• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

Background image handling

M

MarkkuS

Messages
125
Country
sweden
I have activated a background image which is 20Mbyte big. But after a while the ADE gets very sluggish.

If I look in the windows process list, it shows that ADE memory usage varies from 70M (no airport loaded) to 125M when the airport is loaded. When I start to work with airport, zoom in/out, put nodes and link, the memory consumption starts to increase. Sometimes the memory usage is over 6-700 Mbytes and GUI response is very slow, almost unworkable.

But the memory usage varies. Sometimes it goes back to about 120M. If I open the Image list window, when the image is active, mark the image filename , the memory usage increase immediately to over 6-7-800Mbyte and then goes back to abt 120Mb. If don't touch anything the usage settles back to about 120Mb.

The problem seems to have a connection with the zoom level. When I start the ADE and open my airport (with the image file activated) the memory usage is abt 120Mb. When I start to zoom in, the memory usage jumps up occasionally and settles back to 120Mb. At zoom level 2.6 it jumps up to over 500Mb. And now for every operation I do in ADE, the usage jumps up to over 500Mb, making the GUI very sluggish.

Is this a problem with my computer or do the ADE have problems with (not so) big image files?

I have a DELL Pentium 4, 2.8GHz with 1.25 GB memory.
 
20MB is HUGE for an image file. I tend to keep to about 100KB in .jpg format.

George
 
George is correct, large images will certainly slow ADE down. ADE can use quite a bit of memory especially for large airports in areas of the world where there are a lot of other airports and/ or navigational features since the ADE file does hold some information about these elements as well.
 
I have continued to work with a 360kb image, but the ADE gets sluggish now also. I have studied the memory usage and when I increase the zoom (more detail) the memory usage also increase. I have seen figurers up to 300-400 Mb. But if I switch off the image, the sluggishness disappears immediately.

If I compare ADE with AFCAD2, I think the ADE is a better program. For example it easy to select vertices's and moving them. But I think the image handling sluggishness is a major drawback. Is this a problem only I have? Are there anything I can do, that would make the image handling better? Is a 360kb image too big?
 
MarkkuS said:
I have continued to work with a 360kb image, but the ADE gets sluggish now also. I have studied the memory usage and when I increase the zoom (more detail) the memory usage also increase. I have seen figurers up to 300-400 Mb. But if I switch off the image, the sluggishness disappears immediately.

If I compare ADE with AFCAD2, I think the ADE is a better program. For example it easy to select vertices's and moving them. But I think the image handling sluggishness is a major drawback. Is this a problem only I have? Are there anything I can do, that would make the image handling better? Is a 360kb image too big?
Click to expand...

Let me take a look at it - I have not really optimized the code around image handling so I am sure it can be improved.
 
I have just carried out some tests here on a machine with a 2.52 P4 with 1Gb of memory. I did not clear out any clutter so had a background memory requirement of about 600Mb. Loaded ADE 1.05 and then an image (jpg) just over 1mb in size - about the biggest I use. Zoomed in and out and used preset zoom levels. also panned. No noticable slowing down of display reponse. Memory usage jumped about 20Mb now and again as the zoom level changed but dropped back within a second or two to the level before the zoom started. So, here at least background images don't seem to slow things down. Of course much bigger images or multiple active images at the same time could be a different story.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top