Out of Memory - Again!

[colfmedion 1]

Hi,

System Basics:

Win 8.1. FSX Gold.

Intel 4990K at 3900Mhz. 2 X 8GB Kingston Hyperx Beast DDR3 AT 2330Mhz.

MOBO is Maximu VI Hero. This rig is 4 months old.

OS ON SSD. FSX on its own SSD. Lots of spare capacity on both SSDs.

Have Drzewiecki Design New York City Airports installed. Previously had FSDream Team KJFK V2. Aerosoft Manhattan X.

Up to about 2 months ago I was able to use all sceneries with no problems whatsoever. Then out of the blue I started to get OOM when using any of the New York Airports.

Since then I have tried everything that I can think of to cure this. Tried every variation of Paging File. Settings have been changed many times. Tried Direct X 10 Preview. Tired with just one of the New York City Airports installed. Max Memory used, according to Resource Monitor was 38% but still get OOM.

I say again that I have changed nothing but one thing, in the past 2 months prior to which I did not get OOM. The one thing that has changed is the MOBO. PC had to go back to manufacturer because of a fault which was determined to be MOBO. A new MOBO was installed.

Grateful for any advice/help.

 

Colf

 

[Jim Young 2,356]

Check out the following link regarding Virtual Address Space (VAS) - http://support.precisionmanuals.com/kb/a108/vas-management-stopping-out-of-memory-oom-errors .

Monitoring VAS in FSX or P3DV2 – The freeware or registered versions of the FSUIPC utility will allow you to monitor the amount of VAS remaining during a flight session. This might be valuable in troubleshooting Out-of-Memory (OOM’s).

Startup FSX/P3D and then enter the Addon Menu and select FSUIPC. Once FSUIPC is open, click on the Logging Tab and enter 024C under Offset and select S32 under Type. Select where you would like to have the usage displayed. The FS Window is for Full Screen sessions. The FS Title Bar is for Windowed Mode. AVSIM recommends you also check the Normal log file as this provides you information on how much VAS you had to start out with and then it logs usage throughout your flight.

The VAS usage is displayed in Kilobytes (KB’s). The value represents the amount of VAS left so, the lower the value, the more VAS being depleted. The max amount of VAS allowed in computers with 64 bit Operating Systems is 4GB’s. This is shared with other applications running in the background on your computer. For 32 bit Operating Systems, the max amount of VAS allowed for FSX/P3D is 2GB’s but this can be expanded to 3GB’s with a switch like the /3GB switch.

To convert the KB’s to the amount of GB’s, you should use one of the Byte converters on the Internet like the following: http://www.whatsabyte.com/P1/byteconverter.htm. You will never see 4194304 KB’s displayed as this equals 4GB’s. You might see around 3GB’s (3145728) remaining when you first start up FSX/P3D but that would be unusual. Do not be too concerned with the amount of VAS remaining when you first start up.

 

Another tool:

Setting up the Process Monitor for FSX – Another investigative tool used to pin down a situation where FSX/P3D freezes, crashes, or stutters/pauses during a flight is to run a utility called Process Monitor - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645. During your flight, this utility monitors activity such as calling textures, AI aircraft schedules, ATC, weather updates, and scenery loading. When FSX/P3D stutters or FPS drop dramatically you simply write down the time it occurred. This is important as thousands of entries are made every minute, every second. Continue doing this throughout the flight. Of course, if it freezes, you will know what was going on before the sim froze. This utility will not show you a definitive cause of your issue but it will show you what add-ons were being loaded about when you received the stutter, the long pause(s), and the freeze and you can further investigate by disabling that scenery, that aircraft, or whatever might have caused the event. One member used this utility to determine that My Traffic X, version 5.4c was the cause of a BEX/StackHash/NTDLL.dll crash he was getting. It was easy to disable My Traffic X in the Scenery Library and find that FSX no longer crashed.

AVSIM recommends you do not run a flight any longer than 60 minutes as the Process Monitor log becomes quite large. For a 60 minutes flight, expect the file to be at least as large as 8GB’s or tens of millions of captured events. Make sure you delete the log or move it to another drive after you have finished your testing to free up HDD space. Another recommended tip is to make sure you use system time to mark the time of each event and do not use an external clock unless they are sync’d. Going through one minute of a glitch is a massive amount of data needed to be reviewed (it goes fast as thousands of entries just show a scenery being loaded).

