FS2004 and memory usage...
I was running a memory commit/usage program in the background while running
FS9.1, the most commited physical memory it appeared to use at any one time
is about 38MB (on a Cessna 172 at Seattle Tacoma with MegaScenery loaded
for that area). Unfortunately I'm currently not able to see the commited
video memory (I'm coding a tool that might do just that but it relies on
DX9).
I'm a little surprised that FS9.1 uses such little main memory -- I would
have thought it would cache scenery files/textures and terrain mesh (.bgl)
into main memory for rapid retrieval and avoid the stutters of loading
scenery from disk. But it appears that FS9.1 is very uneducated about it's
current environment and doesn't pre-cache based on available physical
memory -- seems to just rely on OS file caching system (which is not very
good).
Now I can understand FS9 dev team wanting to fit the lowest common
denominator in terms of hardware requirements, but I was hoping they would
NOT penalize those of us that do indeed have much more than the minimum to
run FS9.1.
Scenery files can apparently live in different locations so I'm wondering if
a RAM drive could work -- wonder how many file types this might work with??
AC, terrain mesh, etc. ? hmmmm... wonder if this is what MegaScenery
folks also discovered and hence they install their scenery files into none
standard location (i.e. not under FS9.1) -- unless they fell for the false
claims that FS9.1 works better on a "different" drive channel other than the
OS drive channel -- which is only applicable if one's main memory is 256MB
or less and the difference is barely noticeable (if at all).
|