John took the words right out of my mouth .. or right off my fingers. I definitely would move your swap file to your non-OS drive. I moved mine to my larger and much faster drive and it made a noticeable difference.

Great advice John, mine is on a separate drive from both VuePro and the system drive.

I created another swap file on my second HD where Vue resides. I am now running the new beta (3693000) version and it seems fine, even fast IF (a big IF) I turn off background drawing and Open GL. Working with Open GL is slow motion from the beginning of the session and it crashed. Scene is 4 mill polygons.

I can leave OpenGL on, but turning off the background thread is a must for me. Although, Vue's OpenGL implementation can't make up it's whether it wants to speed up the view panes or not ...

Seemingly at random it will slow down -- even just panning around a simple object. And other times moving the camera around a scene is very fluid, with multiple complex objects.

I DO notice that maximizing the main view (or any of the other views) speeds up the display considerably. Which, of course, make sense.

On the subject of the new V4P build; I didn't download because of crashes, I haven't had a crash since disabling the background draw thread 4 months ago. I downloaded to see if it would fix some wierdness I'd been getting in P5 cloth simulation imports.

Given the above, I think you can guess how happy I was when "Vue4Pro.eon has encountered a problem and needs to close." appeared after about 25 mins of playing with it. Anywho, I hit the "send error report" button and, much to my amazement, after the "checking for error status" message box, I got a dialog I've never seen before saying there actually WAS information available that might help fix the problem - all the time I've used XP, I never really thought that error reporting really DID anything! The link in the dialog took me to a page at microsoft.com containing the message that my error had (most likely) originated in the ATI driver, and a link to ATI driver updates.

The ATI link wasn't really useful, since my desktop PC blew up (literally!) I've been using an HP/Compaq laptop with HP custom drivers, got the latest drivers from HP though and I'm stunned by the difference it's made. When I first got Vue Pro I as impressed with how quick I could see a shaded preview of my scence, maybe 3 or 4 seconds, but now I've got real time! No noticible wait for a preview with textures, lens fare, the whole thing!

I really am very sorry for those having big problems with Pro, I didn't even realise I was having a problem till I fixed it just now, all I can say is please stick with it, coz when it works properly - and particularly in conjunction with Poser 5 - the results are awesome!

John

quote: "I didn't even realise I was having a problem till I fixed it just now." I wonder how many more have problems but want let anyone know about them. Can anyone tell me exactly what background draw is for and actually does. I do know what OpenGl is and I would like to think I can use it since it was part of our package when we bought Vue Pro. Tomorrow I should be able to play in Vue a while and then can tell about the new upgrade I installed.

Well I had another menu deletion episode with VuePro tonight with 52,000 polygons and 2 lights. I selected a group I had made of 2 poser objects and a light and when I let go of the mouse, it got super slow and then finally returned, and when it did, the menus were gone, but the speed returned. This is the same type of things I've been getting. I tried closing it out and reloading it, but it had already did crazy things to the windows resource table, so I had to reboot to continue. So the update didn't fix this.

I will try the background draw thread workaround and see if that works for me as I try to get this picture done.

ShadowWind

Since the updates (the previous one), I haven't had it crash as in end the program or end with an error message in any particular program. It just craps the menus and the requesters to the point of being unusable until rebooted. At which time I can load the same scene and continue on for another hour or so. ShadowWind

iloco; That option should really be called the 'background redraw' thread, because that is essentially what it does. That is the screen refresh for the non active components in the viewport, and any effect that changes in your active component(s) might produce (such as shadows, or hotspots caused by adding light sources). It also handles the realtime redraw whenever you actually move something; that is why you disable the feature whenever you have the trouble of creating an object, moving to a new location, and you get multiple ghost artifacts of that object along the path you moved it. And the big kicker is that this thread uses (I believe )your video card to handle the redraw; disabled, the task falls back onto the CPU.

