Just started getting oom crashes

I have been flying FSX-SE for 9 months with no OUT OF MEMORY CRASHES. A couple weeks ago I stated getting Out Of Memory Crashes for the first time.

 

I've read tons of posts on this matter so I understand a 32 bit simulator only has 4 gigs of game memory. So I tried lowering all the sliders way down from what I had been using but it continues to happen.

 

I can't make a 60 mile flight without getting an OOM Crash. Also the longer the flight goes on my FPS gets lower and lower.

 

Also every time I verify game files on Steam there is always exactly 8034 files not verified and then it acquires the missing files.

 

Does anyone know why after 9 months with no OOM's it just started happening? I don't have any detailed scenery other than Orbx Global, North America, and Vector.

 

Any suggestions on how to fix this problem?

 

Thanks in advance for any help with this problem.

For me personally, I find Steam to be a steamy pile of crap and refuse to use it. I bought FSX Deluxe on eBay. And any game I want to use I try to get the DVD. Albeit, I play a lot of old games.

 

The issue with an OOM is usually with scenery. It will consume the RAM and then you get an OOM. In my signature below I have a link on OOMs from PMDG. Since you don't have a bunch of add-ons, I'm assuming what ever those files are that are being dumped into your Sim are the cause to an out of memory condition.

 

Can you see what those file are?

By all means read CRJ's OOM explanation, it's good learning material.

 

Remember also that an OOM comes from a combination of factors, not just the settings in FSX.CFG. I do not have ORBX, but if during installation there was an option for choosing a high level of detail, dense scenery etc etc, this would play heavily into the causes of the OOM.

 

Jorgen

Jorgen is right, I have Orbx and there is an option to have less detail/s like static aircraft, different grass and trees, some animated objects plus those robot people, I have a lot of it turned off or down.

 

If you think about it you are only at the airfield a short time anyway, most of the time you are flying, but lots of people do have problems with Orbx, you only have to go on their support forum and see for yourself.

 

Col.

Hi,

 

If it has only just started happening it's worth thinking about anything that might have changed. If you can't think of anything that you might have changed, or changed due to an update of any software, i would backup my fsx.cfg by renaming it then restart the sim to allow fsx to create a new fsx.cfg file.

 

If this doesn't do the trick you may as well re-instate your old cfg file. If it does you may then need to alter your settings in fsx back to how you like them ( or edit fsx.cfg in notepad to get the desired settings).

 

Good luck, i know from experience how frustrating OOM's can be.

 

Stinger

 

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

There are some videos, and other tips and tricks on how to re-set and increase the RAM's cache while a program is still running (like FSX). Don't know if that is your particular problem though, or how many gigs of RAM you have? (I just purchased additional slots of RAM recently that totally stopped the oom crashes).

Are you flying at higher altitudes at about 28,000 feet or higher? For some reason this is when I get my OOM's. ORBX also uses up a lot of memory. I usually do not have issues at lower altitudes but did have one plane that was causing issues. It had about 600MB of hi-def textures plus the repaint had over 300MB of textures. Redid the textures, cut them in half which is actually cuts them down to quarter size and that fixed the issues without any noticeable degradation. Are you using FSUIPC4? It has a memory monitor feature in the "logging" section. I am not sure if you need the registered version or not for this feature. Under "Specific value checks" enter “offset” 024C and “type” U32. In the "Display to" section check "FS Window" if you are using full screen and "FS Title Bar" if you are using FSX in a window. You can also check more than one item. This will show up in your main window memory or title bar with a number indicating how much memory you have left. Watch what happens to this value as you fly, you can also try various scenery configurations and settings and see what happens with your memory.

….

 

Also every time I verify game files on Steam there is always exactly 8034 files not verified and then it acquires the missing files.

 

….other than Orbx Global, North America, and Vector.

 

 

As others have stated OOMs errors can be caused by a number of things and can frustrating to resolve. I suspect that, in this case, it is due to missing default scenery files AND is possible associated with the very basic set of addons that you have. Answering these Qs may give important pointers as to what the issue is.

 

Q1. Are you able to ID what these files are and/or the location within FSX where they are stored?

 

Q2. Are they the same files each time?

 

Q3. Does this happen in all FSX regions or in only one specific region - North America for example - or is it in a more specific area of a region - XX miles North of a specific location?

First of all thanks for your replies.

 

In this post I will try to address all the replies.

 

KEEP IN MIND THESE OOM'S JUST STARTED HAPPENING A COUPLE WEEKS AGO OUT OF NOWHERE. I've been using this set-up without any additional addons for 9 months and never got one before.

