Not my intentions

[Jack Sawyer]

So I made a beautiful attempt at a flight from San Diego to Catalina.

 

All Orbx and AS4 and UTL traffic, and worse all sliders maxed.  It was one of my most beautiful, sedate flights yet.

 

First, I loaded the sim with this plane at the same place as it is now and it quit straightaway.  So I reloaded and then "It" happened.

 

A few miles from landing P3D 4.1 just up and plum slap quit on me.  No warning, nothing.  Made me  as I was just about to land.

 

I looked in the Event View and saw the dreaded ntt.dll I think it's called.  So I reckon it was overloaded hardware?

 

Anyway, I hope you like my nice flight, no yellow, no inverted, and no bridges.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With @VH-KDK Martyn's help my first Google Earth location!  I did it, matched the coordinates and I found out that below is the Manta Roller coaster!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ka Blam!  Night night Teddy bear!

 

 

[medx421]

Affinty Mask tweak was what nixed the ntdll errors for me. Some people swear against it, some it saved their sanity. I add at the beginning of my p3d.cfg:

 

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=85

 

This is on an i7-6700k.  Not a crash since. Your mileage may vary if you choose to use it.  I am not a hardware expert, but there are many, many resources out there regarding the addition of Affinity Mask.

[Jack Sawyer]

2 minutes ago, medx421 said:

Affinty Mask tweak was what nixed the ntdll errors for me. Some people swear against it, some it saved their sanity. I add at the beginning of my p3d.cfg:

 

[JOBSCHEDULER]
AffinityMask=85

 

This is on an i7-6700k.  Not a crash since. Your mileage may vary if you choose to use it.  I am not a hardware expert, but there are many, many resources out there regarding the addition of Affinity Mask.

Thanks Medx!  I'm gonna have to try this next time I boot the PC, it can't hurt anything?

[medx421]

Just now, Jack Sawyer said:

Thanks Medx!  I'm gonna have to try this next time I boot the PC, it can't hurt anything?

 

No, it won't harm anything.  If it doesn't work, you can work with the values or just remove it and search for other solutions.  Sometimes, it is like you said, just overstressed hardware.  I would make the mod, then completely duplicate the flight where you had the problem, aircraft and all, and see if you had resolution.  I would always have the ntdll problem in the San Diego area.  Lot of heavy scenery in there with ORBX and other products.

[Jack Sawyer]

33 minutes ago, medx421 said:

 

No, it won't harm anything.  If it doesn't work, you can work with the values or just remove it and search for other solutions.  Sometimes, it is like you said, just overstressed hardware.  I would make the mod, then completely duplicate the flight where you had the problem, aircraft and all, and see if you had resolution.  I would always have the ntdll problem in the San Diego area.  Lot of heavy scenery in there with ORBX and other products.

Thanks kindly Medx!

 

[flyingleaf]

What no yellow plane? No inverted flight?. Never mind Jack what a great little tour and shots you've made there. Sorry to hear your trouble. Hey I wanna go on that water slide you flew over.. Well done Jack as always.

[Stewart Hobson]

Hi, Jack.  Unless you have the same CPU has Medx, his affinity mask setting probably isn't suitable for your cpu.  In fact, I've seen reports that P3Dv4 really works best with affinity mask=0 for some cpus.  Find out what affinity mask setting works best for your cpu in combination with P3Dv4.x.

[Jack Sawyer]

2 minutes ago, Stewart Hobson said:

Hi, Jack.  Unless you have the same CPU has Medx, his affinity mask setting probably isn't suitable for your cpu.  In fact, I've seen reports that P3Dv4 really works best with affinity mask=0 for some cpus.  Find out what affinity mask setting works best for your cpu in combination with P3Dv4.x.

Thanks Stewart, scratch that then.  Glad to have someone like you with so much PC hardware knowledge, I'm lost when it comes to hardware.  I mean really lost.

 

 

[Jack Sawyer]

6 minutes ago, flyingleaf said:

What no yellow plane? No inverted flight?. Never mind Jack what a great little tour and shots you've made there. Sorry to hear your trouble. Hey I wanna go on that water slide you flew over.. Well done Jack as always.

Thanks Karl!  It was such a beautiful flight too.  I started at dusk and was really enjoying the sun going down.  It was very relaxing and I thought I'd make it.  But I'll try it again some other time with more sensible settings.

