It just goes bye-bye

[tdcarter]

Hi all,

I just rebuilt the pc.... downloaded and installed the 2.5 version of Topo.

I fire up the program and use it for a few minutes, when, *POOF*, it just disappears. No error messages, no MS debug info, just goes away.

First time, I was looking for my shared directory to save the track I just downloaded. Second time, I was in process fo downloading, third time, I had downloaded and saved, was scrolling around in aerial view of latest track plot.

Fourth time, I panned around a bunch in 4m topo view, no problem, switched to 4m aerial, again no problem, 4 m urban, eventually, *POOF*.

Suggs?

OS,  XP pro.

[Krein]

Hi,

Thanks for the report of the problem.  You are the second user to see this behavior.  The other user can't reliably replicate the problem, but it happens randomly when scrolling or zooming aggressively.

I suggested updating his video card drivers, which did not seem to help, but I'd suggest that for you as well.  Can you post (or email) a more detailed system spec?  There may be a common similarity that would help us track it down.  

This is the first we've ever heard of the program just disappearing -- you'd think it could at least give an error message!!

Krein,
Tried updating video drivers, no joy.
Tried using program on second monitor, same result.

How detailed the specs ya want? Shoot me an e-dress and I can have ms-info or a program of your choosing export the results to a file.

Off the top...
Dell Optiplex box.
P-3, 733
256 ram
Dual video
1 Intel 810
1 Nvidia 5200
1280x1024, 1600x1200 respectively. Both at 16bit color.
Xp Pro, version 2002
Norton Anti-virus, Virtual CD, Netscape 7.2 running concurrent with Topo.
64~74 meg memory free and available.
Net connection is Lan through Win2000 server.

TC

[jmstacey]

If you lower your screen resolution, does that make any difference?

No harm in trying.

[tdcarter]

Change of resolution had no effect.

TC

[tdcarter]

Don't even need to be aggresively panning.

I can have it dissappear while I'm sitting waiting for the tiles to fill in. I switch from topo64 to combo8 and while waiting *POOF*

Maybe this will help debug... aftre it blows away, all the data of where I just panned too will be gone also. And any tiles it downloaded seem to dissappear and have to be refreshed.

TC

[tdcarter]

Okay...

Now it's not even when scrolling. All maptiles were drawn on-screen (or so I think)...

I was trying to draw a track, had started, was about half drawn, and *POOF*

TC

[Alan]

I'll have to do some research into the exception handling.  I'm just confused that windows doesn't give you any error at all.  I wonder if the XP "application log" (see the event log view) says anything about it, it usually logs whenever a program crashes.

[tdcarter]

Not a thing.....

Dang it!

TC

[Alan]

Try this, turn the tiles off (one of the toggle buttons).  See if you can get it to die with the tiles off.

[tdcarter]

Alan,
I assume you mean turn off tile downloading?

Well if not, guess what, that fixed it. Well, not really fixed, but prevented crashes.

I don't even need to aggressively scroll to get a crash. I was playing back a track at on 3.75x and it would crash quite easily, and frequently.
Turn off downloading, and the whole track could play nice and easy. I tried turning on dowloading part way through playback, and *POOF*

But now for the fun part... yesterday I couldn't play back the track for more then a few minutes without a blow-up, today, the whole thing played back and all tiles downloaded.

Could it be some slow or errant connection to/with TerraServer?

TC

[tdcarter]

Ooopps, might of spoken too soon.

Aftre successfully playing back the track, I was looking to plan a route for todays ride.

So I zoomed out to 1m urban, and was panning,. not being too aggresive. I would drag 1 screen, let the tiles fill, then drag again, etc...

Aftre about 3rd drag, *POOF*

Same thing in log...
Successfully Created Surfaces
CopyJpegToSurface: Error reading JPEG image

[Bob Crane]

I have been getting the same erratic crash results on my new desktop where I upgraded topofusion. For the first few days it shut down every few minutes, now after a few months it shuts down much less frequently(however I have been doing most of my topofusion work lately on my laptop which I decided not to upgrade to the new 2.5 topofusion)

Let me know when you figure it out, by the way, topofusion is still the best program I have used for getting quick maps and editing them without much hassle. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, keep up the good work.

bob

[Krein]

Quote (Bob Crane @ May 22 2005,10:04)

I have been getting the same erratic crash results on my new desktop where I upgraded topofusion. For the first few days it shut down every few minutes, now after a few months it shuts down much less frequently(however I have been doing most of my topofusion work lately on my laptop which I decided not to upgrade to the new 2.5 topofusion) Let me know when you figure it out, by the way, topofusion is still the best program I have used for getting quick maps and editing them without much hassle. THANK YOU VERY MUCH, keep up the good work. bob

Bob, are you seeing the same kind of crash -- no error message, just the program disappearing?

