Test with 10.50b4

[daemotron]

Hello Maxx-Xp Team,

I tested a bit with XP 10.50b4 (using SMP 3.2 and RWC 1.0, standard X-Plane weather engine, no third party data injection). On shorter flights (~2 hours) I didn't notice anything worth reporting, SMP simply seems to work fine. However, this evening I did a somewhat longer flight (~5 hours), and I noticed a weird behaviour: After ~4 hours of X-Plane running (probably a bit more), the frame rate went from normal (~60 fps) to total crap (<10 fps). This seemed to not just be a problem with graphical rendering, since also the map screen took nearly half a minute to produce any reaction upon input.

I do have a very strong rig (i7 6700K @4GHz, Titan X) and was flying over water, so I think it was not a scenery playing me tricks. Indeed, I am quite sure I can narrow it down to SMP or RWC: testwise, I disabled SMP and RWC through the plugin admin menu, and instantly my frame rate was back up at 60 fps. Even more funny, after re-enabling SMP and RWC, the frame rate stayed up at 60 fps. However, clouds looked completely different after switching SMP off and back on - before, I had something like an overcast just everywhere (hard to see on the screenshot since it probably was too dark, but it was distinctly visible from inside the cockpit).

Some twenty minutes later on the same flight, I entered the area around LLBG with lots of heavy scenery stuff installed (LLBG in conjunction with Real Land Israel), and the frame rate stayed within expected corridor (around 40 fps) - this just being mentioned to give you a reference what would be normal frame rates I usually have.

I use SMP with nearly unchanged standard settings (except for dense particles - ah and yes, don't consider the elapsed time displayed; X-Plane was running for more than one hour before I started the timer ):

I know 10.50 is still a beta, just thought I'd leave my observations here. Not sure if this means anything after all, I encountered more funny things en route that seem to be linked to Ben Supnik's attempt of fixing the handling of hair cracks in scenery tiles.

As far as I can see, the Gizmo log doesn't provide any useful information; the standard log will show you when I disabled and re-enabled the plugins.

Log.txt

GizmoLog.txt

[sundog]

Looks like you're running HD Mesh and some custom scenery; even with a Titan, I think you probably just ran out of memory over time. What you're describing is consistent with memory (especially VRAM) running low and/or becoming fragmented. By disabling and re-enabling SMP, you caused it to delete and re-create its clouds, which may have un-fragmented things enough to keep you going for awhile longer again.

That said, if you've never experienced this in prior versions of X-Plane using the same scenery, weather, and add-ons, it may be worth reporting to Laminar. It could indicate that there is some sort of memory leak or fragmentation over time that wasn't there before.

[X-Plane Australia]

Just thought I'd chime in and say that I recently had the same issue after a 9 hour flight from YMML to ZGGG with RWC and SMP. 

Definitely not a show stopper as redrawing clouds also fixed the issue for me. In my case I just went to the settings menu and hit apply changes. Still far from ideal nonetheless.

I'm running a 4GB GTX770

[Tchou]

9 hours ago, sundog said:

Looks like you're running HD Mesh and some custom scenery; even with a Titan, I think you probably just ran out of memory over time.

Over water, with a12Gb Graphic card, there must be a pretty serious memory leak, how come disabling/enabling SMP free memory "leaked" by x-plane ? Is there a possibility that in some configs SMP doesn't free memory used by the clouds generated ?

[sundog]

I'm quite certain SMP itself does not leak memory. We tested that exhaustively.

[daemotron]

I will drop a line to Ben Supnik about that. Indeed it had never happened before, and I never managed to consume more than 50% of my VRAM with my settings. As I said, there were some funny things happening with terrain tiles long before the frame rate collapsed. Maybe the new code in X-Plane introduced with b4 causes problems with tiles becoming residual in VRAM. I will keep on testing and keep monitoring what VRAM is doing...

