Terragen 2 - random exiting?

[jwbowyer]

I made a decision between here and the support forums, but seeing as the support forums rarely gets any posts I thought it would be better to post here, as this area seems to get more views and posts. I'm having a very simple issue, I downloaded Terragen 2 today for the first time, I had used the first terragen about a year ago, and was a fun program to mess around in. I never got real technical with it, but I could make some pretty sweet wallpapers with it.

I recently visited the site and saw the new terragen which had some amazing detail to them, so I of course downloaded the technology preview. I opened her up, and did some simple things like generate a small heightfield, add a surface layer. But I noticed that the program was randomly closing, it didn't seem to do it on any specific command, for instance it once closed while I was working on the height field commands, I just got back in and created another one without issue. And then when I was messing with the surface layers, it closed there also.

I searched the forums but I couldn't find any threads that were linked to my problem, so does anyone here know what is happening with the program?

Thank you for reading. 

[bigben]

The support forum may not have many posts but it is watched 

It could be possibly related to video driver issues. I find it much more stable with all hardware acceleration turned off.

[Oshyan]

It's very hard to say what the problem might be without more details and specifics. Do you get any error/crash messages when it "exits" or does it simply disappear completely? Is there any commonality you can determine in what situations it may occur? What are the details of your computer, especially operating system, CPU, and RAM? Do you have the absolute most recent drivers for your graphics card (and preferably other hardware)? Hopefully with some more info we may be able to resolve this as, although there are still some stability issues, I think the majority of users are not having frequent problems like this.

- Oshyan

[DanD]

It happens to me as well,  It usually occurs after I add a 4th or 5th population to the scene
I thought it was just me overloading the program

All drivers are current as of a week ago
2 Dual Core Processors at 2.33 gigs factory overclocked to 3
4 gigs of RAM
2 x NVIDIA G-Force 7950 GTX cards with a total of 1 gig of video RAM
not bad for a laptop

[Oshyan]

It happens to me as well,  It usually occurs after I add a 4th or 5th population to the scene
I thought it was just me overloading the program

All drivers are current as of a week ago
2 Dual Core Processors at 2.33 gigs factory overclocked to 3
4 gigs of RAM
2 x NVIDIA G-Force 7950 GTX cards with a total of 1 gig of video RAM
not bad for a laptop

In your case it's very possible, even with 4GB of RAM that you are going beyond the limits of your system. Are you running a 64 or 32 bit OS?

- Oshyan

[cyphyr]

It happens to me as well,  It usually occurs after I add a 4th or 5th population to the scene
I thought it was just me overloading the program

All drivers are current as of a week ago
2 Dual Core Processors at 2.33 gigs factory overclocked to 3
4 gigs of RAM
2 x NVIDIA G-Force 7950 GTX cards with a total of 1 gig of video RAM
not bad for a laptop

Thats a Laptop !! ?? wow whats the make?
Richard

[DanD]

Its an Alienware m9750 , on a 32bit OS, I also do Video Compositing and editing
and thats where the SLI board excels. Right now Vista wont support SLI
and I really dont see the need for active X 10 right now. Its quite possible that
I am overloading TG2, most of my objects are over 30 megs. (one is 148)
By the time I add the 4th population, there are already 10,000 high res
objects. So,TG2 just dies, immediate CTD LOL, Now,notice I said 10000
Bryce couldnt do that ( I know...I was a beta tester for Metacreations)
Vue cant do it either. TG2 can do it, Its just rendering the scene thats a kicker
anything over 800x600 with the detail slider set to 9, AA set to 5
3 cloud layers, and TG2 crashes LOL. So yeah, I'm trying to crash the program LOL
Maybe its that 3rd cloud layer

[cyphyr]

Detail setting of 0.9 is HIGH. I rarely go above 0.75, sometimes 0.8. Also check your cloud quality settings. This is variable but but again rarely needs to be above 256.
Thats some sweet machine you have there. I didn't know any boards supported two dual core processors (unless your talking xeons) but I want one .
Richard

[DanD]

 Yeah youre right,thats an unrealistic quality setting but isnt that what we're supposed to be doing ? Alpha or beta, testing the software/hardware to an unrealistic degree can only make it better. besides..I need to know what I can throw into a scene and what I cant

[Oshyan]

It would be useful if you could monitor memory usage in Task Manager to see if it spikes dangerously before the crash. It would also be good to know if there is any additional detail provided with the crash. Sometimes it will tell you a module, or it will say it was shut down by the Data Execution Prevention system. In the case of the latter adding TG2 to the exclusions list can help.

It does sound like you may just be pushing things a tad too far though.

- Oshyan

[DanD]

  Memory usage does spike,but not what you could call high,and its an instantaneous
thing. There is no warning window..Its just a CTD (Crash To Desktop)
Its my guess TG2 isnt even seeing 4 gigs of RAM,more like just 2 and I know
its only using one processor. But all those topics are already covered,and I didnt
feel I was adding anything useful,by commenting on them. Also,IF I try a render
containing any model of any type,and if its over 800x600, sometimes I get an error message
saying "image not found". I'm assuming that one or more of my texture maps arent
A) either large enough in resolution.
B) TG2, Just hates me LOL

Dan