Memory leak

[bunchy]

Stu,

 

I think step 1 here is going to require you to fly a flight without a SASL enabled plugin aircraft just to see if that's where we need to be looking. Please fly your same routing with a default aircraft. Thus far none of us have been able to duplicate this, and no other customers are writing in such complaints, so this seems pretty isolated at the moment and we're going to need all the help we can get from you.

 

Thanks for your ongoing help, Cameron.

 

I will re-install SkyMAXX and do the test flight again with the default KingAir, real weather and return my observations.

 

Thanks as well for your input, Ben. Much appreciated.

 

Top customer support. Like it lots.

 

Thanks

 

Stu

[bunchy]

Cameron,

 

I have compiled a chart of my RAM usage.

 

 

Just to explain the chart:

 

Column 1 is the flightplan (I reckon you already guessed that)

Column 2 shows system RAM usage at each waypoint using a SASL aircraft but no SkyMAXX/Gizmo64

Column 3 shows system RAM usage at each waypoint using a default non SASL aircraft with SkyMAXX and Gizmo64.

 

You can see that the RAM usage steadily climbs throughout the flight and culminates in this message:

 

 

This out of memory occurred whilst compiling column 3 with the C90.

 

These are my SkyMAXX settings

 

 

Hope this sheds a little light on whether the seat of the problem lies with SASL or SkyMAXX/Gizmo64.

 

Thanks

 

Good luck

 

Stu

Edited December 11, 2013 by bunchy

[sundog]

bunchy, does this only happen when you are running with real weather on?

[arb65912]

I believe that the real weather has nothing to do with that.

 

If I understand it right, SM Pro takes the given weather conditions from whatever XP is set to, VATSIM or internal weather option and processes it it's own way.

 

Cameron and John, is that how it works?

 

As far as VATSIM weather, I do not know details but VATSIM is forcing XP to run real weather, a little strange thing is that while on VATSIM , looking at the XP weather window will show it set uniformly to whole world, not to real weather as would be expected.

 

Despite what I said above, VATSIM forces the XP to use real weather , regardless of what one sets in XP weather window and SM Pro processes it per it's weather engine.

 

Cameron and John, please correct me if I am wrong, I do not want to provide false assumptions. 

 

Cheers, AJ 

[sundog]

I only asked about real weather because that would cause SkyMaxx to create new cloud layers and remove the old ones whenever you fly into new conditions. So if there was a leak associated with the underlying cloud layers, it might explain this.

 

However, I just ran some tests in SilverLining where I created and deleted a large cumulus cloud layer repeatedly and measured memory at each step - and there is no evidence of a leak there. I am also not really seeing the slow leak Ben reported when running X-Plane with SkyMaxx installed.

 

Looking at the chart bunchy put together more closely, the case without SkyMaxx also reaches a peak memory usage just before reaching the point where memory was exhausted. It seems that the case with SkyMaxx is following the same general memory usage pattern as the default weather case, it just consumes more memory in general than default - which is expected, given the additional detail we provide. To me, it doesn't look like a memory leak so much - it looks more like a system that was running on the edge of memory usage to begin with, and SkyMaxx just pushed it over that edge.

 

The best way to reduce SkyMaxx's memory usage is to reduce the cloud draw distance setting in the SkyMaxx configuration.

 

But, I'll step aside and let the pro's (Cameron / John / Ben) weigh in.

Edited December 11, 2013 by sundog

[bunchy]

bunchy, does this only happen when you are running with real weather on?

Yes, I only use real weather

 

Stu

[bunchy]

I guess there's no break throughs with my out of memory problem, then?

 

Stu

[Ben Russell]

Unfortunately no significant progress.

 

I did a heap of development work using Gizmo during the last week or so; open for hours at a time with multiple script-reboots.

I had SkyMAXX installed, activated and rendering some nice clouds effects.

 

I saw a maximum ram usage of 3.89 gb.....

 

 

I don't consider this item closed, but I don't really have anything solid to chase down either.

 

 

I've just done a quick review of your Log.txt file in the first post of the thread.

 

You have SASL installed incorrectly.

 

Delete the folder: E:\AAA_Laminar/X-Plane 10/Resources/plugins/sasl/

 

SASL is an aircraft-specific plugin and should only ever be installed or used when it is inside X-Plane/Aircraft/ProductFolder/plugins/

 

 

I expect this will resolve your fault. Please let us know, the issue is being monitored..

[arb65912]

Ben and Stu,

 

I am curious about how is that possible to have SASL installed in plugins folder. 

