Quote - this all sounds amazing, i have an amd dual core processor, any ideas on how that might

affect this hack ?

I have an amd dual core and it works fine with this hack.

This hack has made life so much easier. I am able to render the scenes I want to render without messing about now and not being restricting my memory limitations.

It rocks!

If I could remember better, the gig limit has something to do with available addresses, but that's changed radically over time (I remember the DOS 640k limit..;) so what I learned all those decades ago is probably incorrect..;)
    the thing is is that they're going to write Poser for the environment that most users are running. I'm sure some smart cookie at the Poser shop (hint hint), is working on a 'premium' version that could 'address' the memory issue..;)
    You do realize, that once they had a 64-bit version of Poser, someone at one of those '3d' places ('nuff said), will come out with a 64-bit character commonly found in temples, that wouldn't run in 32-bit..;) imagine the poly-counts..;)

And I always thought, more ram the better.

Poser 6 is a 32 bit software, when a software needs memory it request the operating system and the OS returns a pointer to the location of the memory, this pointer is a 32 bit pointer. I doesn't matter if  your hardware is 128 bits or your OS is 512 bits, your 32 bit software only understand 32 bit pointers.
A 32 bit pointer gives a memory limit of 4Gig and this is the maximum value for physical or virtual memory that your application can handle.
Windows reduces by  half this maximum, who knows why,  resulting a total of 2Gig (physical + virtual), there is also a part of memory that is used by the software for the graphic interface and windows, so the maximum memory for rendering is even more reduced.
The only way to have more memory for Poser is to rewrite the whole Poser in 64 bits using 64 bits pointers, compile it with a 64 bits compiler and of course have a 64 bit hardware and OS.
Poser will need to have two versions, a 64 bit and a normal 32 bit. A 64 bit version is unable to work with 32 bits machines.

Attached Link: Memory Support and Windows Operating Systems

agreed that to give Poser more than 3GB you need to rewrite Poser to be a 64Bit application. but this hack makes Poser a LAA app and therefore able to run 3GB ram if the OS has this mode on.

see link for details on this mode and operation.

2GB is not a limit of 32 bit software, is a limit of Windows, if you change Windows, 32 bit applications are able to handle up to the real limit of 4GB (physical + virtual) memory.
The other big problem is how the application handle the memory, if the memory get too much fragmented, the available memory can become very much lower, you have memory but no enough contiguous memory space to fit the requested block.

except thats not what we are talking about..
I'm not sure why you are talking about that.. it's actually something again from the subject of Hacking Poser to run in 3GB. May I suggest you start a new thread on this which can be concerned with the internal workings of Windows and Memory Addressing..?

I'm on a 64bit machine. I made the trick and... I know the "LARGEADRESSAWARE" works (i checked it), but i can't render...

I saw marvlin made a render with fifteen clothed millenium figures... The one i tried is 9 millenium figures, the VAP vehicule (by Sanctum Art) and the 30 first blocks from Dystopia. All together, without rendering, is a heavy scene (1,4 GB RAM use before rendering). I start rendering... but it never goes over 1,8 GB of RAM...

For testing purpose, can someone show me a pic that need 2.5 GB of RAM ? What are the render settings, the lights, etc...

Also, is the WOW64 (the 32bit emulator) limited in the amount of RAM it can give ?

I have concluded that on my machine with 15 figures the best I could achieve was the pic shown above.

This was rendered at 800 x 600 with 288 pixels per inch.

I used a single point light and 1 diffused IBL light.  I could not render with raytracing on.

When I did try, my RAM usage went up to 3.8 GIG but then poser just seemed to hang without rendering and the CPU pulsed between 15% and 0% over and over again for about 45 minutes at which point I cancelled.

In my next post you can see the settings I used.

Hope this helps

Marv

PS, I am running XP Pro 64 bit.

Attached Link: 9 millenium figure render

I was interested to know how 9 figures would render so after a little adjustment I ended up with the settings shown above and the image shown in my gallery (see link at top of post).

Task manager showed 3.2gig before the render started.

Thanks ! I'll make a try.

I don't understand why i can't go over 1.8 GB of RAM. I also have Win XP Pro 64 bit. MAy i ask how many physical memory you have ?

Quote - Thanks ! I'll make a try.

I don't understand why i can't go over 1.8 GB of RAM. I also have Win XP Pro 64 bit. MAy i ask how many physical memory you have ?

I have 4GIG

I'm not an expert... but is it possible it's not working because i have only 2GB of RAM ? In theory, Windows should use the Virtual Memory....

