1.12 memory management and memory leak as bad as in early LockOn versions?

[Shaman]

Since 1.12 the game is suffering horrible memory leaks on my system.

I've been editing and testing my custom made missions lately. That means I have to re-fly go back to editor, fly again etc.

After several loadings of the mission, again and again... (+10 loads I think) suddenly in last load, framerate droped to 1. I was able to quit the mission and go to the main menu. I tried to quit LockOn, though after pressing QUIT button and confirmed it nothing happend. I've waited several seconds because I thought it is just trying to clean itself up from the momery. However LockOn couldn't free itself from memory. Not even harddrive was giving me any indication that anything is happening.

Then I've pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del helped and that brought LockOn minimized on windows taskbar. Suddenly LockOn.exe process began to clean itself up from memory and closed itself!

 

Since 1.0 legacy version it's never been that bad I believe.

 

Very similiar issue happens on big multiplayer missions. Some squad mates has this issue and restart LockOn game totally after each flight. I actually only fly on VVS504 server. After you refly two or several times framerate drops down like hell. Really one maybe two frames per second! Notice that it doesn't happen like everytime on 2nd flight, sometimes after few, or several loads.

 

Very very strange. It seems memory management in LockOn has gone really bad.

 

edit:

I have 1GB of RAM, and 1,5GB of swap file.

I'm attaching Error.log file, because it looks strange at the end! (last mission load)

gEnvCubeZW: failed to create Cube Texture, D3DERR_OUTOFVIDEOMEMORY.
Can't render environment - target not ready

- lots of these, I mean hell a lot!

Error.zip

[Pilotasso]

I already posted a reply to a problem like this on another thread. did you checked any of my suggestions?

http://forum.lockon.ru/showthread.php?t=13918

Because I dont have a memory leak that serious.

 

Edit: I just noticed you have a 1.5 GIG swap file...its not enough. Try 2 GIG's thats what I have. No major problems here.

[Prophet_169th]

Nor I.

[Pilotasso]

Yeah and judging by the error messages you got, it seems as the game is waiting for data that the system is trying to provide but its starved somehow. LOMAC is unforgiving in disk access requests. It used to crash alot if they took too much time.

 

After you changed the swap file setting, and if you have norton systemworks make sure LOMAC DIR is to be defragged at the beggining of the drive along with windows files (default). That helps alot, and LOMAC will crash less when it demands data that the system can provide in time.

[RuskyV]

I had the same problem with the other versions of LockOn and i linked it to the map screen, if you enabled the map screen in game and then repeatedly accessed from the cockpit then it would reproduce this problem, it stands to reason if you were using the editor then it is posssible that this same problem has not gone away with the latest patch, i cant speak from experiance regarding the latest patch as i have yet to find time to try it, But check this out dude, try enabling the map screen in game and keep accessing it while flying and see if you can recreate it,

 

Peace.

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

i also had a problem where the frames would stutter like hell, one minute game would be smooth, then it would stutter, but not like a usual stutter, it was like the game was being slowed down using the alt+a keys.

 

Also the crash problem and also the greyed out mission editor menu options and also the crashes when viewing the ingame map, it would 60% of the time crash as soon as i pushed f10.

 

All this happened as soon as i installed the new patch, game was working perfect beforehand or as near perfect as lomac can get.

 

weird problem it was, i think this patch has did more damage to my copy of lockon than any other patch that ive ever had. I formatted this afternoon, so i will wait til new 1.12 is out before reinstalling.

[RD]

After you changed the swap file setting, and if you have norton systemworks make sure LOMAC DIR is to be defragged at the beggining of the drive along with windows files (default). That helps alot, and LOMAC will crash less when it demands data that the system can provide in time.

 

I'd like to try this, but I only see an option for Norton to put files first, not the whole program. How do you get Norton to defrag Lomac at the beginning of the drive?

