what are "memory leaks?" I know you mean the ram right? but in what way does it leak? I'm tech savvy, just ignorant to some facts.
*dusts off his "C+ for dummies"*
First I assume you understand the two fundamental types of memory in computing? One that keeps memory permanently (such as your hard drive with your family photos stored on it) and one that only exists as temporary and random-access memory that your computer needs to run and process running processes (and that gets "poofed" each time you turn off your machine). This later memory is the RAM or temporary type that the computer constantly is accessing or releasing as it is needed to run it's various processes and tasks and is the cause of "leaks".
The term "leak" is used because picture the RAM physicaly as a bucket of water. As the processer requires memory from the bucket, it sips up what it needs and then when it's done it spits the memory it's no longer using back into the bucket. The idea being in a perfectly programed world that no memory is ever just lost from this bucket, it gets used and when not being used it goes back into the bucket. It gets sucked up, if it needs to be permanenetly stored then the memory gets transfered/copied to the permanenent memory world of the hard drive, then the temporary stuff gets dumped and spit back into the bucket. You start to get a "leak" when this temporary data gets used/called up by a process, but then is unecessarily not returned/dumped back into the bucket when the need for it is done, thus it is basicaly out of the bucket and not getting back in (it leaked out). Enter a memory leak fix, basicaly finding memory that was being sucked up outa the bucket by the processor and then not being spit back into the bucket when the need/use was done.
When a program or aplication, like Aces High, runs a single process (while many many porcesses are simultaneously occuring to generate an operating program) like say keeping count of how many bullets you have left in your machine guns, these processes require/consume a necessary amount of memory from the system's master cache of available/free memory (the bucket). When the process if complete, say you land an no longer need to keep count of how many bullets are left in you guns, the memory that the process was earlier using and reserved for itself should be freed up or reset and returned back to the system's master chache of available/free memory.
It is bad if this doesn't happen, as in my example lets say you land one sortie and then up another plane. Plane #1s ammo count is no longer necessary, but due to a looping effect of upping a new plane (starting a new process) without completely returning and freeing up memory from a previous and now redundant process (such as landing your old first plane and now upping a new plane, you and your system has no need for keeping the previous plane's ammo-count on-hand and in active memory. Eventualy you're on plane #25 for the day, but your system still has inside of it memory being consumed by holding onto those ammo-counts that you had in plane #1, #2, #3, #4, etc. etc..), your system gradualy and steadily looses more and more memory that is not returned when the process is done using it. So eventualy, if it's eaten/leaked away enough memory, you have nothing left in your bucket... now things start getting bad and noticable to the user, first with performance slowing down before it just starts to freeze/crash or random reboot due to a lack suffecient enough memory to keep running.