 

Changes made over the last month due to other problems:

 

I ran the "VERIFY GAME FILES" for the FSX-SE, and for all of my Orbx addons which are:

Global Base Pack - Global Open Land Class for NA, SA and SA Mesh, and EUROPE. Also VECTOR, TREES HD, AIRPORT PACK, LIGHTS CONFIGUATOR, and ORBX LIBRARIES.

 

Then I ran the Vector Tool (Automatic Configuration) as in the instructions.

 

These Orbx programs were installed using FTX Central v 3. During installation it didn't give any choices as Jorgen referred to. And remember there were no OOM's for months after their installation.

 

I have 16 Gigs of physical ram. But my understanding is physical ram has nothing to do with OOM's. Correct me if I'm wrong please.

 

The computer I use was built for flight simulators. It is used for my flight simulator only.

 

I hope this information gives you guys more to work with in trying to figure out this problem.

I've been reading and watching you tube videos for hours a pond hours and can't find why it would start out of nowhere after 9 months with no OOM's.

As others have stated OOMs errors can be caused by a number of things and can frustrating to resolve. I suspect that, in this case, it is due to missing default scenery files AND is possible associated with the very basic set of addons that you have. Answering these Qs may give important pointers as to what the issue is.

 

Q1. Are you able to ID what these files are and/or the location within FSX where they are stored?

 

Q2. Are they the same files each time?

 

Q3. Does this happen in all FSX regions or in only one specific region - North America for example - or is it in a more specific area of a region - XX miles North of a specific location?

 

 

 

Hi Brian,

 

Q1. No I can't ID these files or location. I never tried and I wouldn't know how.

 

Q2. Not sure but it seems to always be exactly 8034 files that do not verify.

 

Q3. I've only been flying in North America, New Jersey to be specific. All low and slow with a Cessna 172. I fly from Atlantic City International airport to Philadelphia international airport quite a lot for practice. The OOM's started during one of these flights as a matter of fact. It also seems to be worst on night flights. If you are familiar with New Jersey, between these two airports there is not much scenery. I can't remember if it ever happened in other states or continents because I stay in Jersey most of the time.

 

I also have Mega Scenery Earth New Jersey installed but I have it unchecked in the scenery library. I never use it.

 

I will try flying in other areas today and let you know if it happens.

As others have stated OOMs errors can be caused by a number of things and can frustrating to resolve. I suspect that, in this case, it is due to missing default scenery files AND is possible associated with the very basic set of addons that you have. Answering these Qs may give important pointers as to what the issue is.

 

Q1. Are you able to ID what these files are and/or the location within FSX where they are stored?

 

Q2. Are they the same files each time?

 

Q3. Does this happen in all FSX regions or in only one specific region - North America for example - or is it in a more specific area of a region - XX miles North of a specific location?

 

 

Hi Brian,

 

I figured out how to answer your first two questions. So I'll have answers for all 3 of your questions by tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

Thanks,

Bill

HI

 

As I understand it, Virtual Address Space is the working space for a program to run

on a PC. It does not have any relationship to the physical memory or page file on

your PC. VAS is a specific space that allows an application to run, and under a 64bit

operating system it is up to 4GB, and for a 32bit operating system it is 2GB, but can

be tweaked up to 3GB.

 

So from what I can see, everything we load into FSX, basically loads into VAS. That

can be aircraft textures, airport scenery, scenery textures, or else whatever you install

and run, and this is going to consume memory in VAS. Since we have a limited space

of 4GB, we have to be aware sceneries, HD aircraft textures, and so on take up a lot of

the VAS when loaded.

 

One of the biggest contributors to VAS usage, is how you have set your LOD_RADIUS in

FSX.cfg. This setting alone can offset the VAS usage by a couple of hundred MB when

bumped from default 4.5 to 6.5, and to add to the problem, FSX does not free up this VAS

space as you fly along,so if you start your flight with add on AC and HD scenery, this could

be up to 2.8GB VAS usage to start with, and as you continue your flight, this will slowly

grow. If you dont overfly any complex airports or scenery, you might get away with it,

but if you overfly any complex scenery, this VAS will continue to grow and you are likely

to get a OOM!!!, remember FS does not offload VAS until you close it down!

 

Since flying FS2004, I have always deleted the empty texture folder in my addon

scenery folder as I add my scenery in separate folders, and I understand that FS will

continue to look in that folder for textures as you fly and will not unload this folder

until you quit FS, this in itself will consume VAS memory.

