Annoying OOM Problem (VAS getting full)

[martin88]

Hi guys,

I have an annoying problem with my fsx steam edition: I had some strange OOM´s the last time. Although I draw my fsx settings down, fsx wants to crash very often. I will give an example:
I start a flight with Captain Sim or an Aerosoft plane at a gate, use GSX, do my checklists bla bla and take off. I downloaded process explorer to check my virtual memory. It is normaly around 3GB during game (is this normal or too high??) but now it gets more full and full until I reach the 4 GB limit and my fsx crashes. The worst plane at the moment is the Captain Sim 777.
I really do not know why the VAS gets bigger and bigger over a flight over an area which does not need much resources. Isn´t it so when you start the flight, VAS usage is bigger, inflight it goes down and when you land it goes up again? At the moment my VAS is getting bigger and bigger the whole flight until it crashes! I think this is not normal.
My system is: i7-3770, GTX 660, 8 GB RAM and I use Windows 10 x64 home and I have about 1,5 TB free space on my drive! All drivers are up to date, I checked my fsx config, tried the "bufferpool thing" but it did not help at all. I even played aroun with the VAS settings in my system but I did not get a better result. At the moment the vas size is "automatically handled for all drives". I hope this is the right translation!

I would be happy if someone could help me here. Attached you can see my fsx settings which are far away from max settings. I only use fsx and GSX, no REX, no texture addons and meshs.
If you need more information or want to see my fsx.cfg, please let me know!


Regards
Martin

[DaveB]

Isn´t it so when you start the flight, VAS usage is bigger, inflight it goes down and when you land it goes up again?

I don't think that's what happens Martin. My understanding is that your VAS at startup will be as good as it's going to get and will increase the longer your flight lasts. You can unwittingly speed the process up by loading complex models and flying from, over and to high detailed sceneries. Someone posted a link regarding OOM's here recently and there was a good explanation of VAS in the same thread.
ATB
DaveB:)

[martin88]

I don't think that's what happens Martin. My understanding is that your VAS at startup will be as good as it's going to get and will increase the longer your flight lasts. You can unwittingly speed the process up by loading complex models and flying from, over and to high detailed sceneries. Someone posted a link regarding OOM's here recently and there was a good explanation of VAS in the same thread.
ATB
DaveB:)

Ok thats interesting to know. Yesterday I did a flight with the CS 777 from yellowknife http://www.militaryaiworks.com/briefing-room/developer-blog/item/48-yellowknife-airport-cyzf-fsx-p3d to EHAM http://www.nl-2000.com/nuke/
Although this yellowknife scenery is a small airport with not much AI traffic, it needs long to load and during the whole flight over north canada and the atlantic with nearly 0 AI traffic, clear sky, my VAS was at 3,8 GB. Of course when I was 10 miles away from EHAM, my game crashed ruthless.
I use some addon airports of course, all are freeware. With the default scenery, I have about 154 scenerys registered in my scenery.cfg. My whole scenery, clouds, mesh etc. is all fsx standard. Last week I did a flight to KPHL and of course over the NYC area, the game always gets slow cause of the traffic and Manhattan. But this day I had no OOM at all with the 777.

I had some uncommon crashes of my game with the Just Flight DC10 HD series half a year ago. Now a similar problem occurs with the Captain Sim 777. Even the Aerosoft Airbus with its complex system runs smoother.
Any Ideas?

[vortex]

Martin, have you checked if any background programs or services are running when you're using FSX? For example, inadvertantly running virus scans can sometimes affect your system significantly. Do you run in DX9 or DX10? Some users say that DX10 has reduced their OOM problems (although FSX-SE is supposed to do that).

[Sieggie]

One thought is to use a scenery configuration program like "Scenery Config" https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/ and disable all the various stuff that is not going to be used during your flight so it is not loaded into memory just by flying over it at 30K. I have over 500 scenery entries but only enable stuff I want to see and very seldom encounter an oom.

Dave

[StormILM]

