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Where are my memory and frame rates going?

O

OBIO

Retired SOH Admin
I am having frame rate issues with FS9....not just one install...but across all 6 installs (2 Golden Wings, 2 Silver Wings, 2 "stock"...one of the stock is totally bone stock with just the FS9.1 update installed.

I have my frame rates locked at 25, and have been running a steady 24.8 to 25 FPS in all three views....with some VCs having a bit of a frame rate hit if they are very detailed with lots and lots of gauges. My frame rates drop a bit if I am over some scenery rich airports or cities....but since I mainly fly out of remote fields along the Pacific Northwest coast (Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska) this isn't a real issue.

For the last couple of days, my frame rates have been less than usual...ranging from 10 to 25 even when over open land with not real scenery detail to speak of. I have not changed any settings in my sims.

I have run full system sweeps using AVG Free, AD Aware and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware...and nothing has been found. Using the Task Manager to look at processes, it is still showing the 30 that are usually there...nothing new. Again using Task Manager and looking at memory usage, I see some oddity that I can't explain. I have 2gig of Ram installed in my system. After a fresh reboot and allowing the system to fully boot and stabilize, I have 1.68 gig of free RAM with Windows XP SP3 and the back ground stuff running. If I fire up FS9, fly a bit, shut down and recheck my free Ram, it is around 1.4 gig.....I can't explain why 200 plus meg of Ram less is free after running the sim than before.

Does anyone have any clue as to what might be going on? I just reformatted and rebuilt my OS a few weeks ago and don't want to go through that hassle again. My system is clean inside...no dust on the fans, no dust on the heat sinks...so it isn't a heat issue...plenty of circulation in my case.

OBIO
 
It's hard to tell what might be causing the memory usage you're describing. It's possible that one of the programs or services running in the background is consuming more memory than usual due to an update.

I have only one install of FS9 and am running the same framerate lock and levels as you. Unlike your setup, however, I am running with only 1 gig of ram.

I use FSAutoStart. After a reboot I average about 640 Mb of available memory, and FSAutosStart gives me up to 740 Mb or more of ram to run FS9.

On days when the wife is surfing a lot on the web, or if I'm running other programs such as MS Word, I start out with about 350 Mb of available ram. FSAutostart clears as much memory as possible to run FS9, so I seldom have to reboot.

In addition to shutting down background programs to free memory, it also shuts down services. For example I have Diskeeper running in the background to keep the HD defragmented, but shut it down when I run FS9. I also shut down any update services as they can start up at any time and ruin your FS9 flight.

You may want to look into FSAutoStart or the newer product, AlacrityPC. Both are by Ken Salter.

--WH
 
Ever since Norton bought AVG its been a hit or miss deal as the way I see it...


Why not completely uninstall AVG and see what happens...


Plus...if you did get a virus or Trojan, chances are that if its a new one out no freeware will pick it up untill the definations are updated for it..As freeware thats rather slow these days...

There are Trojans out that steal like 1/2 your ram and downclock your CPU too!
 
THe memory loss only happens when I fire up FS9...regardless of the install (GW3, Silver Wings, Stock). Prior to firing up the sim, I have 1.68 gig of free ram. Fire up the sim, fly, shut down, and my free ram has dropped to 1.4 gig. Prior to the sim and afterward, service count is 30.

I have uninstalled all my scenery from all installs, currently going through one pack at a time looking for duplicate bgl files, anything that could result in the slow down of my sim...but since this happens in a totally stock install with no addon planes or scenery or mesh....I don't think I will find the answer there.

While I am in the scenery looking around, I am consolidating it into larger packs. Taking all of the add on scenery that comes with Bill and Lynn Lyon's aircraft and putting them into one complete scenery package instead of 8 or 9 individual ones...have found about a dozen duplicated texture files. While not creating a huge savings in HD space, it will result in fewer files for my sim to have to read. The big savings will come when I get all of Leon Louis's scenery consolidated into one mega package....I know that each of his scenery packs have a lot of shared texture files....and with something like 100 scenery packs either installed or waiting to be installed, I am sure I will eliminate a ton of duplicated texture files...and possibly some duplicated scenery bgl files as well.

I had the Broussard up for a flight a bit ago, and frame rates were right where they should have been (24.8 to 25) in all three views.

