Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

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JBlyth
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Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Thu Sep 02, 2021 11:13 am

I have had this happen twice recently with only minor variations:-

I seem to fly off the edge of the scenery (but I haven't), and in today's Condor NZ race, the scenery ground disappeared into nothingness on a ridge line about 10km from the finish. When I crossed the finish line, Condor 2 immediately locked up, and seemed to go to a different view - the one with the flight data along the bottom of the screen. When the scenery disappeared, the horizon in front appeared milky white with no detail, but I could see other gliders still flying.

I was able to get to the exit menu with the exit key, but the mouse wasn't active to exit out of the main screen. The screen became very garbled, particularly the data in yellow to the left. I was also surprised that the LastTrack.ftr was only 20kb, or the first 7 minutes of the flight instead of the expected 15000kb to 20000kb, so I couldn't even use the last track to upload for my ninth place :x

It's very frustrating to have this happen, so if anyone has any suggestion to resolve it, I would be eternally grateful!

As an aside, I was looking to change to my new Microsoft SurfacePro 7 as the frame rate looked 30% higher, however, the imagery was quite jerky in spite of that, so I have gone back to my Microsoft Surface Book 2, which is usually ultra reliable with Condor, even thought the graphics are only 128mb....

[EDIT] I note that the ErrorLog.txt hasn't updated since 20/06/2021....

Many thanks
John in Sunny Carnarvon - Western Australia

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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Fri Sep 03, 2021 4:29 am

Update:-

In an effort to track down the issues I mentioned in the opening post, I have turned all the graphics settings down to the minimums except for the visible distance one. This has picked up the frame rate a little to around 30-45fps, but very interestingly, absolutely no observable change in Graphics resolution/detail.

I am using a Phillips 32 inch monitor set to 1940x1080.

I used Task Manager to check the load on the CPU and GPU, and found they tended to run around 55-65% and 60-75% respectively when running Condor.

I'll see if these reductions in Graphic Options have any beneficial effect.

Cheers
John

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congo
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by congo » Fri Sep 03, 2021 9:29 am

Hi John,

FYI, the visibile distance setting is the very one that will cause crashes in Condor2.
Try dropping it one step, and see if it still crashes, if it does, drop it another step.

I can have all my settings on the highest available, but the visible distance setting
set to max will still crash in HD scenery. Tree count is another setting that can be
reduced while leaving others high.

My experience (personally and as a troubleshooter for other players) has been
on low to high end PC's with dedicated graphics cards, and even the highest spec
PC's will still crash with the highest visibility distance setting.

This may not explain your crashes, but suffice to say that my first advice is to immediately
reduce view distance settings, then tree count, then try other reductions if required, in that
order, but others who are smarter than me might add their advice here as well.

Clarity and quality of in-game graphics is not only dictated by the Condor settings, but by
dedicated video card driver settings;
(highest quality textures and anisotropic filtering set to max 16x),
however, your devices probably don't support those settings- but you could check.

Frame rates are always a trade off with quality of course.
Last edited by congo on Fri Sep 03, 2021 5:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:40 am

Thanks for the very thorough explanation, Congo. Much appreciated.

I just had another complete freeze while doing unusually well in a race. VERY frustrating. I have only had minor glitches until a few days ago.....

I will do as you suggest, and I will probably do a re-install as well, just to be doubly sure.

Cheers (and fingers crossed!)
John

6266
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by 6266 » Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:50 am

Because of memory I restart the computer before each race and try not to use other programs I don't need for flying. Don't know if it helps, but it doesn't hurt either
Visit https://www.baleit.no

Vintage Series 24, The Journey
25 landscapes with free available textures, newest: Maine

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Bre901
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by Bre901 » Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:00 am

JBlyth wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:40 am
I will do as you suggest, and I will probably do a re-install as well, just to be doubly sure.
I don't think re-installing helps in any way with those resource-related issues.
6266 wrote:
Fri Sep 03, 2021 10:50 am
Because of memory I restart the computer before each race and try not to use other programs I don't need for flying. Don't know if it helps, but it doesn't hurt either
This is a much better idea indeed
CN: MPT — CondorUTill webpage: https://condorutill.fr/

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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:18 am

Thanks 6266 and Bre901,

I reinstalled anyway, thinking it could do no harm. I usually reboot before each race, but I think I will also exit as many other background processes as is reasonable too. Display Fusion, TeamViewer, cloud apps and the like certainly must gobble up some resources.....