Okay, I have experience on said matter, the above post regarding using the Scenery Config Editor is a good move and will help curb excess VAS consumption (by disabling unused scenery) but there are other things you can do to help. If at all possible, DO NOT open the FSX Flight Planner. That alone consumes a lot of VAS which you do not get back and if you're running a complex aircraft model and scenery, you'll almost certainly suffer a VAS related OOM by the end of the flight if you use the on board Flight Planner and make repeated use of the map or other functions via the FSX menu bar. If I'm using a complex FMS Nav System type model (PMDG, Aerosoft Airbus, Captain Sim or other), I usually generate a flight plan via different free web page services and from those, I either generate a flight plan file (which I can add to the specific aircraft's nav system folder to call up in the aircraft's FMS) or I can simply print the flight plan and enter it manually into the FMS. After taking these steps with complex models, I managed to enjoy complete flights without VAS related OOM's to and from fairly complex scenery. I would still caution that some very long flights will still end up with the OOM's simply because of the overall distance and accumulated VAS consumption. So, the rule of thumb is, avoid using the on board Flight Planner and other FSX menu functions, bear in mind that large high res textures (both for aircraft and scenery) eat up VAS, and prolonged flights as well. Just the other day, I flew my newly purchased Carenado Hawker 850XP (using the full model, not the Lite model) from the Aerosoft Bonaire Flamingo Airport to FS Dream Team Flort Lauderdale Airport without a OOM. I tested the same route with my Aerosoft A319 and PMDG 737NGX and MD-11 and all went fine following the above steps.

I have to say, it is a pain in the backside but I truly hope that the future DFS sim will alleviate this irritating issue for us once both the sim and new/updated aircraft begin to populate that sim.

[speedy70]

Here is the link to the article I posted a few days ago about this topic.

This article should help,in fact it can help most FSX or P3D users.

https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/...don-vas-usage/ (https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-oom-and-addon-vas-usage/)

Hope it helps.

Cheers Chris

[Naismith]

OOM is one of the things which scunnered me of the sim. I have in the last week reinstalled FSX having had no Sims since Oct and with PNW by FTX and Van+ installed, a short flight from CYXX to KSEA in the stock 737 came close to crashing the sim, there was about 400Mb of RAM remaining. When I tried a fresh run at FSX in the CLS DC10, I got airborne to FL120 when OOM. Research reveals that particular a/c as a memory hog, so there is a waste of money.
I tried in DX9 which also crashed the sim and it lasted a bit longer and it did appear that sometimes DX9 returned some of the memory periodically which DX10 never did, but ultimately it leaked away anyway.
X Plane is beginning to look more of an attraction ...... maybe. :banghead: but I really hated V6 when I had it - can someone assure me it has been totally renovated to not behave and look like a DOS game?

[martin88]

One thought is to use a scenery configuration program like "Scenery Config" https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/ and disable all the various stuff that is not going to be used during your flight so it is not loaded into memory just by flying over it at 30K. I have over 500 scenery entries but only enable stuff I want to see and very seldom encounter an oom.

Dave

So if I fly for example from Europe to the States, I have to disable my scenery in Asia, too? I have the FS2004/FSX Scenery Config Editor installed but it does not let me do any changes: If I do change anything and want to save, it says
java.lang.RuntimeException: java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\FSX\NewScenery.cfg (access denied)! BTW I do not have a file called "NewScenery.cfg"

I have 2 files there: oldscenery.cfg and scenery.cfg


If at all possible, DO NOT open the FSX Flight Planner. That alone consumes a lot of VAS which you do not get back and if you're running a complex aircraft model and scenery, you'll almost certainly suffer a VAS related OOM by the end of the flight if you use the on board Flight Planner and make repeated use of the map or other functions via the FSX menu bar.

I have to say, it is a pain in the backside but I truly hope that the future DFS sim will alleviate this irritating issue for us once both the sim and new/updated aircraft begin to populate that sim.

Interesting to know!!

[martin88]

Ok for me to understand: For saving VAS, do I have to disable areas, over which I do not fly?
For example: EHAM to KJFK. Do I have to disable areas in Asia, too?

Or only Addon Areas over which I fly?

[StormILM]

Ok for me to understand: For saving VAS, do I have to disable areas, over which I do not fly?
For example: EHAM to KJFK. Do I have to disable areas in Asia, too?

Or only Addon Areas over which I fly?

I disable everything not in use except perhaps small airports in the region I am flying. With the Scenery Config Editor, you can very quickly click to enable/disable scenery not in use by general areas and subsections/individual scenery.
http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=35891&stc=1http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/attachment.php?attachmentid=35892&stc=1

[GypsyBaron]

Disdabla ANY photo scenery that you will not see during a flight as photo scenery will always get loaded regardless of
where you are flying.
At least that is what I have been led to believe and I confirmed that on one occasion using Process Monitor and
watching the FSX loadingoperation.

I fly online with a group that flies the A2A warbirds, primarily the B-17G. Each of us have our own custom paints so when I
add a new paint to the aircraft.cfg file (I have over 90 B-17G paints now) the first thing I do is reduce all the textures to
1024x1024 since even when we are flying in formation on a mission, you never really get close enough to the other aircraft
to notice any difference between 1024 x 1024 and 2046 or 4096 textures.

The only aircraft paints I keep at the full resolution are the ones that I fly. 1 B-17G, 1 Spit, 1 P-51, 1 P-40, etc.