Gesendet von meinem SM-G920F mit Tapatalk

[seth]

i had the same fps issue , for some reason during  every flight ( even with not so many clouds and good weather conditions)  fps drops from 30 to 10. I made all the tests with and with out HD mesh scenery , w2xp sceneries, lower texture resolution , low rendering settings ....the result was the same. Only when i disable Skymaxx pro 3.2 , fps returns to stable number ( 30 as i have adaptive Half refresh rate vertical sync). the weird part is that i didnt have any frame drop when i used x-plane default clouds even in a really bad weather conditions. i use 980gtx with 3930 i7  to 4.7 ghz. and 32g ram 2133 , 100% there is an issue with Skymaxx pro 3.2 as i didnt have any issue with 3.0 release. Also this frame drop comes always after 20 or 30 minutes of flight.

attached some snapshots during the flights with skymaxx pro 3.2 always enabled

Photos that have 30 fps description  are in the beginning of the flight route where everything was perfect with out any issue , but after 20 or 30 minutes there is always a frame frop even with less clouds ( check attached photo)....this is weird ... i have always to disable/enable skymaxx to work everything perfect  ..but i have to make it 3 or 4 times during the flight.

thanks

Seth

 

[sundog]

Even if there aren't many clouds visible, SMP 3.2 pre-loads clouds and keeps them in memory in order to avoid stutters when you fly into bad weather and they are needed. In contrast, SMP 3.0 created new clouds on demand, which resulted in the stutters everyone hated in that release. So it doesn't really matter how good or bad the weather is as far as SMP's memory usage is concerned. This isn't an "issue" with 3.2, it's a conscious trade-off between memory usage and reducing stutters. But, you can adjust that trade-off with the cloud draw area slider if need be.

Short story: you are probably in fact running low on VRAM for some reason (maybe you're running at a high resolution and/or with high anti-aliasing settings?), and need to turn down the cloud draw area setting to better fit your system's capabilities. SMP does demand more memory than default clouds - that extra detail has to come at some cost.

 

Edited June 29, 2016 by sundog

[seth]

11 minutes ago, sundog said:

Even if there aren't many clouds visible, SMP 3.2 pre-loads clouds and keeps them in memory in order to avoid stutters when you fly into bad weather and they are needed. In contrast, SMP 3.0 created new clouds on demand, which resulted in the stutters everyone hated in that release. So it doesn't really matter how good or bad the weather is as far as SMP's memory usage is concerned. This isn't an "issue" with 3.2, it's a conscious trade-off between memory usage and reducing stutters. But, you can adjust that trade-off with the cloud draw area slider if need be.

Short story: you are probably in fact running low on VRAM for some reason (maybe you're running at a high resolution and/or with high anti-aliasing settings?), and need to turn down the cloud draw area setting to better fit your system's capabilities. SMP does demand more memory than default clouds - that extra detail has to come at some cost.

 

thanks for your fast replay.

i made all tests including minimum cloud area, shadows,cloud terain,puff rotation...everything to minimum. I reduced all rendering settings including hdr etc ... no result.... i had always this weird frame drop during the flight ( after 20 -30 minutes of flight). I disabled even any custom sceneries like HD mesh, W2xp and simheaven photosceneries/

something important: When i have this frame drop on x-plane frame/gpu/cpu panel i could see large numbers on cpu expect gpu...  for example when i had 8 frame/sec i had 0.122 on cpu and 0.123 gpu.

conclusion : when i make a  flight with Default x-plane clouds while  using quite High rendering settings and Fs global real weather everything is smooth and nice.

when Skymaxx pro 3.2 is enabled ...unfortunately i always have this annoying frame drop which is impossible to make the flight route. I am using also the real weather connector.

and by the way i never touch the limit of my Graphic Card V-Ram ...i always somewhere to 3500 to 3700 mb or even less  ( 980 gtx 4g)

 

 

[sundog]

Seth, can I see your log.txt file after you've experienced this? Whatever is happening to you is unusual, but there may be some clues in there.

You might consider re-installing SMP as well; perhaps something went wrong during one of the update installations somehow.

[seth]

1 hour ago, sundog said:

Seth, can I see your log.txt file after you've experienced this? Whatever is happening to you is unusual, but there may be some clues in there.

You might consider re-installing SMP as well; perhaps something went wrong during one of the update installations somehow.

log.txt attached. I will try to re-download and re-install smp 3.2 

i always have some errors with some extra airports  but 100% this has nothing to do with the frame drop.

thanks for all your efforts

 

Log.txt

[sundog]

Well, I don't see any obvious errors or signs of trouble in there - but you do have a lot of custom scenery + HD mesh installed, and a lot of add-ons. My best guess is that you're still just overloading your system, and SMP is pushing you over the edge on some resource that's in short supply - although I can only speculate on what.

