Problem with FSDT sceneries

[Greg Goodavish]

I purchased the PMDG 777, and started having OOM errors.  I did some research on their forums, and they said this aircraft uses a lot of VAS (Virtual Address space), along with add on sceneries, weather programs, etc..  They suggested a program called scenery configuration editor, which allows you to disable all of your add on sceneries, except the actual airport you are flying out of and into.  They said this will free up VAS memory, which has a 4GB limit in FSX, thereby eliminating the OOM errors.  I tried this, and it works.  One problem I am having, though, is that when I disabled (not uninstalled) the FSDT sceneries, when I enable them again with the scenery config editor, the buildings are not showing up at those airports in FSX.  I then have to rerun the stand alone addon manager, and that gets them to show up again.  however, not all the time.  For instance, I enabled Hawaian airports 2, so I could take off from PHKO.  No buildings!  I reran the addon manager, and now they are there, but there also appears to be default buildings showing up and coming through the FSDT buildings.  Very strange.  I made sure when I ran the addon manager, all of my firewalls and virus scanners were off.  I also set them up not to scan the coutl.exe and bglmanxx files (not sure those are spelled right here, lol).  My FSX.exe file also does not have any of the compatiblity modes checked under properties.  These are the only sceneries I am having these problems with, are the FSDT ones.  I am sure it has something to do with the coutl.exe file or the other one.  Can you shed some light on what it happening, and how to fix this permanently?  I don't want to have to run the addon manager every time I enable or disable one of your sceneries.  Thanks.

[virtuali]

If with "run the Addon Manager", you mean run the Stand-Alone Addon Manager installer, then no, you don't have to do that. Changes to the Scenery Library are automatically detected when FSX starts, with no action on your part.

What you cannot do, with FSDT sceneries, it to change the Scenery Library with FSX running and expect that changes would be applied immediately, the Addon Manager reads the scenery library ONLY when FSX starts, for the obvious reason that it wouldn't make any sense to force to wait for another scan, if you just change the Scenery Library while flying.

But this is NOT an issue if you want to use that configuration editor because, the big advantage of our sceneries, is that THANKS to the Addon Manager/Couatl, you don't need to turn them on/off to save memory to begin with!

That's only valid for sceneries using the standard SDK methods: those are in the hands of the FSX scenery handling, and it's known that FSX sometimes loads sceneries that don't have anything to do with your flight, and sometimes fails to clear up memory taken from a scenery you visited, after you fly away from it.

But with our loading method, this doesn't happen. The scenery is loaded ONLY when you get close to it, under our control, and it's unloaded from memory as soon as you go away from it. The loading range changes between 8 to 16 NM depending on the scenery used, and if you are outside this range, you can be sure no memory is wasted.

So, if you want to use the configuration editor, that's fine, but just leave the FSDT sceneries always on, because they don't waste any memory.

[Greg Goodavish]

Thanks, Umberto, that is good to know!

[Greg Goodavish]

OK, turned them all back on, and will leave them so.  All are working fine again.  It seems that if you disable some, and have others enabled, it causes problems.  Per Umberto, no need to do that with FSDT airports anymore, (and I assume Flightbeam as well)

[virtuali]

Sometimes disabling areas while flying will work, but sometimes it will create issues, depending what the scenery contains ( landclasses, vector data, airport, 3d objects, etc. ), that's why it's always safer to restart FSX to be sure that *everything* will be updated, and why the Addon Manager assumes you are always restarting, so it won't check the Scenery Library again after the initial loading.