 

I have also optimised most of my scenery and aircraft textures, and have

never had an OOM situation since I have been using FS2004/FSX/FSX-SE, have

a look at the "Mipmapping and Optimising Textures Guide" at the following link, it does

make a massive difference to FSX performance, it just takestime and patience, but it is

worth it IHMO

 

https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/470865-guide-mipmapping-and-optimising-textures/

 

cheers

An error in the beginning: VAS has nothing to do with the OS. Both on a 32-bit OS and a 64-bit OS, a 32-bit application like FSX will operate in a VAS up to 4 GB. However, a 32-bit OS can only use 4 GB of RAM anyway.

 

A 64-bit OS can use petabytes of RAM, and the VAS of a 64-bit application the same...

 

Jorgen

However, a 32-bit OS can only use 4 GB of RAM anyway.

 

A 64-bit OS can use petabytes of RAM, and the VAS of a 64-bit application the same...

 

Jorgen

 

It's a little more complicated than that. 32 bit Windows desktop operating systems are limited to 4GB of address space due to Microsoft's decisions, while some 32 bit Windows server OS can access far more thanks to PAE support in the CPU. There were issues with third party drivers and system stability on desktop systems that lead to Microsoft capping the memory limit.

 

 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/memory/memory-limits-for-windows-releases

As others have stated OOMs errors can be caused by a number of things and can frustrating to resolve. I suspect that, in this case, it is due to missing default scenery files AND is possible associated with the very basic set of addons that you have. Answering these Qs may give important pointers as to what the issue is.

 

Q1. Are you able to ID what these files are and/or the location within FSX where they are stored?

 

Q2. Are they the same files each time?

 

Q3. Does this happen in all FSX regions or in only one specific region - North America for example - or is it in a more specific area of a region - XX miles North of a specific location?

 

 

 

Hi Brian,

 

Here are the answers to your 3 questions.

 

Q1. I was able to ID the missing files and their location in FSX-SE when I run "Verify integrity of FSX-SE files". I can see the files that were recovered the date and time I did it.

 

1. Texture Folder - There are too many files to name. The files are a combination of FSX and Orbx.

2. terrain.cfg file - it showed up as being modified the exact date and time that all the other files were recovered.

3. helipads.csv file

4. r5.bin file

5. t5.bin file

 

Q2. It looks like they are the same ones every time.

 

Q3. I can't be positive on this one because I only had a chance to make two flights in a different area. One was in another State and one was in the UK. Both flights were one and a half hours with no OOM's.

 

Other Notables:

 

- My gut is telling me it's mainly in New Jersey although I could be wrong.

 

- FPS continually drops as the flight goes on before I get the OOM.

 

- Sometimes FSX-SE will not shut down because of the Steam Bootstrapper App does not close. I have to use task manager to close it then FSX closes down.

 

- I do have a scenery addon for the Atlantic City Airport. It's not a big photo real addon but it does add scenery and textures. I have it set as my default airport.

 

- I always run the Orbx Vector auto config tool after I recover all the files that go missing.

 

Sometime when I Verify FSX-SE there is 156 files missing and sometimes it is 8034 files missing. But it's always exactly one of these two numbers only.

 

If you need anything else let me know.

 

Thanks,

Bill

After many hours and days of research I THINK I understand why these files don't verify or are missing when I run FSX-SE "verify integrity of game files". From what I read the Orbx programs change those files. That's why they don't verify. So you are not supposed to recover them.

 

I also always read and thought that FSX-SE asks for memory for its VAS but does not release it. In other words the memory in VAS keeps adding up as your flight goes on. After it reaches the 4 gigs, OOM occurs.

 

I don't understand how that could be the case. If it is continually adding up as you fly, of course it will eventually exceed 4 gigs. So theoretically OOM's would eventually occur no matter what your settings are.

 

I know that can't be right either so I continued my research.

 

I came across a few lengthy threads on forums that says the amount of VAS memory being used fluctuates during a flight. So now it sounds like it does release memory back to be used again.

 

Can someone who definitely knows how this works please explain it to me. I'm doing way more researching then flying.

 

Next, I think my OOM's only occur in my home state of New Jersey where I do most of my flying. I can't make a 60 mile flight without an OOM. And remember this just started a few weeks ago out of nowhere.

 

On Sunday during the football game , I set up a flight in a stock 172 (which I always use) and made it fly over every major city from Virginia to Maine (stayed away from NJ), did not change any settings, put it on auto-pilot and let it run. It ran for 4 hours with no OOM's.

 

What could be wrong with New Jersey?

 

The only difference with NJ is I have MegaSceneryEarth NJ installed but I have it disabled in the scenery library list. I never use it. I was wondering if that program can still have an effect even disabled.

