CTD with Iraq

[ChuckJäger]

Hello - I just purchased Iraq and I cannot run it.  It loads (both CH47 and AH64D aircraft) and then immediately crashes to desktop both on multiplayer and SP instant action missions. 

I was waiting for it to be a little further along but after a few youtube videos I figured I'd give it a go, now I'm wondering if that was the right decision.

dcs.log-20250110-171615.zip dcs.log-20250110-172034.zip dcs.log-20250110-172322.zip dcs.log-20250110-172820.zip

[Harley]

Same for me. I can't be sure, but it almost looks like the scenery is quite large for VRAM, and I don't think my GPU is up to this task. I'll look at the recommended specs, but I would have thought I'd be safe for a bit.

[Harley]

You know, I haven't found where the specs are listed for this map. Surely they are quite significant. I know I'm near EOL for my current setup as VRAM requirements are beginning to pass my current allocation.

I'm running an AMD 2700X, 32GB 3200MHZ RAM, 2x Vega 64s, and DCS is on a 2TB SSD. This machine is almost 6 years old, but I have 2x 8GB cards in my setup. I wish DCS could use the other one for at least caching some stuff, rather than really demanding that we keep upgrading. Granted it's been a while, but a new PC is hardly an investment. It's always a liability, because the life cycle seems to be getting shorter and shorter, and the equipment is always resold at a loss. Not to at all mention that a new top-of-the-line GPU is now well over $2k, even approaching $2500! I once bought an entire CAR for less. A CAR. Not even that long ago.

 

This hobby is expensive, and I'm into it enough to be building a sim pit for this purpose. As close to 1:1 to an F/A-18C tha a former concrete worker and current aviation mechanic can make with skills that one needs a hammer and tape measure for. It's not perfect, but as close as needs to be for me, and it's always a WIP.

That said, I've still built the whole structure and even some of the tools to build with for so much less than it would cost for some of these new PC parts, it seems very lopsided.

It's crazy. But still fun. It seems the direction that everything is going now is that thesse maps are going to start needing massive amounts of RAM and VRAM and M.2 drives eating into the PCIe lanes to supply the bandwidth anymore. It's getting so real, but at the cost of maintaining the latest hardware to get good use from it. Looks great, but dang.

[Tomcatter87]

Strange thing - for me, DCS runs stable as never before. Only on the Iraq Map, I get many CTDs, it's really frustrating. First I blamed the bug in the Apache, with George slewing, but this is fixed. All other maps are running smooth. Even in empty missions (aside a player's aircraft), without anything going on, without mods. 

Edit: attached a crash log for a flight where the crash occured just seconds after lifting off. dcs.log-20250121-113333.zip

Edited January 21 by Tomcatter87

[Harley]

On 1/21/2025 at 3:04 AM, Tomcatter87 said:

Strange thing - for me, DCS runs stable as never before. Only on the Iraq Map, I get many CTDs, it's really frustrating. First I blamed the bug in the Apache, with George slewing, but this is fixed. All other maps are running smooth. Even in empty missions (aside a player's aircraft), without anything going on, without mods. 

Edit: attached a crash log for a flight where the crash occured just seconds after lifting off. dcs.log-20250121-113333.zip

If your system can do it, when you're ready for takeoff in Iraq, open task manager. I saw this map eating up 30GB of RAM. The rest of my mere 32GB available were presumably running windows and other background processes. I am considerably behind the curve, but I've ordered some PC parts over the last couple of days to catch up some. I've had the same specs for 7 years or so. Time flies! And, I've been fortunate enough to skip all the generations of CPUs since then, but my time has come.

I'm going to be using 64GB of RAM now, and the Ryzen 5700X will be in tomorrow to use it. I tried putting that 64GB of new DDR4 RAM into my motherboard and the old 2700X I'm using didn't like it. Constant crashes, and memory errors. The 2700X can only address 64GB of RAM, and there's a GPU to manage, also. So, I'll still be behind by 2 generations, but at least I can use what appears to be a new minimum requirement for these newer maps.

I guess I've been lucky so far, but time has run out for this former beast with the 2 Vega64s in it. That new GPU pricing is WAY out of control. I think I'll keep the GPUs in service a bit longer until these guys get their act together.

