VAS + EGLL

[Lude2Envy 17]

I just purchased Heathrow Xtended this morning as an upgrade to the original version I purchased several years ago. I was optimistic that SimWings would utilize new technologies or design techniques to reduce the impact the original scenery had on FSX. I'm quite disappointed to see that Heathrow Xtended uses 1GB more VAS than a T2G, FB, FSDT, or FT airport. Taking off out of EGLL with the PMDG J41 leaves me with ~350MB of VAS remaining. Any other high quality airport (all other factors kept the same) and I have at least 1300MB of available VAS. I'm also seeing around 14-18 fps with EGLL. Any other scenery and I'm locked at 30 fps - which is what I have nVidia Inspector locked to. I just don't understand how FB can make an airport like KDEN or FT make OMDB with excellent fps and low VAS usage, but SW can't make EGLL with the same quality and performance.

[Er!k 572]

I think that also has to do with the fact that London city is nearby. Also if you have additional London airports like Luton, Stansted and Gatwick scenery it will impact performance. KDEN and OMDB are in deserted places. Another example KJFK... FSDT KJFK does not perform as well.

[SierraDelta 4]

Something is not right, then.

Using the PMDG 777, ASN, UT2 at 85% (practically all gates occupied), FTX Global, Vector and OpenLC EU taking off on 09R I'm never below 1 Gb of VAS left.

[mopperle 4162]

I also can not confirm such a high VAS usage. and as the others alreday said, it depends a lot on what is around you EGLL installed and how your settings are in FSX.

I also have installed FTX Global, FTX Vector, FTX EU England, FSGlobal Ultimate and doing a flight from EDDH to EGLL (also involved VFR Germany and MA Hamburg) with the AXE 319 about 800MB were left after landing and most of the VAS has been eaten up before arriving EGLL

[data63 421]

would be interesting to know which other sceneries, weather an texture updates you have installed

Happy landings

Juergen

[Finn 873]

Just some tests I made..

Using:

PMDG 777-300ER "Preload sounds = None"

ASN (Rainy day - low visibility)

Orbx Global Base

VFR London Scenery = Off

VFR London City airport = Off

Location= Rwy 09R lined up

VAS= 840.000 Left

Same conditions as above, but with VFR London City Airport = On:

VAS= 830.000 Left

Same conditions as above, but with both VFR London city Airport = On, VFR London Scenery = On:

VAS=260.000 Left

Setting PMDG 777 "Preload sounds= All":

Reduced VAS by 320.000

So teoritically if I had VFR London City Airport= ON, VFR London Scenery= On and PMDG 777 "Preload Sounds=All" I would certainly get an OOM.

But i also shows that depending on settings You can get anyting between OOM and 840.000 VAS left.

It also shows that though nearby airports do have an impact, that the impact is not so sever. The problem is when too many nearby highend airports are active.

Recommendations:

Don't use the PMDG 777 "Preloadsounds= All / Partially" - set it to "None"

Reduce or disable all phototrealistic scenery - not just nearby, but also globally, since photoreal sceneries will be loaded regardless if it´s on the other side of the globe.

Set Autogen= Normal, Water= Low 2x or less

Be very carefull when using high res textures, both for sceneries and aircraft.

Don´t set AI traffic too high. I use 30% with My Traffic 2010 and see plenty of AI aircraft at Heathrow.

Disable FSX own airport vehicles. Like photoreal sceneries, airport vehicles are loaded globally and since we have AES, the FSX vehicles will not make sense anyway, apart from the lack of vehicles at Your arrival airport, if it doesn´t have AES or GSX.

Bottom line:

Your FSX install including addon aircraft, sceneries and tools can be setup to run the PMDG 777 with this new Heathrow scenery.

Compromises must be made, but thats not the fault of the scenery or aircraft being used, but simply the old architecture of FSX that kicks in.

Blaming Microsoft is not fair either, since FSX is an old simulator made in the days where no one knew how the PC hardware and OS would evolve.

It´s tedious having to re-comfigure Your sim ddpeneding on the type of flight and the places You like to travel between, but thats the compromise You need to make when You want to use tadays highen aircraft together with detailed airports.

This is no ones guilt, but simply the confines we are put into using a 32bit application.

Experiment and find the best settings for a error free flight and learn to live with what that setting gives in terms of visual appearance.

Finn

[Lude2Envy 17]

would be interesting to know which other sceneries, weather an texture updates you have installed

Happy landings

Juergen

I recently formatted my computer and did a fresh reinstall of everything. The only other addons I had installed as of yesterday when I tested EGLL were FTX Global/Vector and T2G KMCO.

I always disable my addon airports in the scenery library when I'm not using them. I also use ASN w/REX 4 textures, PMDG/Q400/FSL Concorde, etc and never have a problem with other airports - including JFK V2.

[Autopiloth 462]

EGLL itself uses about max 500 MB of VAS. No more. You can simply have a look at the Airport install files, about 80 MB for BGL´s and 320 MB for textures = 400 MB. Add a liite overhead for AFCAD, Ground and you will have 500 MB max. if ALL is loaded. It is absoluty wrong that EGLL uses 1GB of VAS, that must be something else (double install, whatever) The 4 GB of Terrain data do not effect VAS! You can turn it on or off, VAS will be the same.