I don't use AI but years ago before I started flying on line exclusively I reduced all the AI textures to 1024 or sometimes 512.

Paul


Edit: One more thing I forgot to mention. I always run in windowed mode and have a constant readout of my current VAS.
When I see it getting low, below 800 MB or so, I click on the 'minimize' icon and the window shrinks to a smaller size.
(I drag a corner to set the size initially) When I do this I see my current VAS increase by 300 or 400 MB. When I return
to the full sized screen the VAS may start to come down again but I have bought some time and can often reach my
destination before getting an OOM error.

Another thing I do that gives me a bit more VAS when needed is to look up at an area of the cockpit that is just
a bare overhead or area with no switches, gauges or other things that need to be displayed.

It can be a PITA but better that ignoring the OOM error message (do not click on it) and trying to land when any
new textures/terrain will not be loaded. I have had to do that on occasion to keep from losing the flight time
data when the OOM occurred.

[martin88]

Thank you guys for explanation. I installed the newest version of the scenery config editor https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/. The location of my scenery.cfg is right, too.
But problem is when I change anything with the editor and go on "save and quit". It does not save my changes :/ I have no error window. It looks like it saves and closes. But when I open the program again or go into fsx, no changes are done
Only option I have to make changes in the scenery.cfg is by hand or in fsx.

Any ideas?

[stansdds]

Here is the link to the article I posted a few days ago about this topic.

This article should help,in fact it can help most FSX or P3D users.

https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/...don-vas-usage/ (https://kostasfsworld.wordpress.com/fsx-oom-and-addon-vas-usage/)

Hope it helps.

Cheers Chris

That is an excellent article regarding the relationship between the VAS and FSX.

FSX requires contiguous blocks of memory when it writes anything to RAM. FSX is also notoriously bad at managing RAM. It simply does not clean up after itself nor does it defragment the RAM. So what you can end up with, especially on long flights, is a whole bunch of little blocks of unused VAS, but suddenly FSX needs to load a large scenery area and there is no contiguous space of adequate size remaining in the VAS, so FSX crashes with an OOM message. Dovetail Games did manage to improve this behavior, but it is still possible to get an OOM with the Steam Edition of FSX, it's just harder to do it.

[ncooper]

Thank you guys for explanation. I installed the newest version of the scenery config editor https://sourceforge.net/projects/fs-sceditor/. The location of my scenery.cfg is right, too.
But problem is when I change anything with the editor and go on "save and quit". It does not save my changes :/ I have no error window. It looks like it saves and closes. But when I open the program again or go into fsx, no changes are done
Only option I have to make changes in the scenery.cfg is by hand or in fsx.

Any ideas?

You need to use the "Save as " function and ignore the message you see when you close the programme.
FSX and P3D can only see the file in the folder named scenery.cfg.

So make your changes and then click on Save as and save it as scenery.cfg.

Nick

[martin88]

Hey guys,

so the last 2 days I implemented all the things you told me. What should I say it did not help a lot :/
At the moment I am flying over North America with the PMDG MD11, it is night, no traffic, little bit of clouds and my VAS is at 3 GB. I really do not understand this.
But I slowly do not care anymore. FSX is old "crap" and won´t get better

[StormILM]

Martin88, I forgot to ask, are you using any 3d street lights and/or upgraded ground textures on a regional or local scale?

[martin88]

No just this and I use it since 10 months without problems: https://flyawaysimulation.com/downloads/files/7592/fsx-road-textures-scenery/
And over those areas I mostly fly, there are no roads^^

[GypsyBaron]

A VAS of 3 GB isn't that bad considering you are flying an 'advanced' 3rd party aircraft. That leaves you
about a 1 GB margin (25%) before you will experience an OOM error.

I don't start worrying about my VAS usage until I see my remaining VAS reach 500 MB.

Paul

[martin88]

A VAS of 3 GB isn't that bad considering you are flying an 'advanced' 3rd party aircraft. That leaves you
about a 1 GB margin (25%) before you will experience an OOM error.

I don't start worrying about my VAS usage until I see my remaining VAS reach 500 MB.

Paul

Today I flew from KLAX (default) to EDDF https://www.forum.eulenandfriends.de/index.php/Thread/13840-Frankfurt-Main-Airport-EDDF-v8-von-Mark-Aldridge/ with the PMDG MD11.
The whole flight I had about 3 to 3,2 GB VAS. After landing at the gate with gsx I was at 3,6-3,7 GB. The flight took around 11 hours, no acceleration time.
The MD11 is so frame rate friendly, does not need much more than default ultra light. Captain Sim 777 is a bomb on VAS unfortunately.