OH MY GOSH!! I Passed My I-01 Rating!

[signmanbob]

It took me two tries, but I passed my I-01 Rating on the 2nd try.
The first time I tried, I was under so much pressure I thought I was going to pass out. I guess I had tried the I-01 test offline about six times and never restarted P3D, then I filed the flight plan and went online.
I took off on Rwy 20R, turned to heading 220 and followed ATC instructions.
Well, I'm heading away from Seal Beach VOR per ATC instructions and I hear "BLING...BLING...BLING...BLING....BLING..." I couldn't figure out what was happening. Then I realized P3D was running out of VAS memory and my FSUIPC was warning me that I was heading for "Never, Never Land" (...as in "you'll never land, and you'll never pass this test on this round).
Well, I got so darn flustered that I bypassed the ILS and royally failed the test, then got an error message saying that "Your computer has run out of memory and P3D will shut down (like..right now)" Note: My computer has 64GB of RAM, I doubt it is the one that ran out of memory .
ATC was kind enough to allow me to run through the test again after restarting P3D, and this time I did pretty good (and so did P3D).
This was so stressful, I believe I need a vacation (like Arnold) before going through the next test.
Anyway, I'm thrilled to officially be part of the elite IFR world of pilots on PilotEdge, and well on my way to being an ATP.

[Keith Smith]

P3D is a 32-bit application and is only able to use ~4GB of ram before it dies. So, having 64GB of ram won't necessarily help. Also, any rating that involves vectors to final can be challenging to practice offline.

[Kyle.Sanders]

Congrats!
And as Keith said... You can have 1,000,000 GB of RAM... 32bit programs can only use up to 4gb.

If you aren't too invested into P3D... Try X-Plane, as it is a 64bit program and will make use of all of your available RAM.

The I-2 isn't that hard. You will do great! Even if you fail, you will at least learn something from the experience.

[signmanbob]

P3D is a 32-bit application and is only able to use ~4GB of ram before it dies. So, having 64GB of ram won't necessarily help. Also, any rating that involves vectors to final can be challenging to practice offline.

Yes, I have had run-ins with this before in FSX. I should have thought to restart P3D before attempting my I-01 rating. It would have gone much better.

Congrats!
And as Keith said... You can have 1,000,000 GB of RAM... 32bit programs can only use up to 4gb.

If you aren't too invested into P3D... Try X-Plane, as it is a 64bit program and will make use of all of your available RAM.

The I-2 isn't that hard. You will do great! Even if you fail, you will at least learn something from the experience.

That's true Kyle. I did some other mistakes that I wouldn't have known to correct without making that first attempt, so it did pay off. I learned a lot from my mistakes.
I do use X-Plane also. In fact, I took my V-1 using AirFoilLab's Cessna 172 in X-Plane and it's a great aircraft sim. I just have some great addons in P3D, like Active Sky 2016 and Orbx, that are not available in X-Plane.
Lockheed Martin has done a lot of work with P3D to improve VAS management, and it is so much better than FSX, but it still needs some good and sensible user management to keep from running out of VAS memory.
This is not a concern with X-Plane, which is really nice. X-Plane is also getting some better addons.
I just really like A2A's Cessna 172 and 182...really everything that A2A makes.
Thank you to everyone and on to I-02.

Bob

[overload]

If you use FSUIPC with your P3D , you can get an onscreen value of the remaining VAS memory - that's what's running out when you hear the pings,

Go to the FSUIPC logging tab. Enter 024C in one of the 'specific value checks' boxes (0 = zero, not the letter O). Change the 'type' from S8 to S32 and check one of the available options where you want to show the remaining available VAS.

Eugene

[signmanbob]

If you use FSUIPC with your P3D , you can get an onscreen value of the remaining VAS memory - that's what's running out when you hear the pings,

Go to the FSUIPC logging tab. Enter 024C in one of the 'specific value checks' boxes (0 = zero, not the letter O). Change the 'type' from S8 to S32 and check one of the available options where you want to show the remaining available VAS.

Eugene

Thank you Eugene! That's great information. I'll try it.
I appreciate your help.

Bob