Sure!

 

Post 147 from here.

 

..and on DisablePreload=1:-

 

When you start FSX it normally takes one to the "Free Flight" page, right? Here there is a flight ready to go, - your 'default flight', and you can use it as is. As you select "Fly now" - that scenario - all it's textures and paraphernalia are ready to go, and the black line zips (sic) across the screen and we are flying. All of those textures and paraphernalia were preloaded, ready for you to hit the 'Fly now' button. This is the default, and effectively the flight is 'preloaded' - so this would be a "DisablePreload=0" or... "Preload=1" or "PreLoad is, or = True".

 

If, on the other hand we normally grab a different aircraft, place, or time - we don't want all that existing default flight's "stuff" in there - it took time and resources to get it all ready - we just want to see the screen, so that we can change it to what we want to do. If we set "DisablePreload=1" in [Main] then all of that pre-loaded paraphernalia doesn't happen: we just see the 'words' in the boxes.. "Cessna 172" - "Meigs Field" "Parking Ramp 2" - "Sunday Aug 20, at 16:00" - but they're not attached to anything in memory, ready to go.

 

This is supposed to help us save time, but it depends upon our normal habits. Mine is usually set to "1", as I frequently change my default flight, and from the cfg's that get posted - I think most people do it this way, too.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Note:- In a pinch I can yap about AFCAD's, too, but I'm very much no expert, but right now the boss-lady is calling - I have to get some "stuff" to the dump, so I'll be gone for a couple of hours. Back later!

Thanks Paul great info - I did apply your settings and its a bit lighter on the FPs - still got the dreaded OOM however if I linger too long in the london area :(

Hi again: I don't remember what your paging file info was, James, how many you have, nor where it/they are... Can you refresh me please? Your RAM was 16 gig, right? Same with your drives. The os and the FS were on an SSD, right?

Hi Paul,

 

Yes i have an ssd with Win7 64-bit on it - 16gb of RAM have tried with a page file of 4096 and also system managed - each time i got an OOM

Just had another thought - my system gets thevOOM when fsx starts to use around 3.3gb of ram - am i missing something, i thought on the 64 bit os i should be able to hand it up to 4gb??

Aaah.. found it!

I've got a PF installed but on my second drive - Having an SSD as the first drive (With the OS) I wouldn't want to place the PF on there. And with 16Gb of memory having it system managed would make it somewhat large, and even so, with this much memory would actually slow the whole operation down!

 

Would you mind trying this, James: Go into the Advanced-->>Virtual memory, and change the SSD drive (C:) to Custom, with 100 meg in each, and Set it: then do the same with your HDD, except put 12288 in each spot, then Set it, press OK and reboot. Then do your thing with FSX and post back.. Thanks..

Hi Paul - shall give it a go first thing in the morning. You still think i need to do anything with the 'AFCAD' s?

James,

In regard to AFCADS, these are *BGL" files and the term "Afcad" is really an acronym that came about when Lee Swordy made it possible to edit airport layouts, gate positions etc.

If you have MTX Traffic 5.4 as an example, it comes with Scenery BGL files that alter airport gates and layout at default airports. There is quite a few hundred of them and are located for example, C:\FSX\mytraffic\scenery. You can rename them to *.Bak or delete them if you so wish. It will not effect default airports, as these bgl's only enhance default. Please bear in mind, some MTX afcad bgl's offer gate assignments that there is no default option. So AI planes won't land at those airports. Some of those airports could be in obscure places like Nigeria for example. My suggestion is not to delete default or addon airport afcads.

Sorry for treading on your toes PJ

Dunno yet... I haven't heard of "afcads in your scenery folder doing damage", so I have to go back to Petraeus's other post to dig up the spot that he's talking about - however I believe that Stevejp is correct in his conjecture that the area either side of the timeline - the meridian - and the number of areas being loaded - are tripled - then we may well have that issue here. First, though, I think that a). we need to create a fresh, moderately large - 12 gig is more than enough, of clean, fixed swap which will not fragment on the plain ol'-fashioned disk drive , with a very small one on the ssd, to capture the needed files in the event of an "unexpected shutdown", and see what happens over the next coupla runs of FSX, experimenting by unchecking those heavy airfields while you're running - in World --> Scenery Library. Will talk more tomorrow.

 

Hey Julian! Just saw your post! You're not treading on my toes, my friend - James is everyone's client here! As I think I mentioned - I'm no expert with afcads, but in FS9 days it was pretty easy to create your own airforce! I remember having FlightZone's FZ01, setting up base at Quonset State, with ten or so T37 Tweets and about eight or nine MAAM B-25's, plus a couple of Geese(?) doing T7G's. A snap! Yeah - I use Burhard's MTX 5.4a and I'm aware it messes with airfields.... gets a tad complicated with OrbX doing the same thing.

This is a waste of time guys. It's obvious what the solution is, remove duplicate afcad files.

'm aware it messes with airfields.... gets a tad complicated with OrbX doing the same thing

It sure does Paul, especially in PNW. Had a few issues there, took a bit of checking to remove double afcads.

Aaaahh... yes - obvious.... obvious... we're all so blind..

Thankyou mr 'Gear up n' Off' for your technical input - However it would appear that the AFCAD's being in there, or not there makes not a jot of difference!

 

Done some rather extensive testing this morning; Done the page file alterations as per Paul's reccomendation - It does seem lighter on the memory. Did my usual test of flying between EGLL-EGKK a few times and no OOM yet. Other things that may have contributed that I've found;

 

I've set the autosave in FSUIPC - now the amount of memory being used DOES actually decrease every now and then as well. Before it would just go up and up and up and then our friend Mr OOM returns.

 

However that change was done at the same time as getting rid of my batch file FPS limiter and instead locking the FPS using FSX settings. Some more testing here probably needed to find out which was the helpful factor.

 

Reducing autogen had a small impact - but nothing big really.

 

Reducing AI did have an impact, but not as large as one may think. FPS did go up, but the effect on memory usage was not as large as one might expect. And as mentioned at the start. I did a test after deleting the BGL files out of the mytraffic directory, no difference whatsoever. I then placed them back in... No difference on performance or memory usage at-all......Obvious..... ;-)

:Peace: That's great, James. That's exactly what I want to hear. You might download the SysInternals Suite from MS, too. The Process Explorer Tool will allow you to monitor the memory system in real time (View --> System Information --> Memory). Some excellent diagnostic tools.

Paul - Thanks to your fantastic input I've now managed to complete my flight - EGNX to EGLL - Memory didnt get over 2.4GB and a lovely smooth ride all the way :)

 

I had to sacrifice a bit of autogen and AI traffic went to 25. Decided to do away with all ground and sea traffic. Its not exactly a highway simulator afterall!

 

I've also increased my knowledge of FSX insides by about 200% in the last 3 days so all in all a positive exercise..... If only some of the server problems at work could be resolved so quickly and easily!!!