Panel Freezes Gone after doing this!

[winged532 7]

Being one of those experiencing continuos panel freezes, I want to share what seems to have fixed the problem for me. This was an idea which I must credit to someone here on the forum, but I forget who it was. His suggestion concerned FSX having to load a lot of third party airplanes, thus eating into memory space. Seemed reasonable, and since I had a ton of addon aircraft, I decided to try his suggestion. I renamed my Aircraft folder to "~Aircraft", and created a new Aircaft folder, copying and pasting only the stock FSX+Acceration aircraft, plus the PMDG737NGX. Lo and behold, that solved my panel freeze problem. I have flown 2 flights, fully utilizing all features of the NGX without any freezes. One flight was 1.5 hours from KATL to KMSY, and the other was a 1.8 hours from CYYZ to KBNA. Three of the airports were stock, with KATL being and addon. I Used the CDU enroute to make route changes due to the weather, and had real world weather enabled. Intel QuadCore 9550, 2.83, 4GB, 8800GTX, WinXP.Mike Illian

[ajpongress 467]

That seems overly complicated.All I did was stop using custom liveries and start using the default NGX livery, and I haven't had a freeze since.

[Lmaire 38]

That seems overly complicated.All I did was stop using custom liveries and start using the default NGX livery, and I haven't had a freeze since.

Same here.

[JohnS 0]

I dropped the CLS airbus A340 ( It is a terrible sim in comparison to PMDG) and I have only had ONE panel freeze since. I may drop the CLS DC-10 as well ( I sorta like the '10 though) and see if I get better performance. I will say this, I have a GPU acceleration option on my Quadro 5600 and I have disabled it. When I enable it, it hurts performance and caused a crash. With it OFF, I have had almost NO problems. I have gradually moved my sliders very close to max, I am running 35% traffic and I always use downloaded weather. Last freeze occurred when I was trying to change ILS runways while descending for landing. I was using the FMC heavily and thats when it froze. I havent had a freeze in 7 or 8 flights. We'll see tomorrow.

[tf51d 284]

Note,there are two types of panel freezes in the VC. One is a memory issue, and is frequently accompanied, by some other anomaly, such as graphic coruption or reduced scenery detail, and possibly a OOM, or a CTD. The other is a focus issue. (Some other aircraft have this issue as well.) That is if you move the seat back too far, you can no longer click on the panels controls. This can also happen with movement with EZDOK. When this happens, the gauges will still function and controls on the 2D panels will work, just the VC controls won't. To correct this, just move your view position closer. Remember move not zoom. Then it should work again. So if your gauges function, but you can't click any knobs or buttons, try this, before you assume it's a memory panel freeze. You may save your flight. If the gauges freeze, it's most likely the memory issue.

[winged532 7]

This was not a lot of work to do. Took me about 3 minutes to setup. Now I can fly any livery of the PMDG that I like, not locked into the PMDG livery. All my other aircraft are easily available, If I want to fly one of them I just use explorer to move the folder back into the Aircraft folder. I continue to fly free of panel freezes, fully utilizing all views and the CDU in flight. Works for me!Mike Illian

[readyfortakeoff 11]

I didn't have any ctd or freezes until I loaded up REX. Now I get them almost every flight(panel freezes) I had 1 freeze when I first installed NGX without REX. But that was it just 1. Now I have them all the time. Very frustrating indeed. I hope by lowering the settings it will help, but that's defeating the purpose. REX is awesome and makes every flight delightful, especially with NGX...if I can get it to stop freezing..... Rick Otolo

[ricky76 46]

I'm still using the first version from day one,(no hot fixes installed) and have 91 hours on it to date. Since first flight, I have only had 2 fatal errors. Those were both due to logitech popping up a window telling me my mouse battery level was critical.I can fly over ORBX scenery with max sliders (except around KSEA where a CTD happens anytime with any plane) and as long as I keep my butt in the cockpit with out switching views, I can get 3-4 hour flights without any issues.