[Pilotasso]

See first pic:

 

Select "drive options" and then imput a similar wildcard. Doesnt have to have all those asteriscs. I just wanted to make sure all subdir's were included. :)

 

 

See second pic:

 

to make things even better I have placed all my data that doesnt need to be ultra-fast accessed like multimedia (my aviation videos and MP3's) and old programs, or simply those that wont matter if they load a litle slow (such as winzip, photshop, old DOS games etc) to the end of the drive so that the data we want to accelerate is more at ease at the beggining of the drive

 

See 3rd pic:

 

 

this is how it is distributed on My hard drive: All important data is at the beggining of the drive including the swap file! :)

[Shaman]

My LockOn runs on dedicated partition.

All drives are defragmented.

First partition is system only. This keeps system decluttered.

I'll try 2GB swap file tommorow, and see if same problem occurs.

[Pilotasso]

My LockOn runs on dedicated partition.

All drives are defragmented.

First partition is system only. This keeps system decluttered.

I'll try 2GB swap file tommorow, and see if same problem occurs.

 

Did you manualy partitioned your hard drive so that you placed each partition on a part of the drive of your choice?

 

If not consider this: Lomac and the system files might not be optimaly placed on the hard drive and the disk might be pooled between the zones of the disk containing LOMAC, sytem files and swap file. This is why I hate partitions. You need some realy smart partition programs to do this right, or youll actualy making it slower than it would be with a single partition... My brother has his drive partitioned that way and although his sytem is similar to mine his PC takes more time to load stuff. Every time hea loads a game it takes noticeably more effort to have it donne than mine. Just an Idea.

 

I considered your method (as my brother implemeted) but then after seeing the reults I opted for another aproach as I did above. People like it organized and tidy but sometimes the sytem cant see that way also. :)

[Shaman]

I don't use partition programs (who do you think I am lol), these make nothing but mess. I re-format hardrive and do every single partition manually and format them, so my partition is a real partition.

 

I've been experimenting with partitioning drive and keeping selected stuff here and there to find best performance, and have system decluttered. Works very fast, no room for complains, really.

[Pilotasso]

rgr that. Just trying to help out. :)

[Shaman]

rgr that. Just trying to help out. :)

I know man. I really appreciate. I'll push LockOn to the limits tommorow. I've had enough for today. I'll continue my work on that multiplayer mission tommorow and see what happens after several reflies.

[RD]

Pilotasso,

 

Thanks for the help on Norton. I appreciate it!

[Breakshot]

Shaman, you said that this problem of yours has started to occur since the 1.12 patch. This might be a silly question, but did you try to just simply reinstall the whole thing all over again with a clean patch??

[Shaman]

Shaman, you said that this problem of yours has started to occur since the 1.12 patch. This might be a silly question, but did you try to just simply reinstall the whole thing all over again with a clean patch??

Yes, I always reinstall totally. I'll do the same with 1.12a.

Maybe you guys have same problem, but you are still not aware of it.

[Kula66]

Did you manualy partitioned your hard drive so that you placed each partition on a part of the drive of your choice?

 

If you have a single physical drive and a fixed sized swap file, partitioning will make NO difference. You only get an advantage IF you can put you OS, swap and apps on different physical drives ... then you can have separate disk request queues for each drive, otherwise the requests just get queued the same as on one partition. IMHO :)

[Pilotasso]

If you have a single physical drive and a fixed sized swap file, partitioning will make NO difference.

 

Now Im certain that your wrong. It does make a difference. This I know from experience. Theres a reason why most defrag tools (including windows) will automaticaly place the most accessed files first as close as possible to the begginning of the drive. Certain tools even allow to move the Swap file arround. Norton used to move the swap file first of everything else and it made a HUGE difference (no longer possible due to NT management of things).

 

If you made partitions manualy theres no way you can garauntee the partition you placed windows and swap file is at the beggining of the drive. Worse: When windows wants to access a big program it will make heavy accesses silmultaneously on the several different partitions and will be pooled between them.

I have seen this and made comparisons. There is a difference.

