Hi,

I have in the past posted queries about PMDG 737 Freezes.  I've just now seen a post of a few years ago suggesting adding a line to the fsx.cfg file to help with PMDG 777 freezes.  the suggestion is adding  a line VideoMemoryOverride=536870912 to the section [DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770.0] .  Could I use this extra line in my fsx.cfg file to help with freezing when flying the 737 aircraft?  The section in my fsx.cfg appears as

[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770.0]
Mode=1920x1080x32
Anisotropic=1
AntiAlias=1

Where do these nine digits in the line come from and is it OK to put the extra line in?   Does the extra line  "VideoMemoryOverride=536870912" suit my NVIDIA device?

I'm a bit of a novice with all this so any help would be appreciated.

Ray

 

Check this - https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/373830-videomemoryoverride-does-it-really-work/

Thanks Jim for the link.  A very technical link indeed (way out of my depth).  After much discussion the end result seemed to be: 

Conclusion:
Forget VideoMemoryOverride !

But if I were to try VideoMemoryOverride, do I have to calculate the number (I have 8 GB mem') ?  If so, how to calculate the number?  Then with a number, is it sufficient to put a line in and out, willy nilly?  Forgive me if I haven't a clue what I'm taking about!

Yes, I posted the link to show this was brought up back in 2012 and many tests were done and no improvements.  The main ingredient for improvements is a more powerful system.

2 hours ago, twister1853 said:

But if I were to try VideoMemoryOverride, do I have to calculate the number (I have 8 GB mem') ?

It is my understanding the "tweak" was discussed because members thought the video card memory was causing out of memory crashes (OOM's).  That was in 2012 and back then we did not have a full understanding of Virtual Address Space (VAS).  We now know we have to be very careful with our settings, especially when flying the PMDG 777 as that appears to be the aircraft members are experiencing OOM's the most with.  It's a very popular aircraft (as well as the PMDG 737) and that's why we see more OOM's with these aircraft than others.  You have to understand what settings in FSX that take up the most resources and thus cause FSX to use more VAS than other applications.  Commercial AI programs and autogen use the most resources.  If I max out autogen with the PMDG 777 and fly over non-default scenery, I can easily cause an OOM within 30 minutes of flight.  The PMDG 737 within maybe 35 minutes.  Heck, we proved that when P3Dv2 was released!!  Lockheed techs subsequently fixed that issue but it has not been fixed in FSX because it cannot be fixed in FSX as there is no one upgrading it.

If there was a "holy grail" of fixing the problems with VAS with a tweak like VideoMemoryOverride, wouldn't this be the top of all of the discussions in FSX.  Any fix for stopping OOM's in FSX would be a major news story here at AVSIM!  Back in the days prior to January 2011 we were all running duocore computer systems and trying to find ways to run FSX above 30 fps.  Most everyone had to lower their settings to get to that point and it was not pleasing as the scenery was blurry and some stuttering and other anomalies.  Then, in Jan 2011, Intel released Sandy Bridge and the i7 2600K, and suddenly that became the "holy grail" for fixing issues with FSX.  FPS shot up dramatically and most members started to move their sliders more and more to the right as... well, they could do it.  Then developers saw this sudden performance gain and decided they could put more eye-candy into their products because eye-candy sells products and, sure enough, more people purchased their eye-popping products and kept moving their sliders further to the right.  But you cannot do that in FSX.  It is a 32-bit application and it cannot handle all of the eye-candy from scenery and aircraft.

So, the solution to having eye-candy scenery and aircraft is to have a 64-bit application like P3DV4.2.  You can move most of your sliders to the right and not have many problems.  The only one I have seen is a reduction of FPS but only at the beginning of the flight and at the end of the flight when I am taking off from an eye-candy airport and landing at one.  But, even though the FPS go low, it does not reduce the immersion factor and the sim still works.  In FSX, you would be suffering from another OOM.  Not even the most powerful computers and video cards cannot handle FSX properly as you will most likely get an OOM or the blurries or stuttering.  The faster the system, the more likely one will move their sliders to the right, add more eye-candy scenery and aircraft and the faster it will subsequently crash. 

I have FSX on my system but only to use it for testing purposes when someone has an issue where there is no OOM but some other type of error.  I own the FSX version of the PMDG 777 but refuse to install it as I know it will not work well.  I do have the PMDG 737 and have yet to have an OOM or other type of crash.

Best regards,

Jim

Jim, I'm immensely grateful to you for this very clear reply to my post.  Your note spells out clearly the result of many researches carried out on this problem.  It shows clearly the limitations of hardware and software and the most interesting historical path we have all been on with Flight Simulation.  So, not having the P3D, I won't be getting the 777 but staying with the PMDG 737.  And I'm happy sticking to short domestic flights while making frequent view changes (which seems to me, for some unknown reason, to help to keep the dreaded 'freeze' at bay).

Kind regards.

Ray