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Thessaloniki X City Configurator [v3.0] (if you have OOM issues)


EmilG

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In process explorer, from what i've seen, couatl "belongs" to FSX VAS consumption. Programs that contribute to increase VAS, i saw: couatl; as_audio; EZCA and nothing more if i remember

Seeing as Couatl is a separate EXE is would have it's own separate 4GB block of VAS.

I don't think you should read it like that, I could have written that to you just as easily.

It's what I written now many times. The people that have problems have on thing in common. They have a lot of add-ons that require a lot of memory and some of those are not very cleverly programmed. That means that you load the scenery (a heavy scenery no doubt about that) with very limited available memory. Things are really that simple.

Getting you sim on order in that sense means deciding where you want to spend your available memory. As long as you do not demand more then is available all is well.

You told me that on your sim you could fly the airbusX around and to T&G's at LGTS with little impact on the VAS and I did specifically ask you what other sceneries you had running, but you never responded.

A few years back (2007) you wrote up a very informative tweak guide when FSX was first new. Suggesting settings and tweaks for a better running sim.

Maybe it is time for a new and definitive guide with complete instructions on how to streamline your sim? With the above things mentioned in this thread (such as how to edit your dll.xml and how to edit your scenery.cfg or use scenery.cfg editor and the impact that having large amounts of entries in these files has on the over all VAS useage)?

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OK...just did my second flight into LGTS and I'm sorry to say this one ended in the very same way as the first one with an OOM error on short final...

Considering all that has been discussed in here and tested and now with City Config Tool ver 3 LITE II mode applied I really don't know else I could do to be able to use this addon scenery which is very sad because I've seen how great it looks. This time it was overcast conditions @ 2500 ft so of course that added to the posibility having an OOM error but it's really crazy what's happening and how the available VAS can drop so quick when you get close to the airport. This time I was on the ILS into 16 coming in from the north, last time it was the same runway but from the other direction...rwy 34.

Too bad really and especially since I was so sure I would be fine this time after the successful tests I did the last couples of days where I clearly could watch how the available VAS increased after applying the LITE II mode/fix when I was sitting on the apron.

Of well, guess I can't fly to/from this airport online on VATSIM using the NGX and my normal addons and settings.

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That's when i got the oom too. On the short final, and i must say (again) that the problem is in the airport and not with the city. VAS increases dramatically when you are facing the airport

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That's when i got the oom too. On the short final, and i must say (again) that the problem is in the airport and not with the city. VAS increases dramatically when you are facing the airport

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So...I wonder what is so special about our setups considering others are doing circuits and touch and go's both using the NGX and the 777 with ASN running etc.

I really don't get this and I've never seen this problem before not even when EFHK was just released and lots of people suffered from OOM issues and I'm using the exact same addons and setting now as I did back then.

Hmm...:confused2_s:

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OK...just did my second flight into LGTS and I'm sorry to say this one ended in the very same way as the first one with an OOM error on short final...

Considering all that has been discussed in here and tested and now with City Config Tool ver 3 LITE II mode applied I really don't know else I could do to be able to use this addon scenery which is very sad because I've seen how great it looks. This time it was overcast conditions @ 2500 ft so of course that added to the posibility having an OOM error but it's really crazy what's happening and how the available VAS can drop so quick when you get close to the airport. This time I was on the ILS into 16 coming in from the north, last time it was the same runway but from the other direction...rwy 34.

Too bad really and especially since I was so sure I would be fine this time after the successful tests I did the last couples of days where I clearly could watch how the available VAS increased after applying the LITE II mode/fix when I was sitting on the apron.

Of well, guess I can't fly to/from this airport online on VATSIM using the NGX and my normal addons and settings.

Did you try LITEII as well as removing the grass (the grass has a large impact of VAS).

Also, if you remove the city part and use just the airport and land class it has very little impact on VAS. I know you don't get the whole enchilada doing that but at least you can use the scenery in some capacity.

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Now I'm even more puzzled...just checked the size of a number of my other airports and it can't only be the (file)size of LGTS that is behind these OOM issues because although most of my airports are somewhere between 300-500 MB I found a number of airports that are roughly equal to LGTS in size and I've never had any issues with any of those airports.