Thanks Dale B for that explanation. beginning to understand more how a few things are working in Vue. I have been working in Vue this afternoon after new upgrade and Have not had any hard crashes so far. Vue does seem to be very sluggish and not as responsive as it should be. It is on the verge of being just like what ShadowWind is experiencing. Still something is just not right with Vue Pro. Have not finished a scene yet, so will keep observing what takes place. :o)

What stinks is, because Renderosity is living in the mid 90's as far as forums go, this thread is getting buried as each day passes. Many people who might benefit from an active and informational thread like this will never see it. Not as bad as if this were the Poser forum, but it's still getting buried. What a totally idiotic way of doing things. And don't get me started on the pathetic search system ... arrrghh. [/rant]

timoteo1 weird that I was thinking same thing this morning. Have to agree this type of forum doesn't have a lot going for it. "lol" When I saw it didn't have an edit option I knew it was still in the stone age. :o(

It's a real shame too, because it IS a good forum ... people/content -wise. Just a lot is being squandered because of their arcahic BB system. S A D

Tonite had a hard crash using Vue Pro. Had a few rocks and one object with a couple points lights. When I added a directional light it locked it up solid. Had to shut down and restart computer bye reset button on PC tower. Getting real agravating that something is causing all these problems and we can not figure out what it is. If anyone can prove to me it is my hardware I will buy new hardware so I can get Vue Pro to work for me.

I give up on VuePro after several more crashes last night. Maybe it works for some, that are willing to go to extreme measures, none of which are in the program specs (buying a dedicated machine, reformatting windows, etc). Maybe the pain of doing these things is a lot less when you get the software for free. But I didn't. I paid for it as a legal customer should, and at this point, I really feel as though e-on pirated my $300 and sold me this bugware that promises to be a technical wonder, but must be badly coded to require such extreme measures that has been mentioned here. So back to Vue 4, and will write this up as a lesson in never buying from e-on again. You know, I'm against piracy, but it completely amazes me that we see e-on in these threads very quickly to roast a pirate, but not to address their legitimate customer's concerns. Says a lot about the company.

ShadowWind

Well, so far on my clean new system (and I mean CLEAN!) Vue has not crashed. Besides being totally amazed at speed increase and smoothness, I have not encountered any problems but need to do some more testing. However, it did say my Radeon 9800 PRO was not a validated card, but it too seems to work flawlessly for the most part. (Get some weird "noise" in some patterns.)

Now the bad news ... the timeline response STILL comes to a crawl (worse than a crawl) after importing a simple animated Poser figure. It is beyond unusable.

I don't how Phoul and other animators can stand it or even work with it ... it's ludicrous. There is still a good one or two second lag from when you try to move the cursor, to it and the scene actually moving. FORGET showing the animation smoothly at all. This is on a 3.4GHZ HT, 2 GIG RAM, RAID, etc. machine.

PLEASE, PLEASE fix this dibilitating bug Eon. PLEASE!!

Here are only few persons speaking. None of you was able to do a step by step description of your crashes. How would you get help if e-on isn't aware how the crashes arrived?

That's because for most of us, no one thing (except maybe or using UNDO) can be narrowed down. Vue seems to crash or lose resources at random. Also, many of us have used their dreadful technical "support" system to no avail. This has been covered by many people, many times Guitta.

I'm not speaking about the support pages at e-on timoteo, because that's the same problem. No description, no specific help possible. Even if it is random, just write it down, step by step. This should be easy, as crashes seems to happen all the time for you. Maybe in repeating exactly the same steps you can get it twice? Write it down here in this thread:-)

Step 1 open vue pro Step 2 open New Orleans atmosphere Step 3 add rocks untill I have a group of 8. group the rocks and remane to rocks1 Step 4 duplicate rock group one and rename rockgroup2 step 4 move rockgroup2 to postion I want it. Step 5 move rockgroup1 to postion I want it. Step 6 add a terrian and add a lemog testure and resize terrian. move terrian to back of scene into the background. step 7 add one point light and place behnd camera. step 8 add a water plane and add water texture from Vue default textures. Add reflexion of 20% to water. step 9 add a plum tree to rockgroup1 as brush. step 10 duplicate plum tree and add more brush to rock group 1 step 11 duplicate plum tree and add to rock group 2 aSs brush. step 12 add one directional light and click on the icon to move its position. CRASH!!!!!! This is a hard crash that needs to shut off computer and restart with computer off on button. Ctl Alt and delete will not let me get to the application to top it from running or restart computer from Ctl Alt Delete. Now what more can I add if these were the only steps I did and have them listed as it happened. These are random slowdowns or crahes and no one thing cause them to happen. As long as a few think we (3-4 users that do speak up) are having a problem I don't see much progress as it seems others think it is us the user instead of Vue the Software that is the problem. I think a lot of users that have problems don't speak up because they feel intimadaded by how they get replys that it throws all the blame back to them instead of where the problem rally lies. I refuse to be intimadated by any one when I pay cash for an item that is suppose to work as it is advertised and it does not do as it is suppose to.

iloco, if you do these steps again, does it crsh again at the same position?

