VAM was working perfectly last week, now it crashes every time - "System Out Of Memory"?

[Rhiza]

Hey all, would really appreciate some help with this because I'm completely lost as to what's happening here and why.

Tech specs, for reference:
CPU: Ryzen 7 2700 8c/16t
RAM: 16GB
GPU: RX Vega 64 8GB VRAM

As per the title, I've been playing VAM (desktop mode) for months and it's been absolutely great, no tech issues at all. Up until this week. All of a sudden, every time I try to load anything - scenes, looks, plugins, etc. - 9 times out of 10, VAM crashes to desktop.

As far as I'm aware, absolutely nothing has changed on my system between the last working session and this week. I've not installed any updates, not changed any system files, changed nothing within VAM except downloading stuff from the Hub, and the only thing I've installed is another game's launcher on a seperate drive via Steam. (Uninstalled again anyway just to be sure, no dice.)

I've done a bunch of troubleshooting, including clearing cache, verifying the files via the launcher (all options), reinstalled a new instance on a different drive, running fresh with no addons (partially worked, will explain further down), and I'm still experiencing the same crashing.

So, what seems to happen is that loading a scene sometimes works, depending on the size/complexity. If it loads, selecting a character and loading a look seems to work until the progress bar reaches the end and then VAM usually crashes. If I don't load a look or the scene doesn't crash at this point, simply opening a loaded plugin's settings or loading another look will also cause it to crash most of the time. So with all of this, VAM is basically unusable for me at the moment.

I've attached the error log for reference.

I've already trawled through the crash logs in the hopes of finding something obvious, but to be honest, I don't understand most of them and Googling some of the specific errors hasn't lead to anything apparently useful or relevant to me.

What did catch my eye though was one of the first errors listed: "Error during texture load: System.OutOfMemoryException: Out of memory". This error repeats at several points through the logs, as well as "Could not allocate memory: System out of memory!". Which is weird, because my amount of RAM has stayed exactly the same between this week and last time VAM worked.

So I did some more testing, keeping an eye on RAM allocation as I loaded scenes and slowly added more and more content. What I've found is that the game runs fine up until RAM usage (overall, not just VAM) hits around 12GB and then I get the usual crash. I tested this at least 10 different times with a variety of scenes, characters, load orders, settings changes and reinstalls, and exactly the same thing happens: when RAM allocation gets to around 12GB, the game hard crashes. Keeping the game below 12GB lets me do whatever I want without crashes (which isn't much, with my amount of addons).

So the solution seems obvious, right? Must be something wrong with my RAM. Except this is the only program this happens with. I can load up other games/software and sail up to 15GB with no issue, so I'm not sure what VAM's problem is.

I would appreciate any insight or experience or even guesses because I'm completely stumped. Let me know if I you'd like any more logs or information and I'll provide what I can.

As a side note because I've seen this being suggested before: this PC is also my workstation desktop I've spent the past couple of years working on, so nuking Windows is not a solution for me, but I would really like to be able to play with VAM again.

 

[Rhiza]

Okay, a little update after some more testing:

Ran several tests on my RAM and there's no problems found.

I've increased my virtual memory capacity to 8GB. Now VAM will go over 12GB RAM usage without immediately crashing, but it now seems to crash sometimes between 12-14GB usage with the same error.

 

[atani]

In your log there's this package missing - MeshedVR.PresetsPack - which I thought it would be part of a default VaM. That got me wondering if anything else for a base VaM was missing, but you said you checked for Core integrity so I guess the core is fine.
If you can add more RAM, then that would be the best course of action. Even with 32 GB I get crashes, but takes me longer for that to happen and that's when in VR.
I wonder if:

• Your antivirus is messing with your VaM. Some people reported VaM files being quarantined for no apparent reason
• Any recent Windows updates you did could have made this more likely to crash?

Would you consider having a dual boot Windows system? Perhaps having a separate Windows from your workstation would give you some flexibility to try out some things.

 

[Rhiza]

In your log there's this package missing - MeshedVR.PresetsPack - which I thought it would be part of a default VaM. That got me wondering if anything else for a base VaM was missing, but you said you checked for Core integrity so I guess the core is fine.
If you can add more RAM, then that would be the best course of action. Even with 32 GB I get crashes, but takes me longer for that to happen and that's when in VR.
I wonder if:

• Your antivirus is messing with your VaM. Some people reported VaM files being quarantined for no apparent reason
• Any recent Windows updates you did could have made this more likely to crash?

I did consider adding more RAM, but I'm confused as to why this has only become a problem now when it's handled more stress before without this issue.

I've also checked my AV, nothing quarantined or locked by it. I did try disabling the AV and Windows Defender just to be sure, but still had the same crashing problem.

In terms of Windows updates, haven't installed any for months. Definitely not within the past few weeks between VAM working fine and now not.

Would you consider having a dual boot Windows system? Perhaps having a separate Windows from your workstation would give you some flexibility to try out some things.

Possibly, but it's not something I really have the time or resources for setting up at the moment.

 

[atani]

There's nothing I can think of besides either getting more RAM or dedicating some time to set up a dual boot system. The latter would allow more customization and uncouple your workstation from the fapping..., I mean playing station

 

[DJ]

8GB is probably too small for your virtual memory. The stock recommendation is to set the size to "managed by windows".

Vam is known to crash pretty regularly on systems with 16GB of Ram. But usually, you can load a scene or 3 before running into issues. Have you maybe recently added some program or service that's running in the background and using RAM? Before running vam, shut down everything else.

When you change clothing, hair, textures, etc on a model, Vam doesn't actually unload the old ones from memory. It does this so if you chane back to them, they'll load much quicker. It's supposed to unload this stuff as your RAM fulls up, but as you've seen, that doesn't work particularly well. So when you chanhe a skin, clothimng, or appearance, you should make it a habit to go to the person control > Control&Physics1 and hit the "unload unused assets" button to manually clear up RAM space. And maybe do a hard reset (mainUI > file (open&save) > hard reset) every few scenes loads, which will clear *everything* out of ram.

 

[Rhiza]

Well as I said, I'm confused how I've been using VAM for months and only just ran into this problem, but maybe I was just getting lucky.

I've set my virtual memory to "system managed" now and while VAM still crashes occasionally under the same conditions, it's nowhere near as frequent as it was when I made this thread.

I'll look into doubling my RAM and see if it makes more of a permanent difference. Thanks for the help both of you.