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OOM on long haul flights

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I'm trying to understand this OOM problem. I have read the manual and pretty much any long haul flight I do with the 777 goes OOM as I am on my final approach. The whole point of getting the 777 was to do long haul flights. I do not have this issue with any other planes, although those other planes would only go for 3-4 hours where the 777 I am doing 6-8 hour flights. I see my memory usage jump up at the very end due to the airport I am landing at loading up. Is it not possible to fly from one payware airport to another payware airport without going OOM on a long haul flight? I use FTX global, but beyond that the only scenery addons I have are payware airports and opus weather (with rex textures). The manual talks about disabling some scenery not being used, but I am a bit confused about that point. For example, Lets say I fly KIAD to CYUL (both payware airports). I also have kjfk as payware. I fly past kjfk but I am at like FL 341. Is KJFK loading and draining my memory? I also have klas, ksfo and klax on the west coast. SInce my flight is on the east coast of the US I am nowhere near there. Are those airports having any impact on my memory since my plane is nowhere near there? Do they need to be disabled? What about FTX global Europe if the flight is US only? Is that impacting my memory usage? I fly on vatsim usually. I totally disabled UT2 and have 0 traffic trying to cutdown on the memory usage? I also use EFB but only the data collector is running on my fs computer, the display screen is on my laptop. 

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We had a heated discussion a little while ago about one possible cause for OOMs.

Memory leaks!

 

The topic was closed but I have decided to do some testing and I will report results within a week (I think) from now.

 

I have been doing overnight holdings for the past 10 days or so (up to 11hr holdings) to see if memory usage (VAS) increases during a flight even when you stay at the same position.

I have been doing this with various FSX slider settings (AI traffic/ Autogen)

 

It seems on my rig that VAS keeps kreeping up during flights.

So the lower My VAS usage at the beginning of a flight, the better!

(people please dont react to this yet and dont come with suggestions yet, as I am not done testing and tomorrow everything might be different)

 

To answere your question untill then.....Yes, you should disable things you dont need.

There are other things you can do to lower VAS usage also, and they have all be mentioned in similar threads already. (just search for VAS I guess).

 

But how much that lowers your memory usage (VAS usage) depends on how many addons you have. If you have lare photorealistic scenery addons over areas you dont fly or dont need it, then I would definately disable (untick in the library, and I would reboot FSX thereafter) those. Disabeling 3 or 4 addon airport hardly seems to help anything on my PC. I guess it needs to be a big package for it to do anything really.

 

If you save your flight just before you start your descend, then quit the flight and close FSX, then restart FSX and start your saved flight again...then you will have emptied and reset your memory also.

You should be able to finish your flight then unless you are going into something like ORBX global scenery and REX HD clouds in bad weather and Manhattan X and FSDreamteam KJFK with the PMDG 777, if you know what I mean.

 

I realise this is close/restart FSX is no fun...but it is better than an OOM with the flight not saved right?!


Rob Robson

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Ok, looks like all my overnight holdings are about to discover something that has been known all along, lol :-(

 

Here is a quote from Word Not Allowed:

"What we should be aware of, is how much our addons use. Some use more, some use less, but they always take some VAS space. And most importantly, due to nature of FSX, this space is not freed as you fly along, nor has anyone yet come up with a plan how to free it up or fix this problem"

 

here is the rest of it:

http://#####.wordpress.com/fsx-oom-and-addon-vas-usage/

 

VAS keeps growing on my PC just as Word Not Allowed sais.

Even if I hold at the same place, next morning my VAS has grown from 2.8Gb to 3.8Gb.

(that was a 10hr hold over WSSS where I do not have ANY addon scenery by the way!)

 

The less things I turn on (Autogen/AI Traffic) the less VAS usage at start ofcourse, but also the less VAS goes up during the flight!

(the same hold over WSSS without Autogen and AItraffic, caused VAS to increase way less, like 90% less)

 

My Conclusion (and yes it has all been said before):

VAS does not get emptied after you leave an area :-(

It just keeps growing.