OK... After some tries... i finally found out WHERE is the problem. In the task manager, i was checking the amount of PHYSICAL memory used... And suddenly discovered the monitoring of the VIRTUAL memory use... So, i can go over the 2GB limits...

Thanks for the help !

Another simple stupid question: Actually, The task manager shows 1.5 Physical memory and 2.2 Virtual memory. Does this means Poser is using 3.7 GB memory ?

Quote - OK... After some tries... i finally found out WHERE is the problem. In the task manager, i was checking the amount of PHYSICAL memory used... And suddenly discovered the monitoring of the VIRTUAL memory use... So, i can go over the 2GB limits...

Thanks for the help !

Another simple stupid question: Actually, The task manager shows 1.5 Physical memory and 2.2 Virtual memory. Does this means Poser is using 3.7 GB memory ?

I have to say, that I am far from an expert myself :o)

Like alot of people, I am learning as I go through trial and error.

As regards virtual memory and whether it allows you to effectively render as though you have more RAM, I don't know.

My belief has always been that you can only utilise the actual physical RAM for the purposes of rendering.

If this is not the case then this will be something else I have learnt today :op

If it is as I belief, then you would definetly benefit from more RAM :o)

The figure you want is in a column in the Task Manager.
Select the Process tab and then View menu | "Select Columns..." and make sure "Memory Usage" and "Peak Memory Usage" are checked.
These columns will show what the names suggest.
The Peak Memory column saves you from having to watch the Mem Usage numbers while rendering.

to stewer-

please give us a step by step tutorial on how you tweaked poser/windows to get 2.7gig

out of it i'm sure many would like to know

i'm running xp home on an athlon64 3500 with 1 gig ram and looking to add more

especially if i can get poser to fully utilize it without choking at 1.3 or 1.5 ram

i need to populate my scenes a little more with a reasonable render quality and time factor as well

I don't want to answer for stewer... but he already said on another thread that he didn't do a step by step tutorial for one reason: the hack involve changing some important thing in Windows (when using 32bit version) and changing something on the Poser executable.

Both are UNSUPPORTED and he only wants people who know how to do it do it, because you must be able to revert it !

But...if you check he's website and if you ask specific questions here, i'm sure you will be able to do the "hack" really easily... Just one imortant thing (where i had the most problem... Do not use the built in "Command prompt" of Windows, but use the one coming from Visual C++). With that info, you should able to make the necessary changes... And remember, if you are under Windows XP 64bit version, you only need to do the hack on the Poser executable.

I'm so glad someone tried this again.  I had tried it back on Poser 5 and still crashed around 1.9GB due to some other internal limitation, but on P6-SR2 it's working fine.  I'm about halfway through a final-mode render w/ 5 V3's, a bunch of trees, hair, etc.  It was 649MB before render.  It peaked at about 2.31GB during the "loading textures" phase, and it's settled down in the range of 2.05GB to 2.25GB.  So far, so good.

The only weird thing is that my bucket-size has been cut in half.  When I had set it at 64, my buckets seem to be 32x32, and when I lowered it to 32, they now seem to be about 16x16.  For you others that have tried this, have you seen that effect as well?

Dan among Den

Attached Link: Confluence

Caught this thread a little later than most!  I found Stewers website doing a google search on RAM usage and Poser.

Just an update from the XP Pro 64bit perspective:

Its (the /LARGEADDRESSAWARE switch) working perfectly, scenes that would die out with memory resource errors that would only render at roughly 2500 by 1900 with a bucket size of 8 are now rendering at 8000 and bucket size of 256- this is really going to revolutonize my ability to get higher rez work done!  Thanks Stewer- you are, without a doubt, a great and wonderful human being!

My machine has 4GB physical RAM, so although I understood the limitations of 32 bit application address space usage, it still pissed me off to run into memory errors, especially running an OS capable of addressing terrabytes!

 Oh- and I think ill give this a try on Vue 5 infinite as well, it suffers from the same memory limitations... hmmmm, this could revolutionize my workflow!

I was wondering if this would work with other programs, there is probably no reason why it wouldn`t.

Xantor,

It might work.  It might not.  Some programs inadvertently have internal 2GB limitations, i.e. assumptions made by programmers that 2GB is the limit.  My company deals with large datasets, and when we made the switch to /LARGEADDRESSAWARE a few years back, we found and fixed a few of those limits.  If the program you're considering trying this on has some of those issues remaining, then you'll likely crash when you cross 2GB.  That's what happened to me when I tried this back on Poser 5.