Possible new VAS issue in v3.4

[Kosta]

Well, I would say the OOM problem is solved for me.
I tried the same flight I described above, ENGM-ENBR with PMDG737 over ORBX Norway (UTXv2 and ORBX Vector also installed "behind"), and autogen settings on high!

With these settings, I approached ENBR with 400MB free of VAS, which is more than I managed to do without Hotfix2, where I went down to runway with FSUIPC dinging.

And here is the kicker: after I loaded the flight, I had 700MB of VAS free. Then I remembered I wanted autogen on high, and set that. Did not reload the sim. Free VAS shown was about 410MB. And as I went up, the VAS freed up to about 550MB. And still, was able to land. In the end, it did start to ding, but hey, I was at higher settings and more scenery, and did reload the graphics (which caused higher VAS usage).

First thing I noticed is that there was no uncontrolled VAS growth. The memory was released more aggresively.

Very interested how it goes on...

And then, what LM have in store for us in 2017 :)

[Raphael_Chacon]

All right,

Hot Fix 2 in action, flying again KIAD-KSFO, lets see:









So far it is getting very interesting. I see there is a purge process. But not so convinced. Lets see when i arrive KSFO(If i really can do it avoiding VAS OOM with exact same settings than before).

:-)

[Hanse]

I am running on a highend-PC all 4 FTX-Products (Global, LC, Vector, Northern Germany) and flying the Aerosoft Airbus. Before version 3.4 I never experienced CTD or OOMs. I also recognized that VAS is now allways increasing if I fly in a "populated" area. The problem seems to be that no longer used scenery still "occupies" the memory / VAS. A good example for me is flying from EDDH (Hamburg) which means the Northern Germany Scenery is "active" to EDDF (Frankfurt). Even after leaving "Northern Germany" the memory is not "freed" and entering the EDDF area the VAS is increasing because now Aerosofts Mega Airport Frankfurt V2 comes on top. Then I get an OOM .

This seems to be the same issue that other people reported on longhaul flights e.g. the get OOMs near their destination airport. The memory is still occupied by no longer needed scenery and when the destination airport scenery comes on top it is too much for the system.......

Regards,
Rolf

After installing HF2 the situation using again the a. m. mentioned flight did not really change. Approaching EDDF I again got an OOM. But two interesting things I tried and recognized the following:
1. If I reload the scenery before T/D the used VAS did not really change and again I got the OOM near EDDF
2. If I save the flight before T/D and then load it again VAS used was 300 MB less than before and I could land in EDDF without any problems.
So for me there clearly seems to be a problem with memory management......

Regards,
Rolf

[Kosta]

After installing HF2 the situation using again the a. m. mentioned flight did not really change. Approaching EDDF I again got an OOM. But two interesting things I tried and recognized the following:
1. If I reload the scenery before T/D the used VAS did not really change and again I got the OOM near EDDF
2. If I save the flight before T/D and then load it again VAS used was 300 MB less than before and I could land in EDDF without any problems.
So for me there clearly seems to be a problem with memory management......

1. that will never purge the VAS
2. 300mb is not very much freed VAS, and I'd simply say you have too much installed

Which addons are used, including coverage for the area?

[gkollmann]

After a few flights with HF2 I can unfortunately not see an improvement to any previous versions.
The OOM at Aerosoft’s Mega Airport Frankfurt 2 was easy to reproduce with my default flight setup.
However I don’t think this is only Lockheed Martin’s fault. The developer of this scenery created an extremely detailed masterpiece which looks fantastic but is way too “heavy” for a 32 bit simulator.
I for my part uninstalled the scenery now to avoid further crashes in this area.

Today I tried a different flight to another VAS intensive area. I reached my destination, but I still saw some very high VAS numbers towards the end of the flight.

Departure: EPWA Warsaw Chopin Airport X (Drzewiecki Design)
Destination: EDDL Mega Airport Düsseldorf (Aerosoft)

Aircraft: PMDG 737NGX - P3D

Other Addons:
FreeMeshX – Europe
Ground Environment Prepar3D World Edition
Ultimate Terrain V2.0 Europe
REX 4 - Texture Direct with Soft Clouds (Medium Resolution 1024, DTX5/DXT1)
Active Sky 2016 for P3D (Live Real time mode with lots of clouds and rain at EDDL)

After loading the flight I read a VAS of 2785 sitting at the gate. Pushback and taxiing while using external view mode adds quite a bit which bumps VAS up to 3150 right after takeoff. Still a very good number for a highly detailed scenery of this size.



The last few weeks I was monitoring VAS on every flight and one thing I could observe is, that whatever number you have after takeoff is what you are carrying on throughout the whole flight to your destination. 100NM away from EPWA at FL360 no major airports or cities in the vicinity I still read 3100, which is way too much for my opinion.
Overflying EDDB Berlin at cruise altitude adds another 200 which brings the number up to 3330 at the T/D.
3000 or less would be good to have a VAS buffer for you approach.



