X-Plane 10 Crashes with version 3.1.1

[daemotron]

Is it a driver crash? What exactly happens? Are you overclocking anything?

No, no overclocking, just working with default hardware configuration. The crash itself is a classical CTD (no specific message, just Windows telling the application doesn't work normally anymore). It did not happen with SMP 3.1 (without RWC); I will play a bit around to see if RWC is involved.

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[K4bel123]

I´m really disappointed now. I reduced the SMP cloud draw distance by more than 1/3 (now around 5500 sq kms) as well as other X-Plane rendering options. Still this Nvidia Open GL message often appears and X-Plane crashes. There were nearly no clouds at all around me. I don´t know what to do. Can´t fly X-Plane anymore. If this issue doesn´t go away, sadly I´ll have to ask for a refund.

Log.txt

[K4bel123]

The weird thing is: I can set the cloud draw distance to any position between full left and full right but the available VRAM doesn´t change... It does so randomly (sometimes 350mb left, sometimes 70mb left)

[sundog]

Nothing in the log you sent implicates SkyMaxx Pro as causing your crash at all. SMP is not the only thing that affects your VRAM. The issue could have to do with your custom scenery, your plane, or something else.

I would recommend installing a clean version of X-Plane to a new folder, add SMP, and see if things are stable. If so, we know SMP is not the root cause.

[K4bel123]

I might do this as soon as I can (quite busy currently). But I'm convinced it's got to do with the SMP 3.1 update because this Nvidia Open GL crash had never happened to me before this update. Literally directly after installing it it started. I'm now getting this CTD with an average of nearly once per started flight.

[sundog]

What we are trying to explain is that you may just have too much stuff installed, and smp 3.1 may have just pushed your system over the edge  (as opposed to there being a bug in smp ). Are you flying over custom scenery, HD mesh, etc? 

[K4bel123]

I use HD Mesh V3 in a few areas but the CTD happened in areas with and without it. I looked at my X-Plane rendering options and it always says that about 625mb VRAM are being used. I have 2gb in total. I don't believe that Skymaxx can take all the rest of it... When I reduced my texture revolution, X-Plane said 420mb VRAM in use but Skymaxx said before and after that step that 70mb of VRAM were left.

[sundog]

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.

 

[K4bel123]

Well the problem is: Whatever compromise I make, Skymaxx always shows about the same amount of VRAM that is left. E.g. like I said I set my texture resolution one step down. X-Plane showed me 200mb more VRAM left, whereas SMP still showed me about the same 70mb in total left. I also tried reducing the cloud draw distance within SMP to the absolute minimum (and for a test to absolute maximum). There was no effect (and the area was a cloudy one). So, I'd like to make a compromise to continue flying but it's simply not possible.

[sundog]

One customer reported here that he had to reboot in order to get NVidia's driver out of a bad state with memory management. Might be worth a shot.

Our clouds actually don't use much VRAM at all if you're using default settings.

You might try the "medium" preset in the rendering settings just as an experiment; it frees up a good amount of memory for me.

[K4bel123]

I'm gonna try these things out once I'm at home. Thank you very much for your kind support!

[K4bel123]

I´ve followed your advice and so far there seems to be a bit more VRAM space. I´m gonna have a testflight in the next few days (hopefully with the IXEG 733 ). I really hope that these crashes might go away.

[sizziano]

I would also recommend doing a fresh install of your drivers after cleaning them out. Look up Display Driver Uninstaller and run it in safe mode.

[daemotron]

OK, I have invested some time in testing. From my side, I couldn't find a specific issue with SMP or RWC. Instead, I discovered that my GPU load went up to 100% when running X-Plane, entailing a rise in CPU temperature to up to 85°C (still within TDP limits with a max of 91°C, but mind, I have a new computer with a Skylake i7 CPU and a Titan X) - so of course I was wondering what's causing this. With a lot of monitoring data recording and a round dozen of CTDed flights, I finally found out that there seems to be an issue with ansiotropic filtering. Once I disable it, the GPU load stays within "normal" limits and the temperature remains below 80°C, even when using RWC with a coverage of ~10k sqkm.

I don't know what exactly the problem is (on an older system with a GTX 780 Ti and five years old Xeon CPUs anisotropic filtering did work, so possibly it's either it's a problem specific to the GeForce 900 series or an issue with the current 364.72 driver version).

