Hi everybody,

 

Okay so here’s the deal, I’m going to post this question in a number of different forums because I have become so frustrated with the problem that I want to get a broad range of feedback from different sources and different people who may know something about this issue. What is the issue? Well the issue is the memory problems that I have encountered since the installation of the new PMDG 777 aircraft. I have had memory issues in the past with the 737 and GX but for the most part with a little tweaking and memory fix tweaks that I have found on various forums I have been able to manage pretty well. The new 777 is a totally different Cat!

 

I’ve been working on my Sim for a long time to get it ready for the issue of the 777 into the most part my Sim seems to be running very very well. However, once I installed the 777 I began have memory issues all over the place even when I wasn’t flying that particular aircraft. The main issue was liveried textures not installing correctly by this I mean that the aircraft would be missing parts when it was flying for instance the engine might be missing scowling or part of the fuselage might be missing or when I was sitting in the cockpit there might be areas of the firewall missing so that you can see straight out into open space I am by no means a computer expert----I’m just a pilot who likes to also fly flight simulators in his spare time.

 

I have a good computer with a very fast processor and 12 GB of memory--- the only thing I really skimped on when I built this computer (which by the way I built solely for the purpose of flight swimming) was the total amount of memory. I bought $1000 processor and the best video card I can get at the time which still seems to be high-end acceptable if not the very best on the market. I did not add huge huge amounts of memory to to the fact that I was led to believe from what I could glean from the various flights emporiums that I read that the flight simulator program itself is only able to access a limited amount of memory. My computer guru, when asked about this problem said,(although he is by no means a flight simulator aficionado) that he felt that memory was a big deal because of all the scenery that needed to be crunched)--- so I don’t know if 12 GB of memory is way low or average or way high --- the documentation that accompanies the programs that I run certainly don’t request more than this amount of memory. I have many nice third-party add-on programs which I run with my flight Sim program such as mega scenery 2.0 and Orbix scenery, and professional flight planner ask and radar contact and Rex and all the cool PMDG aircraft.

 

So here it is once again----if I’m flying aircraft other than the 777 then I will usually, but not always have some sort of texture issues on the aircraft itself--- I Sagan this is not always the issue lifelong flights from San Francisco to Chicago in the 737 NGX and experienced absolutely no trouble at all. However, when I load up the 777 I will run out of memory before I can program FMC in the control data unit.

 

I will certainly appreciate any thoughts, ideas, possible fixes, absolutely guaranteed fixes--- general thoughts on the amount of memory that a flight Sim pilot should maintain on board his rig--- and of course will warmly receive any commiserations from other flight simulator pilots about the general state of memory issues in relationship to flying the new PMDG Boeing 777.

 

Thanks for reading this long post and I look forward to getting any and all information that the flight Sim community might be able to provide. I’m going to post this on the PMDG forum, on the Avsim FSX general form, I’m going to post it on my flying Tigers virtual airline forum where there are some really savvy long time flight simmers. So if anybody wants to follow this thread to see if there are solutions to the memory issues that I am experiencing these are the places that you might find flight Sim community responses.

 

Cheers

 

Dorn Cranert

 

Search the forum for OOM. This has been discussed many times and all your answers you will find from a search. The problem is not how much RAM you have. You have plenty. The issue is VAS and that limit you can not do anything about. 

 

Assuming this is an OOM problem it is mentioned in the Intro manual.

 

Regards

 

P.S. Also Have you added HIGHMEMFIX=1 to your .CFG file?

Strange!

 

I run the T7 on my "old" WinXP 32 Core2 Quad 4Gb mem and /3G switch without any problems. No hangings, no freez, the OOM is gone. No need for high res scenery at

38000 feet. I have UTX, GEX. UT2 and OpusFSX. My scenery.cfg only contains the area and airports (MEGA no problem) I am flying between.

Everything in the scenery.cfg is loaded even if you are on the other side of the planet. FSX is an very old construction (programming style). It is doing everything by itself, today games uses the GPU a lot but they did not exist when MS started what ended with FSX. After I did a big cleaning of my scenery.cfg my VAS went up. Now at MEGA Arlanda I have 800 Mb free in the

T7 at the gate. That is enough.

 

You will never have any use for the 12Gb to FSX. It just can not use that much, maybe you can have a lots of external addons running at the same time

but never to FSX. FSX uses 4Gb max if you are on Win7. The only things that makes FSX run fast and good are a very fast CPU, fast memory (low timing) and fast disks like SSDs.

That is all. No need for the latest hottest graphic card with lots of mem, 1 Gb is enough. Max I have ever seen it use is around 600Mb.

 

About VAS. I have stopped using EFB with the T7 because it takes more then 700Mb of VAS. And that VAS FSX needs. Now I do a very deep planning before

flying and use PFPX to do that and prints all to a PDF doc.

