FSX SBuilderX Crashes on Map

[Andrew]

Am I doing something wrong?

First I tried a 4000 x 7700 pixels day texture, and SBX renders it fine. It looks quite well on my airport, but I want to test even higher quality.

The thing is, I have bougt 20cm material. So in order to try a higher resolution, I made a 8000 x 14000 pixels bmp. But SBuilder only crashes and shouts "Maps turned off". How can I remedy this?

Cheers,

 

[Luis_Sá]

Hello,

I do not know if increasing the system memory will help. The best way is to divide your bitmap in parts and generate partial BGLs. Alternatively you can use the resample tool after creating an INF file. Please check the INF file generated by SBuilderX for the smaller images. Also read the SDK. May be you can write the INF file by hand ...

Best Regards, Luis

 

[nz255]

I also notice it crashes for me when looking at Google maps in Sbuilder. Particularly the New Zealand region, when zooming in and panning to NZ

 

[Andrew]

Hello,

I do not know if increasing the system memory will help. The best way is to divide your bitmap in parts and generate partial BGLs. Alternatively you can use the resample tool after creating an INF file. Please check the INF file generated by SBuilderX for the smaller images. Also read the SDK. May be you can write the INF file by hand ...

Best Regards, Luis

It might. I will try increasing system memory first, as I do not like the thought of splitting my map into four parts. That will make it hard for me to find new coordinates for each piece, plus Xdim and Ydim. Anyway, I have had success writing an Inf manually, but this was only for one map.

SBX may crash because the page file does not build fast enough? I spoke to a guru today, and he said it might be timings. Could it be SBuilder waits for the page file to finish building, then quits on timeout?

Right now I got 2GB RAM. I will order 8GB; this is also as a preparation for Win7-64bit

PS: I am also thinking this may be caused by not-so-good memory management in WinXP which I use now. Could be it will work all right by just stepping up to Win7.

Cheers,

 

[Luis_Sá]

Hello,

Does it crash or does it tell that Map Viewing have be turned off? I looked into this problem yesterday. I used a map of 14.000 x 14.000 pixels. The message "map view turned off" appears because there is an error in the updating (drawing) of the display. There is nothing that I can do to avoid the error. SBuilderX catches the error and displays that message. Fortunately the map is still present (press the right button to get the project properties and you will see that the map is still there). Unfortunately you can not select the map or even access to its properties to change its name in order to start with "photo...". I have a new build where instead of turning off the display of maps, I use a simplified version of the map (just for display purposes). You can click on this simple version (a rectangle filled with the red color) to select it, to calibrate it or to set its properties. The actual bitmap exist in disk and resample (when you compile) will read it from the disk. I could even improve this by not having the map in memory when the trapped error appears. Returning to this point and to clarify: when I start SBuilderX the memory usage of my system is 600 MB. When I add a map from disk (a 8,000 x 14,000) the memory usage increases to 920 MB as soon as the map is read. But immediately after when the map is displayed there is an instant when 2 copies of the bitmap exist in the memory and it goes to 1240 MB to return again to 920 MB. These instantaneous peaks of memory usage occur when the display is refreshed (for example changing the ZOOM). My system dealt well with this 320 MB bitmap. Then I created a 14.000 x 14.000. In this case the memory increases to 1240 MB and, when refreshing the display, it would have a peak 1880 MB which triggered the internal error. In the new build I can generate photo scenery. The memory usage is 1240 MB and, because display is off, it does not increase to the 1880 MB. As I said, I could even improve this by removing completely the bitmap from memory and so using only 600 MB. But I have not done it yet.

If you write me, I will send you the EXE so that you could test it.

Best Regards, Luis

 

[Andrew]

Luis,

First, thanks for mentioning Resample again. I battled for an hour with the INF syntax, and now Resample is happily chewing away at my 8400 x 14.500 pixels photos, with day, night and mask. And WOW what sharpness I got

When I try the map in SBX, it says only "Map view turned off!". I have noticed the map is still present, only I can`t see it.

Your idea of using a simplified map is elegant. I`ll be happy as long as I can see a red border. I know there are many that fears using manual labor using INF files and Resample, so if you get SBuilder to display just the border for bigger maps, this will be a good thing for scenery design, keeping up the "easy" access to photoscenery.

By the way, I got 8GB RAM now. Did not help at all, but no problem, guess it is WinXP memory management that stops the process. ADE also crashed on me a lot when adding maps, but now that XP "sees" 3GB...ADE dont` crash no more. It also helped setting the background zoom level to 10% from inside ADE. Looks like it is the same problem with both ADE and SBX.

I will send you a PM - looking forward to try a new exe.

Cheers,