Having CTDs with several new (4.14) maps
 

I posted this over in the "4.14.1 Patch Observation" thread but I've gotten no response, so I instead created a separate thread for it in the hopes that I could actually get some help with it. Anyhow:

I updated using the update patch that allowed updating directly from 4.13.4 to 4.14.1, and most of it seems to work fine (for now, anyways; I'll update whenever necessary). However, a couple of maps seem to have some problems:

When, on the Full Mission Builder, I selected any of the Battle for Donbass or the Battle for Moscow maps, the game would quickly CTD, and I'd have to restart the program. The other new maps included in the patches don't have this problem.

Did I do something wrong, and/or is anyone else having trouble? I haven't noticed anyone else mention it here (yet), so I thought I'd ask around for help. I would greatly appreciate any help on this matter!:)

How much video RAM does your GPU have?

Not having enough video RAM can be a cause of the CTDs when loading large, detailed maps. The Moscow and Donbass maps are very large with a lot of custom textures and detail.

I had similar issues with the Solomons Islands and New Guinea maps when they were first released, while using an old 512mb video card. Moved up to a 2GB card and the issue resolved.

I have an NVidia GTX 1080 Ti, which has 11 GB of VRAM. I also have about 32 GB of regular ram, an OCed (4.8 GHz) Intel Core i7 7700K, and a 1 TB SSD. That's just off the top of my head. That should clearly be enough to avoid most CTDs, and yet it still happens on those maps that I mentioned!

I would have said the same as Treetop64, but since that's not it I wonder if it could be an Open GL thing. I have only a modest graphics card and system, but I can open Moscow and Donbass maps in FMB and zoom in on the city centres without any issues. Are you running in Open GL? I know that IL-2 is optimised for Open GL and it helps with some other texture issues. Other than that I'm out of ideas.

Have you try using the 512 MB il2fb.exe?

Lol yeah, ok. That's not it, then. :)

Same as idefix mentioned; which il2fb.exe are you using? There is now a choice of .exe's to use with the release of v4.14, with each succeeding choice having a larger memory address than that preceding.

Well, I have only one that I can find (the one that's in my "Program Files" folder for this game; specifically, under "C:\Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\IL-2 Sturmovik 1946".). If there's supposed to be others, then I wouldn't immediately know where to look.

In addition, it seems to work on that particular il2fb.exe, so long as you don't change maps too often.

In your game folder you should have a folder called "EXE". In there is a subfolder, "Client_RU" containing 4 alternative il2fb.exe files. They allow different amounts of RAM use for Java. My limited understanding is that you should use the largest one that works for you. The other folders contain other versions for use with mods.

Might as well try it I guess, but I don't think this will fix whatever is causing your map problem. I only have a GTX960 and the 'Battle for...' maps load fine. I tried it with the 96MB and 1024 exes and it works with either.

I found that those maps work quite well on the 1024 MB .exe file. However, I ran into another couple of problems:

First, when I try to play a mission set on a large map (e.g. Battle for Moscow or the Solomons maps), sometimes the mission wouldn't load even when I may only have one unit on the map. In those cases, it would display an error message saying "Mission loading failed: Mesh 3do/humans/Paratroopers/[insert country here]/mono.sim not created"; the country it would mention would usually either be Russia or Germany. I have no idea why it would do that at all; it also seems to not matter which of the .exe files I try, as the tendency to spit out these error messages would remain about the same.

Second, even though I've mentioned that my computer should be able to put out playable framerates for a number of games (including this one), when I tried flying over Moscow on the Battle for Moscow (just a single, player-controlled plane, no other units), the framerates dropped to single-digit speeds. When I face away from there, the framerates improve, but only by a few FPS. It seems that there's an issue with how all those various models on the ground have to be rendered, even though my hardware should at least theoretically be up to the task. I'm not sure how well optimized the rendering system is, but it may need at least some tweaking. Perhaps there's also other factors that I don't yet understand or know about, as well.

In any case, I hope that there's a way to fix these immediately, or failing that, the dev team could do some more work in fixing these bugs and other issues in the next hotfix/patch or thereabouts!:)

This one has come up before. Check your conf.ini under [Render_OpenGL] and try these settings:

TexCompress=2
TexFlags.TexCompressARBExt=1

I also wonder if your overclocking is causing problems. Try resetting to default and see if there is an improvement.