Mercenary - CTD after 100% loaded

[Wolfox]

Hi all,

Bought Mercenary yesterday/today, but only now had time to install it. I ran, created a pilot, configured joystick axis and buttons, and then clicked on launch. It went to the loading screen, got to 100%, and right where it should have shown space... it just crashes to desktop. Any ideas? And what kind of info should I provide?

General info:
OS: Windows XP SP3
RAM: 2GB
Video: GeForce 8800GT 512MB with 6.14.11.6921 drivers (old, but they work perfectly with all my games, and Legends runs fine)
Audio: Realtek on-board
Joystick: Thrustmaster Top Gun 2 Afterburner (there's also a Logitech Rumblepad 2 gamepad connected)

Any ideas?

[Edited on 18-9-2010 by Wolfox]

[Vice]

Usually a sign of running out of memory. How much of that 2 GB of RAM is available to programs? Have you checked the list of tasks running in the background for memory consumption?

[Wolfox]

Task Manager shows more than around 1.5GB available for programs. If I close Firefox, it should make another 100MB available - but there's plenty of virtual memory as well. I think that, with virtual memory, the system should be able to make at least 1.7-1.8GB available.

Again, I run X3 Terran Conflict. I can't imagine how Mercenary would ever use more memory than X3 does.

[Wolfox]

Minor update: it worked after I changed two settings: Planet Detail from Ultra to High, and Display from Optimized max vsync to Optimized. I'm not sure which one did the job, as I set both at the same time, but I'd say it's probably the Planet Detail setting. Any comments?

[Vice]

Yup, planet detail is often the key. The 'Ultra' mode consumes a lot of additional memory, generally only recommended if you have 2+ GB of available memory. If a system has about 1.5, 'High' will probably work. If a system has only around 1 GB, 'Low' or 'Medium' may be required along with other lower settings.

[gietek]

Yes - planet detail is the key! Thanks!