I know you said you experimented with disabling some things, but have you tried disabling absolutely everything but SMP/RWC and putting SMP on default settings? No custom scenery, HD Mesh, X-Life, EFASS, 3rd party plane, SoundMaxx, etc? If you experience this with a plain vanilla X-Plane installation with nothing but SMP, RWC (and Gizmo) installed, that at least means there's hope of us reproducing what you're seeing on a similar PC. If not, it may point to a bad interaction with SMP and one or more of your other add-ons.

[WagnerTenor]

Well I am not an expert on this,but I can only tell you that I see this.  When my fps drop SMP is showing that I still have 5000 Gigs of VRAM available.  If I increase the cloud distance and hit apply, then everything returns to normal.  VRAM usage has not changed. I have 64 Gigs of RAM.  I use a GTX 1080.  Seems to me that there is something going on with SMP memory management. 

[daemotron]

Just chiming in again as I lauchned the topic: First of all I was never talking of a thing I experienced with 10.45 (and I had a couple of hours there, with heavy stuff loaded). So most probably what I described in the first post is not (or at least not directly linked) to what other users experienced outside X-Plane beta test. Second, I re-tested, and with SMP 3.2.1 and X-Plane 10.50b5a the drop is not reproducible, no matter how hard I try (over-)loading the Titan X. VRAM consumption stays well in a range of 5 GiB, so there's plenty head room. I even could extend SMP to full range coverage (whatever the slider does when pushed all to the right) and use some very heavy scenery tiles (Spain UHD, UHD Mesh, w2xp stuff... all at the same time). So for me it's plausible that it was something in 10.50b4 causing it - however I'll keep an eye on it, just in case...

[Defiance_co]

daemotron,

Forgive me, i'm so tired and in pain ......

But what you're saying is in beta4 smp was taking a hammering performance-wise, but all seems well now in todays Beta5a ?

Cheers

Tony

ps : I had performance issues with smp and maybe rwc in beta4, but and it's a big but, i had hellofa game sorting fresh os install for a fresh ati to nvidia gpu, so wasn't sure wth was going on, but beta5 today i'm flying solid at stock mind you so no smp/rwc back in yet, but now sim's been running 4.5hrs using the ixeg classic 737

pps : I mean, i was sure it was to do with the beta not the new smp release, but on top of windose crashes it was hard to tell right off the bat

 

Edited July 2, 2016 by Defiance_co
added text

[daemotron]

Hi Tony,

What I'm saying is that I had no issues with SMP 3.2 and X-Plane 10.45 (and neither the IXEG 737 nor the PMDG DC6-B, both being my current favourite planes). With SMP 3.2 and 10.50b4, I did have an issue, but it was specifically happening only on very long flights, and I had it in conjunction with terrain loading issues (tiles loading only when crossing the border right into it). Very hard to reproduce since I had to fly for 4-5 hours before it happened, so not exactly a good receipe for reproducibility. I was not able to narrow down where exactly the gremlin was hiding; I even don't have a proof that the suspicion of VRAM leak or fragmentation holds true; it was just Frank's (however very plausible) conclusion by looking at the symptoms.

When SMP 3.2.1 was released, I installed it and intended to re-test, just to discover that Ben had meanwhile pushed 10.50b5a to the servers. Since I didn't want to run two flights of 6 hours each, one for seeing of SMP 3.2.1 brings any change, and one for checking that b5a fixes the tile loading issue, I upgraded to b5a and did a check ride just beyond the risky threshold - nothing odd happened, the tiles are now loading as expected, and I didn't see any drop of the frame rate, even with really evil(tm) scenery loaded.

Conclusionwise, it's somewhat intricate - It could be that a change in SMP 3.2.1 prevented the issue from occurring again, or - more plausible, a change in X-Plane's beta (maybe even just a compiler flag or whatever and not even the code itself) cleared off the problem. Or maybe (and that's one I also cannot exclude) the problem is still there, and I missed reproducing it for whatever reason (could be it now sets off later, after 7 or 8 hours of flight, or I didn't have the "right" terrain tiles loaded, or METAR was more gentle today, or ... - well I think you got my point there...). As only factors I can rule out, there's the Nvidia driver version (didn't change it for a couple of weeks now), and heat (water-cooled rig, custom fan profiles, and constant monitoring of the temperature, so I would have known if it had increased beyond thresholds set clearly below manufacturer-indicated thresholds).

