FS2Crew VAS usage

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi there Bryan!

 

The last couple of days I've been trying to troubleshoot some OOMs I've had flying to the newly released Aerosoft Thessaloniki scenery which consumes a huge amount of VAS.

 

For this reason I'm currently trying to figure out what else consumes VAS in my setup and now my question to you is how big the VAS footprint is running FS2Crew?

 

Also, do you think it would be possible for you to further down the road develop a FS2Crew running as an external module outside FSX's VAS? As long as we're stuck in a 32-bit environment I think trying to develop products that are not dependent on FSX's VAS would be a great thing both for the developers and users. For the developers since they don't have to worry about their products need to fit in FSX's VAS and for the users not having to worry about OOMs.

 

What do you think?

[ivanm 20]

Aerosoft has a configuration tool which will lower the VAS footprint of the Thessaloniki X.  Other users have had success with the tool and I don't remember anyone mentioning  much of a visual difference.  I too am getting OOM, but mainly at night and using the NGX.

 

What most of my VAS hogs have in common is the use of high resolution textures.  I don't think FS2Crew has much of a VAS footprint.  I can't say that for certain.....but I can try to measure it if you want.  What has helped me tremendously with the OOM issues are the following:

 

disablepreload=1 (my default flight was in a photoscenery area so this actually made a huge difference for me)

texture size=2048  (I can barely tell the difference)

disable photoreal scenery- disable it for areas you're not flying over on that flight

lower autogen = I have mine in the middle

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for your input!

 

All this has been discussed in a very long thread over here -> http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/topic/78173-thessaloniki-x-city-configurator-v30-if-you-have-oom-issues/page-8#entry560083

 

Unfortunately I already used the config tool that comes with the new LGTS scenery and disabled all features like detailed grass, 3D lights etc but that didn't help me much solving my OOM issues. After Aerosoft and the developers realized this config tool maybe wasn't enough to lower the VAS footprint the developer released yet another tool called City Configurator where you can choose between 3 different modes - default, LITE and LITE II. What this tool does (at least that's how I understood it) is it will remove parts of the detailed surroundings near the airport. The fact that the scenery not only is the airport itself but also a great part of the nearby city and surrounding has been used as an explanation why the VAS footprint is so big.

 

After this tool was released it appears most people can now use the scenery without OOMs but some of us are still having issues. I even went further by manually disabling the complete city scenery layer from the FSX scenery library which gave me some 500 MB extra VAS space back. Haven't had the time to try this yet doing a complete flight.

 

Won't take this discussion any further in here since it obviously doesn't have anything to do with FS2Crew but nice to know FS2Crew probably doesn't have a big VAS footprint then. And to be honest even if that would have been the case that of course wouldn't have stopped me from using it, couldn't be without my FS2Crew FO Just trying to figure out what I could possibly do to be able to use the new scenery I just bought and according to the publisher (Aerosoft) we can expect to see many more addon airports coming out further down the road that will have the same VAS footprint so I fell I somehow need to understand if there's anything I can do to my FSX config that will allow me to enjoy them.

 

Will try that DisablePreload=1 tweak and see what it does to my VAS. I know I've been using it before but I don't at this moment. Also I don't have any photoreal scenery installed which I've understood has a very large VAS footprint. Despite this I have disabled all addon airports except the ones needed for a certain flight hoping it might give me at least some extra free VAS.

 

Someone told me there's a tool called VMMap from Sysinternals that can be used to track VAS usage in detail. Will give that a shot.

[ivanm 20]

I see you got that covered.  I personaly use sysinternal's Process Explorer to track VAS usage.  You just have to enable the "Virtual Size" column which Is initially hidden.  Good luck with your OOM issues. 

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks!

 

I've been using Process Explorer too but I think VMMap gives more detailed information.

[Mephic 129]

I am currently testing different options On a epkk (drzewiecki design) to eddt FSX default but with airport environment X

 

I went down from OOM to 3.2 gb vas usage after full flight with NGX and multiple other addons I use. Fs2crew is one of them but I see almost none vas influence.

