Crash at 80% - Core\GraphicsEngineDX10.dll

[madvad 654]

Hello everyone!

I'm experiencing a crash during loading in some specific terrains, as follows:

IraqWA 80-03 version (IraqWA03 works OK)
IraqWA ODS30 version
IR2003

All other terrains runs perfectly.

Strangely, the previous versions of these maps worked without problems, but the latest updates started giving me this error.

My machine is a penultimate generation I5, with 16GB RAM and an Nvidia 1050Ti 4Gb.

I run games much heavier than the merged SF2:NA without any problems.

I've already reinstalled everything, I've already changed the graphics card drivers... I always get an error related to this path:

C:\Program Files (x86)\ThirdWire\Strike Fighters 2\Core\GraphicsEngineDX10.dll

Could this .dll in my installation be corrupted?

Could someone send me this specific dll so I can test it?

Edited September 12 by madvad

[+Menrva 4,200]

1 hour ago, madvad said:

Could someone send me this specific dll so I can test it?

Don't bother, it happens randomly on my system with an RTX 4070 Super as well. It's a problem of the game's DX10 renderer, it's old and video driver updates can at times cause issues to it. The game's stuck on old DirectX 10 and it manages VRAM badly, so terrains and mods with several different objects and textures make the game run out of VRAM with consecutive loading of missions in a single playthrough. Without chances of TK ever updating his games to current DirectX standards and to 64bit, you can only hope for video driver updates to mitigate the issues.

A DLL from SF2 also cannot get corrupted out of nowhere unless you've been playing around with it with an hex editor. A DLL from another SF2 installation to the same patch level won't solve your problem, it'll be the same one you have. Look for updated video drivers and reinstall DirectX 9 June 2010 redistributables, there's nothing else you can do. At some point in the future DirectX 10 will be so old that graphics wrappers for it will be needed. You can already try using a Vulkan wrapper, not sure if your GPU supports it though.

[madvad 654]

3 hours ago, Menrva said:

Don't bother, it happens randomly on my system with an RTX 4070 Super as well. It's a problem of the game's DX10 renderer, it's old and video driver updates can at times cause issues to it. The game's stuck on old DirectX 10 and it manages VRAM badly, so terrains and mods with several different objects and textures make the game run out of VRAM with consecutive loading of missions in a single playthrough. Without chances of TK ever updating his games to current DirectX standards and to 64bit, you can only hope for video driver updates to mitigate the issues.

A DLL from SF2 also cannot get corrupted out of nowhere unless you've been playing around with it with an hex editor. A DLL from another SF2 installation to the same patch level won't solve your problem, it'll be the same one you have. Look for updated video drivers and reinstall DirectX 9 June 2010 redistributables, there's nothing else you can do. At some point in the future DirectX 10 will be so old that graphics wrappers for it will be needed. You can already try using a Vulkan wrapper, not sure if your GPU supports it though.

To be honest, I've tried using a wrapper to try to mitigate this, and it didn't do anything.
It's frustrating.
Thanks for you help, as always.

[orsin 160]

this usually happens when the game runs out of its set memory range.

The memory range here is not referring to the limit of windows or system memory. rather it is a range around 3-4GB. I noticed this happens a lot when certain weapon/ground unit use ultra high resolution texture.

 

I used the exclusion method to pin down and discovered this to be the root cause. It is proven that when I reduce the resolution of the texture thus reduce the memory of those weapons, the crash is gone.

 

So, when you see the crash happens intermittently, it is highly possible this is the cause. SF2 loads random ground unit and aircraft weapons for AI jets. When the program loads the weapon that has a memory requirement that exceed the allowed memory, this happens.

 

The simple way is to examine the resolution of your weapons and ground object folder and resize those excessive resolution textures. 

It is completely unnecessary to use 4096x4096 texture on a bomb. 512 x512 is enough.

Edited September 14 by orsin

[+Menrva 4,200]

4 hours ago, orsin said:

this usually happens when the game runs out of its set memory range.

The memory range here is not referring to the limit of windows or system memory. rather it is a range around 3-4GB. I noticed this happens a lot when certain weapon/ground unit use ultra high resolution texture.

It is so. However, even by resizing textures in the ODS mod (and I resized thousands of them for objects, weapons, pilots, aircraft, etc., it was no joke) the issue still happens. Some aircraft still feature 2k resolution textures otherwise quality would be compromised. The problem is also about mapping. An aircraft with a single texture takes a smaller toll on the game's memory compared to an aircraft mapped with 10 different textures. A mod tends to feature many more aircraft and ground objects with such mapping. We can get rid of crashes with even lower resolution textures, but that comes at the cost of compromising visual quality.

I wonder if increasing size of the stack in the DLL and in the EXE would make any difference. There's a tool to do it: https://joeduffyblog.com/2006/07/03/modifying-stack-reserve-and-commit-sizes-on-existing-binaries/

[simonmiller416 1,830]

2 hours ago, Menrva said:

It is so. However, even by resizing textures in the ODS mod (and I resized thousands of them for objects, weapons, pilots, aircraft, etc., it was no joke) the issue still happens. Some aircraft still feature 2k resolution textures otherwise quality would be compromised. The problem is also about mapping. An aircraft with a single texture takes a smaller toll on the game's memory compared to an aircraft mapped with 10 different textures. A mod tends to feature many more aircraft and ground objects with such mapping. We can get rid of crashes with even lower resolution textures, but that comes at the cost of compromising visual quality.

