FSX does not take advantage of HT and I could keep the temps down if I turned it off. If I am incorrect in that regard, please let me know and I will turn it back on.

With the 950 aircooled (Muggen 2) John, I was able to run at 4 - 4.2 gig: with it water-cooled I could push her to 4.48 gig, but that was max; she would go no higher. HT needs to be off to keep it cool.http://s118.photobuc...mview=slideshow Microsoft is the best place for memory detail:http://windows.micro...-virtual-memoryhttp://windows.micro...search?q=memory All running programs will initially load into cached memory - in RAM - the plain physical RAM. In Windows 7 - the gpu's memory is also mirrored (maybe not the right word) in ram, too. (This complicates the usage & FSX tweaking process.) When you begin to use more and more of that RAM - windows will begin pushing the lesser essential processes which are also using ram, off to disk - into the swap space, and - because they are effectively still live processes - you will hear disk activity - thrashing. This combination of swap space and ram is called 'virtual' memory, and you can run out of it if either space is too small.System 'Handles' is a unique program number given to all programs (or parts of) - an analogy would be your apartment number. If you were a 'program', and your 'handle' was (e.g.)123, every time Windows wanted to talk to you it would go to 'Handle 123', i.e. - your apartment number.Threads - tasks or processes carried out by a processor. Multi-threading or multi-tasking and multi-processing mean slightly different things on a single proc, compared to a multi-proc pc - all will depend upon the Operating system and upon the way the application is written. And it's too deep a subject for this thread, John!Uptime is the time since you last turned on the pc.http://windows.micro...ng-task-manager Sorry for being long-winded, John - reams have been written on how computer processors work! - so if you're really interested, I would recommend taking some time and browsing those - and other - websites given above. There's lots and lots more where they came from!

[JoTayhen 6]

You know Paul - - you're a good friend. Not many folks would have spent the time and taken the effort to help. That means a great deal to me and to the others that will open this thread and learn. Please, won't you accept my thanks as coming from not only me but also all those who benefit! I know this is not "on topic" but I want you to know that years ago (1959) I could be found scooting around on a wonderful old (even at that time - because it was all I could afford) Indian "Chief" in the foothills of New Castle, PA. I know it is not a motorbike but, when I saw you mention your "other" hobby, I thought I would mention it. I loved that cycle - I wish I still had it although my wife, Charlene would have a few choice words about me getting on it now! I am currently using the free version of Gamebooster 3. I will look into Alacrity. I agree with you, Paul. The money' isn't the thing here. Years ago, I entertained a fantasy about learning to fly and owning a wonderful a/c. Finished school (North Dakota St. U), then Vietnam, then wife & wonderful children and grandchildren and a very satisfying career in banking ( to pay the bills) and for the last 27 years - owning and operating my own little business. Somewhere, as the years passed, that dream got hijacked or simply turned to dust from "misuse". Anyway - here I am - having a wonderful time and able to share it all with good folks like you! Why - just this afternoon I flight planned a trip from Camden, SC over to a little regional airport in the Atlanta area (Fulton Co. - Brown - KFTY) to pick up the kids and grand kids. We had lunch together and then flew up to King Field (SC78) in Cleveland, SC where Charlene and I have rented a home next to Caesar's Head State Park. Took me awhile but I'm back on track, living the dream! I can fully understand where you're coming from, buddy. Aren't the 3 monitors great! I believe, if I understand things correctly, your resolution of 3840X1024 equates to 1280X1024 for each monitor. If I understand the concept behind TH2go, the device "fools" your system into believing you have a single window open rather then the multiple windows I use at the moment. I would like run 1920X1080 for each of the wide screens and I'm told that takes a different TH2go set-up. But tell me - when you couple your TH2go together with your TrackIR5 will all your monitors pan together as you move your head? I'm guessing the answer is "yes". I did, at one time, have my CPU overclocked up to 4 ghz but I found I could not fly into places like Columbia or Charlotte at night without the system crashing. I dialed it back to 3.8 ghz and the system stabilized. As a result, I must compromise my settings a bit if I choose to enter places like Atlanta, New York or Seattle. (hardly ever go there anyway, Paul - too many folks) By the way, one of these days I'll have to sit down and tell you all about going up to Deer Bay in the Detroit River area and catching Muskie and Walleye. Used to have an 18ft Lincoln tripper canoe and I would load that thing up wifh food & gear and head out to camp on the many granite islands. Stay about 2 wks. Nothing like having breakfast on the stringer anchored to a rock down by the shore having caught em the night before as you listened to the loons an such. But those are times gone by, I'm afraid. Unfortunately, as much as I like the BN-2 Islander, it is causing difficulties with my system. I flew (using the dialed back FSX display settings) for approx an hour and, while on final approach in the Atlanta area, I received a new type of windows message. My system froze and a window appeared stating something to the effect that a "creator" file was missing. When I "X'ed" out of that window, I began to hear a steady beat of "clicks" and I immediately received another message stating my computer had "run out of available memory" and then the system crashed. I will continue to play with the a/c and the settings to see if I can't come up with some sort of a cobbled together fix. You will never be long-winded to me, my friend. Just listen to me for goodness sake! Thanks again for taking the time to write down all of the great info and share it with those of us who are very much "computer challenged"! Take care! John

[Paul J 349]

Thanks for the kudo's, John, and the nice reminisces, but I'm just another simmer who's 'been there', and if I/we can help in any way - most of us will. It's why Avsim is a magnet for the folks in our hobby.I have the BN, and she's a beautiful aircraft, trouble-free, predictable, with an excellent sound package. I love those engines, and having an issue after an hour or so might suggest something inadequately cooled, as you have a couple of "warm" video cards there. How is your system built? i.e. - case, fans. motherboard, cooling, drives, etc..? The problem of crashing can - for sure - be caused by an unstable overclock. Here are my oc testing figures for the 950, and yours should be similar as they're basically the same proc. Voltages shown in CPU-Z are not what is set in bios.http://s118.photobuc...3_bucket/Titan/ I also downloaded and ran 'Memtest' to guarantee ram was ok - I have had a failure with the OCZ Platinum ram and so have since gone to Corsair for the 2600K build. All's well thus far.Let us know how you continue the story (saga?), and maybe re-post in the the CTD or the Hardware forum if you wish. All the best,

[JoTayhen 6]

I agree. The BN is a great a/c, especially for me since I really do enjoy the smaller, more rugged, less sophisticated stuff. I'll keep on fiddling and, when I do come up with something that would bear repeating I'll send it along. Thanks again for the info and also for the insight. John