Scenery budget trouble for the gurus

**greycap.raf** · May 8th, 2012, 07:14

The problem is extremely simple but I can't understand why it results in what it does.

<Budget Name="Five">
<Rings AboveGroundLevel="0" MaxDistEyeInnerRing="0">
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="25" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00015" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="512" RingDim="21" LOD="25" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="256" RingDim="17" LOD="50" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
<Ring PatchWorldDim="128" RingDim="13" LOD="250" MajorDensity="0.00025" />
</Rings>
</Budget>

I want to increase the maximum distance to 4096 so I can get trees further in the distance. It can be done and the game runs flawlessly - and looks brilliant with no "horizon" in the tree line - but hangs after a few seconds and throws the "CFS3 has encountered a problem etc." error. I doubt it's an issue with weak hardware as I'm getting well above 60 fps during those few seconds. Any ideas on why it acts like that?

**gecko** · May 8th, 2012, 10:04

I've had the same issue. High fps and then freeze and ctd without warning. The higher I have my scenery settings, the more often this happens. It could be exacerbated by the presence of high-poly aircraft, but it seems particularly sensitive to scenery. At times I'm the only aircraft around and I still get it. It also happens more if I fly several missions from different locations in one session. Perhaps there are some config settings that need to be adjusted?

**greycap.raf** · May 8th, 2012, 11:20

Additional testing seems to show that every time it happens it's accompanied by a simultaneous heavy hard drive usage, it's like the game needs something from the HDD but can't get it in time and goes belly up. Perhaps it could be cured if we knew what causes the problem as it could be added into the preload.xml - just a shot in the dark but you never know.

**gecko** · May 8th, 2012, 13:30

Interesting...I find it happens often when suddenly panning my view from looking down at a relatively small portion of ground up to the horizon where a large amount of scenery is visible.

**greycap.raf** · May 8th, 2012, 13:42

Agreed on that. Almost like the game tried to render the entire scenery to the best of its ability but there's a bottleneck somewhere that prevents it from happening. Panning the view bit by bit doesn't give trouble, other than pretty heavy HDD usage, but try a quick sweep to a completely new direction and boom, there it goes again with the HDD light constantly lit. I refuse to believe that we need SSD drives to be able to play CFS3 properly...

**gecko** · May 8th, 2012, 19:25

Which scenery set are you using? I've got von Oben's hi-res 7 season set running. I checked and my preload.xml is completely stock, I'm going to add the scenery sheet dds to it and see if that helps. Another thought is that the culprit could be the autogen scenery models themselves, which would make sense considering the huge amount of them that are displayed in when quickly panning over a large area. Can they be added to the preload too, or is that just for textures? Another solution could be to compress the scenery in .zip files like the stock files are - or would that have the opposite effect?

**greycap.raf** · May 9th, 2012, 07:10

Zipping the scenery won't help, in that case the game would have to handle their unzipping and rendering while now it only has to do the rendering.

On the other hand I've just tried adding all the contains of the "sm" folder to the preload and while it works - in other words I didn't get an instant CTD - it doesn't help a bit. The same problem still persists. So we can draw a conclusion that it's not linked to the autogen scenery models themselves but something else, what, remains to be seen. I really doubt it's the scenerysheet or the actual scenery tile textures either as those are already loaded on the screen by the time of the crash. Still something is being read from the disk as the light keeps blinking ferociously while the camera is panned around the aircraft but I'm quickly running out of ideas about what that something can be.

My scenery is a messy mix of many things... airfields of stock layout but using ETO airbase graphics and a very high amount of them as quite a few came with the MW graphics SceneDB tool, all wrapped in Johno_UK scenery and now topped off with VonOben's trees and winter textures following the normal two season system. Nothing really extraordinary there though, just bits and pieces from several sources.

One thing I've been wondering though is the memory usage of my CFS3. I remember someone saying that it's a 32bit program and thus can only use 2GB of RAM but I'd be really happy to see it actually using that much, my peak memory usage is around 1,8GB and that already includes Windows XP and a few programs - for example this Firefox window which is currently using 175MB. CFS3 alone doesn't even use 1GB but has constant access to the HDD, if this could be changed to using 2GB and next to no HDD I believe we might see results.

**gecko** · May 10th, 2012, 10:43

Aren't there some config settings that change how the game loads things? Starting to get out of my league here, so I understand very little of the config utility.

**gecko** · June 1st, 2012, 10:04

I think I may have found a helpful config setting: in the texture info tab a moved the vertex cache slider and the two sliders above it (forgot their names) all the way to the right. Right now it seems to help, but it will likely take a little while to see if the results are consistent. Hopefully it will help you too Rene.

**greycap.raf** · June 2nd, 2012, 02:47

I tried it and crashed the sim on the first go...

:

It didn't hurt anything though so I left the sliders like that. However, after that I experimented with the config a bit more and eventually found out that moving the Vertex Buffer Pool dot from D3DPOOL_DEFAULT to D3DPOOL_MANAGED cured the crashing. I have no idea what the options technically do but I'll try the Composite Aircraft Texture Pool and Index Buffer Pool today too, they're both D3DPOOL_DEFAULT now. One thing I can't recommend is putting all three to D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM - you'll be looking at 5 fps on the next flight. Makes me wonder why the option even is there and what it's supposed to do.