 

Download that little utility ProcessExplorer that PMDG writes about in the Intruduction manual. With that I found some Services in windows that took a lots of VAS. So

that tool is great. I found some processes that was just eating mem, like check for new version of the bla. bla. app.

 

Just my opinion. Will stick to my Core2 WinXP because it works great. No strange and stupid errors as I read about in this forum and others. T7 have worked as a clock from day one,

except some OOM. Yes, but they have been cured with ease. As I said above no need for tons for houses, trees and super scenery in a airliner high up. When I like to sniff low on cool scenery then

I take a single or twin to do that.

 

Many out there seems to think that if they spend a lots of money to get the hottest hardware then they can load all cool scenery they have installed and addons at max and then

fly a plane like the T7.

 

FSX is just an old tired 32-bit app. But PMDG have done a very great job to make the T7 work on it.

 

I hope that someone somewhere will port or do something to make FSX be a true 64-bit app using the GPU and so on. Then we are talking.

I have my hopes to P3D. But until then I will stick to my old machine.

 

Some say that WinXP is 12 years old. True! But also 12 years of bug fixing!! Instead of tons of new features.

 

 

 

Just my opinion.

/Per W

Sweden

I have stopped using EFB with the T7 because it takes more then 700Mb of VAS.

 

That's if you use both server (DataProvider) and display on the FSX machine or just the server?...

That's if you use both server (DataProvider) and display on the FSX machine or just the server?...

 

It is the Client (display) that takes that much. If I had one more machine I would use that one for the client.

 

/Per W

Sweden

There is a new directX 10 fixer coming out and that should enable wider use of DX10, good news as DX10 does not store working video memory in the VAS.

 

See the DX10 section of AVSIM for more info etc

Have you read the manual?

About VAS. I have stopped using EFB with the T7 because it takes more then 700Mb of VAS. And that VAS FSX needs. Now I do a very deep planning before

flying and use PFPX to do that and prints all to a PDF doc.

 

 

Surely separate programs such as EFB use their own VAS, not FSX's?

There is a new directX 10 fixer coming out and that should enable wider use of DX10, good news as DX10 does not store working video memory in the VAS.

 

See the DX10 section of AVSIM for more info etc

Not necessarily true, and what I fear is the case with FSX. If the applications data area (Where the video memory is loaded) is declared as lockable, then it will not be released, even with DX10.

 

"If an application creates its own in-memory copy of its video resources, or the application uses DirectX 9 or an earlier version, the virtual address space contains the WDDM video memory manager's virtualized range and the application's copy. Applications that use graphics APIs that are earlier than DirectX 10 and that target GPUs that have large amounts of video memory can easily exhaust their virtual address space.

 

To address this problem, Microsoft is changing the way that the video memory manager maintains the content of video memory resources. This change is being made so that a permanent virtual address range does not have to be used for each virtualized allocation. With the new approach, only allocations that are created as "lockable" consume space in the virtual address space of the application. Allocations that are not created as "lockable" do not consume space. This approach significantly reduces the virtual address space that is used. Therefore, the application can run on large video memory configurations without reaching the limits."

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940105

 

Below are screenshots, showing the default Cessna loaded in DX9, and DX10 with FSUIPC reporting VAS available. No Traffic, or weather. Note, there is only a 50M difference I'm running 32bit Vista, so I'm limited to 3GB VAS for FSX. My video card is the a GFX460 with 1GB video memory. If FSX released that address space  I should have a lot more available running DX10.

 

DX9

 

 

 

DX10

 

 

 

Tom Cain

Surely separate programs such as EFB use their own VAS, not FSX's?

 

 

It depends.

 

The OP is also talking about different processes eating up VAS. As long as they are separate executables they don't utilize the FSX VAS.

 

If addons add dll's to the FSX modules they increase VAS usage. Same happens when the external EXEs "inject" textured objects into FSX: The external EXE uses its own VAS, but the objects created use FSX VAS.

I also have the FSUIPC VAS display. So why does that numbers go up when I for eg. exits FSCommander. And if I try to run EFB Client it drops down so that I end up with a OOM in FSX.

 

I am on WinXP so the VAS might be handled in a different way then in Win7. No idea. Just wrote about my experience.

 

/Per W

Sweden

I also have the FSUIPC VAS display. So why does that numbers go up when I for eg. exits FSCommander. And if I try to run EFB Client it drops down so that I end up with a OOM in FSX.

 

I am on WinXP so the VAS might be handled in a different way then in Win7. No idea. Just wrote about my experience.

 

/Per W

Sweden

Is the EFB an executable APP or a DLL running inside FSX? If it's a DLL, then it will consume VAS

EFB is an outside program, it doesn't run inside FSX

EFB is an outside program, it doesn't run inside FSX

If it's reading data from FSX, SimConnect (or FSUIPC if it uses that) may be using some space for it

 

Tom Cain

can you copy n paste your fsx.cfg here? Its worth a look, just in case.