To run this utility properly, you need to capture only FSX/P3D events. It would be nearly impossible to find a possible glitch if Windows events or other system activities were being logged too. AVSIM recommends opening of the Process Monitor when you are on the active runway and preparing to takeoff to save space on your HDD:
Open Process Monitor. Click on the Filter tab and then Filter….

Display entries matching these conditions:

Where it says Architecture, click on that and select “Process Name”
Go next to the blank box and click on that and select FSX or P3D.exe and make sure “Include” is shown (FSX or P3D must be running when you do this!!). Once completed, click on Add and then click OK at the bottom of the form and Go Fly.

You can use the utility while in Full Screen mode or Windowed Mode. In Windowed Mode you can monitor what is happening instantly but it is best to run Process Monitor in Full Screen (unless you are seeing freezes in Windowed Mode).

When the flight is finished, immediately go to the Process Monitor application and hit Ctrl+E on your keyboard to capture the events (event logging will continue until you do this). Shutdown FSX/P3D and begin your investigating!

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

[colfmedion 1]

Hi,

Thanks for response. Have just printed off your response and the link you referred to. I will study them. To be honest I think the problem lies in my expectations.

I have a high end system but this apparently counts for nothing in FSX. I know my problems lies in the "paid for" add ons I have for the New York area - Manhattan X, New York City Airports for FSDream Teams KJFK V2. All are excellent  but their requirements seem to be just too much for FSX unless I tone down my settings.  But what is the point of expensive equipment and excellent add ons if everything has to be toned down. Just saying.

 

Colf

[Jim Young 2,356]

Hi,

Thanks for response. Have just printed off your response and the link you referred to. I will study them. To be honest I think the problem lies in my expectations.

I have a high end system but this apparently counts for nothing in FSX. I know my problems lies in the "paid for" add ons I have for the New York area - Manhattan X, New York City Airports for FSDream Teams KJFK V2. All are excellent  but their requirements seem to be just too much for FSX unless I tone down my settings.  But what is the point of expensive equipment and excellent add ons if everything has to be toned down. Just saying.

 

Colf

I totally agree!! Manhattan X is a FPS killer especially if you have eye-candy turned on and up high. Autogen is the fastest way to get OOM's so setting this above normal is crazy unless you are flying in the Pacific Northwest in a bush flying aircraft over lots of trees. As I recall all the Autogen is already included in Manhattan X and FSDT KJFK and Autogen is not necessary. It has been a while since I had Manhattan X installed so apologize if I'm in error. FSDT says they have installed special Autogen for KJFK and the area around the airport.

 

If FSX was programmed better to take advantage of the modern computer systems, then maxing out the sliders might work but it's an old solftware program that does not take advantage of modern CPU's and video cards. We discovered all of this after the release of Lockheed Martin's P3DV2. They found that Autogen was depleting Virtual Address Space at a high rate. This is the same Autogen that you will find in FSX. Lockheed Martin techs were successful in optimizing the Autogen so that it does not use as much VAS and cause OOM's. We cannot do that in FSX so that is the problem.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

[colfmedion 1]

Hi,

Have just done 3 test flights from Philadelphia to KJFK using same aircraft, etc. 1st flight had Autogen Off and Manhattan X Off. All other airports for New York were on as normal. VAS started at 2192584 and ended at 895776 and no OOM. All scenery behaved as expected with airports showing full details.

2nd flight was with Manhattan X on and Autogen Off. VAS started at 2289336 and ended at 304004 and no OOM. Again, scenery was as expected with Manhattan X in all its glory.

3rd flight was with Manhattan X on and Autogen Normal. VAS started at 2240464 and ended at 116800 with OOM but no Crash. I then set Autogen to Sparse and VAS went to 439292 with no OOM. All flights ended at Gate.

So, exactly as you said, Autogen is the killer but at least I have found my level and around New York there is enough detail generated by the airports so lack of a few "trees" is not too upsetting!!. Elsewhere I have full Autogen and Full everything else with no problems.

Many thanks for help.

Colf

[Jim Young 2,356]

The New York City area is especially frame rate unfriendly and I personally try to avoid it when flight planning. I know you are probably from that area and want to get the most eye-candy possible in that area especially since you now have a more powerful computer. Don't blame you. I use to fly back and forth from KJFK to KDCA or KIAD and that was my favorite but now I'm out west in California or flying the route between Chicago and St Louis. Glad you got a grasp on the Autogen for the region.

 

Best regards,