That's why I said I would keep an eye on it just in case it occurs again, but I will not deliberately try reproducing it by flying the same 6 hours leg again and again - it just get's boring, and after all, there are more obvious bugs to go looking after in the beta

[Defiance_co]

Hiya,

Thanks for the detailed reply

I'm just about on vapous in the 737 from KJFK to KSFO, on beta5a, all stock except the ixeg and free A380, no added plugins or hd mesh so pretty vanilla

So far, no more damned windose 10 errors !!

I'll put smp+rwc back in after landing and a food run and give the old bird another long run

With me getting a new gpu (nvidia) and having ati installed, after a few days and then yet another hdd fubaring on me, i thought a fresh install was the best option, been years since i had nvidia, so started w10 errors, now i've just got a warning about memory, well rather that was lastnight using beta4

Obviously with so much w10 problems coupled with nvidia driver errors too, i really didn't have a clue what was causing what lol

Anyways, Thanks Again

Gonna land and grab food

Have Fun

Tony

Edit : seconds after posting this, sim crashed lol, here i go again

 

 

Edited July 2, 2016 by Defiance_co
added text

[frontendrob]

6 hours ago, Defiance_co said:

Hiya,

Thanks for the detailed reply

I'm just about on vapous in the 737 from KJFK to KSFO, on beta5a, all stock except the ixeg and free A380, no added plugins or hd mesh so pretty vanilla

So far, no more damned windose 10 errors !!

I'll put smp+rwc back in after landing and a food run and give the old bird another long run

With me getting a new gpu (nvidia) and having ati installed, after a few days and then yet another hdd fubaring on me, i thought a fresh install was the best option, been years since i had nvidia, so started w10 errors, now i've just got a warning about memory, well rather that was lastnight using beta4

Obviously with so much w10 problems coupled with nvidia driver errors too, i really didn't have a clue what was causing what lol

Anyways, Thanks Again

Gonna land and grab food

Have Fun

Tony

Edit : seconds after posting this, sim crashed lol, here i go again

 

 

You have issues man.

[mmerelles]

6 hours ago, Defiance_co said:

 

Edit : seconds after posting this, sim crashed lol, here i go again

 

I am having crashes with the ixeg 1.0.7

I thought they were related to xplane beta, but reverted back and crashes are still there. Most of the time crashes happens some time when upon reaching cruise. A Gizmpo popup kicks in for a second and then the desktop.

 

I am still trying to figure out what is going on, never experienced those crashes. Reverted back to 10.45 crashes still there. I realized crashes started after upgrading to 1.0.7

Tested other jetliners and no crashes at all so it is related to 1.0.7 to me, but i am still trying to understand them.

 

If i am unable to figure out it, i will open a new threat (it is not related to beta specifically to me) and all the logs after a crash for the developers helping me to understand this.

[Defiance_co]

Hiya's,

I think i've sorted it ! (though i've said and thought this previously)

The culprit seemed to be the gpu driver

So far for the 1080 and i guess the 1070 we only have a choice of two drivers

After some fiddling and many searches online

It came down to a forced installation from nvidia even if you choose a custom install !!

From what i've read, nvidia say this will be fixed, as-in when you choose not to install it, well it/they won't install lol

mmerelles, i'll try some testing tomorrow, it's just gone 2am and i'm shattered hehe

I know the DC-6 taxed my old gpu, i can have a try at staying in the air with her lmao, surrounded by smp clouds   if that works i guess A i'm stable again, B i can get back into the ixeg again with smp+rwc and see if i can get some problems

I just need to be back at 100% OS/Sim stable, or any conclusions won't mean nowt !

....................................................................................................................................................................................

Anyways ...........  to make things clear for others casually reading, SMP+RWC had no issues for my crashing

I just seem to have such crappy runs of bad luck lately Well, if it wasn't for bad luck i'd have no luck, that's me hehe

Sleep->Stability test sim->stability test different planes->Stop pulling my hair out->Back to having fun

Adios All

Have a Good'un

tony

 

 

[Awjvdheide]

Hallo Maxx-XP team,

I am having the same problem.

I have a heavy setup computer consisting of 6 screens and 2 comupters. On the main computer the view display is 3 screens with one combined resolution of 5900x1080.

