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Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Installing FlightGear, scenery, aircraft etc. on Mac.

Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:14 am

Hello all,

Haven't posted in a long time. One of the reasons why is that I am still on FG 2.0 but I long to update to the latest versions. FG 2.4 worked fine for me but my FPS was really low most of the time. When FG 2.6 was released I couldn't even get it started. Hopefully it won't be the same for FG 2.8 this time. I was wondering if the graphics were getting increasingly better causing my laptop to not be able to handle it. If so, are there any RAM requirements? This is sort of depressing because I've always liked FG and now I can't stay up to date with it. I got Mac OS X 10.7.4 but I don't know the name of my graphics card. The problem is probably because I've only got 2GB of RAM :lol:

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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby gral » Sun Aug 19, 2012 11:58 pm

aviationR wrote in Sun Aug 19, 2012 8:14 am:Hello all,

Haven't posted in a long time. One of the reasons why is that I am still on FG 2.0 but I long to update to the latest versions. FG 2.4 worked fine for me but my FPS was really low most of the time. When FG 2.6 was released I couldn't even get it started. Hopefully it won't be the same for FG 2.8 this time. I was wondering if the graphics were getting increasingly better causing my laptop to not be able to handle it. If so, are there any RAM requirements? This is sort of depressing because I've always liked FG and now I can't stay up to date with it. I got Mac OS X 10.7.4 but I don't know the name of my graphics card. The problem is probably because I've only got 2GB of RAM :lol:

aviationR


Hi aviationR

More important than having a lot of RAM is having a better graphics card and enugh video ram. Some of the older laptop cards are not able to give a pleasable result and are completely out of the loop (i.e. ATI/AMD x1000 series). 2 GB if RAM might be enough, and at a first glance the core of the simulation seems to be faster than version 2.6., you can use 2.8 also with an older machine probably, just turning of shaders ... Rembrandt (shadows) is heavy in consuming video ram, there I would recommend at least 512 mb, nvidia card or AMD 6000 mobile series (i.e. 6750M).

Watch out for your "system information" to get the name of your graphics card, the amount of video ram and the processor you run. With this data posted here I can probably give some more hints how you can use FG 2.8, but I fear there will be some limitation in graphics with your machine, in case the machine is older than (let’s say) three years.

-gral
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Mon Aug 20, 2012 1:12 am

Thanks gral! I will look at the system info just like you said. I do know that my machine is 1 and a half years old. It was part of the last series of Macbooks before they were discontinued.

Thanks again,
aviationR
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Mon Aug 20, 2012 1:19 am

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 320M

Hope that's enough,
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby Hooray » Mon Aug 20, 2012 5:56 pm

You will definitely need 512-1024 MB of free RAM for FlightGear, more or less depending on the aircraft and location (scenery), and "eye candy" settings you are using. See the hardware recommendations at: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Hardware_Recommendations
So it would make sense to shut down all other apps and free up as much resources as possible.

Overall, if you don't mind tweaking your setup/configuration, you should also be able to run 2.8 on your laptop - but you may need to change many default settings and find a combination of aircraft/scenery working well enough for you.

Some of the details to do that are covered here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Debugg ... ar_Crashes
EDIT: FlightGear RAM & Performance Issues: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Subsystem-le ... FlightGear
Last edited by Hooray on Thu May 15, 2014 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Tue Aug 21, 2012 1:20 am

Ok thanks Hooray! :lol: I do close all apps when running FG but it still doesn't load properly. Anyway, I'll take your advice.

Thanks,
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby f-ojac » Wed Aug 22, 2012 2:32 pm

Nice to see another user from France, <joke>even if you're using a Mac.</joke> :lol:
What do you mean by "doesn't load properly"? Any error message?
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby Hooray » Wed Aug 22, 2012 4:07 pm

Yes, please post:

  • startup arguments
  • console output
  • screen shots

Thanks!
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Thu Aug 23, 2012 2:28 am

Hey guys,

By "it doesn't load properly", I meant it's stuck on "loading scenery objects" or something like that. It just doesn't start up. That was on 2.6 though. I don't know about 2.8, could be different. Anyway, I will post my console stuff from 2.6 because I'm too lazy to download 2.8 just yet. My internet here is slow :oops:

Thanks,
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby Hooray » Fri Aug 24, 2012 6:37 pm

Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby flywisher » Thu Aug 30, 2012 6:46 am

aviationR, if it's any help, my son and I just loaded FG 2.6 on his 7-year-old iMac. It has 2 GB RAM and the video card is listed as "X1600" with 256 MB VRAM. (We tried to get 2.8, but could not find a workable link to d/l it. Only a message that it was not ready yet.)

With shaders off, it can even fly the F-14 smoothly, even around KSFO (San Francisco Int'l, the default airport).
We tried the various shaders to see what they would do. The machine could show us, but often with framerates around 1-4, even with the UFO. Unusable for flying, but we see the effects.

I was able to fly the C172 over the urban area near KSFO with the urban shader set to 1 and all others off. It was usable. Very little stutter.

Tonight I just finished tested it with a CH Pro Yoke and rudder pedals with the C172, shaders all off, and display set to 1440x900. I had installed the Southern California coastal scenery and was flying around San Diego, so the scenery and traffic burden was less than KSFO. It flew very smoothly with a pretty steady 24 fps. The basic terrain looks better on the iMac than on my Windows XP machine.

For what it's worth.
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby gral » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:27 am

The x1600 ati series are definitely out of the loop for shaders since FlightGear version 2.4. Heavy driver and rendering problems have been encountered with this card since 2.4. It’s still possible to run FlightGear with a reasonable result, but I guess all the shaders have to be turned off. x1600 is a mobile card also used for macbooks and not for iMacs only, I guess most x1600 cards have 128 MB VRAM and not 256. But of course, a lot of common used FlightGear functionality is also in FlightGear 2.4/6 and using the simulator with this versions is still fun of course ! :D Actually I have no x1600 machine here to test FG 2.8, testing that and reporting here will be much appreciated.
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby flywisher » Thu Aug 30, 2012 9:50 pm

Thank you gral for the information.

I will try to accomplish that in the next week or two. Is 2.8 available for OSX yet?
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby someguy » Thu Aug 30, 2012 10:56 pm

Yes, it's labeled 2.8.1. On my 2010 iMac, it runs about as well as 2.6, after diddling the shaders a bit. No Rembrandt, of course. Can any Mac use Rembrandt (without booting it into Windows or linux)? Apples drivers are so conservative, I'd be surprised, even though much of the video hardware should be up to the task.
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Re: Any RAM Requirements for FG 2.8?

Postby aviationR » Fri Aug 31, 2012 2:49 pm

Hey guys,

Thank you all for your inputs. So out of what I read so far from you guys, all I have to do is turn the shaders off? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks again,
aviationR
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