 

I am a mytraffic2013 user - turned off ga traffic, airliners 30% (this is more than FSX default 100%), Lod 5,5, autogen dense (will be going to very dense)

 

Rest is maxed out except mesh (10m I'm using fsglobal 2010) and water (2.x low as I am using vector). Ftx global on with trees and lights (orbx)

 

My fsx.cfg has affinity mask setting to 14, highmemfix and textures running at 2048. That's it - no other tweaks.

 

Rex4direct set to 1024/dxt5 clouds and dxt1 water. Everything covered with FSX shade.

 

Active sky next with enhanced overcast.

 

From my observations VAS killer was road/boat traffic (switched off) and airport traffic (set to none, I use GSX)

 

Autogen is not much of an issue if you don't go too high with Lod distance (for NGX 5.5 is more than enough although there is some autogen popping but this game is 8 years old)

 

The most important change vas wise was buying dx10 scenery fixer by SteveFX. Memory management is totally different under dx10 and you get extra performance. Mix the dx10 bloom with FSX shade and my sim looks PERFECT.

 

I started in dx9 with Venetubo - now its all different but it took me 2 months to get here. Vas is definitely manageable in FSX and we have plenty of it. It is just matter of settings, good addon choice and right approach.

 

As in dx10 vas is also killed by clouds (together with performance) cloud cull option from dx10 fixer was my ultimate tweak

 

Sorry for going a bit away from topic but whenever vas is mentioned I want to confirm it will work with right approach.

Ah one more thing - aircraft casts shadows on ground off - gave me huge FPS boost same with ground shadows

[WebMaximus 372]

Thanks for your great input!

 

Comparing my settings to yours I'd say the biggest difference is I don't use any AI traffic at all since I do all my flying online on VATSIM exclusively.

 

Another thing making the comparison between our setups maybe not that relevant is the fact that you're running DX10 and I'm running DX9. I did try DX10 just before Steve's DX10 was released but at that time there were far too many issues with white terminal buildings and the biggest issue of them all that my online traffic using IVAO MTL models they also were all white.

 

I did try finding out if Steve's DX10 fixer will also fix that issue but I was never able to find an answer to that.

 

This was a long time ago so maybe I'll do a second attempt because I would happily switch to DX10 to have better memory management and to a certain degree also utilize my hardware in a better way plus any other improvements there may be vs DX9.

[Mephic 129]

Dx10 scenery fixer is already in version 1.4 you can check change log here on avsim

 

Tbh I don't know anything about online flying - dont have enough time for it and that's why I decided to make my single player best as possible. Already put almost 1000 bucks in it...

[lodestar 186]

Be aware that DisablePreload=1 tweak can make some applications not to be initialised properly - like FSInn for example. I saw that you are VATSIM flyer  

 

My advice is to serach for other topics about VAS and apply those settings - like disabling payware scenery that is not used via SceneryConfigEditor, using DXT REX textures with 1024 for cluods resolution(especialy for cumulus), using defauld lod_radius, applying microsft fix to increase heap limit, leaving paging file to system managed etc etc... Just search, i can't find the link right now, but we had a couple of realy great topics about this after 777 release

[byork 2,259]

Hi there Bryan!

 

The last couple of days I've been trying to troubleshoot some OOMs I've had flying to the newly released Aerosoft Thessaloniki scenery which consumes a huge amount of VAS.

 

For this reason I'm currently trying to figure out what else consumes VAS in my setup and now my question to you is how big the VAS footprint is running FS2Crew?

 

Also, do you think it would be possible for you to further down the road develop a FS2Crew running as an external module outside FSX's VAS? As long as we're stuck in a 32-bit environment I think trying to develop products that are not dependent on FSX's VAS would be a great thing both for the developers and users. For the developers since they don't have to worry about their products need to fit in FSX's VAS and for the users not having to worry about OOMs.

 

What do you think?

 

Hi Richard,

 

Please see this thread regarding FS2Crew and Virtual memory:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/420220-so-how-much-virtual-memory-does-fs2crew-use-anyway/

 

 

Long story short, FS2Crew doesn't use that much memory at all.

 

 

The enemy of memory in FSX are 3rd party scenery that use HUGE textures... 