So the lower VAS you start with the better.

Deactivate addons you overfly and not intend to land at!

Better yet, deactivate everything you do not need!

Save your long haul 777 flight once an hour or so and before starting your descend.

(so you have something to restart after an OOM)

If your VAS reaches the limit (use VAS explorer to see this), then save flight and restart FSX. This will reset VAS.

 

 

What do we need?

A VAS reset tool!


Rob Robson

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I'm sorry, but I refuse to deactive scenery.   I use AS2012 for weather and reduced the cloud textures to 512x512. The only 2 times I OOM'ed with the 777 was before I did this.  Since then I have no problem whatsoever.  I did a 15 hour flight over the weekend (KPHX-OMDB) and when I landed it was silky smooth with FPS over 30 and no OOM.

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I'm sorry, but I refuse to deactive scenery.   I use AS2012 for weather and reduced the cloud textures to 512x512. The only 2 times I OOM'ed with the 777 was before I did this.  Since then I have no problem whatsoever.  I did a 15 hour flight over the weekend (KPHX-OMDB) and when I landed it was silky smooth with FPS over 30 and no OOM.

I did not say you have to. Or, I did not mean to imply that. If you dont have an OOM problem then why would you. But it would be interesting to get some feedback from others on how their VAS behaves. Did you monitor your VAS with process explorer? If so, can you post a start vs end VAS?

Rob Robson

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I hear people say vas goes and stays gone.

But mine went from 2109899 to 1983365 back to 2000871.

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I was looking at my VAS for about 30 minutes overall - probably not long enough to cause a dramatic rise in my VAS but I noticed mine goes up and also down. I'm running a 64bit OS. At the menu it sat around 500'000 to 850'000. Once I loaded a PMDG 747 with UK2000 EGLL and Ground Environment X Europe, my VAS was around the 1'500'000 mark. I then slewed my aircraft to New York which has GEX North America, it stayed around the 1'500'000 to 1'600'000. 

 

On my next long-haul I'll try and monitor it start to finish. If only FSX was made several years later and we might not have this 4GB restriction! At least I think we wouldn't?

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I'm sorry, but I refuse to deactive scenery.   I use AS2012 for weather and reduced the cloud textures to 512x512. The only 2 times I OOM'ed with the 777 was before I did this.  Since then I have no problem whatsoever.  I did a 15 hour flight over the weekend (KPHX-OMDB) and when I landed it was silky smooth with FPS over 30 and no OOM.

 

Having only two - even if these are two rather large sceneries - activated, may work and not get You close to the "4GB limit".

If for instance though You also have other sceneries activated "in between" and "en-route", then an OOM will become way more likely.

In other words:

If flying long haul from scenery A to B it can really help a lot to prevent an OOM in advance, if only sceneries A and B are activated.

And this is a compromise which is very easily taken i think, because when flying above, lets say FL300, there is barely any need to have high detailed airport sceneries activated, which's detail will hardly be noticed when flying that high.

Another thing might be add-ons such as MegaScenery Erath or so though, i know.

It may be hard to turn them off as they really shine when being looked at from "high above" - but it is also a fact that photorealistice textures always demand far more VAS then repeating LandClass textures for instance.

So then it may be up to testing individually.

PMDG's NGX for instance may still be able to fly above huge, lets say MegaScenery Earth photolayers - but - will PMDG's 777 also be able to do it without letting FSX run into an OOM?

This is just one example, but i just want to point out again, that OOM's have no real predefined pattern and depend on various factors!

It is proofen though however, that the chance of experiencing an OOM rises noticeably when a large amount of individual sceneries are activated, real world weather delivers heavy clouds, high res textures are being used and lots of AI traffic circles around in the sim.

 

On my system and by judging from userfeedback at various FS related websites also on other PC's too, switching to DX10 seems to be quite a good way to lower the chances of running into OOM's significantly(!).