Thanks.  We need to take a closer look at this problem.

[Bob Crane]

Yes, it just disappears without any notice. Really makes you get serious about saving your files often.

[tdcarter]

Bob,
Take a look at the topofusion log and see if you get an error message after a crash. You have to look before you start back up, as it re-writes with each initalization.

Log is in the primary topofusion directory... ie
\Program Files\TopoFusion\TopoFusion.log

Just use notepad to open it.
TC

[Krein]

Quote (Bob Crane @ May 23 2005,6:48)

Yes, it just disappears without any notice. Really makes you get serious about saving your files often.

Hi Bob,

Can you post or email (to smorris@topofusion.com) your system specs, to the level of detail that Thomas posted above?  Maybe there is a link there.

I'll bug Alan again about some exception handling stuff.  It's disturbing that it just disappears!!

[tdcarter]

I've recently had some 'poofing' for no apparent reason - - until I remembered that I had gradually been increasing the cashe settings, and the memory use settings. I set all of these way back and the poofing stopped. Then I started increasing them again without problems until...

I increased my RAM from .75 gb to 1.5 gb. Since TopoFusion uses a percentage of RAM to set the memory use values, these numbers increased a lot. Apparently something (XP SP2 or who knows what) could not use all that dedicated RAM, and I got a poof every time I tried to run TopoFusion. I backed the setttings down, and everything is fine again.

By the way Krein, it would be great to know more about the end effect of these settings? For example, for normal use, is their an upper limit beyond which you won't see any difference. Say on the 3D settings. At least that way I could crank up only the settings that really make a difference.

Larry

reported in another thread.
TC

[tdcarter]

Scott, Alan, and the rest of the gang....

Okay. I'm thinking Larry's post is either different, or much more involved then my non PA mind can handle.

I can play back tracks fine if I disable tile downloading. But I turn it on... and *poof's* start happening at random. They do seem to happen in patterns. One day, I can't play back a track for more then a few minutes without a blow-out. So I finally give up. next day, I play it back and download all the tiles just beautifully.

So with my limited knowledge of code (as I'm a sys-admin), I'm assuming it has to be something in the download. Something is timing out badly.

Here is a proposal. I can send you some tracks of mine that I've had trouble playing. Maybe when you play them back it'll recreate the problem. Thus narrowing it down to the data of the tilesets I'm downloading or the servers database of them.

Or.... if the problem is in my connection or hardware (what??? a sys-admin problem, never..)

Why not custom compile a debug version of TF. Insert a loop that writes out a log of each and every time a tile is requested, the ack's received, and any other data necessary. Yeah, It'll slow me down, but in the interest of solving this problem, I'm game.

On a similar note, I recently played back a track that covered old data I know I already downloaded. But... it re-downloaded the data again and constantly crashed. I was using the .25m urban tileset.

So did it really need to get the data again? Was it redundant? How are you checking for old/outdated tilesets? Was it crashing for no reason? In my maps directory I have a 640m file that was map1 and should have already contained the tiles of the urban data for that area. But now it was making a maps2 file and re-downloading the data. Is that within defined parameters?

TC

PS If you want to contact direct, get more info and take this post momentarily offline, let me know at tc.carter at charter.net

[Krein]

Quote (tdcarter @ June 10 2005,11:49)

I've recently had some 'poofing' for no apparent reason - - until I remembered that I had gradually been increasing the cashe settings, and the memory use settings. I set all of these way back and the poofing stopped. Then I started increasing them again without problems until... I increased my RAM from .75 gb to 1.5 gb. Since TopoFusion uses a percentage of RAM to set the memory use values, these numbers increased a lot. Apparently something (XP SP2 or who knows what) could not use all that dedicated RAM, and I got a poof every time I tried to run TopoFusion. I backed the setttings down, and everything is fine again. By the way Krein, it would be great to know more about the end effect of these settings? For example, for normal use, is their an upper limit beyond which you won't see any difference. Say on the 3D settings. At least that way I could crank up only the settings that really make a difference. Larry reported in another thread. TC

Thanks for reporting your experience and fix.  This will help narrow it down.  My machine only has 512mb, so there may be a bug when the map cache gets too large.  