I wonder if increasing size of the stack in the DLL and in the EXE would make any difference. There's a tool to do it: https://joeduffyblog.com/2006/07/03/modifying-stack-reserve-and-commit-sizes-on-existing-binaries/

Menrva, it's time to start Strike Fighter 3 Project

[citizen67 48]

Mee too I'm experiencing CTD at 80%, mostly in in Korea terrain and Vietnam (modded with Air & Ground War Exp. Pack and Green Hell 3.5). Sometimes the game freeze at 40% or at 70% and I need to restart. It's a very annoying problem but if there's no solution I'll get over it.

Thanks

[simonmiller416 1,830]

7 hours ago, citizen67 said:

Mee too I'm experiencing CTD at 80%, mostly in in Korea terrain and Vietnam (modded with Air & Ground War Exp. Pack and Green Hell 3.5). Sometimes the game freeze at 40% or at 70% and I need to restart. It's a very annoying problem but if there's no solution I'll get over it.

Thanks

Yes, this is a problem with the game itself, so I usually split the mods into several copies and copy several games (similar to creating multiple campaign packs lol) to reduce the burden of game spawning units, which does reduce the chance of CTD. Even so, I still need to restart the game frequently to avoid the "black skin" problem...

[+daddyairplanes 10,234]

1 hour ago, simonmiller416 said:

 so I usually split the mods into several copies and copy several games (similar to creating multiple campaign packs lol)

welcome to the wonderful world of multiple (often themed) installs....

1 hour ago, simonmiller416 said:

to avoid the "black skin" problem...

thats interesting. i rarely get that and if i do, its generally a format error (the model really wants bmp or dds not jpeg) or more often naming (ie F-4B_5 in a F-4J folder). i dont recall hearing about it as a regular error

Edited September 14 by daddyairplanes

[+EricJ 4,244]

Yeah I don't get black skins unless it's what DA described. I never gotten that error on a regular basis.

[+Menrva 4,200]

11 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

thats interesting. i rarely get that and if i do, its generally a format error (the model really wants bmp or dds not jpeg) or more often naming (ie F-4B_5 in a F-4J folder). i dont recall hearing about it as a regular error

Unfortunately it happens also when the game runs out of memory, and like it has been said before, it happens in large mods and objects with several high resolution textures. When textures become black randomly on parts that usually appear textured, that's when the game has memory issues and is close to a crash to desktop. It happens to me in ODS 30AE with consecutive missions unless I reload the game after each mission.

[simonmiller416 1,830]

15 hours ago, daddyairplanes said:

i rarely get that and if i do, its generally a format error (the model really wants bmp or dds not jpeg) or more often naming (ie F-4B_5 in a F-4J folder). i dont recall hearing about it as a regular error

This is not because of a format error, everything was normal in the previous game, but once I refly multiple times, those normal skins will turn black.

So I have to close the game and restart. As Menrva said so.

What's interesting to me is it didn't happen on my old computer a few years ago

Edited September 15 by simonmiller416

[+Menrva 4,200]

1 hour ago, simonmiller416 said:

What's interesting to me is it didn't happen on my old computer a few years ago

Things change over time, DirectX 10 is now pretty old, and current video drivers for graphics cards clearly give priority to what's new. My only suggestion is to try the DXVK wrapper I link in the ODS 30AE download page; in converting DX10 to Vulkan rendering, it makes graphics a bit worse but it seems it reduces black textures and crashes to desktop by far. Before I bought my dedicated Nvidia GPU, I was using the integrated one by Intel which is very weak. I couldn't even load a mission in the ODS 30AE mod, but once the wrapper was added, I could finally load missions.

[+Nightshade/PR 7,931]

6 hours ago, Menrva said:

DirectX 10 is now pretty old

Have you tried DX12?

I'm using DX12, and while I get the occasional game-related oddity, I rarely have any graphical issues that aren't of my own making.

Edited September 15 by Nightshade/PR

[+Menrva 4,200]

18 minutes ago, Nightshade/PR said:

Have you tried DX12?

We're all using DX12 on Win11. The DX version supported by your graphics card and Windows system is totally unrelated, it does not mean the game is running on DX12, the game engine of SF2 is built on DX10 and it remains at DX10. Unless TK ever updates the game to make use of DX12 and 64bit (not gonna happen), we're stuck with this situation, an old game engine limited by a 32bit executable and outdated DX10 tech.

That's why I'm talking about wrappers, those sort of emulate older DX libraries with current technologies. There's no such thing as a DX10 to DX12 wrapper, the only one that works in SF2 is DXVK, which makes DX10/9/8 games run with Vulkan rendering.

[simonmiller416 1,830]

17 hours ago, Menrva said:

which makes DX10/9/8 games run with Vulkan rendering.

I'm pretty new to this, so Vulkan can also run with DX10? I've heard that it can reduce image quality, so have been thinking about whether to use it.

[OlWilly 130]

Indeed, the game engine was built to deal with a limited number of assets during a single mission. You have like up to 10 types of aircraft, limited number of munitions and very few ground objects all using relatively low res textures and not too crazy on polygon count.

Then you load up a heavily modded game with number of objects increased by order of magnitude and all using bigger textures and often high poly.

Ground vehicle mods tend to contribute to this problem a lot. A single mission won't generate too much types of the aircraft, but can go crazy with ground units. When I added vehicles from massive WarPac pack the loading times increased a lot ...