**rbp71854** · June 2nd, 2012, 03:48

Guys

I have been following your thread with interest. I had an area of RS that was heavy with water textures, RRs, runways and roads. After a bit the area would wink out the water textures and they would not return until an exit and restart of RS. By fiddling with the config.exe I was able to correct the problem. Keep in mind that each of us has to fiddle with the config depending upon our machine hardware. The following is a screenie of my texture-info. winxp64, intel i7-990x, asus GTX570, Asus Rampage III Black MB, 16meg G-Skill Ripjaws. Also note I have increased my virtual memory from being managed by the os and have set it manually.

Keep fiddling.

cheers

Bob

**gecko** · June 4th, 2012, 14:15

Originally Posted by greycap.raf

I tried it and crashed the sim on the first go...

:

It didn't hurt anything though so I left the sliders like that. However, after that I experimented with the config a bit more and eventually found out that moving the Vertex Buffer Pool dot from D3DPOOL_DEFAULT to D3DPOOL_MANAGED cured the crashing. I have no idea what the options technically do but I'll try the Composite Aircraft Texture Pool and Index Buffer Pool today too, they're both D3DPOOL_DEFAULT now. One thing I can't recommend is putting all three to D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM - you'll be looking at 5 fps on the next flight. Makes me wonder why the option even is there and what it's supposed to do.

Yeah, doesn't work here either, just seemed like it for a little while. I've already had the other settings in place for some time, so it won't help me. Bob, what you did with the virtual memory sounds interesting. What exactly did you do and how?

**rbp71854** · June 4th, 2012, 15:55

Originally Posted by gecko

Bob, what you did with the virtual memory sounds interesting. What exactly did you do and how?

I have adjusted the virutal memory on winxpx64 by control panel > system > advanced tab > category performance >select settings select "adjust for performance". Next select advanced category memory usage: I have selected system cache rather than programs. You can try either and see your results.

For virtual memory changes select virtual memory category and select change page file select "custom size" bump up your MB then select "set" and "ok" and "apply" if necessary as you exit from control panel.

I have seen claims that by having your page file on a hdd other than your os hdd it will help, but I haven't seen any real improvement by having the page file on non os hdd. Keep in mind that page files are not defragged during defrag operation and the only way to compress is to move the page file to another hdd for a bit, defrag the os hdd and then move the page file back to the os hadd if that is where you want to keep the page file. Mute point if you have ssd drive as they do not recommend defragging ssds.

Keep in mind that my settings work for my configuration and may not work for yours. That why they call them Personal Computers.

cheers

Bob

**gecko** · June 4th, 2012, 23:09

Thanks Bob! I'm not sure if it helped this problem or not, but I noticed that the AI got way better! I've heard that the more computing power you have, the better the FMs and the AI get - this really proves it for me. The sky is now way more dangerous than I'm used to.:isadizzy:

**rbp71854** · June 5th, 2012, 05:51

Following are screenies of all the config settings that I have presently for my RS install. This may give you some potential areas to fiddle with your settings.

Notice the settings in the texture limits page

cheers

Bob

**Daiwilletti** · June 5th, 2012, 23:35

Bob's config settings look pretty similar to mine, however for vertex and index buffer pools (second screenie) I use system_mem.

@ Greycap, where your file has:
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="25" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00015" />

and you want to increase to 4096, why not reduce the MajorDensity slightly? This may stop the crashing. Try say "0.00010".

Actually, on checking this is what I have.
<Ring PatchWorldDim="2048" RingDim="15" LOD="5" MajorDensity="0.00010" />

HTH,
D

**greycap.raf** · June 7th, 2012, 07:10

I think I tried values as low as 0.00005 and it still crashed until the (seemingly working) fix I mentioned on the first page. The issue seemed to be more that they had to be drawn than the stress they put on the GPU.

Then a couple of words on the virtual memory, it's an allocation of the HDD that is used as a "RAM extension" by Windows. I'm sure most of you knew this already. But what many people don't know is that a 32 bit OS, for example the good old XP, can only use 3.2GB of RAM (the figure varies depending on who you ask but it's always around 3GB) and any more than that is simply wasted. I have 6GB of physical RAM in this machine and can naturally only use it all in W7 but in XP I've disabled the virtual memory altogether as I already have more physical RAM than the system can understand so there's zero need for it.

**gecko** · June 7th, 2012, 08:13

Do you notice any difference in performance between 7 and xp? Did you encounter the problem less on either system?

**greycap.raf** · June 9th, 2012, 13:35

No, the performance difference between the two is non-existant. Logically so because CFS3 can't take full advantage of the higher memory amount or use two cores properly.

**gecko** · June 18th, 2012, 23:47

Found another possible solution - the UseMips="y" value was absent from the ring parameters lines, so I added it to the outer couple of rings. It reduces the quality of the ground textures at longer ranges but still allows the nicer quality for most of what is typically visible, and given the symptoms, seems likely to get rid of the CTD in most situations.