X-Plane 10 Crashes with version 3.1.1

[Aerospace]

So, I've been successful using SkyMaxx v2 with little to no problems. Upgraded to v3, and every version usually crashes within 20 minutes. With v3.0 and v3.1.1, the crash was always Silverlining, however with v3.1.2, I can get it to crash within 10 minutes, and this time it says --=={This application has crashed because of the plugin: SkyMaxx Pro}==--

Not sure what has changed, but something sure has. Log file attached.

Thanks.

Log.txt

Update: installed the latest Nvidia video drivers (364.72) and now X-Plane won't even start.
Log2.txt

Edited April 25, 2016 by Aerospace

[sundog]

Start by completely un-installing your video drivers, and re-installing them.

Are you overclocking your CPU or GPU? If so, try disabling that.

If you increased the default settings in SMP, try deleting the resources/plugins/silverlining/settings.dat file, which will put you back to defaults. You may have set things too high for your system to handle.

Beyond that, I'm afraid you are probably asking too much of your GTX560 video card. I believe that is a one gigabyte card, and in addition to X-Plane you are running a lot of custom scenery and aircraft. You're almost certainly running out of video memory which is probably the root cause of your crashes. A 1GB video card is the minimum system requirement for X-Plane, as soon as you start installing add-ons, you're pretty much guaranteed to run out of memory. If you want to run X-Plane with lots of add-ons, you should consider purchasing a video card with more memory (8GB would be my recommendation.)

 

Edited April 25, 2016 by sundog

[Aerospace]

Thanks for the quick reply!

So, yeah, it's a 2GB card, so I'm sure it's a VRAM issue. Excluding X-Plane's VRAM requirements, what are your minimum specs for just SkyMaxx in the VRAM department?

Thanks,
Jim

[Marcusmmc]

On ‎4‎/‎18‎/‎2016 at 5:57 AM, sundog said:

SkyMaxx's measurement of VRAM is much more accurate than what X-Plane reports. X-Plane is only telling you how much memory is used by its textures, but there are many other things that use VRAM. SkyMaxx actually queries your video driver for the real amount.

So yes, you are simply running out of VRAM - 70MB isn't enough to maintain good performance. You'll need to find a compromise with your settings in order to keep at least a few hundred megabytes available.

 

I recently started getting crashes after installing 3.1.2. Interestingly enough, I can't find the exact cause in the log.txt or the windows event viewer. However, in the log.txt the last entries are for SkyMaxx. You say 70MB isn't enough. I checked my settings and I have 400MB+. What is enough?

 

Marcus

[sundog]

1 hour ago, Marcusmmc said:

I recently started getting crashes after installing 3.1.2. Interestingly enough, I can't find the exact cause in the log.txt or the windows event viewer. However, in the log.txt the last entries are for SkyMaxx. You say 70MB isn't enough. I checked my settings and I have 400MB+. What is enough?

 

Marcus

When you "checked your settings", that was SkyMaxx Pro's settings screen, right? The VRAM usage displayed in X-Plane itself only reflects texture usage and nothing else.

If Skymaxx Pro says you have 400MB free, then I don't think VRAM is the problem. Are you overclocking your CPU or GPU by any chance? If that's not it, please post your log.txt and we'll see if there is anything that might give us a clue in there.

 

[Marcusmmc]

19 hours ago, sundog said:

When you "checked your settings", that was SkyMaxx Pro's settings screen, right? The VRAM usage displayed in X-Plane itself only reflects texture usage and nothing else.

If Skymaxx Pro says you have 400MB free, then I don't think VRAM is the problem. Are you overclocking your CPU or GPU by any chance? If that's not it, please post your log.txt and we'll see if there is anything that might give us a clue in there.

 

Yes, I was inside of the SkyMaxx settings. I fiddled with some more settings to try to eliminate the crashes but to no avail. I have now near 200 MB available. There is no overclocking, I just have a pretty beefy system. I've noticed every time it crashes, it's a similar last entry to the log file. I'm thinking of uninstalling SkyMaxx and flying the same flight to eliminate possibilities.

 

Marcus

Log.txt

[Marcusmmc]

So, I've uninstalled SkyMaxx and it still crashes. I've uninstalled all my custom scenery and it crashes. I've uninstalled custom databases and it crashes. I'm at a loss. Looks like I will get a reinstall of X-plane.

[ONDR4.cz]

Probably had my 1st SkyMaxx crash yesterday (log included). The crash happened approx. 30 mins into the flight with RWC + IXEG 737. Everything was very smooth up to that point.

I'm still not sure how the available VRAM meter works, because regardless of my x-plane settings it still shows roughly the same value. I have 2GB of VRAM on my GTX 660Ti. Let's say I turn down the rendering settings to the point I get rock solid 40 fps -> XPL rend. settings shows VRAM usage around 600-800MB, SkyMaxx shows around 100MB free. How is this possible? Even when approx. 200MB are taken by the system I should still have around a 1GB of VRAM free. Now, I turn up my XPL settings quite a bit - XPL shows that 2500MB VRAM is used (at this point I'm still getting stable fps around 25-40 depending on the view) but SkyMaxx still shows like 100MB free. Now, if I use nvidia driver 35x.xx, it shows something like -600MB in both scenarios, but I'm still getting the same frame rate as before... (35x.xx is crap BTW, the only one that doesn't eventually crash with "Unable to recover from kernel exception, code 3" is 337.88 but Win 10 will eventually update it no matter how hard I try, including some PowerShell tricks).

Log_SM crash.txt

 

EDIT: I just read the posts above mine and it seems I'm not the only one with the same amount of available VRAM always shown available. I'll try some of the advice and will see what it'll do but I've tried several clean reinstalls of the nvidia driver to no avail (the VRAM available shown by SkyMaxx is VERY dependent on the driver used BTW).

Edited April 27, 2016 by ONDR4.cz

[sundog]

>  XPL rend. settings shows VRAM usage around 600-800MB, SkyMaxx shows around 100MB free. How is this possible?

24 minutes ago, ONDR4.cz said:

XPL rend. settings shows VRAM usage around 600-800MB, SkyMaxx shows around 100MB free. How is this possible? Even when approx. 200MB are taken by the system I should still have around a 1GB of VRAM free.

XPlane's rendering settings info only displays VRAM consumed by X-Plane's textures - there are lots of other things that consume video memory. The amount of VRAM displayed in Skymaxx Pro is far more accurate, and should agree with what you would see with a utility such as GPU-Z.

So, if Skymaxx Pro says you're down to 100MB of VRAM, then you are indeed running out of VRAM, and that is the most likely cause of your crash.

A 2GB card isn't really enough to run X-Plane with lots of add-on scenery, planes, and add-ons such as ours. You're going to have to make some compromises with your settings or the amount of custom scenery you are using in order to fit within your VRAM budget.

 

[ONDR4.cz]

Yeah, I guess you are right, the thing is I was used to associate running out of VRAM with stutters and low framerates. Running out of memory while having 60+ fps (just played with the settings now) seems kinda strange. Nevertheless, by turning off extended DSF, reducing number of objects and texture resolution to "high" I can get SkyMaxx to show around 200MB of available VRAM. Can't get much more than this without making it look like FS2000 so hopefully nvidia will release GTX1070 early in the summer so I can finally enjoy all the add-ons in their full glory.