 

As for yellow and inverted, well, can't be goofy all the time can I?   

[Stewart Hobson]

3 minutes ago, Jack Sawyer said:

Thanks Stewart, scratch that then.  Glad to have someone like you with so much PC hardware knowledge, I'm lost when it comes to hardware.  I mean really lost.

 

 

Sometimes you just never know though, Jack.  It won't hurt to try his suggestion--what d'ya got to lose?  It might work, it might not.  I'm running AM=0, since a reputable source over at Avsim has the same cpu as I do (i7 4790K) and this was his suggestion.  Haven't had any problems yet, knock on wood!

[Jack Sawyer]

5 minutes ago, Stewart Hobson said:

Sometimes you just never know though, Jack.  It won't hurt to try his suggestion--what d'ya got to lose?  It might work, it might not.  I'm running AM=0, since a reputable source over at Avsim has the same cpu as I do (i7 4790K) and this was his suggestion.  Haven't had any problems yet, knock on wood!

I have an i7 4790 Quad Core 4.00 GHz, same as your's?  So now there's two different suggestions.  And I know it'll CTD again so next time I fly I might have a go at it.  Thanks again Stew!

[Stewart Hobson]

4 minutes ago, Jack Sawyer said:

I have an i7 4790 Quad Core 4.00 GHz, same as your's?  So now there's two different suggestions.  And I know it'll CTD again so next time I fly I might have a go at it.  Thanks again Stew!

You're welcome, Jack.  Let us know how it sorts out.

[BradB]

See that's what happens Jack when you take a "normal" flight , your CPU went bonkers .

 

Cheers

 

John

[medx421]

Stewart is absolutely right, and I certainly encourage you to do some research on values for the AM tweak bases on your processor.  My 85 value is based on 4 cores used for the sim with hyperthreading enabled.  Other defined values will only engage 1-3 cores or are for non hyperthreaded processors.  Bottom line is, whatever value you enter will not harm your sim.  It will either improve, degrade, or do nothing to the performance overall.

[adambar]

You have quite a bit of heavy duty scenery and clouds to deal with Jack, I have an eight core machine and mine shut down the other night for no reason.   First time for that, oh well.

[paulb]

Excellent series of shots Jack! Well done!  Sorry to hear that your flight was 'stopped'.

 

Re affinity mask, there are different views about it in P3Dv4. Anyway, this link might be of interest -

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/prepar3d/getting_help/advanced_configuration.html

[VH-KDK]

Bummer Jack and it appeared it was going to be a beautiful landing.

Could have been worse though, could have been Wednesday

7 hours ago, flyingleaf said:

Hey I wanna go on that water slide you flew over.

Sorry Karl, no dice. They only let real men in there who wear Budgie Smugglers and NOT Long Johns.

It would be a great sight all the same to see you going down the slide in your Alaskan uniform though.

[European Mountain Man]

Well Jack I enjoyed your flight and your screen shots look fantastic sorry to hear of all your wows may be you have your settings to high try lowering them a bit and like they said it may be because on yellow plane no bridges and no inverted  you where behaving your self and look what happened your p3dv4 crashed never mind Jack regards stewart  

[Jack Sawyer]

5 hours ago, paulb said:

Excellent series of shots Jack! Well done!  Sorry to hear that your flight was 'stopped'.

 

Re affinity mask, there are different views about it in P3Dv4. Anyway, this link might be of interest -

 

http://www.prepar3d.com/SDKv4/prepar3d/getting_help/advanced_configuration.html

Thanks Paul, I'll have a look.

10 hours ago, BradB said:

See that's what happens Jack when you take a "normal" flight , your CPU went bonkers .

 

Cheers

 

John

Thanks John but what's "normal" for me?    My CPU said wait a minute, you're not flying a yellow plane inverted under a bridge so I'm taking my electronics and going home. 

9 hours ago, adambar said:

You have quite a bit of heavy duty scenery and clouds to deal with Jack, I have an eight core machine and mine shut down the other night for no reason.   First time for that, oh well.

Hmmm.  I have only four measly cores, my PC is a little long in the tooth but ti'll be a while before I can upgrade.  Guess I need to dial back a lot of things,

4 hours ago, VH-KDK said:

Bummer Jack and it appeared it was going to be a beautiful landing.