 

I also noticed after an OOM in NJ , in task manager it showed FSX was around 95% under CPU and Memory. I have 16 Gigs of ram.

 

I apologize for this long post but I wanted to give you guys as much info as possible.

 

If I didn't love flying so much I would have thrown the whole rig out the back door months ago. As I said earlier I do more researching than flying over the last 9 months when I started in the hobby. The problems never end but I'm hanging in there.

 

I sure would appreciate help with understanding all this.

 

Thanks,

Bill

On Sunday during the football game , I set up a flight in a stock 172 (which I always use) and made it fly over every major city from Virginia to Maine (stayed away from NJ), did not change any settings, put it on auto-pilot and let it run. It ran for 4 hours with no OOM's.

 

What could be wrong with New Jersey?

 

Here are two suggestions:

1) One or more of your New Jersey sceneries has a corrupted install, who knows what or where. The quickest way to find out is to uninstall all of your New Jersey add-ons completely and do a test flight. If you don't get a CTD, re-install ONE of your New Jersey add-ons and test again. Keep re-installing and testing until you get another CTD. If you don't get another CTD, it was just a corrupted file somewhere. If you do get another CTD, check for the latest updates for that scenery and install it/them, and test again.

2) If you have an AI aircraft program or collection installed, one or more flightplans could be missing aircraft models or liveries. The process is basically the same as for the sceneries in 1) above, except you remove all the traffic.bgl's from the Scenery/World/scenery folder to a backup folder, restart the sim, do a test flight, shut down, then replace half of the traffic.bgl's and test again. If you get another CTD, remove half the active traffic.bgl's and test again, and so on until you've isolated the corrupted traffic.bgl.

I also always read and thought that FSX-SE asks for memory for its VAS but does not release it. In other words the memory in VAS keeps adding up as your flight goes on. After it reaches the 4 gigs, OOM occurs.

 

I don't understand how that could be the case. If it is continually adding up as you fly, of course it will eventually exceed 4 gigs. So theoretically OOM's would eventually occur no matter what your settings are.

 

I know that can't be right either so I continued my research.

 

I came across a few lengthy threads on forums that says the amount of VAS memory being used fluctuates during a flight. So now it sounds like it does release memory back to be used again.

 

Can someone who definitely knows how this works please explain it to me. I'm doing way more researching then flying.

 

When it comes to scenery textures, FSX is pretty aggressive with caching and keeping them in memory. Much of this is because the roots of the design go back to the turn of the century, and maybe a little further, when hard drives were far slower than today and photo real scenery didn't exist. In this world it made perfect sense to keep scenery textures that would be used multiple times in memory as far as possible rather than re-load them again. The sim would release things it didn't need again, but could be pretty conservative doing it. Photo real scenery, however, has a different image for each patch of ground. When the sim tries to apply the same logic, it can run into trouble when it doesn't clear out the images that won't be needed again.

 

There are other parts of the sim that use and release VAS too, and, as the other post mentions, corrupted scenery and add-on files can also cause problems.

Thanks for that explanation. It was a big help in understanding the workings.

 

I ONLY have 2 addons to FSX-SE specific to NJ.

 

"Atlantic City Airport" and a Steam DLC called "Night Environment New Jersey". I will disable these when I get home and try it as you guys suggested.

 

The only other one I have is "Mega Scenery Earth New Jersey" but I keep it unchecked. I never use it.

 

Q1. Could Mega Scenery Earth NJ still effect NJ even though it's unchecked in the settings scenery library?

 

The ONLY other programs installed are: Orbx Global Base Pack, VECTOR, Global Open Land Class for NA, SA, EUROPE , TREES HD, AIRPORT PACK, LIGHTS CONFIGUATOR, and ORBX LIBRARIES. All Orbx products.

 

Q2. Is it possible one of these Global programs could be the cause.

 

There are no other addons installed on this computer.

Edited October 8, 2019 by B44

Mega Scenery Earth New Jersey may have changed some settings and/or files which will remain that way even though you've de-activated the scenery. You'll need to uninstall it to return those settings/files to the default.

 

Sent from my KFDOWI using Tapatalk

Sorry for the long delay since my last post, I was out of town.

 

The problem was corrupt files in the steam DLC Night Environment NJ.

 

I learned a lot from everyone who replied. It helped me understand some basics of the Sim which helps me fix other troubles that pop up.

 

I also set the sliders for the best quality and performance balance and I leave them alone. It seems that when you constantly change the sliders it screws things up sometimes.

 

Anyway, thanks to all of you for your help.

 

Problem Solved.

 

Bill

Good show, Bill! Happy flying!

 

Jorgen