OBIO
 
Don't know whats causing the frames drop but the memory drop is FS not releasing all the memory when it shuts down.
Try this, reboot, load FS and time the load. Load a flight and time the load. Shut down FS and repeat the loads and time them both, it should be faster because some of the files are still in memory.
 
I am experiencing much longer FS9 load time also. I first thought it was because my computer had gone over the safe limits of 15-16% hard drive free space. I found in the Kodak program on my computer well over a full gig of useless pictures my wife put on my machine. I dumped them to clean create more hard drive space, but the FS9 load time hasn't sped up any.

On my computer, the computer will suggest the computer may not defrag if the remaining hard drive free space falls below about 16% of total hard drive space.

Since I freed up more space and still no change and hearing quite a few complaining about slow load times for FS9, I am wondering if it might have been something we all downloaded that could be causing it. Just a thought. If so I couldn't imagine which download. I've been seeing the slow load for about 5-6 months now.
 
Windows update, I'm afraid...I've noticed other software taking much longer to load files.
 
I have no idea where they have been hiding, but my frame rates are back. I did two small Windows updates last night, ran AVG again after updating it again (it found two back door trojans....but they were false positives as they were the exe files for Lionheart's Operation Valkerie and Epic LT...unfortunately I didn't catch it in time and my Operation Valkerie EXE file is now history and I hadn't backed it up to DVD....the Epic LT package is safely backed up 4 ways to Sunday). Not sure if the Windows updates cleared up something, but my frame rates are now back up the the 24.8 to 25 range.

OBIO
 
Hi,

phantomx1
I am experiencing much longer FS9 load time also
Click to expand...

Slow loading time .. and slow frame rate (for OBIO) are two differents problems.
You will suffer more long FS2004 loading time if you put many addon's (and particulary the sceneries addon's) in FS2004
That's not related to any PC problems or space disk available or memory.
Of course a defrag of the FS2004 install will speed up the loading process .. but it's hardly noticeable .. until you use a 1/20 sec chronometer for control the gain !! :)
I have a very one huge FS2004 install who take 4 minutes for go to my default saved flight .....
Long time also for choising a different plane.
But I have no probs when it's running....
 
I was also experiencing slow framerates for the longest time; somewhere around 9-10fps with moderate display settings. I thought it would be something I would have to live with since after all my main FS rig is just a laptop running <cough> Vista.
However about a week and a half ago I made an interesting discovery while tweaking Ivan Hsu's BF2C Goshawk. I was flying in VC mode and had popped up the throttle panel (shift-2) and all of a sudden I was up to 24.8fps. I made the throttle panel smaller but kept it in the same position (lower left hand corner) and got the same results. At first I thought it was because the Goshawk is a CFS2 native plane; however after some experimenting I found that with the exception of a handful of planes I could apply this technique to any plane (as for that handful--I modded the panel.cfg to include a throttle panel to display in the lower right hand corner--they work fine now).
I tweaked the display settings setting them ever more to the right--still 24.8fps; sometimes it would go to 16fps but all I would need to do is look down at the rudder pedals and the fps would go back up to 24.8 for a couple minutes afterward. I briefly experimented with 30fps-and for a time got 29.8fps. However the fps fluctuated too much for my taste and there isn't much difference between 25fps and 30fps.
Flying with this new method has opened my eyes to this old sim. It's like being legally blind your whole life and then getting to see everything. It's an incredible feeling. :engel016:
Here's the fix: First of all make sure you are flying in windowed mode. I have not tried this in maximized (alt+enter) mode. In VC mode bring up an extra panel--any panel. Even the GPS works for this. It doesn't even matter where it is when you start. Next step: make the window small (for this reason I prefer a window I wouldn't use too much, like the throttle quadrant or comm radio), then place it in the lower left hand corner. When you are moving it you will see an outline of the window. Make sure the edges are just outside the view. If you do it right everything gets a lot smoother; at this point I hit shift+z a couple of times to make sure the frame rate is at 24.8 or so
BTW, my rig is an Acer Aspire 4520, dual core 1.9ghz, 2gb ram with some sort of nvidia graphics card. My running theory is that activating this extra view engages the second cpu core but I'm no computer guru--all I know is that I can fly and gawk at my airplanes at 24.8fps!!!:jump:
Hope this helps.
 
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