The issue is as stated above, and sadly there isn’t an easy way around it.
When FSX was released, no add-ons in the form of detailed scenery, weather related add-ons, or capable aeroplanes existed, the maximum allowable address space of 4Gb VAS for 32-bit systems was sufficient (and for a very long time it stayed this way).
More recently, heavyweight scenery packages and complex aircraft mean that VAS limits are reached more quickly, especially all those glorious textures that we so enjoy.
The problem lies within FSX’s (ancient) coding insofar as it is quite happy o load scenery but it is unable to then unload it, so what enters into VAS stays, meaning you have less and less to play with. As your fly over other scenery packages, they too are loaded into memory and not released, even if you don’t land there.
When you get to a few hundred Kb’s left out of your 4Gb maximum allowable, the sim is by then stuttering, not drawing correctly, and eventually “BANG!”, that dreaded OOM message appears.
This issue will not go away, but there are preventative things that you could try, such as using “SceneryConfigEditor” to better manage your scenery areas by activating and/or disabling scenery that you need for your flight as anything else is superfluous.
Another thing you can do is to monitor the FSX VAS in use, as this may help you determine which areas are eating into your VAS and how much you have left at that moment in time.
The concensus is that when it gets low, you should save your flight to then restart it because the available VAS will be higher for you to continue onwards. The problem here is that not all aircraft support saved states (save my aircrafts configuration in this precise state so that you can later load it in that way). You’d need also to save the flight under FSX too.
If you have FSUIPC (full) then follow this link to see how to add VAS monitor within FSX’s window frame:
https://www.avsim.com/forums/topic/4316 ... c-and-fsx/If you use FSX in a windowless state, then you could run a stand-alone VAS monitor:
https://library.avsim.net/esearch.php?C ... LID=194150If you run full screen, then there are options to run a VAS monitor using WideFS on another linked PC, but you’d need to Google that.
A 64-bit system will offer practically limitless (read exponentially greater!) VAS, and is why FSW, P3D4, and XP10/11 are all the rage these days (and 64-but predecessors such as MS Flight and Dovetail’s Flight School). LM attempted to rewrite much of the core FSX code with P3D3 with the intention of it releasing used VAS by unloading scenery, and some users reported better success with this than others. Essentially, the old core coding of FSX from the ESP family of products is the core of the problem.
Sorry that there is no real answer to this issue. It’s a limitation that won’t go away, so the real decision that you face is whether to continue to invest in 32-bit FSX or whether you move forward with a 64-bit platform such as P3D4 or XP11.
Yes, you’d need to buy the same things all over again, but the performance gains and graphical capacity are exceptional. Developers will for now be happy to sell 32-bit add-ons knowing that at some point you’ll probably wish or need to move up a gear into the 64-but arena.
To this end, should you decide to stick with FSX, then buy products that include FSX, SE, P3D1-3, and P3D4, but for the more capable aircraft, scenery or weather add-ons there is likely to be more profit in making 64-bit products, even those based on existing FSX 32-bit products, standalone for extra cost.
Keep us posted!