[Harley]

So, I suppose for someone looking for this kind of thing, I'll post what specs I'm using that don't meet the newer requirements, and then what I'm upgrading to in hopes to catch up.

Currently, I'm on these:

Amd 2700X

Asus Crosshair 7 hero x470 chipset

32GB GSkill @3200

2x Asus Vega 64 8GB HBM2 each

2TB SSD

Processor will be:

AMD 5700X

64GB GSkill @3200 (hopefully)

Keeping the other components in service. I don't know if anyone is interested, but I'll update with either mission success or failure when I learn if these 2 upgrades make it work or not.

[Tomcatter87]

Wouldn't a decent page file size help with the RAM needs? Or did I get something wrong here? I set mine to minimum size 32, max 64 GB.

[Harley]

1 minute ago, Tomcatter87 said:

Wouldn't a decent page file size help with the RAM needs? Or did I get something wrong here? I set mine to minimum size 32, max 64 GB.

I think it is paging, and on an ssd, it's limited by the SATA speed, because I haven't plugged in a M.2 drive yet. I don't know that I will, either. I don't like the idea of sharing PCIe lanes with anything, even if there's more than plenty of bandwidth available.

But I'm sure it is already doing that, and the load times from the page file must be less than optimal. I hope 64GB is enough to store this map at my set LOD in RAM. I'm sure I'm not the only one using only 32GB of RAM, especially of those of us reporting crashes. But that's where I'm going to start. If that test fails, then I suppose a new build becomes a higher priority.

[Harley]

Well, as expected, it was a mission successfully accomplished, as in all the new parts ran just fine. Didn't even have problems with windows after all that. Started right up.

That said, the scenery in Iraq is DENSE. It will want more than 8GB of VRAM, and it doesn't seem to cache extra textures into system RAM, either. If it's told to load anything that exceeds the VRAM allocation, crash. I just saw it crash hard at 6GB VRAM with the in-sim "CTRL+SCROLL LOCK" utility. So, to run it with any acceptable settings, one will need a dense GPU with plenty of VRAM. I wish that it would use the other card I've got in this system. I have a total of 16GB available, if only it would cache to the other GPU also. But, nobody is really doing that these days, and I think I'll be ahead to upgrade that vs asking Wags if there's any plans to implement that. But, for those of us that will inevitably have these problems undoubtedly in the future, seeing that a 24GB card is top-of-the-line now, how much longer before we exceed that? Also, how hard would it be to add some code to use both PCIe slots to just cache textures? It doesnt seem to do that now, but if it did, we could flip them sliders all the way to the right and UNLEASH THE BEAST. What if we really do want 48GB of VRAM to run MAX settings on this platform?

Point being: soon, that may not be a totally ridiculous number. This sim is getting pretty large, and Leon is growing larger!

-Airplane, 1980.

Something to consider.

@Wags@BIGNEWY

I feel the need: the need for speed!

Kick the tires and light the fires!

[Harley]

Also, I think it's worth saying that Iraq looks so good. What I can see of Baghdad before it crashes is what I hope all these maps look like one day. Very dense scenery, and there's stuff everywhere, and it looks lived in, even at this stage. For someone that loves CAS roles, it will be a target-rich environment for Combined Ops. I can just see A-10s BRRRTing indiscriminate buildings to bring some freedom to this map. Let the good times roll, just at some lower settings for now.

[BIGNEWY]

Hi, 

VRAM usage is something we have to consider carefully with terrain for sure, finding a balance for both low and high end systems is a challenge. 

I am sure we will see more optimisations as early access progresses. 

thank you 

[MAXsenna]

9 hours ago, Harley said:

I wish that it would use the other card I've got in this system.

Are they connected? One can, at least could, force SLI to work with Nvidia Inspector. 

9 hours ago, Harley said:

I wish that it would use the other card I've got in this system.

I'm no expert, but I don't think it works that way. Running my Titans in SLI, both cards VRAM were maxed out, because they both needed to render. Let's say you render on one card and caches on the other. How are you gonna move the cache to the render card? 

