P3Dv5 Excessive vRam usage

[ComSimPilot 623]

So we are back again at the OOM nightmare of the 32bit era? I have a 2080 Ti, I get fine FPS but can't leave the gate on complex airports before I a get a VRAM out of memory forced exit. 

Does anyone knows if HF2 is going to address that? Also is there any "magic" setting that can greatly reduce VRAM usage in order to do a flight? At any complex airport/aircraft I start at 8.8/9.2 GB of VRAM.

[chapstick 2,757]

2 minutes ago, ComSimPilot said:

So we are back again at the OOM nightmare of the 32bit era? I have a 2080 Ti, I get fine FPS but can't leave the gate on complex airports before I a get a VRAM out of memory forced exit. 

Does anyone knows if HF2 is going to address that? Also is there any "magic" setting that can greatly reduce VRAM usage in order to do a flight? At any complex airport/aircraft I start at 8.8/9.2 GB of VRAM.

 The situation with P3D and VRAM absolutely sucks right now, and I'm impressed that LM has convinced so many users that it's perfectly normal for DX12 games to crash because you kissed the VRAM limit. 

Anyway, more practical advice... make sure you've updated to Windows 10 2004. Turn off TrueSky. Lower textures to 1024 (yep, it'll look like garbage). With a 2080Ti you could probably get away with a combo of TrueSky off and 2048 textures. Those two settings will make or break whether you crash at PBR airports like LVFR's FLL, MIA, MAD, etc. 

[Recognition 91]

Im on a i9900 2080Ti 48ram and Im running TrueSky on Medium clouds ( Active Sky Beta) textures 1024 in sim

Most settings down a notch and what I found to give me about 25 - 30 FPS with PMDG, Maddox and Captain Sim was to remove ORBX, and to be honest it looks better without to my eyes.

[micstatic 4,319]

1 hour ago, ComSimPilot said:

So we are back again at the OOM nightmare of the 32bit era? I have a 2080 Ti, I get fine FPS but can't leave the gate on complex airports before I a get a VRAM out of memory forced exit. 

Does anyone knows if HF2 is going to address that? Also is there any "magic" setting that can greatly reduce VRAM usage in order to do a flight? At any complex airport/aircraft I start at 8.8/9.2 GB of VRAM.

I don't understand.  I have a 1080ti (same vram) and fly mostly to complex airports.  With the exception of MIA/FLL I never have to worry about VRAM running out.  I have flown with the PMDG 747, QW  787, Maddog, CS767.  I have true sky on.  HDR off.  Med true sky clouds.  Textures 4096.  Now I'm not discounting that LM has to do some serious work to fix the high VRAM usage.  They absolutely do.  But I suspect you have your sliders pushed too hard.  Most importantly I'm locking my frames to 30hz.  That is something I've always done in V4 and it has been reported it is a major help in V5 in regards to VRAM usage.  

[Dave_YVR 973]

9 hours ago, ComSimPilot said:

So we are back again at the OOM nightmare of the 32bit era?

No, it's not even close to that. The 32bit era affected EVERYONE as it was a known limit. The VRAM issue in V5 doesn't happen to every system. There doesn't even seem to be any rhyme or reason to why some get it while many others don't. Dial back the sliders for now and wait for the next hotfix.

[G-RFRY 1,712]

I still don't see how this is happening I have never seen it, and I have unticked the box bottom left on the Scenery settings screen that put more load on the GPU and still cant get it to VRAM out.

[ComSimPilot 623]

Thank you guys for the help. I really appreciate it. I installed the 2004 Windows update, cleared shaders cache, untick the "high resolution ground textures" and backed off the LOD slider to 'Ultra' from 'Max' and I was able to takeoff from FlyTampa EHAM + ORBX TrueEarth Netherlands with around 2GB of VRAM margin. Over the Atlantic now and I am using 4.3/10 GB of VRAM so I guess I should be fine. 

[chapstick 2,757]

6 hours ago, G-RFRY said:

I still don't see how this is happening I have never seen it, and I have unticked the box bottom left on the Scenery settings screen that put more load on the GPU and still cant get it to VRAM out.

What's the point of this post? Do you think after 36 pages it's actually not possible to max out VRAM? Your anecdotal experience simply means you haven't encountered the combination of graphics settings and add-ons that max out VRAM. 

[captain420 3,099]

I really hope that HF2 can fix and or further optimize VRAM usage. Even after updating to Windows 10 2004 and gaining ~1GB of VRAM. In certain situations I am very close to the limit.

Why can't they make it use system RAM as well if you have it. I have 32GB of system memory which is plenty. Would be nice if P3D can also take advantage of that if it runs out of VRAM.

Edited May 31, 2020 by captain420

[pgde 571]

44 minutes ago, captain420 said:

I really hope that HF2 can fix and or further optimize VRAM usage. Even after updating to Windows 10 2004 and gaining ~1GB of VRAM. In certain situations I am very close to the limit.

Why can't they make it use system RAM as well if you have it. I have 32GB of system memory which is plenty. Would be nice if P3D can also take advantage of that if it runs out of VRAM.

Because DX12 doesn't allow use of system RAM.

[Shomron 251]

Question from someone who hasn't upgraded to v5 yet - assuming I am using the same graphic settings I use in v4 am I still in risk running out of VRAM? Trying to understand if these issues are coming since people are trying to push the sliders further to the right since fps is smooth...

I won't upgrade if I need to sacrifice quality (compared to v4) in order to have a stable experience...

[Dave_YVR 973]

1 minute ago, Shomron said:

Question from someone who hasn't upgraded to v5 yet - assuming I am using the same graphic settings I use in v4 am I still in risk running out of VRAM? Trying to understand if these issues are coming since people are trying to push the sliders further to the right since fps is smooth.

 You might not have any vram issues at all, it's really hit and miss depending on each system. 

[ttbq1 347]

it is not a hit and miss... everything in V5 counts in term of VRAM, terrain, aircraft, airport textures will add MB to the VRAM until you run out and crash the sim.

everytime you move any slider to the right you are increasing the objects to be render. For example, the texture resolution from 1024 to 4096 can add easily 1-2GB to the bag. PBR textures are also heavy, when you call the GSX vehicles you are adding 0.5gb to the VRAM.

There are some airports with PBR and 4k textures which are really hard on VRAM like LatinVFR KMIA, KFLL and LEMD, actually the developer is suggesting to drop the texture resolution from 4k to 1024 to avoid CTD.

If you understand this logic and keep monitoring your VRAM usage you will hardly hit the limit.

[JoeFackel 760]

2 hours ago, captain420 said:

Why can't they make it use system RAM as well if you have it. I have 32GB of system memory which is plenty. Would be nice if P3D can also take advantage of that if it runs out of VRAM.

You don't want that. Shared RAM as VRAM is slow as hell, thats when you get heavy stutters with DX11 when it starts to use it.

[Dave_YVR 973]

50 minutes ago, ttbq1 said:

it is not a hit and miss

But it is! Some users can't complete a flight at all without running out of vram and many others have no problems at all. Some with high end 11gb graphics cards and low-medium settings have crazy high vram use while others with the same cards on higher settings don't.