Thorsten

[matchball 5]

Hello Thorsten!

First of all. Thank you so much for making this awesome scenery! I really love it and finally I can enjoy my trips back with BAW to EGLL. This product probably is the best done for FSX for now! Thank you!

Regarding VAS: I have the following addons in use:

ORBX Vector, Base, and OpenLC EU.

Aerosoft Airbus X Extended

Active Sky Next

I am currently at FL370 and my VAS went up to 1,8GB usage. So this scenery definetly is NOT a VAS eater . I remember being with UK2000 and having 2,5gb already eaten...

I persume that the topic starter has:

1) Aeorosft London X installed?

2) All scenery settings max? -especially autogen

3) Terrain LOD radius high?

4) As autopiloth said, double installation.

5) Another EGLL installed below. F.ex. UK2000?

Good luck trying to solve it.

Kind Regards,

[Lude2Envy 17]

Hello Autopiloth!

First of all. Thank you so much for making this awesome scenery! I really love it and finally I can enjoy my trips back with BAW to EGLL. This product probably is the best done for FSX for now! Thank you!

Regarding VAS: I have the following addons in use:

ORBX Vector, Base, and OpenLC EU.

Aerosoft Airbus X Extended

Active Sky Next

I am currently at FL370 and my VAS went up to 1,8GB usage. So this scenery definetly is NOT a VAS eater . I remember being with UK2000 and having 2,5gb already eaten...

I persume that the topic starter has:

1) Aeorosft London X installed?

2) All scenery settings max? -especially autogen

3) Terrain LOD radius high?

4) As autopiloth said, double installation.

5) Another EGLL installed below. F.ex. UK2000?

Good luck trying to solve it.

Kind Regards,

All 5 of your assumptions are wrong. Read above.

[matchball 5]

Sorry for trying to help but you never said anything about LOD or London X or autogen or having another EGLL below(unless in this case you said about recently. In your phrase recently=yesterday?)...

[Guest]

I tried this morning. And ii was able to fly from Aerosoft Dublin to Aerosoft Heathrow no problems ... http://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/oom-out-of-memory-helperfix/

[Lude2Envy 17]

EGLL itself uses about max 500 MB of VAS. No more. You can simply have a look at the Airport install files, about 80 MB for BGL´s and 320 MB for textures = 400 MB. Add a liite overhead for AFCAD, Ground and you will have 500 MB max. if ALL is loaded. It is absoluty wrong that EGLL uses 1GB of VAS, that must be something else (double install, whatever) The 4 GB of Terrain data do not effect VAS! You can turn it on or off, VAS will be the same.

Thorsten

Just out of curiosity, why is the EGLL installer over 4GB and PANC 2.3 GB when most other high end sceneries are in the 500-800MB range? FlyTampa has the best looking sceneries on the market and even OMDB rebooted doesn't have the kind of hit that SW does - with the entire custom city of Dubai sitting right next to the airport.

[Autopiloth 462]

Just out of curiosity, why is the EGLL installer over 4GB and PANC 2.3 GB when most other high end sceneries are in the 500-800MB range? FlyTampa has the best looking sceneries on the market and even OMDB rebooted doesn't have the kind of hit that SW does - with the entire custom city of Dubai sitting right next to the airport.

Well, the answer is quite simple: We use high resolution aerial pictures for the airport AND surrounding with a resolution of about 30cm/pixel. These aerial pictures,

when resampled with FSX SDK, will be 1 GB of size (in EGLL about 42 sqkm!) But this is just summer, so add 3 more seasons and night and you´ll end up in about 4 GB.

Of course I could downsample the resolution, but why? These pictures DO NOT affect VAS. The are handled outside the VAS memory. Which is a advantage against the classic polygonlayers where texture goes 100% directly into VAS memory.

When saying OMDB has not that hit its simply not true. EGLL uses 500 MB of VAS and no more, which is at the lower end of the newly released huge airports.

The most concerning thing for VAS are textures for 3D Objects like autogen or buildings. They are all loaded into VAS (and removed later or sooner). EGLL is an airport which is different in every corner and therefore needs a lot of textures in a good resolution.

Does this answer your question or did I miss something?

Thorsten

[mopperle 4162]

The most concerning thing for VAS are textures for 3D Objects like autogen or buildings. They are all loaded into VAS (and removed later or sooner).

To add: various tests during the beta for EBBR we found that default 3D and autogen objects used by far more VAS then those which were made for EBBR.

And again, in the future (at least regarding FSX), you'll be more and more forced to deal with such "problems": people are asking more and more for highly detailed scenery, more complex aircraft (even GA!), but we still have only 4 GB VAS for all those beautifull addons.

So the only solution currently is to use different profiles for what/where you are flying with the according settings. The freeware SIMStarter http://aviation.pero-online.de/wordpress/?page_id=105 is a great tool to help you. For example, I set up 4 different profiles:

- IFR low: complex aircraft in dense areas (Europe, with a lot of scenery(airport addons)

- IFR high complex aircraft in areas like US, with less sceneries

- VFR high: GA/bush flying (e.g. Orbx "land")

- VFR low. complex aircraft (e.g. B200) in dese areas

While the visual impression is still very good, it helps to avoid OOMs by lowering settings and/or removing unused sceneries etc.