I've followed the instructions from this website to increase my heap space to 1GB but according to VisualVM I'm still throttled at 268MB.
I've also found this website that tells me to "use the cmd-line flags" and enter "java -Xmx6g myprogram". This may be a silly question but does any one know where these cmd-line flags are?
The VirtualMachineArgs attribute only affects the program when it runs from the IDE. You will need to set the same arguments with a batch file (or script) when you run the program outside of the IDE.