andy1252 Posted June 5, 2017 Share Posted June 5, 2017 Following my own recent post about my first OOM, and JV's post on the TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP parameter ( http://www.orbxsystems.com/forum/topic/136271-p3dv4-ptatov4-port-angeles-4k/#comment-1207332 ), and after reading up a thread on AVSIM by Rob Ainscough, I did a bit more experimenting. Take off at dawn from KDEN, heading for the mountains. Everything maxed, 4k screenies. Get in the air and save the flight, then exit, change the texture size, restart. Resource monitor snaps at each level. So, starting with TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8 Quit, changed to TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9, restart, load saved flight Allowing for the effect of a fresh load, it would seem that TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 is indeed ignored, as the memory used is pretty much the same as before. So, quit again and changed to TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 and then restart and reload the flight - And as you can see, I'm pretty much sold out of memory here. Rob Ainscough's post included the info that if VRAM runs out, RAM is used instead. I didn't know that, but should have realised if I'd thought about it as I'm running a card with 6Gb of VRAM and all the accounts I've seen say that TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10 needs somewhere around 10 Gb or so of VRAM. Now in my previous post using the EXP=10 I'd said that it was running like Long John Silver in the 400m hurdles and then I got an OOM. Again, from Rob's post, I realised/remembered that I've always run without a swap file. Ever since the days of gawd knows when I've avoided them as I've always found that any hard paging is such a killer that it really doesn't bring any benefits to do it. But then I thought, OK, I've got three different SSDs on here, I can use one of those and it might be OK to be paging to that. So I let the system allocate a pagefile on my C: drive (it did one of 16Gb to match my physical RAM) and waddya know? My system can now actually fly moderately well with the EXP=10 parameter. And I can see I am taking hard page faults but they're not really hitting hard in performance terms. It's probably slowing the refresh rate down enough to put off anyone who does this mostly for the joy of piloting their 'plane, but for a scenery whore like myself, it's just fine. Don't ask me what the frame rates are like, I've no idea and I don't actually care. I've never been interested in frame rates, it's just a question of "am I aware of the image refreshing and if so is it a problem?" as far as I'm concerned. My only remaining issue is that I seem to remember in the early days of SSD on the PC it was thought that using one for the pagefile was itself bad news in that it could quite dramatically shorten the life of the SSD. I'll have to look into that, but as the sim is the only thing that's going to invoke paging and only when and if I run at this level that may not be an issue. Anyway, I thought I'd post this lot in case it's of interest to others playing with this stuff. And ain't it grand? Once the dust settles this is going to be such fun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aero-3fsx Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Keep on bravely going where no man has gone before Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bermuda425 Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Very thorough post Andy! Let me translate your title from sim language to aviation English: TRACON_STAR, RVR vs VASI, and ODP TEXTURE_SIZE, RAM vs VRAM, and OOMs Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aero-3fsx Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Are you sure your translation is in English This is new vocabulary to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bassman Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 I was going to comment that this does not appear to be a Community Screenshot topic but then I thought everyone wants to be a forum policeman these days so stuff it, I am not a policeman or a moderator so why should I comment so I decided not to. It was a very interesting read mate. I keep flicking between the 1st, 3rd and 5th screenshot but by the time I cross the 2nd, 4th and last screenshot I forget what I saw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vora Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 Looks to me like you're looking at the wrong kind of memory when comparing the difference between 8, 9 and 10 in TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP which would be visible in the VRAM. That 10 is visible in your RAM only tells me that you ran out of VRAM on your GC. That you did not run out of VRAM at 9 just means that in this very instance the 6GB of your GC were sufficient - it does not mean that 9 is ignored. A cfg entry of TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8 is kinda ignored as it's the default setting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 You are correct Vora... TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 is absolutely not ignored. Zoom into a section of distant terrain and compare 8, 9 and 10 and there is a clear difference between the three. 8. 9. 10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andy1252 Posted June 9, 2017 Author Share Posted June 9, 2017 4 hours ago, Bassman said: I was going to comment that this does not appear to be a Community Screenshot topic Yeah, I did hesitate about that but then I wasn't sure about posting a load of images in the other topics. And I figured it was sort of image related . . 3 hours ago, Vora said: That you did not run out of VRAM at 9 just means that in this very instance the 6GB of your GC were sufficient Hi Volker, don't know enough about how the VRAM is allocated and used to comment on this. You may well be right and that certainly didn't occur to me - I just assumed it would be a pure quantitative thing (VRAM required = size of image x pixel flange density or something equally obscure) 2 hours ago, Mark Abdey said: You are correct Vora... TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=9 is absolutely not ignored. Zoom into a section of distant terrain and compare 8, 9 and 10 and there is a clear difference between the three. OK, that seems pretty definite. There is definitely a visible difference there to my eyes as well. Wasn't something I could detect on the image I was using in my particular example. Good to know , and I didn't feel as much of a performance difference going from 8 to 9 as I did going from 9 to 10 that means it's a feasible option for me. 5 hours ago, Bermuda425 said: Let me translate your title from sim language to aviation English: TRACON_STAR, RVR vs VASI, and ODP Blimey, Bermuda! I spent the best part of 40 years putting up with IBM's abuse of the English (American?) language but you may have just set some new kind of record Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Abdey Posted June 9, 2017 Share Posted June 9, 2017 10 minutes ago, andy1252 said: OK, that seems pretty definite. There is definitely a visible difference there to my eyes as well. Wasn't something I could detect on the image I was using in my particular example. Good to know , and I didn't feel as much of a performance difference going from 8 to 9 as I did going from 9 to 10 that means it's a feasible option for me. Hi Andy... Yes indeed, I can do EXP=8 and maintain performance, and keep well within VRAM limits, however running @1080 as I do, with a 23" monitor the difference in use is negligible, and doesn't offset the longer loading times. I have to zoom in a very long way to notice the textures are that bit sharper; far more than I would do in flight. No doubt if you have a large monitor @4k then the difference will be more apparent and worth some sacrifice. For me, having extended Autogen gives a far greater visual boost than the terrain LOD... All good fun trying these things out though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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