During the approach while descending into the clouds and getting closer to the destination scenery VAS continuously increases to 3750 at 22NM and 3860 at short final.



After taxiing to the gate I have 3937 just a bit prior running OOM.



Still not really satisfying!

Regards,
Gerhard

[Hanse]

After installing HF2 the situation using again the a. m. mentioned flight did not really change. Approaching EDDF I again got an OOM. But two interesting things I tried and recognized the following:
1. If I reload the scenery before T/D the used VAS did not really change and again I got the OOM near EDDF
2. If I save the flight before T/D and then load it again VAS used was 300 MB less than before and I could land in EDDF without any problems.
So for me there clearly seems to be a problem with memory management......

1. that will never purge the VAS
2. 300mb is not very much freed VAS, and I'd simply say you have too much installed
Which addons are used, including coverage for the area?

I know I have much installed and I know how to avoid OOMs: Lower settings! But what I want to point out is that there is a strange memory behaviour e.g. VAS is even after HF2 allways increasing during the flight and then there is not enough memory for the destination airport on top! Please look at the following figures:
Before TO at EDDH 887 MB remaining VAS
After TO 776 MB
at T/C 36.000 feet 651 MB
before T/D 610 MB
at 10.000 feet 550 MB
at 5.000 feet 543 MB and then approaching EDDF = OOM
and this after I already left the detailed ORBX scenery "Northern Germany" before T/D.

I also saved the flight before T/D and then reloaded it again with 1.144 MB remaing VAS e.g. nearly double the amount than during the normal flight.

I think around 800 MB remaining VAS before TO from a custom airport and a detailed scenery is OK. The remaining VAS of 1.144 MB at T/D when loading a saved flight also seems to be the exact figure. But the problem for me clearly seems to be that no memory is "freed" when an area is passed and that every newly loaded area goes on top. This is confirmed by the a. m. figures and therefore in this respect something should be done!

Rolf

[Kosta]

Rolf,
Why I asked about the addons is the fact that you use a ORBX Region product (I suspected it was N. Germany).
The fact is that I only until recently never used the regions I bought long time ago.
The reason was a simple one: I could never fly in or out of the region with any high detailed aircraft which uses lots of VAS.

I tested a single flight twice from the same airport, and that was over a Norway Region. I could see some small offloading. Not much, but maybe some 100-200mb.

I suspect that the program has a difficulty handling too much objects, like autogen, AI, whatever... I, for instance, don't use AI, I only fly VATSIM, and my settings for autogen are lower than max, so are special effects too.

And let me tell you, I didn't have OOM now for more than a year - and the only ORBX product I ever had installed was ORBX Global (for textures). Nothing else.

So in the end, you can bark all you want whose fault it is or it is not, nobody can really fix it, as we are limited and the only way is to remove the offending scenery. I say remove Germany and see how your VAS behaves then. Not only if you are able to land, but notice how VAS is performing, is it only growing or also offloading?

[Raphael_Chacon]

All right,

Hot Fix 2 in action, flying again KIAD-KSFO, lets see:









So far it is getting very interesting. I see there is a purge process. But not so convinced. Lets see when i arrive KSFO(If i really can do it avoiding VAS OOM with exact same settings than before).

:-)

Not working.... Got to OOM before arriving to KSFO. Just can not perform long hauls.








I can see there is kind of purge process, but at some point the VAS increases and increases and increases. I can see that somehow it is related to clouds generation(Which is default in AS16), so i observe a VAS increase tendency, but even my cloud resolution is set to DXT5/1024 i see VAS keeps going up more or less related to clouds generation i think, until OOM. If i fly without clouds at all, i see there is not too mutch VAS increase(First half of the flight), but after i gained altitude and after some time, it continually increases until OOM, dont know if its about clouds or not really, but in any case, who cares? Are we going to fly without clouds at all? There is something wrong...

I can not say its exactly clouds, because at low altitude, on approach phase, where i have more and more cloud layers etc, etc... i just dont get OOM, but long hauls behavior is a different history....

Dissapointed...

[Hanse]

,
So in the end, you can bark all you want whose fault it is or it is not, nobody can really fix it, as we are limited and the only way is to remove the offending scenery. I say remove Germany and see how your VAS behaves then. Not only if you are able to land, but notice how VAS is performing, is it only growing or also offloading?

Kosta, I just tested the following 3 different scenarios to see if the VAS increase is really related to the scenery ORBX Germany North e.g. what is my remaining VAS before takeoff and just before approaching EDDF:
1. With GN, AS16 and ASCA: minus 344 MB
2. Without GN, plus AS16 and ASCA: minus 446 MB
3. Without GN, w/o AS16 and ASCA: minus 416 MB
This means the effect is the same on all scenarios e. g. VAS is going up during the flight. So it is not related to the scenery installed but to P3D and HF2 changed nothing in this respect. Especially this happens during CLIMB and DESCENT because the numbers for the VAS used between TC and TD are not very much different. The proof for that statement is saving a flight mid air and comparing the VAS figure with the same situation before saving. There is allways a difference of several hundered MB less.