As for the settings improving things, the memory cache setting will just control how many tiles are stored in memory.  Panning back through tiles you have already loaded into memory will be faster than reading them from disk.  But if you've got 1.5 gb of memory, a setting of %15 or so should be more than enough.  Having more video memory free actually makes more of a difference.  Those maps are loaded instantly.

For 3d, the two settings do make a difference in the quality of the model.  The higher they are cranked the more detail you get, and the slower the display will be.  If you're using the auto-download 3d feature then of course more highly detailed models will take longer to download as well.  So it's a trade off rather than being a matter of which settings really matter.  It depends what kind of system you have and what type of connection.  That's why we made it configurable.

[Krein]

Quote (tdcarter @ June 11 2005,12:19)

Scott, Alan, and the rest of the gang.... Okay. I'm thinking Larry's post is either different, or much more involved then my non PA mind can handle. I can play back tracks fine if I disable tile downloading. But I turn it on... and *poof's* start happening at random. They do seem to happen in patterns. One day, I can't play back a track for more then a few minutes without a blow-out. So I finally give up. next day, I play it back and download all the tiles just beautifully. So with my limited knowledge of code (as I'm a sys-admin), I'm assuming it has to be something in the download. Something is timing out badly. Here is a proposal. I can send you some tracks of mine that I've had trouble playing. Maybe when you play them back it'll recreate the problem. Thus narrowing it down to the data of the tilesets I'm downloading or the servers database of them. Or.... if the problem is in my connection or hardware (what??? a sys-admin problem, never..) Why not custom compile a debug version of TF. Insert a loop that writes out a log of each and every time a tile is requested, the ack's received, and any other data necessary. Yeah, It'll slow me down, but in the interest of solving this problem, I'm game. On a similar note, I recently played back a track that covered old data I know I already downloaded. But... it re-downloaded the data again and constantly crashed. I was using the .25m urban tileset. So did it really need to get the data again? Was it redundant? How are you checking for old/outdated tilesets? Was it crashing for no reason? In my maps directory I have a 640m file that was map1 and should have already contained the tiles of the urban data for that area. But now it was making a maps2 file and re-downloading the data. Is that within defined parameters? TC PS If you want to contact direct, get more info and take this post momentarily offline, let me know at tc.carter at charter.net

Hi,

Try cranking your 'tile cache size' setting down all the way, then see if you can still get it to go poof on you.  That's all Larry's fix entails.

It could be a matter of how much available memory you have when you start TopoFusion up.  If the problem is a memory cache that's too large then it should go poof more often if you start it without other programs loaded.

But it could be a download problem, as you're saying.  I agree that making a debug version for you to try is the next step.  Glad you're up for testing it out for us.

Are you 100% sure you already had those maps and that it didn't crash sometime before those tiles got written out?  The starting of a new maps file is suppose to happen at 640mb in case folks want to burn them to CDs (we had to cap them at 2 gig anyway).  It might be that there is something screwy in the mapindex file, though.  Another thing to try is to changing your map directory (starting fresh) temporarily to see if it still poofs.

Go ahead and send me your files for me to playback if none of this helps.

Thanks

I get the same error with 2.5 Program goes poof.
Dell XPS Gen-2
Win xp Home
1 G Ram
ATI 9800
All software and drivers fully updated.

I figured that an upgrade to 2.6 would fix the problem. It worked great for a while, then I went to the web site to check out Photo Fusion and when I tried to return to the program, it was gone. Any Ideas?

[Krein]

Hi,

We should be releasing a new beta either later today or tomorrow.  It has a new exception handling system that hopefully will catch these "poof" errors.  I'll post here when it's out, besides sending out the beta email to those on the list.

Thanks for the patience.

[Krein]

Hey guys,

Give the new beta a try:

www.topofusion.com/beta.php

It should catch these errors and allow us to fix them.  If you get an error, please fill out the form and send us the log file.

Thanks!!!