[Harley]

First problem is that I'm running AMD cards. I disable crossfire because DCS doesn't like it. Also, I've only got 8GB per card now. I'm sure there will be optimizations, and that's what I'll hope for. Is anyone else able to fly over Baghdad without issue?

[MAXsenna]

First problem is that I'm running AMD cards. I disable crossfire because DCS doesn't like it. Also, I've only got 8GB per card now. I'm sure there will be optimizations, and that's what I'll hope for. Is anyone else able to fly over Baghdad without issue?

I know you have AMD, just wondered if you tried out Crossfire, (I'm notbversed in AMD speak, that's why I wrote SLI), seems you have with subpar results.
I can pretty much promise you one thing. There will be no more optimisations for <12GB cards, or we would have seen it already. Have you tried the texture optimisation script? Might help you, or you just have to bring set the texture to lower levels. Apologies if I missed what settings you run. One thing is for sure, you might as well chuck out the second card, unless there's some sorcery in Vulkan, its VRAM will never be used.
My computer will become a teenager next year, while I did upgrade to a secondhand 2080Ti that made all the difference.
When you say DCS chugs 30GB of RAM, where do you see that?

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

[Harley]

In the F18 and flying over Baghdad in the Iraq map is when RAM use hits over 32 GB. I could adjust some settings as you've pointed out, but man, it looks so good, I don't want to do that yet! I am likely to spring for a new GPU sometime soon, because crossfire doesn't work for DCS. It causes issues, like the sky going dark during the day, and other issues. When I enable it, it still doesn't see any more VRAM than what one card has on board, at least with the "CTRL+SCROLL LOCK" utility inside DCS. It may be a lack of my understanding within the AMD utility, but every time I've tried to enable crossfire and then run DCS, there are issues, and I end up just disabling it.

What is this texture optimization script you mention up there? Is it the same as reducing a slider in the settings menu? Sorry if it sounds like a noob question. I'm not as well versed in the .lua scripting as I was with the other simulator and their .cfg files in C+.

[MAXsenna]

@Harley The script is made by a user and resized the textures to 2048 for modules and AI. For me it makes a 200GB mod, and it doesn't pass IC if you do MP.

 

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

Edited January 25 by MAXsenna
Added link

[pimp]

I am also having issues running Iraq map in VR. It CTDs a lot. Mostly near the mountains. My frames drop and it stutters like crazy. I wish I can get a refund.

Edited January 25 by pimp

[Harley]

18 hours ago, MAXsenna said:

@Harley The script is made by a user and resized the textures to 2048 for modules and AI. For me it makes a 200GB mod, and it doesn't pass IC if you do MP.

 

Sent from my SM-A536B using Tapatalk

Thanks for that. If it doesn't pass integrity check, however, I'll just let it be.

It seems that the global settings in DCS may need to be throttled due to each map having its own and higher demands of your system. It's sad, but it seems the only other way around this is to upgrade the GPU to something with higher capacity. Newer maps seem to have higher requirements, but throttling global settings will have an adverse effect on other maps, such as the Caucasus region whose requirements seem very gentle.

For me, I,suppose it's time to upgrade that GPU also.

Edited January 25 by Harley
Typo, fat thumbs.

[MAXsenna]

29 minutes ago, Harley said:

Thanks for that. If it doesn't pass integrity check, however, I'll just let it be.

@Harley

Maybe I didn't mention it, just remembered this thread is about Iraq. The mod only optimise modules, bazar and coremods folders. Not terrain. 

Yeah, upgrades are needed once in a while unfortunately, even if expected. Optimisations can be done though. Syria runs as good on my system as the Caucasus. 

[Tomcatter87]

I'll try out that mod - sounds good. And with a mod manager, one should be able to restore the original files if needed.

[Harley]

I saw something interesting last night when I was flying in Syria. Lately, I've been using the utility within DCS when you press "R-CTRL+SCROLL LOCK" to see how things are going. I exceeded my /budget (I forget what the other category was, but it's the equivalent to "used/budget", pertaining to amount of things stored of a total allocated on the GPU) By a few MB. Of a total of 7.2XX of available, it exceeded that, something about 7.6XX, which came as a surprise that it didn't CTD. Meaning, I think that adding more VRAM is exactly the secret. I'm still waiting for the Radeon VII I ordered on ebay to arrive, but that may stave off the CTD being experienced with the Iraq map for a bit.

