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Posted

Hi Frank,

 

I will try a different aircraft. The custom scenery I have (that I know of) is mostly airports, glacier max, sky max & urban max. I just trashed some basically empty files for x-plane 9 and glacier max. If you think I should get rid of some airport scenery or anything else please let me know. I truly appreciate the help.

 

Andy

Posted (edited)

The other question I have which my apply to VRAM is it seems when I do short hops (E.G. KGJKDEN) I have no issues. But if I do a 3.5 hr flight from (E.G.KLAXKORD) I have more issues. Does VRAM play into flight length?  I was just sent this article from an X-Plane moderator. Applies to Mac people like me.

 

http://developer.x-plane.com/2014/11/diagnosing-crashes-in-x-plane-10-30/

Edited by brucie1dog
Posted (edited)

I guess I'd say the longer you fly, the more likely it is that whatever odd circumstance that leads to your crash will happen. Maybe you're flying into a particularly memory-intensive area of custom scenery. Maybe you're flying into weather that causes us to generate a large number of clouds. Maybe there is some specific object in an add-on airport that causes trouble once it comes into view. Or maybe it's something else entirely that triggers the weird Yosemite issues that the blog post you linked to mentions.

 

That's a very useful post by the way and not one I had seen before. Everyone should read that. One big takeaway is that X-Plane is prone to crash randomly under MacOS Yosemite, and fixes for it are not expected until X-Plane 10.35 is released. If you're on Yosemite, all bets are off.

Edited by sundog
Posted

The sad part of it is I have been talking to X-Plane customer support since Yosemite came out and no one really said I wasn't the only one who was having problems.

 

Hi,

 

I am on Yosemite myself and I can tell you that there are threads entirely dedicated to x-plane problems under Yosemite. Just search the internet carefully and you'll find those threads in other forums, if not on this one.

 

I do have vram problems but they don't cause crashes, they rather send my fps to single figure numbers, like 4 or 6, but this may be because I have osx and x-plane residing in a SSD, which may smoothe things out when the computer starts swapping. Usually I can bring fps to decent numbers by either pointing the camera to the aircraft floor, so that x-plane doesn't need to draw scenery, or switching to an exterior camera, like "forward view with nothing"; I belive in this case the improvement comes from x-plane not having to bother with the aircraft itself. Until version 10.35 comes out, hopefully curing most Yosemite issues, that's about all we can do.

 

José

Posted (edited)

I have also had a few crashes of the apple mail program and safari over the past couple of months with Yosemite. Never can get a straight answer out of Apple after a few thousand calls they have expedited my issues to the engineering department. I should hear back in the next few days and will let you know what they say the reason for the crashes are. As for X-Plane, I just wish they would have told me there were compatibility issues so I would have known not to upgrade to Yosemite or to expect a rough ride till 10.35 comes out. That's all!

Edited by brucie1dog
Posted

Just got off the phone with a Sr. Technical Support Rep at Apple. We went through several steps to repair disk permissions per the Engineering department. He said mine seemed to be corrupted. Hopefully this will stop some of the crashing. About to do an KSNAKORD test flight. There's a 50% possibility on this particular flight generating a crash before today. I will keep you guys posted.

Posted

Well so much for Apples permissions corrupt disk  permissions theory. X_Plane just crashed again. We'll see if Apple has anything new to says now. I was able to fly  all this before it crashed again KLAX to KORD to KPHX and 40 minutes towards KSEA.

Posted

Well so much for Apples permissions corrupt disk  permissions theory. X_Plane just crashed again. We'll see if Apple has anything new to says now. I was able to fly  all this before it crashed again KLAX to KORD to KPHX and 40 minutes towards KSEA.

Hi,

 

I am trying to fully characterize this to report to Laminar; would you please perform an experiment for me? Could you fly the same route but rather than stay in the plane use the view "Forward With HUD", in my installation is "Shift W". I am hoping you don't get a crash if you are not in the plane and in that case a theory begins to take form.

 

Thanks.

José

Posted

I just spoke to Apple Tech Support.And we transferred data from my system to Apple  Engineering. It will take a few days to see if they can discover the latest issue. Jose, I have begun the same routing as yesterday and will stay in "Shift W" mode. I'll keep you posted.

 

Andy

  • Upvote 1
Posted

Mission complete in Shift W mode with out any crashes! Segments flown KLAXKORD KORDKPHX KPHXKSEA 

 

Right  :)

 

Theory is you are running out of VRAM! This shouldn't happen but it does! By using an external camera you are telling x-plane not to bother drawing the plane itself and so it uses less video memory. Let's see if Laminar can come up with something to fix it.

 

José

Posted (edited)

As I mentioned in the beginning I am not the most technical astute person. I do believe I understand what you are saying about the VRAM though. So whether X-Plane is drawing the plane or the cockpit it's eating up the VRAM? Which eats more VRAM drawing the plane or the cockpit? On the flights I did yesterday I was in the Shift W mode with the exception of for the  5 minutes after takeoff and about 10 minutes prior to landing. I did sneak back in to the cockpit periodically to adjust heading and speed. Originally I thought X-Plane was eating up the VRAM when crossing the mountains but then I also had crashes in the middle of rural Illinois & Nebraska. I never experience these crashes at the beginning of a flight or towards landing once I have started my decent. So I ask does altitude play into the VRAM theory. Also I would think I would have crashed over LA or NYC with all the buildings and scenery. Any explanations or thoughts on this?