No.

Gebe,
The scenario of memory leaking should be enough for their staff to do a full shakedown of the code. It is the one constant in all of this. This type of bug is notorious for not being able to be duplicated by the customer, because it is affected by outside influences that the customer has no way of knowing about.

Let me see if I can explain this in layman's terms...

There is the Windows Hotel, a plush resort that VuePro customers love so much, that when they find it, they just want to stay forever. Now the hotel also caters to other customers as well and at any given time, there is a random number of people staying in the hotel, because most check in and out, making room for new people. VuePro people don't leave though, and so as more come, they fill up the hotel, making it more difficult for other people to book rooms. But as long as there is room at the Inn, everyone is happy to be staying there. Mr. Undo came in and found a room no problem. Mr. Undo decided he wanted another room, after not clearing out of his first room. He finds there is no room at the Inn, even though his travel agent told him there was. He goes down and fights with the front desk, but there is no room, so there is nothing that can be done. Instead of just giving up the room, he blows the place up in anger.

Now in computer terms, it means that if a resource cannot be allocated into the reserved space and that refusal is not properly dealt with, it's going to crash. It may not even be VuePro that instigates the crash, but VuePro is the cause of it nonetheless, because it does not clean up it's allocations as it's supposed to and this is called a leak.

I've been in software development for 20 years and seen many different scenarios where there comes into play, and it's not uncommon (especially in windows). But it's nothing that the customer can share. It's not an easy bug to find, taking a complete shakedown of the code. But it's necessary if their goal is to make a stable system.

The reason it doesn't crash on a dedicated computer is because the resource table can then be used almost exclusively by VuePro, giving it plenty of leeway to leave bits on the stack. By the time it fills up enough to crash, your session with it is probably over, thus you never notice it. Also I've noticed that most people that seem to run VuePro fine, tend to stick with what is in VuePro rather than a whole lot of Poser imports and things, so it's possible the leak is only in those routines, and thus it hardly ever leaks memory in other areas.

So is it the official word from e-on that unless we can give them a duplicatable scenario that we are out of luck? If so, I would like to hear that from e-on directly. I would hope that is not the case though, as I know if I tried to pull that on my customers at work, I'd be fired.

ShadowWind

All I can say is I am glad there are a few reasonable people that do understand there is a problem that has not been found yet with Vue Pro. I do use a lot of outside props, obj's and materials with vue pro. It would be useless to me if I had to use only what came with Vue Pro. I do not use the animation part of Vue Pro so I have no idea how it works and if there is any problems with that part of it. I just bought xfrog basic library and waiting on the USA package of trees to use with Vue Pro when they are converted to Vue format. Why is Vue 4.2 stable and Vue Pro is not. Just a thought but is it because 4.2 OpenGl will not work and it will with Vue Pro. Is Open Gl the culprit or a memory leak as Others has suggested. I am open to suggestions and will buy a new viedo card but I don't think that is my problem. I know its not my RAM because I have done added to where I now have 1.5 gigs of it. I have a faster computer than some that are using Vue Pro so its not my pc. I am using windows 2000 which is suppose to be the best memory manager that there is. I have no idea other than to know it is most frustrating and agravating when all it wants to do is slow down or crash when trying to use it. I only use it for fun. If I had to depend on it for money then I would have done given up with it. ;o( I keep hoping that e-on will find the problem so we can enjoy the software it is suppose to be and can be when the problem is solved.

Thank you, ShadowWind, for wonderfully describing a possible problem with VuePro. Its behavior on my machine, fine when first opened, then gradually slowing down to the point where I'm moving in slow motion seems to be a memory leak problem. I work in the software industry and know that this is always a major concern with development. I've given up on Open GL and background draw even though e-on says my video card is compatible. Somehow this just isn't right.