I found that...

Berlin Tegel X is approx 1 GB

Helsinki is approx 1.2 GB

Menorca is approx 1.2 GB

Mallorca is approx...yes...4.2 GB !!!

...and finally Thessaloniki is approx 1.4 GB (after applying LITE II)

As you can see although the majority of my airports seem to be between 300-500 MB as mentioned above Thessaloniki is in no way unique looking at it's size and not even close to Mallorca where I never ever experienced any OOM issues so...my conclusion is there must be something else unique to this Thessaloniki scenery that on some systems for some reason fills up the VAS space in an insane speed when getting close to the airport.

In a way I feel a bit happy about this finding because to me that indicates there might be something with this scenery after all we all overlooked so far because to me what I discovered here pretty much proves that it's not only about pure size of the scenery.

Now I really need to get some sleep but I'm looking forward to further investigate this tomorrow and hopefully with help from you Emilios or anyone else that could possibly think of what might be the real culprit here since it's obviously isn't the size of the scenery that is that real culprit.

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Did you try LITEII as well as removing the grass (the grass has a large impact of VAS).

Also, if you remove the city part and use just the airport and land class it has very little impact on VAS. I know you don't get the whole enchilada doing that but at least you can use the scenery in some capacity.

This was with LITE II but all effects like grass and 3D lights enabled. Since I rather prefer to have an airport looking as good as possible maybe I should try remove the city part but how can I do that?

Looking in the scenery library I have 3 entries named Thessaloniki X SC 1, Thessaloniki X SC 2 and Thessaloniki X LC. I guess I should disable one/some of these?

Then I still hope after my findings in the previous post above that there might be a solution to this that would let everyone enjoy this scenery without having to go through all these castration procedures cutting off big parts of what makes this scenery so amazing!

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This was with LITE II but all effects like grass and 3D lights enabled. Since I rather prefer to have an airport looking as good as possible maybe I should try remove the city part but how can I do that?

Looking in the scenery library I have 3 entries named Thessaloniki X SC 1, Thessaloniki X SC 2 and Thessaloniki X LC. I guess I should disable one/some of these?

Then I still hope after my findings in the previous post above that there might be a solution to this that would let everyone enjoy this scenery without having to go through all these castration procedures cutting off big parts of what makes this scenery so amazing!

I think Thessaloniki X SC 2 is the city portion, just look at the largest folder and that is the city folder (I think is was 800+MB in size and pretty sure it is #2, and the airport was +445MB, APPOX).

During my testing removing the 3d grass option and 3d city lights saved me 300MB of VAS (while using LITE II).

I had lots of VAS headroom (over 1GB) after removing the city folder.

This scenery jumps up and down between 500-700MB in usage depending what way I am looking so you will need lots of extra VAS room ( I would be aiming for having 1GB free at minimum).

I couldn't achieve that until I unloaded and trimmed down my scenery.cfg (as you know already) or until I removed the city folder.

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Just did a quick test disabling all options not only the grass but everything else as well but the difference looking at VAS usage was minimal.

I then just for fun jumped straight from LGTS -> LEPA (which weights in at over 4 GB as you might recall) and only a couple of seconds after sitting on the apron at LEPA my VAS usage decreased with almost 600 MB...!

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I think Thessaloniki X SC 2 is the city portion, just look at the largest folder and that is the city folder (I think is was 800+MB in size and pretty sure it is #2, and the airport was +445MB, APPOX).

During my testing removing the 3d grass option and 3d city lights saved me 300MB of VAS (while using LITE II).

I had lots of VAS headroom (over 1GB) after removing the city folder.

This scenery jumps up and down between 500-700MB in usage depending what way I am looking so you will need lots of extra VAS room ( I would be aiming for having 1GB free at minimum).

I couldn't achieve that until I unloaded and trimmed down my scenery.cfg (as you know already) or until I removed the city folder.

You were totally correct, it was Thessaloniki X SC2 that should be disabled and doing so gave me maybe 200-300 MB so no when only sitting at the apron with ASN and real weather injected I have between 1.2-1.3 GB VAS space left compared to the 800-900 or so I had before doing the same test.

