Strange Post-Patch Behavior

[basementflyguy 156]

Hi everyone. This is probably self-inflicted but I want to post it here at least for the archives.

 

Having upgraded my sim to Prepar3d 3.2, last Friday night I downloaded the most recent ASN patch to keep everything current. I don't know that this was necessary, as my ASN was working fine post-3.2, but I wanted to have the latest code running. After the install, two things happened:

• I had no visible weather. No clouds of any kind, even when running off the ASN profile where METAR was showing cloud layers at my location.
• I had a MASSIVE memory leak, running out of active memory and getting an out of memory error within about 15 minutes of launching any scenario. This was true just sitting on the tarmac - I coud just sit and watch my available memory dropping like a stone.

I believe the complicating factor (self-inflicted) is that I uninstalled FSX Steam Edition just prior to the ASN upgrade, and I'm guessing the sim is searching for a Simconnect client that it can't find. But while I can see how that might result in no visible weather, I don't know that it would create a massive memory leak. I'm away from the sim for a bit so I won't be able to try to tinker to a solution for a while, but when I get it I'll post it here. In the meantime, if there's an obvious I'm all ears.

 

[Damian Clark 1,128]

Hi,

 

Not sure what is happening here but any cloud issues might be related to 3.2 and other graphics-addons (recurring issue we've been seeing not related to ASN).  Worth a check.  I believe the fix is to reinstall the Scenery msi and/or update your graphics add-ons.

 

I'd suggest opening a ticket for the other item(s).  http://support.hifitechinc.com  - We don't have any open issues similar to this and if you've isolated to ASN we'll need to collect some more information to try and identify the problem.

 

Thanks.

[basementflyguy 156]

You've got it, Damian, thank you. I'll be able to work on this this weekend and will submit an update. I think scenery msi is the likely fix.

[basementflyguy 156]

An update: the issue seems resolved. I downloaded and did a full re-install of ASN (as opposed to an update), and that brought the weather back. The memory leak remained, though. Ultimately it seems to have been Multi Crew Experience that was the source of that problem. It didn't create OOM problems before, but seems to now for some reason. If I don't launch it my memory holds together OK. Thanks for the note.

[FS++ 707]

 

 

Ultimately it seems to have been Multi Crew Experience that was the source of that problem

 

In case you didn't know, MCE and the speech engine run in "mce.exe", which is an external process to the sim. MCE is by far the add-on that has the least impact on VAS usage.

 

We do have a module "fsInsider.dll" running inside the simulator process in order to provide co-pilot with situational awareness. We decided against running speech engine and MCE itself inside that dll precisely to give the simulator better stability, and to leave VAS to add-ons that can't run outside the sim.

 

That way you can have fun with the virtual co-pilot without the need to reduce flight simulator settings. Something you'd have to do if we ran it as an additional gauge to some aircraft panel, the way our competitor does.

 

Demo is available here:

 

http://www.multicrewxp.com/Downloads.html

 

See for yourselves.

[basementflyguy 156]

Thanks for that and it's good to know. I may do a full reinstall of MCE. I love being able to talk to ATC.