Mega Helsinki and PMDG's 777.

[Nixon 4]

This is the start of my first post last night on the PMDG 777 forum.

"Tonight I decided to fly the T7 from Barcelona to Helsinki. I have the Aerosoft Mega airport for each. I have made a special saved setting for the T7 which works fine for flying into UK2000 Heathrow and Fly Tampa Dubai and Athens. I arrived at dusk at Helsinki( not interned but I forgot that we had passed the equinox). On flying downwind past EFHK I heard the dreaded pinging sound which stopped once I was approx 5 miles past EFHK, turning onto final the pinging started again and then I ran out of memory."

Tonight I managed to land at Helsinki but the dreaded pinging started once I neared the terminal but fortunately FSX didn't crash. To accomplish this I reduced the resolution of the FSX clouds from 1024 to 512 and had no AI traffic. I have always been able to land PMDG's NGX at Helsinki with the higher resolution clouds and 40% AI traffic.

PMDG state on there 777 issues forum page that OOM is not an issue and to read the introduction manual. In essences this says that all OOM issues are caused by other add ons and the solution is either to disable them or reduce there settings and also the FSX settings.

My view is slightly different in that I think that OMM issues are due to the memory usage of all add ons and therefore the 777 must be using some of the available memory. From reading the PMDG forum it seems that many people are having to reduce there settings or disable add on airports to avoid the dreaded OOM when flying the 777.

As PMDG are unwilling to offer any advice on how to reduce memory usage of the 777 I was wondering if any one at Aerosoft has any ideas on how to reduce the memory usage of Mega Helsinki?

I have flown into your Mega Barcelona in the 777 and have had no problems.

Regards

Nixon

[Antti (A-Flight) 31]

Nixon,

You are right, FSX (or basically any other app) runs out of memory when too many things are running together with too high settings and saturate the memory that is limited for a 32- bit app. Some areas are already more memory consuming by default, like areas with lots of autogen trees. You can try reducing your autogen to dense or even normal, and use the tweaking tool to disable high res ground and terminal textures. Aside from not using hd clouds, you can reduce the cloud draw distance if set very high. Also check that your lod is no more than 4.5 when flying complex airliner add-ons.

[Nixon 4]

Thanks

I have done all the things you recommend and my lod is 4.5.

In my view the PMDG 777 takes up more memory than any other add on plane and therefore requires that you reduce the memory usage of your other add ons.

Helsinki seems to have a higher memory usage than most add on airports so the combination of the two can lead to OOM's.

PMDG have stated that the memory usage of the 777 is not an issue so the only other possible place to find a solution to OOM's occurring when flying there 777 into Mega Helsinki is here on the Aerosoft forum.

Regards

Nixon

[Emi 5161]

Hello,

the only options we can provide you are to disable as many features as possible in the Airports Tweaking Tool.

Expecially the Oltra High Res Pavement details and terminal textures should be turned off as they use most memory.

The PMDG777 actually uses a lot of memory which is why you run into this trouble only with it and not with your NGX.

We can of cause not do anything about this fact. Only PMDG could reduce the memory usage of their 777, but this would mean that they have to remove some of their high quality textures or of their systems which they won't do.

[jpost 12]

There's no magic bullet to solve the problem of being trapped in a 4 GB VAS box. It's a fact of life; you can't pour a pint of beer into a 12-oz. glass. No one add-on is to blame; it's up to you to make the trade-offs that suit your purpose in using FSX. While it might seem drastic, my solution is to cut autogen to sparse and reduce LOD to 4.0 when flying the 777 into high-density scenery. My goal is precisely flying the airplane to a smooth landing on the runway, so autogen and distant objects are secondary to my goal. Your goals will be different, requiring different compromises. BTW "I" found no discernible difference on my setup by reducing LOD from 4.5 to 4.0 and I can fly into high density areas with VAS at 3.1 - 3.6 GB.

[Cheyenne Chief Pilot 829]

(...)

The PMDG777 actually uses a lot of memory which is why you run into this trouble only with it and not with your NGX.

We can of cause not do anything about this fact. Only PMDG could reduce the memory usage of their 777, but this would mean that they have to remove some of their high quality textures or of their systems which they won't do.

T7 VAS usage is about 0.8 GB. 50% of it, roughly speaking are systems, the other 50% are textures. PMDG are planning to implement a 'performance tool' which switches between different texture sizes. The current "workaround" is to disable the "high-resolution" VC option in FSX, which should decrease VAS usage due to T7 textures.

But the overall VAS usage of the T7 is "only" 0.8 GB as compared to 0.65 GB of the NGX ...