However the real test is arriving at the airport after a 3 hours flight from ESSA online at VATSIM...guess I'll do one last attempt tomorrow and if that one fails as well then I won't be using this scenery anymore unless a real fix is found. I just can't justify to myself wasting more than 9 hours on a single scenery which will be the time I spent on OOMs if I experience the same thing tomorrow...or actually later today looking what time it is...04:30...oups...lucky me I don't have anything booked ;)

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Just as a head's up file size means nothing when talking about VAS usage. I can probably create you a 100kb porta potty that'll pull in 800mb of VAS.

The Mallorca package is so large because the islands are completely covered in photoscenery. Photoscenery takes up a LOT of file size space.

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Ok, so that would mean it must be something in how this scenery is built and what techniques have been used that doesn't go along well with something else in my setup since I only have this issue with this particular scenery and at the same time others have no issues at all.

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Ok, so that would mean it must be something in how this scenery is built and what techniques have been used that doesn't go along well with something else in my setup since I only have this issue with this particular scenery and at the same time others have no issues at all.

Keep in mind,I am not an expert as to how FSX renders scenery and/or the footprint it has on VAS.

The install size rule of thumb I have is only used as a rough guideline.

But you put a small scenery area (that LGTS is) and consider it's install size, then you factor in that it uses only one set of seasonal textures (as well as night like any other scenery), you know that most of that size will be used to render it in the sim, unlike LEPA that is a very large scenery area in comparison, or PANC as it has seasonal textures as well as seasonal photo real that won't be loading all at once.

I am sure each developer has their own set of techniques as to how they build and optimize a scenery. Not sure if any of them would be willing to explain how it works.

Maybe a good test to try is having a vanilla FSX CFG and load the default LGTS, then add the scenery to the CFG and load again, both times noting the VAS to see what impact the addon has..

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Just as a head's up file size means nothing when talking about VAS usage. I can probably create you a 100kb porta potty that'll pull in 800mb of VAS.

Could you elaborate more on this Kyle? For example, how a 100kb file could turn into 800MB of VAS? Is the same file duplicated many times or something like this?

I am just trying to understand how the process of rendering what we see in the sim and what is loaded into the VAS and how it works. For example, Umberto saying that making many BGL's instead of combining them into one has an impact on VAS. Why is that I wonder? I would think the opposite (I'm sure caching would have much to do with it as he suggested but didn't go into detail).

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Before i purchase FTXG i used a lot of photosceneries with mega airports, and i didn't have any OOM so like was said there's something with this scenery, because many people have this problem. Hope the developers could find a way to fix this. I didn't notice any difference with 3d grass disabled and with no duplicate afcads and tml set on 1024 the oom's continue. Only in the final approach. Flying over the city switching views (this increases vas usage)i have no oom. On the final app and no switching views, i have the oom problem

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Coualt.exe runs outside FSX, it has no access to the memory occupied by FSX. It communicates with FSX in order to load the GSX vehicles for example. The Coalt-engine itself has no impact on VAS usuage...

Indeed!!! :dumb_me_s:

That's weird since I think it's running outside FSX just like KLM737 also said above. Not sure what Process Explorer looks like and how good it is, could it be that you "misread" the value or an actual problem with the app itself?

Yes, it is running outside FSX but ProcessExplorer shows it as a "child" as it was run from the FSX.

Wrote a simple test executable just allocating 3GB of memory (which proves it runs its own VAS) and run it via exe.xml.

Here is how it looks in the Process Explorer.

post-62593-0-14303800-1391238482_thumb.j

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Indeed!!! :dumb_me_s:

Yes, it is running outside FSX but ProcessExplorer shows it as a "child" as it was run from the FSX.

Wrote a simple test executable just allocating 3GB of memory (which proves it runs its own VAS) and run it via exe.xml.

Here is how it looks in the Process Explorer.

attachicon.gifVAS_Test.JPG

So does it have it's own 4GB block or not? :D

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Yes. It (exe) does (its own 4GB block). :)

See the JPG - the VirtualAddressSpaceTest uses 3.5GB and FSX uses another 1.8GB - together far more then 4GB.