It'll be a pain, but I might run Discord from my other device and see if that helps too (my wife will just have to put up with the noise :) ).
I've had minimal problems in the past in spite of the low speced graphics, but I will turn off everything unnecessary and go from there.

Many thanks
John

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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by 6266 » Fri Sep 03, 2021 11:20 am

I use discord on the same machin, because I want to hear the Vario and the voice over the head phone. Had no problems up to now with it
Visit https://www.baleit.no

Vintage Series 24, The Journey
25 landscapes with free available textures, newest: Maine

Discord https://discord.gg/bAXJaRT6ZC

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congo
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by congo » Sat Sep 04, 2021 1:25 am

Most likely it's not THAT sort of memory issue, the crashes don't usually mean you haven't got enough system memory.
People with 32gb and more can still have issues.

Unless your system is running a very small memory, this is not the cause and your miserly approach to memory usage will not help.
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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Sat Sep 04, 2021 3:53 am

Thanks Congo,

While my Surface Book 2 isn't a powerhouse, the specs aren't too bad apart from the integrated Intel HD 620 graphics ....

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7300U CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.71 GHz
Installed Ram 8.00 GB

Cheers
John

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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Tue Sep 07, 2021 11:16 am

I am still having this crashing problem with Condor on nearly every MULTI-PLAYER flight. It never seems to be happening while I am flying solo!

Until recently, I have only had the most minor of glitches with Condor while Multi-Player flying, so I am at a loss to explain it.

Before today's ESGP race, I used the Texture Reducer to diminish the AA2 landscape two times. I also didn't leave any nonessential programs running, and used Discord on another PC to further lighten the load.

As I outlanded in today's race, I re-joined in Spectator Mode so I could do some experimentation. The signs and symptoms where identical to when flying a Multi-player race, and I observed the following things happening with the scenery. Note that the clouds seemed to be unaffected, and some minor details around the finish point remained visible when I got close enough in Spectator Mode :-

At various times, the scenery in front of the aircraft gradually was "flown" out off. On some occasions, the was just a sharply defined missing band.

If I switched gliders in Spectator mode, the scenery was working fine in a different aircraft. When I returned to the previous glider, the scenery was still missing.

When I fly off the end of the scenery when there is a large patch missing, the horizon becomes milky, but the cloud detail remains. Eventually the whole program usually crashes sometime after. Rarely it suddenly comes good again, and I can continue the flight. There doesn't seem to be any useful info in the Error or normal logs.

Scenery disappearing
Shot16.jpg

"Milky" Horizon
Shot15.jpg

Bank of missing scenery
Shot17.jpg

I tried rotating the cockpit/map view around in Spectator Mode today, but that made little difference. On some occasions the scenery suddenly came good again. CPU and GPU loads were in the 60-75% range, and there seemed to be not changes to those speeds when the problem occurred.

I am at a loss to understand what is happening and what if anything can be done to resolve the problem - apart from buying a Gaming PC/Laptop...

Many thanks for any assistance!
John in Sunny Carnarvon - Western Australia
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Genchik
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by Genchik » Tue Sep 07, 2021 12:55 pm

Surely you only have one hdd disc. And this is the problem of loading terrain tiles from disk. It is recommended that you have two disks in your pc. And do not install Condor on the system drive. He works a lot for the system.

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EDB
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by EDB » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:01 pm

Read the System Requirements...

And for now at least reduce the Visible Distance a lot. Because your GPU is under par.

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JBlyth
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by JBlyth » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:37 pm

Thank you Genchik and EBD,

I do indeed have two SSD hardrives, and I'll reduce the Visible Distance further in the hope I can all least finish one of the ESGP races this week. I hadn't really had much of an issue with Multi-Player races until recently....

I can see a decent gaming laptop appearing on my doorstep very soon. I just wanted to be sure it was a hardware spec issue rather than something else.

Sometimes living 1000km away from the city shops has its disadvantages ;-)

Cheers
John in Sunny Carnarvon, Western Australia

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wickid
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Re: Scenery disappears - then program crashed at the finish line...

Post by wickid » Tue Sep 07, 2021 2:43 pm

Problem is the sim keeps advancing as well. Textures are getting larger and the planes more detailed. If there are a lot of planes in multiplayer on a large landscape like AA2 you may run into these kind of problem.
PH-1504, KOE

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