To nite I disabled Open Gl and draw. Step1 loaded one terrian and applied a multiple texture from default materials. Step 2 duplicated the terrian twice with same texture. Step 3 loaded walnut tree that came from plants from e-on Step 4 duplicated the walnut. Step 5 duplicated the walnut once more and positioned it in scene. Step 6 added a xfrog dandelion plant and resized it small so it would be to scale. Step 7 clicked on scatter and replicate for the xfrog dandelion and asked it to make 100 copys and scatter at various settings. Vue Pro locked up solid........."o( Now this time I get and error message that says: Mircrosoft Visual C++ Runtime Library Runtime error! Program:....ogram Filese-on softwareVue 4 ProfessionalVue4Pro.eon This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the applications support team for more information. I was able to close Vue Pro this time by clicking on the X but lost my scene as I didn't have it saved with so little in it. Now heres the kicker. I duplicated the scene and this time it duplicated the plants but then quit respondeing. It didn't lock this time so I waited for about 5 minutes and it finally gave me a Vue 4 Professional small window that said Out of memory. Under that window is one exactly like the above described one. I kept clicking on the out of memory small window but it kept coming back as fast as it would disappear when I click on it. I was finally able to get to window under the small one and click on the ok and it closed out Vue Pro. I have no idea what is going on but maybe one of you software people can decifer a little from what happen tonite with this shuting down of Vue Pro. Remember no OpenGl and draw enabled. :o(

"I do not use the animation part of Vue Pro so I have no idea how it works and if there is any problems with that part of it.

And how ... more than I care to mention. The worst of which is the previously mentioned TIMELINE SCRUB SLOWDOWN. It makes Poser animation import useless IMHO. The "fun" has just begun if you're only doing stills.

-Tim

Attached Link: https://secure.e-onsoftware.com/Download/Updates.php

Thanks gebe for keeping us posted. Going there now. Will let you know how things work. I was able to create a scene last nite by saving often and restarting Vue pretty often. Not sure what is effecting my memory that slows Vue down when I have been in it for a while. :)

Sorry, but on my brand new CLEAN system, I was using Vue Pro for about 5minutes when it crashed. Major disappointment. I created a tree, duplicated and randomized size/location 10 times. I drug the timeline around a bit, added a keyframe at 6 seconds. I then move one tree up and was going to move it back down when I got the dreaded Vue.eon error and had to shut it down. sigh This is pathetic. I'll try running it without OpenGL once again, even though that was one of the main reasons I got Pro was to have real GL suppport. Are they planning on having official support for the Radeon 9800 any time soon? (Arguably one of the most popular graphics cards on the market.)

I am still getting VuePro.eon errors and solid lockups when trying to replicate an object so can scatter them in a scene. This time it was the cactus when I tryed to replicate 50 of them in a desert scene. This is after the new update today. It says an error log is being created in the Program error window. I have to reboot my computer before I can access Vue or windows again.

I rebooted computer and loaded a cactus and put in to scatter 50 cactus and it locked again with nothing in the scene but the cactus. After rebooting again I backed off to 25 cactus to replicate and scatter. This it done without crashing. Now I think I will increase the number and see what happens. I increased to 35 and got a solid lockup with Vue and had to reboot computer to get back into windows and Vue. Can someone else try this and let me know what happens.

I have gone back a half hr later and tryed again to duplicate the 50 cactus and it scattered and replicated them with out any problem. Did 50 other plants along with the cactus. I am lost for what is happening with me and Vue Pro. I think I am jinked and maybe its not suppose to work for me. :o( I will quit bugging everyone with my complaints and keep getting updates and hope one these days my Vue Pro is as stable as a lot of yours.

Just to let everyone know I poseted the above crash at e-ons tech site and here is there reply back. Quote"" Indeed, we were able to reproduce the bug. We did not have to reboot, however. I told the development team about this problem, and they will see what they can do about it. Best regards. Tom Thir End Quote. It only confirms to me there are bugs in VuePro and we need to work with e-on and everyone who has problems to get them resolved. :o)

Anyone got catsup for this crow I'm about to eat? He's kinda tough. In doing further research last night about this seemingly lack of resources that VUePro seems to get itself into, I came across some information that I was not aware of. Being a Unix programmer, and one not up on the latest windows enhancements, I found out that even though it appears to be a resource table problem, Win2K and WinXP do not use resource tables, but rather unlimited (only by memory) space for resource storage. Which means, that while it still could be leaking memory across the board, it's possible that there are other elements at play here.

Also in my research, I read the latest service pack release for Win2K had a few fixes that were GUI and memory related that might be interfering. Perhaps these are not a problem in XP, only 2K. What service pack are the ones having trouble running VuePro using.

I'm still not getting the official crash with the Vuepro.eon.exe error message. I just get the destruction of the interface, which seems very difficult to duplicate. I did get one Vuepro.eon error, but it was when I tried to bring in something from Vue 4 that I knew wasn't that compatible and I wasn't surprised it crashed.

The odd thing now is Vue 4 seems to be acting up now a bit, quitting for no reason which it did twice. So I am starting to wonder if there isn't something more at play here than just Vue.