Could have been worse though, could have been Wednesday

Sorry Karl, no dice. They only let real men in there who wear Budgie Smugglers and NOT Long Johns.

It would be a great sight all the same to see you going down the slide in your Alaskan uniform though.

Thanks Martyn, yeah, it was gonna be a cool landing too but this stuff happens.

And, 

1 hour ago, stewart1 said:

Well Jack I enjoyed your flight and your screen shots look fantastic sorry to hear of all your wows may be you have your settings to high try lowering them a bit and like they said it may be because on yellow plane no bridges and no inverted  you where behaving your self and look what happened your p3dv4 crashed never mind Jack regards stewart  

Thanks Stewart.  Sliders I guess, and I have to behave myself sometimes right? 

[Stewart Hobson]

13 hours ago, medx421 said:

Stewart is absolutely right, and I certainly encourage you to do some research on values for the AM tweak bases on your processor.  My 85 value is based on 4 cores used for the sim with hyperthreading enabled.  Other defined values will only engage 1-3 cores or are for non hyperthreaded processors.  Bottom line is, whatever value you enter will not harm your sim.  It will either improve, degrade, or do nothing to the performance overall.

Hi, there.  Noting that you have hyperthreading enabled, does running P3Dv4 benefit from hyperthreading or not?  I have read from certain techie blogs/websites that most games, with a few exceptions, don't benefit from hyperthreading at all.  And I don't mean to hijack Jack's thread, but your post inspired the question, since I've not seen any advantage with HT in running FSX or P3D.

[Jack Sawyer]

Stew, I accidentally somehow had HT on and it was causing countless Blue Screens, so Jetline remoted in and we changed the OC and stopped HT and now all is right with the world.

 

After reading your posts and the stuff at LM I have decided not to use the AM.

 

Cheers Stew and as always, thanks for your input!

[Stewart Hobson]

That's good news, Jack.  Sometimes HT is defaulted to "on", I think, and most folks aren't aware that it's on, and if they're gamers, should probably turn it off.  I think there's a certain amount of misinformation about HT that convinces gamers to turn HT on.  I could be wrong, though, as always!

[medx421]

As to whether HT makes a difference for me, I can't really say.  I haven't tried turning it off in my experimentation.  There are probably as many threads, if not more, about HT as there are AM, so it pretty much becomes personal to the individual.  I did not have HT available on my old machine, and suffered crashes all the time, but then again, that was FSX and a very old CPU and GPU.  I do know that on my current machine, before I put in the AM value, I suffered frequent stutters and occasional crashes in "heavy" areas.  Since applying AM, I have had zero crashes and very infrequent stutters.  I do run a pretty high end system now though, so I know that coupled with a 64bit application, I probably don't experience as many problems as others may.  I guess, from my vantage point, is that when I was having issues, I sorted through the forums and the influx of information on both sides of the coin, and decided to go with the AM value.  On a stable OC processor and a good card, I have what appears to be a very stable sim.  My rendering is smooth, sans the infrequent stutter.  I was never much of a frame rate counter, probably since for years I flew on a much less capable machine and just shot for stability and some level of smoothness.  That said, currently, I do run about 50-60fps in dependent environments (scenery, aircraft, etc).  I'll easily go over 100fps in lesser dependent areas.  Tweaks are just one of those things that are so dynamic to the user, which is why I always try to caveat with "mileage may vary".  I never claim to have the magic bullet for anyone else, just what worked for me.  I respect Jack or anyone for not wanting to tweak the values, although I would feel much more comfortable just adding the application dependent AM value in, rather than altering the HT which affects the processor as a whole.  It's kind of one of those benign things that is easy to experiment with, and easy to "etch a sketch" away if it doesn't work without any lasting damage.  I'm just happy that I don't have to spend so much time with p3d.cfg as was the case with the fsx.cfg.  Certainly not a hijack Stewart, as Jack and anyone else can certainly benefit from the discussion.  We are a community and learn from each other.

 

Nick

[Iain Emms]

Great set of shots.

cheers

Iain

[Jack Sawyer]

Just now, Iain Emms said:

Great set of shots.

cheers

Iain

Thank you Iain!