Edited by brucie1dog
Posted

Hi,

 

I don't yet understand why x-plane exhausts VRAM in OS X Yosemite and I don't think anyone does. I monitor my VRAM with Apple's OpenGL Driver Monitor and I can see sometimes it goes over the top but it has been difficult to exactly replicate the situations. Furthermore, Laminar would prefer if those situations were reported with a clean installation, completely free from add-ons and scenery. I've been able to produce one of those situations of VRAM exhaustion with a clean installation but when I tried to replicate it did not happen again.

I don't have crashes, though, but that is probably because my OS and X-Plane are both in a SSD, which makes memory swapping much quicker than with a hard disk. What I do get is fps drops to 4 or 6, which is barely usable; my workaround then, is to point the camera to the aircraft floor, so that no scenery is drawn, or go to Shift W mode. I know that Laminar is on to it, although I believe they still don't know what is going on and whether it is an X-Plane or an OS X bug.

 

José

Posted

The machine I use is a Mac Book Pro configured like this. So if you have any suggestions I appreciate it.

 

 

  • 2.8GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
  • 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
  • 512GB PCIe-based Flash Storage
  • Intel Iris Pro Graphics and NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB of GDDR5 memory
  •  
Posted

Hi,

 

How did you install SkyMaxx Pro? I notice it is listed under Custom Scenery packages and I don't understand what it is doin there! The same with UrbanMaxx! Apart from that it doesn't tell me a lot, but I am no expert.

 

José 

Posted

Well your log doesn't actually say why it crashed. Usually if it's a genuine bug in SkyMaxx Pro it would clearly state so at the end of the log file - but yours just ends suddenly.

 

What I am seeing in your log however is consistent with the running-out-of-VRAM theory. You not only have a lot of custom scenery going on, you're also flying into some extremely demanding weather conditions. Three layers of large, dense cumulus clouds are being called for in this flight, and those clouds consume a decent amount of VRAM on their own. If you were already running low due to custom scenery, that could push you over the edge.

 

My recommendation is something's gotta go to preserve VRAM. Within Skymaxx Pro, you can turn down the cloud detail option, or set "overcast quality" to low to save memory. Ditching custom scenery could help a lot. You could turn off HDR, or turn down antialiasing. Any of those should save VRAM, and it's up to you what tradeoffs you want to make.

Posted

Hi Frank,

 

His log has these lines:

 

I found the following scenery packages (prioritized in this order):
  0 Custom Scenery/SkyMaxx Pro 2.0/
  1 Custom Scenery/KSYR/
  2 Custom Scenery/KLIT/
  3 Custom Scenery/klit_xp10/
  4 Custom Scenery/MKJS_Sangster International Airport/
  5 Custom Scenery/CYQB - Quebec International/
  6 Custom Scenery/CYUL - Montreal/
  7 Custom Scenery/CYWG - Winnipeg International/
  8 Custom Scenery/CYYZ Toronto Pearson Intl (ISDG)/
  9 Custom Scenery/KDSM.v8/
 10 Custom Scenery/Urban_Maxx_Extreme_V2_3D/
 
The first priority in custom scenery is SkyMaxx Pro, which isn't a scenery package at all. This syggests there may be serious problems in his installation, both with sceneries and plugins, and I think it needs a thorough revision.
 
José
Posted (edited)

Now I am really embarrassed! So here's what I did. Cloud Detail option was already set on low, Overcast Quality now set to low, HDR was already set to off and  I turned down antialiasing to 4 from 8.   I have using the Metar for weather. I have to admit I do like the custom scenery. As far as the location of Sky Maxx Pro and Urban Max,  where should they be? I did get rid of quite  a bit of custom scenery. Is there anything on the list that it's OK for me  to keep? I appreciate the help guys!

 

Andy

 

Abu Dhabi(UAE) with all airports

Arizona

Atlanta

Baltimore_Washington

Beirut

Chicago

Chicago Landmarks

CYYZ Toronto Pearson Intl (ISDG)

Dallas_FtWorth

Denver

Dubai

Florida_South

France-Paris Orly-LFPO

Frankfurt

Gateway To The Rockies

Global Airports

Hawaii

Houston

KFLL Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l

KSEA Demo Area

KSEA Demo Terrain

LAX_Central

London

London EGLL

longbeach copy

Los_Angeles

LOWI Demo Area

LOWI Demo overlay

LOWI Demo terrain

New_England_South

NYC

NYEXPRO

OIII Tehran

OpenSceneryX

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Phoenix - KPHX 2

Salinas

SaltLake

SanDiego

SanFran_Seattle

SkyMaxx Pro 2.0

SLLP

Sochi

Urban_Maxx_Extreme_V2_3D

urbanmaxx

Gizmo64.zip

scenery_packs.ini

Edited by brucie1dog

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