I have a GRX 980 Ti wiht 6GB Vram a have an I7 970 @ 3.2 GHz wich is overclocked to 4.15 GHz and 12 GB ram.

I usual fly under 1500 feet with VFR rules in GA aircraft over my hometown and surrounding area (Amsterdam in the Netherlands) with heavy load on scenery to get the VFR feeling.

I also fly VFR over EHAM (schiphol Airport) which I live close by.

I have done some debugging flights in order to get a good sense of the problem.

This is my conclusion. During the frame drops a very heavy load up to 100% for an extensive time is having place on the system. No hard disk actions to be seen with source control tool of windows. No memory outage in 12 GB ram. Vram is full but that is always as I have noticed during mij test runs.

Disabled several scenery add-ons and plug-ins and flown the same flight path all over and over in a short time span in able to do this is with simular real weather data conditions which is Sunday juli 9 12:00 CET. I can sent a google earht KML file to show the flight path.

All is normal and fine UNTIL the "RealWeatherConnector" plugin is activated with SMP 3.2.1. Then the CPU load problem becomes active.

I have this problem al over the region in which I fly. This is the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherland, Luxoumburg) which is densely populated and have a lot of small airports close to each other with a close density of METAR stations.

I don't say that the problem is in this but I found a for me clear connection between the RealWeatherConnector and the CPU load and framedrop/lockon problem.

I love the product an want to keep it running but for the moment i wil disengage the RealWeatherConnector and see how the system is behaving in the long run.

Added are the screen shot of the setup screen during the 100% load issue

Hope this give some more insight in solving this problem.

Greetings

Albert

[Defiance_co]

Hiya's,

Albert, obviously post back any findings

I fired up x-plane, for a change i chose the SSG 747-8

Had to re-activate her (OS change caused it obviously)

Spent 5mins getting SN etc, x-plane crashed while i sorted activation !!! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr

Error was, 'Kernel Security Check Failure', quick google on yet another windose 10 error code i had never ever had, through up, 'rollback gpu driver', install one of your choice (very limited choice, only 2 drivers for the 1080 series so far lol)

Did that, had a quick fly in the 747, then realized i had to update my navigraph for the plane, in/out like a fiddlers elbow, voila, now my fmc is working as it should, and here i am, gonna test for a crash

This fresh OS install is the spawn of satan i swear, never ever ever ever had any grief like this in 20+ yrs of computing

So yet again, i can only test for x-plane stability first, then move on to other testing

Have Fun

Tony

 

[sundog]

1 hour ago, Awjvdheide said:

Hallo Maxx-XP team,

I am having the same problem.

Actually I think there about 50 different problems being discussed in this thread now, some of which don't even involve SMP/RWC at all

You're talking about occasional CPU spikes when using RWC if I understand correctly. I think I'd expect that while RWC is parsing new METAR data. How often do these spikes occur? If you're using default weather, it should only be once an hour. But, if you're using a third party weather add-on that updates METAR.rwx more frequently, that could be causing it to happen more often.

 

[Defiance_co]

Hiya Frank

For what it's worth, i can max the new cloud area to i think is it a max of 47, obviously in NY for insyance my fps go below thirty, anyways, amazing as usual

But cannot enjoy them again until rig is solid again grrrrrrrrr (still inb kjfk ksfo 747-8i though, no error yet ! (touches head err wood))

When i am sure windose has spat its last dummy out of the pram, i'll do a vid to show the hard work you've (and others i assume) have done, and obviously continue to do

Have Fun All

Tony

 

 

[Awjvdheide]

Halo Frank Kane,

Those spikes where occurring in a flight from EHAM to halfway downtown Amsterdam. That is 10 to 15 min flying time over a distance of 13.4 km (8.4 miles / 7.2 Nautical miles)

I have this problem with all my short flights in this area. These are short because of the dense population and position of airports.

Because of the heavy load of the system I usually fly with 12 to 15 fps over the water rich environment that we have in the Netherlands.

The same is however more inland to the German border. I also noticed it but not as extreme in the Seattle area.

I use simheaven osm2xplane and aerial photography for scenery

Attached is my scenery_packs.ini and the screen shots

Greetings

Albert

2016-7-3 9_9 EH0001-EH0001, 00_06.kml

scenery_packs.ini

Edited July 3, 2016 by Awjvdheide