777 OOM for Dummies! "ME"

[CaptScotty 0]

Ok, I know there are a few threads running on the OOM problems with the t7, but I am struggling. The problems are mostly terminology, and lack of knowledge. The lack of knowledge is not do to not trying. I have read everything currently posted on the issue and I am just puzzled as to if I am inturpeting the terminology correctly. So I am going to ask a few "stupid" questions. I would like some constructive answers so those of us who are not FSX experts can try and solve the issue if we are expericancing it.

 

I have never had an OOM problem, ever. Now with the T7 its every flight. As I read through the threads I see people using "Process Explorer" to monitor it. I have never used this software. I installed it and found FSX.exe listed. I clicked on it and it gave me an FSX properties window. I assume the proformance graph is the place to watch memory useage? Is this correct? If so, my T7 starts having issues at right around 3.1-3.2, and OOM crash at 3.3. Is this normal?

 

Attached is screenshot at OOM crash.

 

Another question is the warning sounds I hear. At 3.1-3.2 I start hearing a windows type chime. It appears to be a OOM warning. It always happens before the crash. Is this FSUIPC giving this warning?

 

I also see a lot of talk about RAAS? What is this?

 

I also see talk of LOD? what is LOD?

 

Sorry for all the questions, but I want to get a good grip on what is going on before I change anything. I have been flying the PMDG 737NGX from day one with no issues. I want to tackle this OOM issue so I can enjoy the T7. I can't get a flight done with the OOM issue.

 

I know the first question from you guys. What are my system specs. Here they are. I hope for some constructive answers. I know there are more out there with the same questions who may just not want to look like a noob asking them.

 

Intel Core i7 2600K , overclocked to 4.6 Ghz water cooled

16 Gb ram

Asus HD7970 3Gb GDDR5

200 Gb SSD dedicated to FSX

200 Gb SSD dedicated to OS (Win 7 64 bit)

 

Thank you in advance for all your help.

 

[cwbspotter 0]

Hello Scotty,

 

About the RAAS; http://www.fs2crew.com/cart/products/FS2Crew%3A-RAAS-Professional.html

In this site has one simple explanation about it and one demonstration video.

 

Cya

[Snuffleupagus 327]

I have never had an OOM problem, ever. Now with the T7 its every flight. As I read through the threads I see people using "Process Explorer" to monitor it. I have never used this software. I installed it and found FSX.exe listed. I clicked on it and it gave me an FSX properties window. I assume the proformance graph is the place to watch memory useage? Is this correct? If so, my T7 starts having issues at right around 3.1-3.2, and OOM crash at 3.3. Is this normal?

 

I've been having more OOM problems with the T7 too, you're not alone. That 3.3GB chart (middle) looks like the right place to monitor FSX memory usage.

 

 

Another question is the warning sounds I hear. At 3.1-3.2 I start hearing a windows type chime. It appears to be a OOM warning. It always happens before the crash. Is this FSUIPC giving this warning?

 

Yes, FSUIPC is the program giving you that error chime. 

 

 

I also see talk of LOD? what is LOD?

 

I can't pull out of my mind what it exactly stands for but I can explain it. LOD is a radius at which autogen and scenery will be loaded. A higher LOD number in your FSX.cfg, the less blurries you get in the distance. However, the higher the LOD setting, the more demand is placed on the RAM and is a cause for OOM's. If you don't know what LOD is, chances are you haven't touched the settings and should be fine with that.

 

 

I know the first question from you guys. What are my system specs. Here they are. I hope for some constructive answers. I know there are more out there with the same questions who may just not want to look like a noob asking them.

 

Intel Core i7 2600K , overclocked to 4.6 Ghz water cooled

16 Gb ram

Asus HD7970 3Gb GDDR5

200 Gb SSD dedicated to FSX

200 Gb SSD dedicated to OS (Win 7 64 bit)

 

Thank you in advance for all your help.

 

Your specs are very close to mine. I don't get OOM's every flight but I do when I try flying into LAX or SEA. You would think our systems would handle FSX just fine but after all the tweaking, cussing, and more tweaking, it's still flawed. All I can suggest is to lower a few settings. Traffic (Road, sea, airport) should all be set low, I'd recommend below 8%. 

 

Do you use nVidia Inspector?

