OOM over the ocean, 1.8 Gb of Memory Usage

Hi, all,

 

I've flown many cross-atlantic flights with no problems, some between FSDreamteam's KJFK and Mega Airport's LEMD and back again in the same session.

 

But, then I decided to try a Norwegian Airlines flight from KPVD to EIDW on the PMDG 737-800. Everything was fine until I was roughly 500 miles from the Ireland coast, in the middle of the Atlantic. I got the dreaded "Your computer has run out of memory" message. Oddly enough, I was able to leave that alert up in the background and continue flying, but over time it was clear it was no longer loading textures and it became unflyable.

 

What I'm really confused by is the memory usage in the task manager looks fine. I had less than 2Gb used, far less than the 4Gb limit 32-bit FSX has (I have a 64-bit machine, so I can at least use up to 3.5-4Gb for FSX).

 

I've flown the PMDG 737 on similarly long flights across the country (e.g. Boston to Seattle), and seeing I fly over land with major cities such as Detroit and Chicago (and seeing as I have FSDreamteam's KORD and some photoreal scenery for Detroit) I would think if any flight would result in an OOM it would be that, and not a flight over tranquil ocean.

 

I have the following add-ons:

 

PMDG 737

Environ Scenery Providence, RI

Environ Scenery Appalacian Ski Resorts

FSRecorder (I've flown many 12+ hour flights with this recording, no problems ever)

Orbx Global Base and Global Vector

Various other sceneries that I didn't fly over in this flight

 

My computer is admittedly a bit old:

 

8 Gb Memory

64-bit Windows 7

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU (Q6700) with 2.67 Ghz

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285

 

The only recently installed add-ons is the Environ Scenery ones. It's possible there's some memory leaking from that, but when I'm in Providence or New England in general, the memory usage is pretty normal, and as I show below, the memory usage looks fine considering I'm in a PMDG over the big blue Atlantic. I've also flown the PMDG 737 from the ES Providence scenery to other less distant places like Orlando with no problems, and again, that involves flying over the eastern seaboard which far busier and more complex than the ocean.

 

Because it's the PMDG, I also lower the graphic settings quite a bit. I disable all autogen, and my AI traffic is at 60% airline traffic and 30% GA traffic, with no other traffic, plus I don't have light boom or advanced animations enabled.

 

 

 

Let me know if you'd like any other info from me.

 

Thanks!

How far out from the land of no snakes are you when this happens? It seems like something there is triggering the OOM. That's the most obvious conclusion. It could be an add-on or maybe even ORBX vector. I don't have vector, but I do use base and have flown to and near Ireland many times with no issues. Albeit it wasn't with the PMDG 737.

 

For the hell of it you could test your RAM with Memtest 86+. Burn it to CD or make it bootable with USB. You can burn it to CD with IMGBurn portable. And I think Rufus will make the USB stick bootable.

Two thoughts:

 

You want to monitor working set, not private working set. The entire working set is likely larger.

Is the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag set on the FSX executable? I believe it's on by default in SP2 and SE, but I'd check that.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

Two thoughts:

 

You want to monitor working set, not private working set. The entire working set is likely larger.

Is the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag set on the FSX executable? I believe it's on by default in SP2 and SE, but I'd check that.

 

Cheers!

 

Luke

 

Yes, the flag is set by default on SP2 and Acceleration, and by extension, SE too.

Thanks for your replies.

 

How far out from the land of no snakes are you when this happens?

 

I believe it was about 500 miles.

 

Albeit it wasn't with the PMDG 737.

 

The PMDG is probably the most likely suspect. It's well-made, but I do know it can have its memory spikes.

 

For the hell of it you could test your RAM with Memtest 86+. Burn it to CD or make it bootable with USB. You can burn it to CD with IMGBurn portable. And I think Rufus will make the USB stick bootable.

 

This is a good point. A while back I did have some memory issues which were fixed by tweaking the BIOS, but there's a possibility I've still got some bad memory.

 

You want to monitor working set, not private working set. The entire working set is likely larger.

Is the LARGEADDRESSAWARE flag set on the FSX executable?

 

I'm pretty sure it is, as I do have SP2. To be clear, I have flown in areas like NYC that pegged my memory usage at 3Gb+ with no problems. Typically if I dared to do anything just a little more intense in those areas, it would tip it over the edge, though. It was the fact that my usage in this case was 1.8Gb.

 

If this happens again I'll be sure to check the full Working Set, though. It looks like the full set is typically 25% larger than the private set on most apps I see here, but it's possible FSX is doing something different.

 

Thanks again.

Welcome to the forum(s). My best guess is that you've run into a situation where , even though memory is available, there is not enough contiguous memory to allow for the heaps to be managed. This is not uncommon on systems with only 8GB of physical RAM when running a highly complex processes. The problem is that sometimes you get an OOM and sometimes you don't. There's just no way to predict it. Any chance you can an additional 4-8GB of physical RAM?..........Doug

Or maybe reboot just before running FSX.

 

Jorgen