Under DX10 the GPU takes away a lot of workload and keeps VAS within a stable margin.

And since i switched to DX10 and use the DX10 fix i can only confitm this - i never experienced one single OOM since then (whereas in DX9 OOM's really appeared to happen more and more frequently under the same settings!)

Sure:

DX10 may not be the best choice for every simmer, but i really consider it worth trying or at least havig a look at it, if OOM's are causing too much troubles.

Cheers, Christoph

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Hi all,

 

Fancy finding a thread here on the exact subject I had been posting about for ages and getting no decent answers!

 

I have the 777 too and have been trying to fly Birmingham EGBB, UK2000 to Dubai OMDB, FlyTampa with GEX and UTX and only a couple of addon airports in between. I have tried this flight four or five times and every time approaching Dubai or even coming in to touchdown,...........OOM. This really annoyed me as my sim has been running for about four years with other PMDG, A2A, QW aircraft and others and never once an OOM! I have even completed some long haul flights to default airports using the 777 and fine, but not to addon airports.

 

Well last week I started reading up on DX10 and decided yesterday to spend some time and try it, using "Steve's Scenery Fixer"..............Ok so far I have only flown EGBB to OMDB but guess what no OOM, no in between sceneries disabled and so silky smooth too.............Ok still early days for me at the minute........... Going to try OMDB to VHHX Kai Tak today, keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Like Wolke85 says DX10 may be the way round this issue. I don't know the technical way it works but I think it downloads the scenery in smaller batches and the dumps it after you have flown by, I think! Anyway you can change to DX10 and back again without any problems, it's not irreversible..................I would suggest you flick the DX10 switch, restart the sim and fly a long flight, ignoring any texture issues, I had a bright blue armrest in the co-pilots seat! just fly and see if you get the OOM, if you don't then invest in "Steve's Scenery Fixer" it's about £20 and it will fix all the issues you have seen in the trial flight.

 

I really do think this might be the answer, I let you know after a few more flights, but it's worth a try, let us know if you try it and how you get on.

 

Right off to Dubai to fly to Hong Kong. 


Happy Flying,

 

Dave Phillips.

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Hi all,

 

Fancy finding a thread here on the exact subject I had been posting about for ages and getting no decent answers!

 

I have the 777 too ...

 

[...]

 

 ... DX10 may be the way round this issue. I don't know the technical way it works but I think it downloads the scenery in smaller batches and the dumps it after you have flown by, I think! Anyway you can change to DX10 and back again without any problems, it's not irreversible..................I would suggest you flick the DX10 switch, restart the sim and fly a long flight, ignoring any texture issues, I had a bright blue armrest in the co-pilots seat! just fly and see if you get the OOM, if you don't then invest in "Steve's Scenery Fixer" it's about £20 and it will fix all the issues you have seen in the trial flight.

 

I really do think this might be the answer, I let you know after a few more flights, but it's worth a try, let us know if you try it and how you get on.

 

Right off to Dubai to fly to Hong Kong. 

 

Hi Dave!

Great to read that DX10 in regards to OOM's works for You as well!

The thing sure still is:

FSX still is 32bit architecture and so 4GB VAS is the limit remaining under DX10 too.

Therefore:

Even under DX10 no 100% guarantee can be provided that no OOM will ever occure.

DX10 just handles all the workload differently than DX9 does and so it has a larger VAS pool avaialble (or somehow like that, but as my technical knowledge is still very limited regarding all this, i'd not take this to be fully correct or exact)

Anyways - and this is very important in my oinion:

If FSX is set up properly, OOM's are definitely far, far, far less happening under DX10 - or, as in mine and so far Your case as well Dave - literally gone!

I have even been able to use higher settings under DX10 than i used to have under DX9 and still had never encountered any OOM so far.

But that's personal testing and trial and error now, taking step by step finding out "how far i can go" on my PC.

But again and generally speaking:

DX10 is really helping a lot to stay clear of OOM's and therefore certainly worth to be checked out if OOM's are a plague experienced while simming around in FSX.