[DAL1850 51]

I can't pull out of my mind what it exactly stands for but I can explain it. LOD is a radius at which autogen and scenery will be loaded. A higher LOD number in your FSX.cfg, the less blurries you get in the distance. However, the higher the LOD setting, the more demand is placed on the RAM and is a cause for OOM's. If you don't know what LOD is, chances are you haven't touched the settings and should be fine with that.

 

LOD stands for Level of Detail. It's an optimization used by 3D graphics engines to dynamically increase or decrease the resolution of the geometry and imagery (textures) being drawn depending on how close or how far away something is from the camera viewpoint. As in real life, objects in the distance do not have the same visual fidelity as they do when they are viewed up close. Moreover, objects in the distance appear smaller or "compressed" to the eye. Because of this, it doesn't make sense to take a massive 4096x4096 pixel textures, for example - which consume huge amounts of memory - and squash it down into a few tiny pixels to be drawn on some object near the horizon. Instead, a smaller "scaled down" version of the texture (256x256 for example) is loaded into memory and drawn. This technique works fine most of the time provided the graphics engine can dynamically keep pace and load more detailed geometry and graphic textures as the objects become closer to your viewpoint. Unfortunately, the graphics engine in FSX SP2 does not do a good job of this; it takes a great deal of time in most cases (especially flying at high speed) for the graphics engine to catch up with the simulation...so those scaled down low-resolution textures that used to be near the horizon get stretched out and appear blocky and/or fuzzy until the engine can replace it with a more suitable higher resolution version. This is a real problem for photorealistic scenery as you might imagine.

 

The LOD_RADIUS in fsx.cfg gives you control over how far that "fidelity horizon" is from your viewpoint. Lower values will move this "fidelity horizon" closer to you making small less-detailed objects and textures the rule whereas higher values push it further away creating a bias for using a larger percentage of higher resolution geometries and textures at the cost of memory. FSX was written in a universe where 1024x1024 textures was considered "high fidelity"; today it's 4096x4096...4 times the quality but SIXTEEN times the size. That creates tremendous load on your processor and your graphics card, especially when everything and its dog (clouds, water, terrain, aircraft, virtual cockpits, scenery) are now being rendered to this maximum level of detail. The memory usage explodes. Add to that the sheer complexity of the add-ons we have today, and its not too hard to see how memory usage and performance can run away from you in a hurry.

 

I found that setting MAX_TEXTURE_LOAD down from 4096 to 2048 or even 1024 makes a significant improvement to memory usage. Also, unchecking the FSX display option to use HD virtual cockpit textures helps greatly with only a very slight loss of quality (other aircraft, especially the stock FSX ones, will not fare as well with this option unchecked though).

 

J

 

PS. Am I the only person that hates that FSUIPC chime?

[Tabs 2,790]

That 3.3GB chart (middle) looks like the right place to monitor FSX memory usage.

 

It's not. Virtual Address Space (VAS) is what matters for OOMs, not private bytes. Private bytes is part of what makes up VAS, but it's not the whole story and the actual VAS is likely bigger.

 

To see the VAS value, get Process Explorer here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

Enable the Virtual Size column - that's it.

[Snuffleupagus 327]

It's not. Virtual Address Space (VAS) is what matters for OOMs, not private bytes. Private bytes is part of what makes up VAS, but it's not the whole story and the actual VAS is likely bigger.

 

To see the VAS value, get Process Explorer here:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

Enable the Virtual Size column - that's it.

 

Thanks for clearing that up! I've never used any programs other than the Windows Task Manager. I'll have to give that program a try...

[Yaffa 13]

TML down to 2048, LOD 4.5 and AA/AF 4x. That's it!

[Manny 1,293]

Its always the last straw that breaks the camel's back. But you cannot blame just the last straw.

 

OOM is eventually going to get everyone...as we keep adding addon scenery and aircrafts. 

 

There are two things you can do to reduce the OOM Issue

 

1) A Microsoft Patch... I now forget where it is...you may want to search here for topics talking about OOM and you may get a link to it.. IF someone know where that is, please provide that link.

 

 

2) There is a thread here about DX10. Running FSX in DX10 mode. If you are not already on it, you may want to get familiar with it. This would also  help 

[jrs 2]

I did search the forum and here is the link for the Microsoft patch.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947246

 

Jared Shipley

[Manny 1,293]

 

 

here is the link for the Microsoft patch.
 
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947246
 

 

Thanks Jared. That's it