Seems to be the way it goes post-WU12 / SU12 — you get a satisfying run of perfection… then in a few frustrating minutes everything goes awry!
Has anyone — either from the official Asobo team or a third-party dev — ever confirmed what causes random CTDs and prolonged texture drop-outs? And is there potentially a blanket fix?
Yes, for xbox on SU12, 75% of CTD are out of memory condition. This was shown by Marital on the March dev livestream.
I can’t remember if he came up with a solution, or did he mentioned anything referring towards a solution? It’s one thing they recognize it as out of memory(something we all suspected), but what about a solution?
Today, I did a flight from and too default airports. It was absolutely smooth as silk. Offcourse it was. Not much to rendering, right? It would be so nice if we just get let’s say 70/75% of that kind of performance when using 3rd party airports…
Okay. Computing isn’t my forte, so bear with me…
This is an issue of Xbox optimisation, then? Doesn’t the Series X have 16gb RAM? And isn’t that what many high-end PCs have?
There has to be some way to add memory to an Xbox via one of its ports, surely?
A lot of the trouble seems to stem from devs prioritising fps and intricate detail over stability — I see so many sceneries that run really smoothly, but suffer in other areas (e.g. texture drop-outs). If it’s as simple as being more conservative with custom detail and animations to preserve valuable memory, I’d happily take an fps cut or slightly less eye candy over CTDs, however infrequent they may be.
Correct me if I’m wrong here: the missing textures are a visual indication that the memory is struggling? “If I don’t limit this now, your flight’s over, buddy!”
Does enabling a huge rolling cache do anything to alleviate the problem?
The most interesting aspect of all this is how a certain dev from Ukraine seems immune to all the problems faced by others. This has to be testament to there being a very effective (but elusive) way to optimise complex scenery.
I advice you to read some other topics about this issue. Very kindly😁Much has been debated already. I’m not an expert on this myself, not by any means, but Xbox uses a complex kind of memory. It’s shared memory, something like that. That 16GB of RAM is not what’s really available.
Xbox Series X includes the highest memory bandwidth of any next generation console with 16GB of GDDR6 memory, including 10GB of GPU optimized memory at 560 GB/s to keep the processor fed with no bottlenecks.
So 10GB from that 16GB is super fast memory.
I guess the argument against a console you can incrementally upgrade is it would basically render the PC redundant as a gaming machine. An Xbox you can constantly add to and tinker with would basically be a PC!
There’s no silver bullet solution. Apart from a fix to the bug they mentioned a while back, where the xbox OS gives MSFS the wrong information about available RAM, which is presumably something that needs fixing in the xbox OS and not MSFS itself, I suspect the rest of it is just a case of gradually optimising different aspects of memory usage, and implementing defensive features such as dropping assets and LOD to reduce active RAM requirements.
It’s quite possible that low resolution textures, low LOD, and other such are the sim trying to cope with insufficient RAM, but obviously without understanding the code we can’t be certain exactly how any of this works.
The series X has 16GB but it’s shared between CPU and GPU and this is not so good. Any PC with a graphics card has separate VRAM for the GPU, and even a fairly tame PC with 16GB RAM + 8GB VRAM has 50% more memory to play with than the xbox. That’s a big difference. Also the sim does seem to struggle a bit with managing the allocation between CPU and GPU for the shared RAM.
Can you extend RAM on xbox? No, and I don’t you ever will be able to, usually this is soldered directly in with no extra location for more RAM, just one of many cost saving measures that gets you that console for $500. If MS bring out a mid generation update (series X+ anyone?) then that may have a different RAM size if that becomes a selling point.
So is this really just an xbox optimisation problem? Mostly yes, and this kind of stuff can be really hard. Early on it is easy, low hanging fruit, but then as those bits are fixed you get less reward even for a lot more work.
Thanks for explaining that in layman’s terms. I always understood the Xbox issue to be purely one of optimisation but it seems the PC definitely has the edge in hardware as well as the versatility advantage.
Having spoken to a couple of prominent devs, LOD optimisations for Xbox apparently don’t have to involve killing practically all the intricate detail — it can be done in a much more subtle manner, so that one would really have to look hard to discern the differences.
With the availability of Xbox testing for devs being a very recent thing, I hope it’s simply a case of their being a bit wet behind the ears with it as they learn the ropes. The effects of the new Xbox tools might take months to become apparent in new-release sceneries, but ‘that Ukrainian fella’ seems to have it figured out already. Not a single CTD or missing texture in either of the two sceneries of his I own! This does give me hope that other devs will be able to continue successfully optimising their sceneries for the console.
As I said, I’d rather have a slight performance hit to preserve memory than have to deal with texture drops and CTDs. What I can’t figure out is the apparent randomness of the issues — perhaps my technologically-inept brain can’t comprehend what’s going on behind the scenes but I just can’t grasp how it can work flawlessly for hours then suddenly nosedive…
I think I might be totally misunderstanding the function of the rolling cache. My current belief is that it can store stuff like texture data so that the sim doesn’t have to expend memory collecting it each time?
That is more about reducing what has to be repeatedly downloaded, which is more about data usage and download speed constraints rather than memory usage — regardless if the data comes from the Internet or read off the storage device, it still has to be loaded into memory.
There has been zero input from the developers about what, exactly, the rolling cache does, so we all theorize.