When one installs the plane that uses SASL, it gets unzipped and placed in Aircraft directory and SASL should be inside of the airplane folder, right?

 

Cheers, AJ 

[bunchy]

Ben and AJ,

 

I was pointed to this mistake earlier.

 

I had already deleted the SASL folder from my plugin folder, so it now only resides in my carenado B58 folder. Out of Memory problems were still noted.

 

 

I'm not really sure how it ended up in the plugin folder in the 1st place but it's gone now.

 

I have been flying X Plane with just the default clouds for now, with no out of memory issues.

 

As I have 8GB of RAM, I'm assuming it is generally enough RAM to have for XPlane ?

 

When I monitored RAM with SkyMAXX, i get the WIndows memory warning before the RAM is saturated. On my last flight it was warning me when my RAM usage was at 67%, not even 3/4 used? Windows always closes Xplane before RAM is anywhere near 100%.

 

I don't know what the normal RAM usage would normally be for Xplane, does anyone know?

 

Thanks

Stu

[arb65912]

Hi Stu,

 

Thank you for reply. I am very sorry that you experienced the problem.

 

I know it is not very nice and I was very reluctant when Ben and Cameron pointed out that I need to do a fresh XP install.

 

I was convinced it was not the case but after I finally followed the advice, Saab started working and SkyMaxx Pro is also working great.

 

As PITA as it is, maybe you should give it a try?

 

I left the old XP install as a backup and started fresh, then just copied over my scenery ( a lot). This way I got rid of many plug-ins I was not longer using.

 

I run now 64 bit exclusively.

 

Well, let us know and good luck, it has to be a way to fix it.

 

Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

Cheers, AJ 

[bunchy]

A full reinstall had crossed my mind. It's not too much of a PITA compared to FSX to reinstall!

 

The problem is clearly local to my machine.

 

I may do just that over the Christmas period, while my port and cheese settle.......burpy pardon.

 

Thanks

 

Stu

[bunchy]

The full reinstall of Xplane achieved absolutely nothing.

 

It looks like I need 16GB of RAM to successfully run this addon.

 

Same old out of memory after about 1.5 hours.

 

Back to default clouds again

 

Stu

[arb65912]

I am sorry to hear that, Stu.... we know that great things can be achieved in XP but it is so computer power hungry. Maybe more memory is the option for Christmas?    Cheers, AJ 

[Ben Russell]

Had another look... let X-Plane run for a while all by itself with SkyMAXX Pro activated and running.

 

Definite leak of about 20 megs every 3 minutes or about 400 megs an hour.

 

I can't understand why your leak is so aggressive but I have some good leads on how to pursue what I can find.

 

Thank you very much for your patience thus far, hopefully we can resolve this with a patch soon.

[Ben Russell]

Tweaked some code so that Mac/Win/Lin all share the same code path.

 

This gives me a more accurate test environment on my Mac...

 

Now seeing a leak that "lost" 120mb in the first 8 minutes.

 

 

I still find it strange that no one else sees such a dramatic problem.

[Ben Russell]

After 29mins 30seconds code had leaked nearly 940mb.

 

Definite problem.

 

 

Now to try and fix it... 

 

 

Still don't know why more people aren't complaining about it. 

[pryoski]

Still don't know why more people aren't complaining about it.

 

I'll complain. Vociferously, if it helps hehe.

[bunchy]

Ben,

 

You've made me a happy man.

 

Thank you so much for all your hard work in this.

Thanks also to everyone else who has helped with their advice.

 

I can relax now, knowing it will be fixed at some point in the future.

 

Thanks again

 

Smiling Stu

 

Merry Christmas everyone!

[bunchy]

Ben,

 

Am I correct in assuming the new 1.2 update doesn't include a fix for the memory leak you found?

 

Thanks

 

Stu

[Cameron]

Ben,

Am I correct in assuming the new 1.2 update doesn't include a fix for the memory leak you found?

Thanks

Stu

Correct.

[Ben Russell]

Confident that I have isolated the offending code causing the memory leak, now to fix it.

[alexcolka]

Great news I'm on the memory leak issue too. Hoping for a SMP v1.3 really soon.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[arb65912]

Fantastic news, Ben.

 

Good luck with the fix.

 

Cheers, AJ 

[Ben Russell]

Leak fixed.

 

 

No error with Gizmo64.plugin

 

The error was in the Activation GUI scripts that I wrote for Gizmo... 

The scripts were being dumb about how they loaded the product icon PNG files, they're being reloaded over and over again...

 

 

Time to put all the scripts back together in "retail ready" packaging again... will have an update to resolve this issue posted as soon as possible.

 

 

Standby..