Cheers, Christoph

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Some FSX 3rd party software can be run at a staggering 4096X2160 texture resolution. I never go above 1024X768. I run ORBX scenery, REX, PMDG etc. I have my virtual memory paging file set at 3072 for all values and my LOD radius in the FSX config file at its native value (4.5). Haven't suffered an OOM in a long time (never with my current hardware). I also have all non-critical background processes and apps disabled to save even more precious VAS. Regards

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Some FSX 3rd party software can be run at a staggering 4096X2160 texture resolution. I never go above 1024X768. I run ORBX scenery, REX, PMDG etc. I have my virtual memory paging file set at 3072 for all values and my LOD radius in the FSX config file at its native value (4.5). Haven't suffered an OOM in a long time (never with my current hardware). I also have all non-critical background processes and apps disabled to save even more precious VAS. Regards

VAS for FSX means that FSX has a max of 4GB available to it. No matter how many apps and background processes you kill, FSX shall not grow beyond 4Gb or it OOMs. The paging file has nothing to do with it either, FSX can still has only max 4Gb Virtual address Space available. Not using HD textures amd reducing LOD does help reduce VAS because now less things need to have a place in that available 4GB.

 

For what its worth,

 

I have had no OOMs either.

But if I would have continued my 11hr hold over WSSS, where FSX started out with using 2.8Gb of VAS, and after 11hrs had 3.8 Gb of its VAS used/occupied, I would have OOMed in another 2hrs or so.

(which surprised me as this was over default FSX scenery and I see others do 20hr flights????)


Rob Robson

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How exactly do we do this DX 10? Is it just on the FSX Settings page or are there any external programs I need to download?

 

It's been a few years since I last OOM'ed. It used to happen a lot on my old computer. I am just expressing concerns over my imminent purchase of the PMDG 777... and it would be pretty bad to spend 90$ when on every long-haul you do; you OOM. 

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VAS for FSX means that FSX has a max of 4GB available to it. No matter how many apps and background processes you kill, FSX shall not grow beyond 4Gb or it OOMs. The paging file has nothing to do with it either, FSX can still has only max 4Gb Virtual address Space available. Not using HD textures amd reducing LOD does help reduce VAS because now less things need to have a place in that available 4GB.

 

For what its worth,

 

I have had no OOMs either.

But if I would have continued my 11hr hold over WSSS, where FSX started out with using 2.8Gb of VAS, and after 11hrs had 3.8 Gb of its VAS used/occupied, I would have OOMed in another 2hrs or so.

(which surprised me as this was over default FSX scenery and I see others do 20hr flights????)

Not correctly allocating your physical memory i.e setting your virtual paging file to either system managed or 3072 and having it set at a low value can lead to an OOM. VAS is the memory map in which FSX operates  and can't exceed 4GB or it will crash. This is irrespective of how much RAM you have installed. I,m perfectly aware that you can allocate all the memory you want to FSX but it won't utilize any more than 4gb. The primary reason for OOM.s, as you pointed out on modern hardware, is most likely the result of running graphics settings at values set too high and can be exacerbated on a long flight as more and more VAS gets eaten up. Regards

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Thats just it isn't it. Those super long haul flights where VAS just keeps increasing.....thats why you get OOMs in the 777. Not because of the 777..... but because of FSX.

 

If you were to air refuel the NGX and do a 15hr flight....you might OOM also :-(

 

I have not used DX10 yet.

And I am not sure I will go that route either.

 

I just bought Aerosoft Paris Orly and guess what?....not DX10 compatible!

And I have a few more like that.

PMDG777 is not DX10 either.

 

I am happy for those who have got the 777 to work with DX10 and with their VAS being lower. But what does that mean when an aircraft is not DX10 compatible?

What problems could pop up? Only texture problems or flight behavior, etc as well?

 

What happens when I go to an area that is not DX10 compatible?

 

And are more scenery products made for DX10 or DX9?


Rob Robson

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