The misleading point here is probably that it is shown as a child of FSX, but it is so from different reason (to show it was called called from there)

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Indeed!!! :dumb_me_s:

Yes, it is running outside FSX but ProcessExplorer shows it as a "child" as it was run from the FSX.

Wrote a simple test executable just allocating 3GB of memory (which proves it runs its own VAS) and run it via exe.xml.

Here is how it looks in the Process Explorer.

attachicon.gifVAS_Test.JPG

Well ofcause it would run outside FSX when you lunch it like a EXE file insted of DLL file.. its the same as i have Goflight driver running as it run outside FSX (EXE file) and have 4 gb for it self

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Have you checked your VAS at the other airports (where you had departed from) and have you checked what happened to your VAS once you settled in cruise?

I did two separate flights (FSX shut down and restarted in between), one from EGLL (ORBX and UK2000), the other one from LGTS:

During both departures my VAS was "tight" (some 4.0 GB - I wanted it that way for testing purposes). Settling in cruise after departing EGLL my VAS usage reduced to 3.5 GB, after departure from LGTS it was "only" 3.2 GB.

So my EGLL departure gave me an additional "VAS burden" of 0.3 GB which I probably would have carried with me into LGTS on arrival. (In other words: Thessaloniki X seems to "unload" VAS in a more efficient way than some other sceneries.)

The LGTS efficiency has been mentioned before in this thread, but maybe less efficient departure sceneries contribute to your VAS findings here, when arriving LGTS? Have you checked your "VAS burden" you were carrying with you from your TOD, for example?)

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Before i purchase FTXG i used a lot of photosceneries with mega airports, and i didn't have any OOM so like was said there's something with this scenery, because many people have this problem. Hope the developers could find a way to fix this. I didn't notice any difference with 3d grass disabled and with no duplicate afcads and tml set on 1024 the oom's continue. Only in the final approach. Flying over the city switching views (this increases vas usage)i have no oom. On the final app and no switching views, i have the oom problem

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Yeah, I'm too starting to wonder if FTX Global maybe is the culprit we're looking for giving us this high VAS usage compared to other people not running FTXG and with no OOM issues at LGTS. Are there any other users in here running both FTX Global together with a demanding aircraft such as the NGX or 777 and also running a wx engine such as ASN? And all this without any OOM issues here at LGTS?

I don't think I've given my complete spec so far so maybe doing so could help give a clue what might be causing my OOMs.

This is my hardware spec...

My%20PC.JPG

...and this is my FSX setup

My%20Simulator.JPG

Below are my settings in FSX...

Display-Graphics.JPG

Display-Aircraft.JPG

Display-Scenery.JPG

Display-Weather.JPG

Display-Traffic.JPG

...and these are my settings in Nvidia Inspector using the most recent version of Nvidia drivers currently WHQL 332.21

Nvidia%20Inspector%20FSX%20settings.JPG

The only performance-related "tweaks" I have in fsx.cfg are...

[GRAPHICS]
HIGHMEMFIX=1
ForceWindowedVsync=1
[Display]
UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=0
WideViewAspect=True

...and these are the performance-related settings used in Active Sky Next

[Cloud options]
PreventTstormsWithCB=1
MaximumCloudDrawDistance=150
EnhanceIMCConditions=1
Now you know everything about me ;)
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  • Deputy Sheriffs

Just doing a flight from EDDM to LGTS with the AXE and FS Global and ASE for real weather. Settings in FSX as suggested by Emil, LGTS "Lite". Let's see what happens.

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AXE at LGTS in its factory state (no lite), all options enabled in the LGTS manager, real wx according to ASN gives me a max. of 3.2 GB VAS. I have not disabled any scenery layers (so even 0.4 GB more to spare),

I do not use "global" addons - no FTX-G, no such night lighting etc. Instead I run Heli Traffic which injects extra helicopter traffic, on top of MT2010 (both sliders at 20%).

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  • Deputy Sheriffs

Just doing a flight from EDDM to LGTS with the AXE and FS Global and ASE for real weather. Settings in FSX as suggested by Emil, LGTS "Lite". Let's see what happens.

Flight ended with around 700MB VAS left, real Weather didn't have any impact on VAS compared to may flight without any weather.

post-12207-0-85697600-1391265741_thumb.j

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