Edited April 19, 2016 by daemotron

[Defiance_co]

Hiya,

Not got my sweaty mitts on a titan yet, but i would go mess carefully after reading up on it and make a better fan profile

I'm a water-cooling addict who came from phase-change cooling, both drop your temps way better than aircooling, but gpu-wise things get expensive fast watercooling

Like anything cpu/gpu wise, the more you have them doing the more heat has to be displaced

The likely theory i have for older gpu's not heating up so much is they were slightly larger dies and nowhere near as much going on in them as the most modern marvels, so as modern cards cram more in in smaller spaces things get nice n warm

My old r9 290x hits 100% even though i have vram to spare, it's just one of things as such

I would google titan x custom fan profiles and go from there, before i went full watercooled i would profile my fan/s if i could

If you haven't, you know those titans clock pretty nicely from what i've seen/read ;-)

Ohh, if your gpu make/brand allows, think about getting better thermal paste, i bet there's many howto's out there, the 'generic' cpu/gpu paste can be pretty thick and pretty cwap actually, ohh and if you go this route beware, you will need new thermal pads of the correct thickness

If/When i get 980ti or push the boat out and get a titan, i wil first reel back from open wallet surgery, then redo thermal paste n pads, then watercool

Food for thought, but really as long as the gpu isn't throttling from what i've read at 100% usage the 85c aint that unrealistic, and may i ask also ? is it a reference design single fan ? as i saw on yt a comparison, and believe it or not the ref fan design outbeat a fancy fan layout ;-)

Just to add, if you've got a spare 120mm fan, try and get it to add airflow on the backside of the gpu ;-) you'd be shocked how hot that side gets without a backplate to shed the heat

Have Fun

Tony

 

[SkyCoyote]

Returning from the water cooler back to SkyMaxx Pro...

Reading through this thread it seems that SkyMaxx Pro VRAM hunger is the theme. My hardware is a Mac 3.5 GHz 6-Core IntelXeon E5, 16 GB 1867 Mhz DDR3, Graphics AMD FirePro 3GB. 

Shortly after upgrading SMP 3 to 3.1 it became necessary to revert back to v3.0. When I  read that the v3.1.1 update implemented handling VRAM more efficiently I gave it a try. I once again received the waring dialog telling me that VRAM was dangerously low. Not wanting to sacrifice terrain appearance for cloud detail, I’ve gone back to 3.0.

[Tinamus]

1 hour ago, SkyCoyote said:

Returning from the water cooler back to SkyMaxx Pro...

Reading through this thread it seems that SkyMaxx Pro VRAM hunger is the theme. My hardware is a Mac 3.5 GHz 6-Core IntelXeon E5, 16 GB 1867 Mhz DDR3, Graphics AMD FirePro 3GB. 

Shortly after upgrading SMP 3 to 3.1 it became necessary to revert back to v3.0. When I  read that the v3.1.1 update implemented handling VRAM more efficiently I gave it a try. I once again received the waring dialog telling me that VRAM was dangerously low. Not wanting to sacrifice terrain appearance for cloud detail, I’ve gone back to 3.0.

It's the same for me.

[K4bel123]

It seems that after various attempts reducing my texture resolution, it might have finally worked to give sufficient VRAM space. I´m so gonna test this out at this awesome weekend!

[sundog]

Just FYI, SMP 3.1's slightly increased VRAM demands exist in order to let us reduce the "stutters" that happened in 3.0 when new weather conditions were loaded. So by going back to 3.0, you're choosing to live with those stutters in exchange for getting a little more VRAM headroom back.

 

[K4bel123]

I realized that by reducing the texture resolution not only the ground resolution but also some textures in the cockpit were reduced so that they´re unreadable now. Is there a way to make an exception for these textures? Otherwise I´ll have to go back to SMP 3.0... Where can I download 3.0 now?

[Cameron]

9 minutes ago, K4bel123 said:

I realized that by reducing the texture resolution not only the ground resolution but also some textures in the cockpit were reduced so that they´re unreadable now. Is there a way to make an exception for these textures?

There's a setting somewhere in Plane Maker for this from what I recall.

[K4bel123]

But is there a way for me to go back to 3.0 if it doesn´t work?

EDIT: Still have it in my downloads

Edited April 21, 2016 by K4bel123

[SkyCoyote]

1 hour ago, K4bel123 said:

But is there a way for me to go back to 3.0 if it doesn´t work?

EDIT: Still have it in my downloads

Good luck with that, the version available is 3.1.1, not 3.0.

I've pulled my 3.0 version from a Time Machine backup. The only issue there is that it can be a bit of a guessing game as to where all the pieces are located.

[kneighbour]

I get the same error if I wind the Cloud draw distance up too far beyond 10,000 sq km. Reinstalling does not help as it leaves the config file in the folder. So once you get the error, you cannot load XP. I guess if you delete the config file it should reset to default values, and then allow XP to load again. And SMP reports HEAPS of free video ram (multiple gigs).

I actually copied across the SMP files from a Demo version of XP that I also have installed. That allowed me to load XP again otherwise it simply would not load (CTD every time).

Edited April 21, 2016 by kneighbour
more info

[sundog]

If you just delete the settings.dat file, SMP will rewrite a new one with default settings when it starts up. No need to dredge up a backup copy.