I know how to handle the current situation (using lower settings or flying on a lower "level" by deinstalling certain scenery - like if not using ORBX GN I get 400 MB additional VAS). But I wanted to point out that there is a problem in P3D and if this could be solved the request for a 64bit version would not be as strong as it is now.

Regards,
Rolf

[Raphael_Chacon]

,
I [dont] know how to handle the current situation....using lower settings or flying on a lower "level"....deinstalling certain scenery - ....not using ORBX....

-->Not using 32 bits p3d and go for other 64bits simulators... guarantede no nore VAS problems...

What? Is it me the only one thinking about moving to a different sim? I invested on a new pc to find out that it is now worse than before, got to unistall every enhancement addon and fly with default things luckly at lower levels performing "medium haul" to avoid VAS?....

C'on.....

[Martyson]

,
I [dont] know how to handle the current situation....using lower settings or flying on a lower "level"....deinstalling certain scenery - ....not using ORBX....

-->Not using 32 bits p3d and go for other 64bits simulators... guarantede no nore VAS problems...

What? Is it me the only one thinking about moving to a different sim? I invested on a new pc to find out that it is now worse than before, got to unistall every enhancement addon and fly with default things luckly at lower levels performing "medium haul" to avoid VAS?....

C'on.....

***

On page 4 of these posts I mentioned I flew your long haul example flight to see if I had any OOM problems on my setup:

KIAD-KSFO-P3D-PMDG737-600-GOOD-VAS

PMDG737-600

KIAD (FlightBeam)
MCRAY2 MCRAY J518 IHD LEJOY J518 LIVER DJB J34 CRL GRB GEP J70 ABR J32 CZI MLD ANAHO LEGGS BDEGA2
KSFO ILS 28L
APPR TRANS IAF ARCHI

Great flight

Departure
FSUIPC VAS 1,985,864

Landing
FSUIPC VAS 1,706,576

[Raphael_Chacon]

Thanks Mart,

I see these differences betwen our systems:

You w7 / me w10
You 16gb / me 32
You fps locked 20 / me fps unlimited
You B736 / me B772
You only KIAD FB/ me both KIAD+KSFO
I use full ORBX (base, vector, PNW, etc)

Check out my specs on pg 4 and let me know if something else....i will try your settings on FPS figures and anything you tell me about your p3d settings, but using b772 (i suppose it should work)....

Btw, notice/remember i use inspector for nvidia tweak... check my specs on page 4 and let me know what should be my next test fligh config...in any case, i cant believe i am really going to downgrade something i have been using all the time for some "unknown" reason.... definitelly theres is something wrong. But i will try again (4th consecutive test day)

Looking forward for your advise...

Thanks

[Martyson]

"Looking forward for your advise..."

Best to start with a default P3D setup and add one aircraft, scenery or setting change (or whatever) at a time and test it.

Then you will know what uses VAS or crashes on your setup.



Also: I have ASN but I used FSGRW (Flight Sim Global Real Weather, which I normally use) for the test flight.

Note:
Kyle's (PMDG737NGX AVSIM Forum) good answer on an OOM problem in this post:
http://www.avsim.com/topic/500035-ngx-t ... of-memory/


"Kyle Rodgers
You sure you're not using any add-on airports, or additional scenery? If you have your sliders set pretty high, it will consume more VAS. Keep in mind that LHR is in a pretty large city with a decent amount of custom buildings even at its defaults. You've also loaded in orbx products, which adds more onto the heap.

VAS is simply the total weight of whatever you've loaded. You could load a single texture in the sim and have it crash if it's large enough. Flying over Norway with autogen stacked up with a realistic level of trees with more detailed textures? That'll do it. Flying over LA with every building modeled? That'll do it. Even if you can crash the sim flying over LA, you can take those same exact settings and fly out of some airport in the Sahara and be just fine flying around for hours.

It's all about what gets loaded in for the specific route you're flying."

[Afterburner SST]

If you have 1700 MB VAS left while he gets an OOM flying the same route with a similarly complex airliner, something must be very different with regard to the computer system and add-ons installed.

You might refer to this post by Adam Breed, where he gives some tips on what you can try to address the VAS issue:
http://www.prepar3d.com/forum/viewtopic ... 15#p147292

@Raphael
I see in one of your earlier posts that you use LOD_RADIUS=8.5. This is way too much! Try using 4.5.

[Kosta]

3400MB initial VAS load and then doing a PMDG777 long haul? Very high VAS. And that might be a problem.
I am betting that without any scenery your VAS won't go above 2800MB, right?

And this is EXACTLY how one should initially test. No ORBX installed, no sceneries. Only basic tools like FSUIPC or whatever is needed to fly, the addon aircraft and go.

One thing to add: I don't have PMDG777. And I see Mart used PMDG737 too. Maybe that is the problem, as I see many posts with 777 problems.

So how's your empty P3D VAS, with a small default aircraft?