Author Topic: FSX Freeze for Loading  (Read 2090 times)

DMac10121

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FSX Freeze for Loading
« on: April 01, 2015, 04:25:51 am »
Virtuali,

I've been having an issue with Addon Manager sceneries lately, and, though I don't know exactly how long it has been going on, I know that under a year ago, on a far slower system, all was working fine. The problem lies with Addon Manager sceneries (namely all FSDT and FB sceneries so far). Not a massive issue, but on approach, just when the scenery falls into the LOD radius zone, FSX will freeze for ten seconds or so, before resuming with the scenery loaded, with no other issues. I use FSX original on a 64-bit system.

Any advice is greatly appreciated - thanks!

Derek

virtuali

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Re: FSX Freeze for Loading
« Reply #1 on: April 01, 2015, 10:17:44 am »
Not a massive issue, but on approach, just when the scenery falls into the LOD radius zone, FSX will freeze for ten seconds or so, before resuming with the scenery loaded, with no other issues.

ten seconds it's a bit on the high side, it's likely your system is already overloaded, so the scenery loading process takes a bit more than normal, but 4-5 seconds it's to be expected.

And, of course, it's NOT a problem or a bug, it's FEATURE!!

It means the Addon Manager is doing memory management of the scenery objects instead of FSX.

Since it's known that FSX is not always able to free memory when you exit a scenery area, users short on VAS are going through with all sort of different methods to save precious memory, like always changing the scenery.cfg to enable only areas needed for a flight. This is not necessary at all with FSDT sceneries, since the Addon Manager will ensure that all objects are discarded when you fly outside a scenery area managed by it, which means (of course) they are all loaded ONLY when you enter it, ensuring you won't waste any memory for a scenery you are not using.

The side effect of this, you'll have a pause when loading a scenery, but that's much better than crashing with an OOM, because FSX hasn't freed an area you flew over hundreds of miles before...

If you noticed a *change* in behavior, it's most likely because you raised the Addon Manager "Anti pop-up" slider. By doing this, you are asking the Addon Manager to load objects earlier so, at the maximum setting, ALL objects will be loaded at the same time when you enter the scenery area (the radius changes from 8 to 16 NM, depending on the scenery ). This will result in less stuttering and a smoother flight, at a cost of lower fps and higher memory usage.

So, if you want a shorter pause on loading, put the Anti pop-up at the default value of 1, which means different scenery objects will be loaded at different ranges depending on their size. You'll have a shorter initial pause, better fps, but potentially more stuttering on approach.

Basically, with FSX .BGLs, the loading process of a scenery is happening in the background, constantly taking CPU cycles and not always freeing memory, but you don't notice it. And, you (or the scenery developer) don't have any control over it.

With the Addon Manager, the loading process is obvious, we as developers can control it, and you as the user can customize it.