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rlgoodson

NYC and FSX: MD-11 vs. 777 VAS usage.

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Every once in a while in this hobby I have "Duh!" moments.  I have a mid-range system.  I suddently realized yesterday that if I have a flight ending or originating from the NYC area that I should use the MD-11 (when possible) as the aircraft even if the real life flight uses a 777.  The MD-11 has FAR lower VAS usage and is more frame rate friendly and I have no problem flying out of the NYC area with it.  I do with the 777.  A simple substitution fills the bill.

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Or.. you could use the allmighty Autosave feature ;)


xxwAU.pngUzJYY.png

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Or buy/build a more powerful computer?

which would not really help you in this case, if you are already running on a 64bit system......

 

VAS is a bit*h - 32 bit - 4GB and not one bit more......;-) never mind if you have a brand new supercomputer with ice cream topping - 4GB of VAS! and not one bit more....

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As I live around the NYC area, flying into and around the area is a must. What I typically do is use Scenery Config editor and turn off every area I'm not using. Using this method I can fly the T7 out of NYC and complete any flight I like. The ONLY issue I have is that if I use Manhattan X with DD KEWR, it will result in a OOM. I can use FSDT KJFK with Manhattan X, but I rarely do KJFK flights.

 

Try turning off some scenery you aren't using. I've heard it makes no difference and I've heard it makes a huge difference. From my experience, the T7 should not cause OOMs with any stock NYC area scenery.


"I am the Master of the Fist!" -Akuma
 

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As the aircraft introduction tells us, the T7 will bite off a 800MB chunk of VAS. If you are using photo scenery in an area like NYC, VAS usage is going to be a problem.

 

Going from my experience, turning off unused scenery does help. If you think about it, it also makes a lot of sense from a performance point of view. There is no need to have the simulator load more than your depature, destination and alternate airport when flying large jets. One could also argue that you would be too busy on take off or approach in NYC airspace to enjoy the scenery much.

 

At first I was not pleased about having to fiddle with my scenery database. But the programs that is mentioned in the documentation is very helpful once you have it set up and now managing the scenery is just another part of my preflight.

 

That said, we are at the very limit of FSX by now. PMDG need to optimize VAS usage of their products as much as possible going forward.

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I have a mid range i5, and the PMDG 777 is right at the top of my computer's abilities.  Which means I will prob hesitate to pick up any new PMDG titles.  My next aircraft acquistions will prob be a 767 (the level D) and maybe a 757(CS)?  I love PMDG's stuff and fly using it regularly, but am unwilling to lay out the cash for the hardware required to run it.

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After years of hesitating I decided to switch to dx10 with steve's dx10 fix and I'm done with OOMs in 777, I've increased graphics details to maximum, no issues with pmdg and sceneries,yet.

 

Rado


Rado

i7 4770K@4,1Ghz HT on since release of MSFS
1080 Ti 11GB 
32GB DDR3 RAM
Samsung SSDs

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Yep, I use DX 10 also.  Also got Fiber Accelerator, which helped a lot, And honestly, if I start with the PMDG 777 on the runway and take off right away I can do it.  I can also land in NYC but forget taxing to the gate.  And I AM running 32 bit soooo...

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and maybe a 757(CS)?

You will be disappointed and regret it. I had no problems with it when the work arounds were figured out but so much of the 757 is not modeled and what is usually doesn't work correctly.

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Thanks for the tip.  And it sounds like the QW's one is the same.  So there is no really good model for the 757 right now, huh?

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What I've started to do since a couple of months now is refreshing the scenery about 10 minutes after t/o. I've mapped the 'refresh scenery' option to a key and just press it to have the scenery reloaded. Usually (and depending on which scenery I am using) this will free up 200-300mb of VAS (I am using a tool through WideFS showing me my current free VAS).

The only (but very annoying) problem I sometimes do encounter when doing the refresh is that every now and then it gives me a black screen (you know that black screen when everyting seems to be still running perfectly well except for the graphics...).

 

As an example: when I make a trip like KATL to FAOR right after taxiing to the rwy holding point my free VAS can drop below 1000Mb (ImagineSim's KATL is quite a memory hog in that aspect). If I would try to make the whole flight starting with VAS being that low I could get in trouble. After t/o the free VAS will increase a bit (let's say about 100-200mb to level up at about 1.2Gb). After 10 minutes (when I am sure the t/o airport scenery is out of range) I do the refresh and this will increase the free VAS up to 1500+Mb. In my case this is plenty enough in order to end my flight (including taxiing to the gate) without having to think about my free VAS. Personally I am very uncomfortable with free VAS decreasing below 500Mb (it's that treshold I cannot accept to trespass :P)

From my personal experience FSDreamteam, FlightBeam and the V2 Flytampa sceneries do a very good job in optimizing the VAS usage (the increase in free VAS after the scenery gets out of range is very noticable even without reloading the scenery manually)

 

Truth be said, I just realized that I actually rarely fly from payware scenery to payware scenery but rather stock scenery to payware scenery (or reverse)

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Thanks for the tip.  And it sounds like the QW's one is the same.  So there is no really good model for the 757 right now, huh?

I have them both and they are collecting sand in the desert in Arizona. Right now there is no good 757s' for FSX.

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