Just some corollary data I thought may confirm what's happening.

[Harley]

1 hour ago, Harley said:

So, I've installed that new-to-me Radeon VII card. For a while there, it was a smooth 60 FPS, and it seems like part of the reason that there are stutters in the game at all is because of a lack of available VRAM. It was smooth as buttered pancakes for maybe 15 minutes. Then, en route to Baghdad, it crashed while only using 5.500+GB or so of available 15.600+GB VRAM. I read the crash log, and after what looks like a somewhat comon loading sequence, I see this message, and it repeats for pages and pages. A stack of these repeats for a while, then a stack with a different number in the parenthesis, but has the same 'DX device removed reason" code.

Can anyone make any sense of this? Crash report sent through DCS error reporting, and perhaps it is a map optimization issue. I copied/pasted from a somewhat arbitrary place, a little before the error stack piles on like the amount of parmesan we want on our spaghetti. It just keeps aflowin. In parenthesis, there is that 4 digit number, and there are others. One is a (2888), there is a (13624). Whatever associations there may be for this, the answer is in there somewhere. It's likely something simple, and is a matter of an update, but I don't know, and that's why I posted that here.

2025-01-29 22:21:42.172 WARNING BACKENDCOMMON (3348): Need to reprocess [DDS] image '/textures/F18C_1_DIFF_STAY_nm.dds'. Reason: Conversion requires - expanded pixel size, setting alpha to known value. Source is an 8:8:8 (24bpp) format
2025-01-29 22:21:45.315 WARNING LOG (11148): 1 duplicate message(s) skipped.
2025-01-29 22:21:45.315 INFO    VISUALIZER (Main): Preload() finished
2025-01-29 22:21:45.399 INFO    Dispatcher (Main): precache units resources in slots
2025-01-29 22:21:45.611 INFO    EDCORE (Main): Created game pool: h:2 n:5 l:2
2025-01-29 22:21:45.611 INFO    Dispatcher (Main): loadMission Done: Control passed to the player
2025-01-29 22:21:50.836 INFO    WWT (Main): FA-18C_hornet
2025-01-29 22:25:47.723 WARNING WORLD (Main): ModelTimeQuantizer: SAME MODEL TIME
2025-01-29 22:28:18.625 WARNING WORLD (Main): ModelTimeQuantizer: ANTIFREEZE ENABLED
2025-01-29 22:28:20.662 WARNING LOG (11148): 1 duplicate message(s) skipped.
2025-01-29 22:28:20.662 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): DX device removed. Reason: 0x887A0006
2025-01-29 22:28:20.664 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): Can't map structured buffer.
2025-01-29 22:28:20.664 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): Failed assert `0`
2025-01-29 22:28:20.667 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): DX device removed. Reason: 0x887A0006
2025-01-29 22:28:20.668 WARNING WORLD (Main): ModelTimeQuantizer: ANTIFREEZE ENABLED
2025-01-29 22:28:20.680 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): Can't map structured buffer.
2025-01-29 22:28:20.680 ERROR   DX11BACKEND (5876): Failed assert `0`

Well, it's confirmed. Installing a GPU with more VRAM did not stop the CTD issue. This is my post in a different thread over what I saw.

[Tomcatter87]

Thanks for the update, good to know. 

[Czar66]

Iraq map is the only map besides South America that I had no CTDs. And both are the hungriest ones in VRAM. Perhaps the CTDs are caused elsewhere.

RTX 3060 12gb, i5 12600k, 64gb ram, 30gb on pagefile on another NVME SSD, DCS on a NVME SSD, 1080p, Windows 11, latest drivers of everything.

HAGS 'off', Game Mode 'ON', track ir app 'on', no VR.
DCS standalone version, or non-Steam.

[Harley]

I downloaded the latest chipset drivers and all AMD utilities available for my setup. I will test again later. Seems to be a driver issue for sure. It's always the same errors. I don't think it's hardware anymore.