 

And no plans to make FS2Crew an external app.  I like being able to build FS2Crew "directly" into the host aircraft for a seamless and non-instrusive experience, rather than forcing the user to start yet another external app.

 

 

 

Cheers,

[WebMaximus 372]

Hi Richard,

 

Please see this thread regarding FS2Crew and Virtual memory:

 

http://forum.avsim.net/topic/420220-so-how-much-virtual-memory-does-fs2crew-use-anyway/

 

 

Long story short, FS2Crew doesn't use that much memory at all.

 

 

The enemy of memory in FSX are 3rd party scenery that use HUGE textures... 

 

And no plans to make FS2Crew an external app.  I like being able to build FS2Crew "directly" into the host aircraft for a seamless and non-instrusive experience, rather than forcing the user to start yet another external app.

 

 

 

Cheers,

 

Thanks Bryan for your input, good to know FS2Crew isn't a huge VAS consumer.

 

I hear what you say about running externally and maybe for a product such as FS2Crew running internally is the best option. However should this change further down the road for whatever reason couldn't you simply execute any modules needed from exe.xml to have them running externally without any user intervention needed and then just have an external GUI for different settings and so just like it is today?

 

Well...I got an answer to my initial question so thanks again and now I'm off looking more into DX10 since I think that might be the best path until P3D 64-bit is released

[WebMaximus 372]

Dx10 scenery fixer is already in version 1.4 you can check change log here on avsim

 

Tbh I don't know anything about online flying - dont have enough time for it and that's why I decided to make my single player best as possible. Already put almost 1000 bucks in it...

 

Yes, I'll do that and I already after some quick testing found evidence some of the issues I had last time I tried DX10 might have been solved so that is great!

 

About the 1000 bucks you invested in your simulator I know the feeling, this hobby doesn't come cheap if you want the best of the best but I guess that is true also outside FS.

Be aware that DisablePreload=1 tweak can make some applications not to be initialised properly - like FSInn for example. I saw that you are VATSIM flyer  

 

My advice is to serach for other topics about VAS and apply those settings - like disabling payware scenery that is not used via SceneryConfigEditor, using DXT REX textures with 1024 for cluods resolution(especialy for cumulus), using defauld lod_radius, applying microsft fix to increase heap limit, leaving paging file to system managed etc etc... Just search, i can't find the link right now, but we had a couple of realy great topics about this after 777 release

 

Thanks you so much for the warning regarding the use of DisablePreload and probably saving me lots of headache trying to figure out why my FSInn doesn't work anymore!

 

Already tried most of the things you mention trying to free up some VAS but most of them didn't do that much difference like disabling scenery not used (works much better if you have lots of photo real scenery installed), switching to DTX from 32-bit, already using 1024 textures and default LOD radius etc.

 

Like I said in some other post above, after all time I invested the last couple of days trying to figure out how to free up some VAS without getting rid of addons I want to keep like the NGX, ASN, FTXG, UTX to mention a few I think I'll look into DX10 instead.

[Mephic 129]

Dx10 is a good first step. Clean FSX.cfg second and pc configured for FSX third.

 

My rig is full of simulators, FSX is only one of them but normal games are collecting dust on shelves

[WebMaximus 372]

Dx10 is a good first step. Clean FSX.cfg second and pc configured for FSX third.

 

My rig is full of simulators, FSX is only one of them but normal games are collecting dust on shelves

 

Yes, DX10 is tempting however I just found out that the airport scenery where I started to get these OOMs (Aerosoft LGTS) doesn't fully support DX10 with some black squares under the taxi lights etc so maybe I'll do one last test using DX9.

 

In a way it would be nice being able to stay with DX9 until I switch to P3Dv2 eventually when the patch is out and rather invest my time and effort in making P3Dv2 work at it's best rather than investing time and maybe also some money into FSX and DX10.

 

Edited to add that when it comes to fsx.cfg and how my FSX is setup and tuned I honestly don't think there is much else that I could improve but thanks anyway.

Edited February 2, 2014 by WebMaximus

[Mephic 129]

Well I am totally against p3dv2 until all my addons will get free upgrade to it

 

Fs2crew and NGX would be first