Anyhow, the running theory is it is helpful for those that fly mostly in the same area. However, if you fly different places all the time, then it has little usefulness, since the sim has to download the new data consistently.
And since third-party content is not downloaded from the 'net (it’s installed on your machine I think?), the rolling cache would be pretty useless in supporting custom textures.
That would certainly make sense, no?
It does seem it’s more about storing world data we are expected to download repeatedly.
Yes, I think the only thing the sim downloads is the photogrammetry and satellite imagery, which for the entire planet would be way too big for the internal storage.
I’m hopeful the sim will get better and better but the last two major updates haven’t filled me with confidence… unless of course I’m incorrectly perceiving a post-update performance hit?
I’m convinced some of the photogrammetry cities looked far better before those last two updates.
I really wish we had a proper primer from the developers (or their proxy) that clearly explains what is responsible for what when it comes to how the sim interacts with “the servers” and what is the sim’s responsibility for performance and what the servers’ responsibilities are for performance — and by performance, I also mean quality of imagery.
Right now, it just a massive guessing game and it’s hard to make sense of what is the cause of the ever-moving target we see.
Well, I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later…
Three black avionics incidents in two days, each ultimately resulting in a CTD (eventually). Two with the ATR and one with the default 32N.
I had till now been extremely lucky to have avoided them! Having said that, I’m pretty sure it happened previously with the ATR and I just put it down to either a bug specific to that aircraft or my unfamiliarity with its systems.
All three times the CTD did at least come after full shutdown so could have been worse.
Out of interest, does anyone suffer this at default airports or are third party add-ons the catalyst?
I’ve had plenty of black screens and CTD at Asobo modelled airport’s in the base sim and WU. Some were bugs and got fixed, eg. Reykjavik. Others happen from time to time. The A310 always CTD at Asobo’s RJAA for me for instance.
Have I had this happen at autogen airports? Yes, probably less so, although I can’t really compare because I mostly avoid autogen airports, they are fairly ugly, and there’s a large choice of Asobo modelled airport’s plus I’ve bought a selection in each area of the world I fly. When I do fly autogen it’s usually VFR in a small plane or heli whereas the A310 I’m mostly going to fly nice airports.
Have I had black screens at autogen airports in default planes? Yes, in fact my first ever black screen was very memorable, WU7 had just dropped and I was flying Perth at sunset, at that time I hadn’t bought anything, I was flying a default or near default sim. There were no modelled airports of any kind in the area, I was just flying around looking at the Perth photogrammetry and then on the approach my screens went black. By then it was dark outside and it was a small airstrip on an island which made it very challenging to find and fly into. I naively thought at the time that it was a modelled failure, or that I’d left the alternator off or something. The whole thing was quite exciting and I managed to land. Then during taxi it CTD at which point I realised it was a bug. Since then I’ve had hundreds of these and it’s not fun or exciting at all.
Fundamentally there can be logic bugs that cause these, but most are due to running out of RAM. If you use the default sim, keep away from large pg cities etc then you give yourself the best chance of having a stable flight. Every extra or setting you have that increases work will use RAM and increase risk of failure. For me the challenge is to find a balance where I can do the flights I really want with the scenery that makes a big difference to be (eg. added airports, city buildings, boats) but not have the sim fail on me all of the time.
I’ve been running MSFS since it was launched on Xbox. It’s not yet perfect but my oh my it’s in the best shape it’s ever been on Xbox Series X. At its best it’s glorious 
I think you’re correct about possible memory limitations however I regularly take off from EGLL (Heathrow UK) regularly (Premium Deluxe version) with 100% live traffic and 100% ground traffic and as long as my internet connection is good and the server traffic is ok I rarely have a problem.
The 310 is quite heavy on the SIM - I’ve noticed that it causes reduced FPS in comparison to all my other planes (including PDMG DC6).
Overall the SIM runs very well on Xbox. I’m flying more than ever before (I stopped flying during some of the previous bug ridden updates which caused CTD on every flight). Thankfully those days are over and I can’t wait for the Boeing 747 and 787 Avionics Updates.
Another black avionics incident last night wit the ATR. Seems to be far more prevalent with complex partner or third-party aircraft. How did I avoid them for so long?! Seems they always devolve into a loss of FPS and, ultimately, a CTD. No blank textures as a precursor last night, though, so it’s clearly a little more random than I thought. I might try turning off my rolling cache, I was reading yesterday that it can have a detrimental effect. Seems rolling cache is only useful in only a small number of situations.
Hopefully someone, somewhere is working on optimisation. Thing is, Asobo have no obligation to solve problems created largely by the complexity of third-party scenery. That it happens to some at Asobo airports does, however, demonstrate that they’re not exempt from the problem, and so an official attempt at a fix is likely.
I think it might have to do with WASM, the case of black avionics, it has already happened to me (Xbox) and even going back to the beginning of the simulator and entering an airport again, the ATR would already enter with black displays and the battery button in the ON position as if it were stuck… It should improve with new updates.
Yes, forgot to mention that the aircraft themselves are no doubt complicit.
As long as they’re continually attempting to fix it, or at least improve the situation, I’m happy. CTDs are still comparatively rare, and there’s no single airport or plane I own with which I’m almost guaranteed a failure.
In fact, I have nothing to complain about CTD in the ATR. In this sense it works very well. I can’t say about FPS. During the day it flies giving some FPS jerks and at night it seems to fly smoothly. But okay.