 

I think you should investigate this matter on your own, I will sound too stuburn If I keep like this. :D

[Shaman]

The point is not to use partitioning software, but drive formating tools to create partitions. If you use partitioning software your partitions are rather virtually visible to you, but on the drive there's a mess.

 

I've just set fixed 2GB swap file and boot-time defragged, MFT, SWAP and LockOn partition. I'll begin now my fun with mission editor and see after how many mission loads LockOn runs out of memory.

[Kula66]

I think you should investigate this matter on your own, I will sound too stuburn If I keep like this. :D

 

I guess we need to do our own testing and draw our own conclusions ... all our systems are different!

 

The things is with 1 disk spindle you can only send one stream of requests to it ... regardless of the number of partitions ... mulitple drives allow multiple CONCURRENT requets - so improving performance.

 

The optimal place to put frequently used files is in the middle of the drive ... hence the $MFT placement in XP. Statisically then they are nearest seek ... the outer tracks have the fastest read speed, hence once you are there you read the most clusters/sec - more clusters per track. Remember XP is good at cacheing ... so quickly most things you need are establishes in cache negating the need for a disk read, this is where a memory leak can have a big impact, reducing the available memory for the cache.

[Pilotasso]

The point is not to use partitioning software, but drive formating tools to create partitions. If you use partitioning software your partitions are rather virtually visible to you, but on the drive there's a mess.

 

I've just set fixed 2GB swap file and boot-time defragged, MFT, SWAP and LockOn partition. I'll begin now my fun with mission editor and see after how many mission loads LockOn runs out of memory.

 

Ah! that is a different matter. I did mentioned this, but you didnt clarify it. :)

 

I guess we need to do our own testing and draw our own conclusions ... all our systems are different!

 

The things is with 1 disk spindle you can only send one stream of requests to it ... regardless of the number of partitions ... mulitple drives allow multiple CONCURRENT requets - so improving performance.

 

The optimal place to put frequently used files is in the middle of the drive ... hence the $MFT placement in XP. Statisically then they are nearest seek ... the outer tracks have the fastest read speed, hence once you are there you read the most clusters/sec - more clusters per track. Remember XP is good at cacheing ... so quickly most things you need are establishes in cache negating the need for a disk read, this is where a memory leak can have a big impact, reducing the available memory for the cache.

 

I actualy tried divide my hard disk before and merged both partitions after trials. I did read somewhere that the paging file is best placed at the middle (Curioulsy so it is mine right now) But most time I see mentioned it is best as close to beggining of the drive.

I guess this depends largely on the hard drive nature, you see, depending on your hard drive size it may have 1, 2 or 4 magnetic disks staked and whats faster for 1 single disk may not be for a HD with twice the size with 2 disks staked.

 

I know mine has 2 disks (maxtor makes HD with disks segments of 80GB each).

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

if you have 2 drives, its best to have the swap file at the begining of the second drive, as the first drive reads and if anything has to be written to the swap file it can be written to the other drive which will have dedicated bandwidth for it and also it saves the main drive from having to read and write at the same time, thus it works out faster, as writing and reading from the same drive at the same time with a lot of info can clog stuff up/slow it down.

[Pilotasso]

No I dont have 2 drives what I said is that many of the large Hard drives are comprised by several plates of smaller size. My disk is made up by 2 plates of 80GB

[Kula66]

I know mine has 2 disks (maxtor makes HD with disks segments of 80GB each).

 

You can have multiple platters, but you only have one read/writre head assembly ... all heads move together. So, even with 2 platters, your heads are over the same track on each platter ...

[Guest EVIL-SCOTSMAN]

No I dont have 2 drives what I said is that many of the large Hard drives are comprised by several plates of smaller size. My disk is made up by 2 plates of 80GB

 

i wasnt meaning you, i was just saying that if anyone had 2 harddrives, its best to have the swap file on the second disk.

 

I just said it so that people who didnt know could try it out. it wasnt aimed at anyone in particular.