Frequent texture reloads are annoying. What to do??

[Guest Waltm]

I know this issue has been addressed here before, but I'm hoping maybe there are some new ideas about this. Here's my issue: While flying, especially from the virtual cockpit of a nice payware aircaft (e.g., RealAir's Supermarine Spitfire), FS9 frequently pauses to reload *all* textures, i.e., scenery, AI aircraft, and cockpit. Often times the reload takes several seconds, and it will even happen while just sitting idle on the tarmak.The HD spins during reloads, I assume what FS9 is doing is reshuffling contents of it RAM and virtual memory. But why so often!? And why a *complete* texture reload? It's especially annoying having to suffer through a 10 second pause while crossing the fence on final. So, is there anything I can do to minimize these reloads short of adding RAM? I currently have 512MB; unfortunately another 512MB will cost me about $200.Thanks.-- WaltFlying FS9.1 at 1600x1200x32WideFS 6.401ActiveSky 2004 2.0 for FS9.1FSUIPC 3.44 RegisteredFS Force 1.02FSNavigator 4.6LAGO FSELinksys Wireless Router 802.11bBASE SYSTEM (Running FS2004):Intel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHzWindows XP Pro SP2(XP manages virtual RAM)512MB PC800 RDRAM,8100128MB ATI Radeon 9600 ProATI Catalyst Windows XP 4.11 video driverDirectX 9.0bViewSonic P95f+ 19 inch Ultrabrite CRT MonitorSound Blaster Audigy2 ZSCreative I-Trigue 2.1 3300 SpeakersMS ForceFeedback 2 joystickNETWORKED SYSTEM (Running WideFS Client & ActiveSky 2004):Intel Pentium 3, 850 MHzWindows 98 SE384 MB RAM

[Guest Tim W]

Hi Walt,Thats definitely not right. I just installed FS plus all my addons on a new machine with 1gb RAM and I've never had that in FS before. The one thing I would try is to manually set your Virtual Memory (page file) yourself and see if that stops it. You can always change it back again. Set it to 1.5 times your RAM as a min and max amount, so 768 min and 769 max, apply the settings and reboot the machine.CheersTimhttp://members.chello.nl/t.westnutt/realair1.gif

[Guest Waltm]

Thanks for the suggestion Tim. I've tried it both ways with the paging file, but it appears to make no difference. QUESTION: My systems has two physical drives partitioned into 4 logical drives (two partitions per drive). FS9 resides on Drive 1, Partition 1, while the paging file resides on Drive 2, Partition 1. Does it make any sense to put the page file elsewhere and/or have more than one pagefile?Thanks again.-- WaltP.S. The Spitfire is really great. Usually I prefer low and slow GA aircraft, but, like all RealAir products, the Spitfire is very immersive and really conveys the feeling of flying a vintage hotrod. :-)

[Guest Tim W]

Hi WaltI would try it on the same physical drive as your FS insallation but in the other partition, depending on how much space you have free on the HDD. There's no logical reason why you can't have it on any partition on any drive, usually the one with the most space is best. Just try experimenting. You can also spread it around as well if you want. There are many articles on the web about it, just do a search on virtual memory.Here's a start! http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.phpQuoteThe slowest aspect of getting at a file on a hard disk is in head movement (

[Guest Waltm]

Thanks for the info and link, Tim!Per the advice, I set up my primary paging file on drive 2/partition 1 (768-769 MB) and a "mini" paging file on C: (2-50 MB). It will be a day or two before I can try it out on FS9, but I'll let you know what happens.-- Walt

[Guest Waltm]

Okay, here's a follow-up. I've tried several flights, and while the texture reloads seem to be somewhat less frequent and not as severe, they still occur roughly every 10 to 20 minutes. At this point I'm inclined to think that it's the plethora of AI flights and aircraft populating my FS world that's causing most of the performance issues. Would more system RAM help (I've currently got 512MB)?Thanks.-- WaltFlying FS9.1 at 1600x1200x32WideFS 6.401ActiveSky 2004 2.0 for FS9.1FSUIPC 3.44 RegisteredFS Force 1.02FSNavigator 4.6LAGO FSELinksys Wireless Router 802.11bBASE SYSTEM (Running FS2004):Intel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHzWindows XP Pro SP2512MB PC800 RDRAM,8100128MB ATI Radeon 9600 ProATI Catalyst Windows XP 4.11 video driverDirectX 9.0bViewSonic P95f+ 19 inch Ultrabrite CRT MonitorSound Blaster Audigy2 ZSCreative I-Trigue 2.1 3300 SpeakersMS ForceFeedback 2 joystickNETWORKED SYSTEM (Running WideFS Client & ActiveSky 2004):Intel Pentium 3, 850 MHzWindows 98 SE384 MB RAM

[Guest Tim W]