To the ones running VuePro fine, and we already know gebe's answer, are you running Vue 4 and VuePro together or just VuePro itslef without Vue 4. Would uninstalling Vue 4 do any good?

ShadowWind

I am running service pak 3 for windows 2000 pro. What gets me is my other applications don't have the problems I have been having with Vue Pro. Since I quit trying to replicate plants and been doing normal things I have been getting along prety good since the last upgrade to Vue Pro. I have also wondered if uninstalling Vue 4.2 would have any effects on VuePro but if its not open I don't see how it would effect VuePro when its running. There is a lot I don't know and understand about how software works. I only know when it is not working as its suppose to work. :o)

Don't waste your time ... like I said, I installed Vue Pro on a CLEAN system. It made no difference whatsoever. Also, on my old machine I was running Win2K service pack 3.

Shadow, I didn't realize you were talking about those kind of resources (GDI resources I suppose), or I could have saved you from eating that particular aviary feast. I knew the NT-kernal (aka "kick-ass") OS's didn;t rely on this anymore. The main reason I left Win98 waaay back when.

-Tim

Hmmmm.... I'm on Win2kPro SP -2-, and VuePro has been very well behaved... Norton's AntiSpam broke part of the OS, so I'll have to strip her down to metal again, but I might get SP-3 and install it first, just to see if it has any effect on my stability... (I'd rather depend on hard and software firewalls, AV protection, and common sense experience to protect me from the Bad Things out on the Net; I've seen too many 'patches' that acted like a skin graft. One area of damage was fixed by peeling another....)

Cripes! Now this thread makes me wonder if I want to buy VUE at all! What's a Poser Fan ta do? LOL!

I have a G4 dual 500mhz mac with 1 gig of ram. At one stage vue pro was working quite well for me albeit with fairly frequent crashes. Then I downloaded the upgrades and kept going with the next and the next in the hope that vue pro would work better, and now it doesn't work with poser at all. As soon as i import a poser object it crashes. I wrote to the e-on support and they said to reinstall poser 4 poser 5 and vue which I did but it hasn't helped. One thing I thought of reading this is whether the mac installers are working properly. I did have a problem downloading the latest beta complete 24 meg upgrade similar to what's mentioned in the early messages, but then I used the incremental instead. but maybe even if I had the complete upgrade it wouldn't help and I'd still be stuck with unuseable vue. Its very sad as I've not made a pic for what seems like months although I suppose it could just be about 6 weeks or so. Love esther

After working with Vue Pro for last couple days after the last update I can tell it is a lot better than what it was before the update. I do have a bug that will crash Vue when I duplicate or replicate plants but Vue has confirmed it is a problem and should have a fix in next upgrade. It seems a little sluggish but at lest I have not had any more crash's and I am able to use OpenGL. I have slowed down and quit pushing it and this may be helping some. Once you are use to Vue 4.2 and its quickness it is hard to do different with Vue Pro. I hope others that were having problems are doing better after the last update. I do know how frustrating it can be. :o)

I've just DL the update so I'll give it a whirl later....

Well, I've done the SP-3 install, and tried to crash VuePro, with less than stellar success (created 58 plants, grouped them, and pulled them all over window. No problems). So that doesn't seem to have any effect.

Looks like we are about to loose our thread that has been quite a good one for the ones who have had problems with Vue Pro. I had a crash again last nite after working in VuePro for a while. When it crashed it corrupted my saved file and I had to resort to my bakup file to get my scene back. I have no idea what caused the crash or the problem because everything was going along so good and then BAM a crash. :o( I am thinking seriously of doubling my RAM from 1.5 gig to 3 gig and see if that would have any effect. :o)

I've been speaking to someone who has a brand new PC with 2Gig RAM and it's crashed on her system several times - no particular reason, just like the rest of us - random crashes

gillbrooks after reading what you said about your friends computer crashing and the amount of Ram they had and me checking on the price to upgrade to 3 gigs of Ram I have decided against it. If we need so much Ram I think e-on should experiment and tell us what the minimium we can have to operate VuePro without having probems, If.... that is part of our problem..

The manual says min 512mb :-O

Like I mentioned at least a few times, I just got a brand new system with 2 GIGs of RAM ... bleeding edge system, and have the same problems as you and others. I don;t think it is a RAM issue at all ... I think it is an "Eon engineers suck" issue to put it bluntly, and we're paying for it.

Vue 4 Pro Build 268493 Posted Make a backup of your env folder, at least:-)