After a multi month absence from FSX, I decided to fly a nice long cross country trip in an Alaska Air NGX - 800 from KSEA to KPHL.   Like riding a bike, I remembered most all of my workflows and such, and had a nice relaxing approach at the tail end of the 5 hour trip.   But in the back of my mind, I was a little worried about one thing I had started to encounter around last summer/fall, the dramatic return of the dreaded OOM at the end of a flight.  I do remember something new about these OOM errors, as I would now get a beep about every 20 seconds, and without fail, it would happen during the most important and stressful part of the flight, the final approach.  And sadly, this time was no different, as the minute I crossed the IAF for KPHL runway 09R at 4000ft, I heard the first beep.   After the first 3 beeps, I decided to be proactive and try something different.  I paused FSX, brought up my task manager, and attempted to close down any unnecessary programs, like my malware scanner, the print spooler, index searcher, etc.  However, I went one step further and went to the services tab and stopped some services that I thought I could do without, all in the hopes of getting rid of the beeps and preventing the occurance of a OOM situation.  

 

Unfortunately, I only ended up making things worse, as now, the task manager froze, and there was no way for me to force quit it by ctrl-shift-esc!   I could still bring up FSX and other apps, but their windows were obscured by the stuck task manager window... I have now experienced my first task manager crash!  I fuxored this up big time, spoiling a perfect 5 hour trip!  To make matters worse, upon restarting the computer by a forced reboot, I hoped that I could just use FSUIPC's autosave feature to go back 30 minutes or more from the point of impact and just continue the flight, but I mistakenly only saved the last 10 minutes of the flight, not the last hour.  I had a major virus infection last December, and carefully rebuilt my FSX install from scratch, but I put in a typo in the FSUIP autosave settings when I reinstalled, asking it to save every 60 seconds and keeping 10 autosave files instead of my usual 120 seconds and 30 files.  My last autosave point is on downwind for the ILS runway, and I was hoping to continue from the TOD point!   I even had FSrecorder record my approach, I was hoping to grab some popcorn after the flight and enjoy the replay of the beautiful Alaska bird passing over my house on the BOJID STAR approach to 09R, but alas, I was unable to close FSrecorder properly for the saved replay. AAAAAAAAAAAARRGGGHH!!!!!  

 

Now, I have been around these parts and know all the latest tricks and workarounds, having experienced all the common CTDs and OOM situations we all have talked about in these past 5 years.  And to tell you the truth, I thought OOMs were a thing of the past anyways, since I discovered 64 bit OS's 3 years ago!!   But like I said, I had recently started noticing the warning beeps on finals, a smooth landing, and the minute I turn off the runway or shut down at the gate, BOOM, a window pops up saying FSX has run of out memory.   Until late last year, I NEVER had an OOM with a 64bit OS, and I believe I have read others had started to notice a comeback of this once thought to be extinct game-ender.   What is causing this?   Are FSX aircraft and scenery developers pushing the envelope too far?  I know hardware has improved significantly in the past few years, and I welcome the increased fidelity of hd visuals in payware products, but is anyone else of the opinion that this is all pushing even modern hardware over the edge.   I have too many addons to list, and my hardware, although 3 years old, is pretty robust and powerful and has for the most part been very capable of handing just about anything.

 

I don't expect a answer to my ills, as I know I just may need to lower the sliders and/or limit other application usage during simming, but I really just needed to rant.   And ask these two questions:

 

1.  Once the OOM warning beeps appear, is it already too late, or can one salvage their situation by closing apps and freeing memory?

2.  Has anyone suddenly noticed this, to me, newfound behavior?  Even on a 64bit OS and an i7 processor with 6 gigs or more RAM? 

 

In recent memory, it seems like most of my long flights have ended with the cursed beeps.   I think once, I was able to shut down at the gate and exit FSX successfully, but more often than not, FSX crashes on its own once I'm on the ground or when I end the flight at the gate.  This is a frustrating thing to see happen, as I take particular care in tuning my OS and FSX appropriately so as to not put too much strain on my system.  I don't use 4096 HD super clouds, only the 512x512 HDE v2 freeware clouds/sky textures (besides, it was clear skies in Philly during this approach).  NGX is the default 4096 DXT5 textures, but it has been since I first bought the NGX on launch day in August 2011, and it never caused any issues or undue strain on my system that I could pinpoint.   I took off from ORBX PNW, but the rest of the country and vicinity where I landed is just plain ole GEX/UTX.   KPHL scenery is the awesome SunskyJet KPHL, and no other heavy-frame use payware airports are in a 100 mile radius.   AI, yeah I can't fly without it, but I use UT2 and even reduced the traffic density a smidgen from the normal 100% AI just because I know the northeast corridor is known for being a stutter inducing frame rate hog area in FSX.

 

As I have said, I have 5 years experience with FSX, and it pains me to no end that I now have to worry about the potential for this stupid crash at the end of a long flight.   If anything, I may have to upgrade to a new Ivy or Sandy Bridge system sooner rather than later.   I wonder if that would make a difference, as those systems now use 8 gigs RAM.   I know FSX won't use it, but it would probably help as I run lots of apps when I sim.  Anyone getting OOMs with 8 gigs RAM and a new fangled I7?!?!?!

 

Anyhow, thanks for listening.   Maybe that is why I had avoided FSX these past few months, I thought it was just burnout but God help me if I have to live with those incessant beeps...

OOms are not necessarly tied to Computer specs: you can have also a bad addon/scenery which eats up your Memory in seconds.

 

The OOM beep is a FSUIPC Feature and you can turn it off.

The beep should give you the opportunity to save the flight before a CTD occurs.

 

However I sometimes run myself into it (with a bad combination of aircraft and Airport) and in my case, I got no CTD, but scenery was looking strange then. Got it also on final.

 

So, it's up to you if you disable the bing and look what happens or maybe it's better for you to save and restart FSX.

 

 

About other possibilities I do not know ... (doesn't mean there aren't some)

100% AI? How can you land anywhere? I don't go over 30-40% UT2 and fps is still not great landing; 15-20ish. Core i5-3570k 4.5 ghz, 16gb ram. OOMs? Occasionally landing at a payware airport like the recent problematic fsdt vancouver. Lax and Dfw will give me problems sometimes too if weather is bad. But jeez 100% ai? Turn that down! And turn down autogen and LOD. Those will eat up vas. Also fsx oom's have nothing to do with what other programs are running. FSX can use 3-4 gb of ram and that's it.