Hi Walt,Another 512 mb of RAM wouldn't do any harm. One way to look at it it to open up task manager and go to performance and look at the bottom left. Commit charge Peak, Do this after running FS9 for a while and see what the number is, if it's anything approaching 512000 then you are peaking near your RAM limit. You can also keep an eye on your Page File usage here,Why not disable AI for a session and see if you still get the texture reloads. Mind you I have tons of AI running and I don't see this. It is a new computer though, A Dell XPS Gen3 3.40gb with 1Gb Ram.CheersTimhttp://members.chello.nl/t.westnutt/realair1.gif

[Guest]

try changing your texture_bandwith_mult number in the fs9.cfg file to a different number and see if that fixes it. It seems like you need to make the number higher, too high a number and fs constantly jumps, too low a number and the textures bottleneck your system causing refreshes like you experience. either way this is one of the worst optimized games I have ever seen.

[scott967 62]

First off, ISTM that running 1600x1200 on a 9600 pro is pushing the boundary of what's possible with this card.I've just built a new system, and I'm slowing getting FS9.1 installed again. I'm playing around with the performance monitor in Win XP Pro.For a simple flight in a default Cessna and no weather I turned on some counters for 15 minutes, sampling at 5 sec intervals.Here are some setup details for this system:Athlon64 3500+ winchester CPU2x512mb DDR400 dual-channel memory9600 XT 256mb at 1200x1024 graphics, AA and aniso at 2x1536mb page file.frame lock at 30 fps.First thing I notice is that processor% is pretty much locked at 100%.Page faults for fs9 would on occasion jump to 100-400 pages/sec,but most often were in the 50-60 range. But the number of page faults to disk was low, often 0 per sec on occasion 4 - 6 pages/sec. The page file usage never got above about 4.5% (approx 70mb).FPS seemed pretty much locked at 30, with occasional stutter.So at least at this point I don't seeing the page file as a performance limiter for a 1gb system with my graphics settings. I need to go to symflyers KLAX with a complex addon plane to give it a better work out though. scott s..

[Guest Waltm]

>try changing your texture_bandwith_mult number in the fs9.cfg>file to a different number and see if that fixes it. It seems>like you need to make the number higher, too high a number and>fs constantly jumps, too low a number and the textures>bottleneck your system causing refreshes like you experience.>either way this is one of the worst optimized games I have>ever seen.Mine is currently set at TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=400, and I'm not sure I should go much higher than that. Thinking maybe I'll try 200 next?-- WaltFlying FS9.1 at 1600x1200x32Intel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHzWindows XP Pro SP2512MB PC800 RDRAM,8100128MB ATI Radeon 9600 ProATI Catalyst Windows XP 4.11 video driverDirectX 9.0bViewSonic P95f+ 19 inch Ultrabrite CRT MonitorSound Blaster Audigy2 ZSCreative I-Trigue 2.1 3300 SpeakersMS ForceFeedback 2 joystick

[Guest Waltm]

>First off, ISTM that running 1600x1200 on a 9600 pro is>pushing the boundary of what's possible with this card.>Yep, that's probably the case as I'm always trying to get the absolute most out of my hardware :-)The funny thing is that my system really I don't see much performance difference between 1152x864x32 and 1600x1200x32. Higher than that, and yes, my 9600 Pro would probably have a meltdown.-- WaltFlying FS9.1 at 1600x1200x32Intel Pentium 4, 2.0 GHzWindows XP Pro SP2512MB PC800 RDRAM,8100128MB ATI Radeon 9600 ProATI Catalyst Windows XP 4.11 video driverDirectX 9.0bViewSonic P95f+ 19 inch Ultrabrite CRT MonitorSound Blaster Audigy2 ZSCreative I-Trigue 2.1 3300 SpeakersMS ForceFeedback 2 joystick

[Guest]

Definately put that number lower and you won't see these problems. The magic number for me is 120 but it varies with what type of plane I fly. A highly detailed VC means I need a little higher number than if I was going to fly around in a default mooney (not like I would, the default airplanes MS gives are garbage)

[Guest Waltm]

Hey! This is making a difference!!! :D :D :DFirst I tried TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=200, and now I'm looking at TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=150. The frequency of texture reloading episodes has significantly decreased, though I still get the occasional 5-10 second pause. Looks like things are moving in the right direction.Thanks!-- Walt

[Guest Tim W]

Good news Walt. Mine is set at 400 and gives good performance here but then I have a pretty new system that I just upgraded.Good luck curing it completely.CheersTimhttp://members.chello.nl/t.westnutt/realair1.gif

[Guest Fibble1]

Hi Walt,I stumbled over a post in another thread that might be of interest to you. With all the info there it's kinda like drinking from a firehose, but many people (including me) have benefitted greatly from it.http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...77&topic_id=425Hope that helps.-Brian