[JohnS 0]

I have 33.7 hours since I reloaded NGX and HF3. One freeze and I moved sliders (mesh complexity etc) to max. Losing some FPS over LIRA on departure, but no crashes and another great 3.6 hour flight to Norway.

[winged532 7]

Ricky76, try this: Just move some of your addon aircraft folders into the another folder in your SimObjects folder. For example, your PMDG747 folder into the "Animals" folder, so it doesnt load when you start up the sim.Then try to fly around KSEA and see if it helps. You are just freeing up some memory space for FSX to use by doing this. If it doesn't help, just move the folder back to the Aircraft folder, No Foul, No harm.Mike Illian

[Tabs 2,790]

Guys - this doesn't sound logical to me. FSX doesn't load all the aircraft in your aircraft folder into memory - only the one you're actually flying and ones that are assigned to AI aircraft that are active in the world. The idea that using the House livery doesn't make sense either - it's no different from any of the other liveries aside from what's actually painted on it. The House livery is actually larger than many of the airline ones even.

[winged532 7]

Then, why does it work for me? Why does my FSX load in one-third the time it took before? Why have I been able to fly three, nice long flights, using all the features of FSX and the NGX, when it was impossible to compete one flight without a freeze before? It may not make sense to you, but the proof is in the pudding, so to speak.

[Tabs 2,790]

FSX itself during loading goes through and "catalogs" so to speak which aircraft are there for creating the aircraft select screen. (it does this by scanning the aircraft.cfg entries) It is not actually loading all those airplanes into memory as if you were running them in the sim. That's my point. Correlation doesn't equal causation - I have nearly every major addon aircraft installed on my own FSX setup and I have never seen a panel freeze. I could just as easily claim that it has nothing to do with the aircraft folder based on that. Here, if you want to do a concrete empirical test - do this: 1. Open up Task Manager and go to the Processes tab - go to View/Select Columns and enable Working Set and Peak Working Set. These most closely approximate the amount of VAS FSX is using aside from video memory. 2. Run FSX in both of your configurations (with the other aircraft in the folder and without) - run the exact same flight each time to minimize any variables. Note what the working set and peak working set values are throughout the flight. If your assertion is correct they should be massively larger with the aircraft in the folder.

[winged532 7]

I am using WinXP, and Working Set and Peak Working Set are options that are not aviailable to me

[winged532 7]

Ryan, I did what you suggested, substituting the Task Manager items Memory Usage, and Peak Memory Usage for Working Set and Peak Working Set, for both the original Aircraft folder with all my addons, and the modified Aircraft folder containing only the stock aircraft and the NGX. According to your predicted behavior, there was no substantial difference between the memory values with either of the Aircraft folders. I flew the same flight for about 15 minutes, each performed normally. I moved through all the outside views, opened all the 2D windows, interacted with the CDU, zoomed in and out with the VC, and panned around the VC in all directions. In both flights the Memory Usage, and Peak Memory Usage pretty much stayed in lock-step, with Memory Usage settling a little under Peak Memory usage: Flight #1 with Modified Aircraft folder: Memory Usage 1,377,377 Peak Memory Usage 1,414,932 Flight #2 with non-modified Aircraft folder: Memory Usage 1,423,122 Peak Memory Usage 1,476,312It stayed similar to this during both flight, altering slightly. The interesting thing that I discovered, however, was when I minimized FSX to the task bar to access my desktop, during flight # 1. When I returned FSX to full screen, my Memory Usage had dropped to 677,000! It stayed around that level until I closed FSX. I then proceeded to start Flight # 2. Upon minimizing FSX to the task bar, and then returning FSX to full screen, my Memory usage also dropped, this time to 587,000. It also stayed around this level until I closed FSX.Now, I am not that tech savy to know if this is important or not. This was simply an observation. I did not have any panel freezes with either of these flights. Both departed from the same stock airport and used the same flight plan and configurations. I wish I knew more about why my FSX and NGX are working now.