SkyMAXX pro is Unusable for Me

[jdb2]

Ever since the 1.1 update of SkyMAXX Pro I've been experiencing several problems that make it unusable for me.

 

The first problem is that it pauses and locks up the main X-Plane flight loop every 5 seconds to 5 minutes and each "pause" ( lock-up ) can last from seconds to many minutes to an indeterminate amount of time.

Here I mean that the mouse cursor changes to Window's little animated circular busy indicator and X-Plane stops responding.

 

The second problem is that these pauses will often crash X-Plane with the following error : 

 

---------------------------NVIDIA OpenGL Driver---------------------------The NVIDIA OpenGL driver lost connection with the displaydriver and is unable to continue. The application must close.Error code: 2Would you like to visit http://www.nvidia.com/page/support.html for help?---------------------------Yes   No   ---------------------------

 

The third problem is that the above two problems manifest themselves whenever I make changes to the SkyMAXX Pro configuration within X-plane. After hitting apply, it can take *forever* before X-plane is responsive again. Also even after waiting all that time, when I close the plugin configuration window, it will take *forever* again, with X-plane basically locked-up, until the window finally closes.

 

I'm using the latest SkyMAXX Pro 1.2 update and my system configuration is X-Plane 10.25 64-bit, Intel Core i7 3970X Extreme Edition CPU, 64GB of DDR3-2133 9-11-11-31, EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked Graphics Card, 2x 256GB OCZ Vectors in RAID-0 and an Areca ARC-1882-IX-12 SAS 2.0 / SATA III / 6.0 Gbps hardware RAID card ( with 4GB of ECC cache and BBU ) which controls my 12TB 6x 2TB WD Black RAID-0 array where X-plane is stored.

 

Thank you,

 

jdb2

 

EDIT : I'm using Windows 7 Ultimate x64

 

The relevant log files are attached :

Log.txt

GizmoLog.txt

Edited December 22, 2013 by jdb2

[jdb2]

I use WinDbg x64 and attached to X-Plane while SkyMAXX was hung/paused and generated a two backtraces. See the attached file :

 

Regards,

 

jdb2

xpdebug.txt

[jdb2]

I use WinDbg x64 and attached to X-Plane while SkyMAXX was hung/paused and generated a two backtraces. See the attached file :

 

Regards,

 

jdb2

 

Note that these backtraces where generated while SkyMAXX was hung at "apply" in its configuration window. Also, I can reliably generate the OpenGL crash from the configuration window particularly if if max the settings out.

 

This behavior differs from 1.1 where it would usually just take a long time.

 

Regards,

 

jdb2

Edited December 22, 2013 by jdb2

[JohnMAXX]

I cannot look at right now but have you tried the 1.2 update?

Edit....my bad I see you are using 1.2

Edited December 22, 2013 by JohnMAXX

[Cameron]

I cannot look at right now but have you tried the 1.2 update?

 

He's using 1.2 as stated in original post.

 

We're looking into it. First glance this seems bad driver related, but I'm not going to pin it there just yet.

[Cameron]

Okay, we've reviewed this now and it's come down to a few possibilities:

 

1. Potentially bad drivers - this would be on Nvidia. It's possible that we are tapping into something on the GPU that X-Plane typically does not, thus the reason you didn't have the issue before. 

 

2. Potentially hitting a fill-rate wall. The 580 was a good card (especially for X-Plane 9), but when X-Plane 10 came out the fill-rate issue became a big factor, and this card does get hit hard with it (I had the very same card myself). You have such an amazing config, this will likely be your next thing to upgrade down the line so that you're not GPU bound, I'm sure.

 

Anyways, if it's a fill-rate issue and we are filling up your card beyond what it can handle with current settings, there's one option you can try (side note: folks, this is not an invitation to try this with the exception of the thread starter here)...

 

1. From your desktop, go to your system control panel / system and security / system / advanced system settings

 

2. Click on "environment variables"

 

3. Click "new", enter SILVERLINING_NO_VBO for the name, and 1 for the value.

 

4. Restart Windows.

 

What happens now?

[sqrt(-1)]

You may also want to disable power management in the Nvidia control panel.  (Set it to "Prefer Maximum Performance")

[jdb2]

Okay, we've reviewed this now and it's come down to a few possibilities:

 

1. Potentially bad drivers - this would be on Nvidia. It's possible that we are tapping into something on the GPU that X-Plane typically does not, thus the reason you didn't have the issue before. 

 

2. Potentially hitting a fill-rate wall. The 580 was a good card (especially for X-Plane 9), but when X-Plane 10 came out the fill-rate issue became a big factor, and this card does get hit hard with it (I had the very same card myself). You have such an amazing config, this will likely be your next thing to upgrade down the line so that you're not GPU bound, I'm sure.

 

Anyways, if it's a fill-rate issue and we are filling up your card beyond what it can handle with current settings, there's one option you can try (side note: folks, this is not an invitation to try this with the exception of the thread starter here)...

 

1. From your desktop, go to your system control panel / system and security / system / advanced system settings

 

2. Click on "environment variables"

 

3. Click "new", enter SILVERLINING_NO_VBO for the name, and 1 for the value.

 

4. Restart Windows.

 

What happens now?

 

The environment variable seems to have completely fixed the problem! Now the pauses are very infrequent and when they do occur they last only a few seconds ( and that's on maxed out settings! ). SkyMAXX Pro v1.2 is awesome!

 

I know I need to upgrade my GPU but I'm waiting until March/April 2014 when Nvidia releases the desktop consumer Maxwell cards ( 800 series -- the 800M series is already confirmed for a February launch. ).

 

Just one more question : How does the environment variable affect rendering quality?

 

Thanks for all your support!

 

Regards,

 

jdb2

Edited December 23, 2013 by jdb2

[jdb2]

You may also want to disable power management in the Nvidia control panel.  (Set it to "Prefer Maximum Performance")

 

Yes, it was already set to that.  ( I also have PowerMizer turned off in the registry )

 

jdb2

Edited December 23, 2013 by jdb2

[Cameron]

Just one more question : How does the environment variable affect rending quality?

 

You're not losing any rendering quality. This just forces an alternate method for updating vertices. It's not as efficient speed wise, thus we don't make this default. You don't have much choice, and as you can see, it's not too inefficient in the end.