I've been relaxing at my home in Sydney for the last couple of weeks, (thinking about may be moving home to L.A. for the Aussie winter), while waiting for my next development assignment. I've been a little bit bored and decided to see how many Freeware/Payware addons I can stuff into FS9. I'm at around 1200, (give or take a few), and was wondering if that is totally insane or what? Flight Simulator takes about 5 minutes to load because I've installed so many AI packages. So the question of the hour is...how many addons are to much and how many do you have?Thanks for the sanity check if you decide to respond!Mark

Good question. I think one of the problems on that score is that since we tend to install things over a period of time, the longer and longer load times kind of creep up on us, until one day you start thinking: 'I've got time to roast that chicken while the sim loads up'I noticed that earlier on when I reinstalled FSX and just put SP1 and SP2 on and ONE add-on aircraft. That load bar whizzed across the screen faster than greased lightning, and it occurred to me that maybe I should get into the habit of trimming the fat from it every once in a while. Luckily for me, that kind of happens fairly often anyway, since when reviewing things for AVSIM, if I think there is a possibility that any untoward behavior of a product might be down to a clash, FS gets reinstalled in order to give the product a far shot at things.I just checked in the back up folder for FS add-ons I keep (that's only the payware download zipped files, not payware stuff on disk and not freeware). That folder is 23Gb in content. It doesn't even take into account the fact that some stuff I've bought over the years as downloads I have lost the serial numbers for, so it aint everything I've ever bought and downloaded by a long shot.FS9 is a bloated behemoth of add-ons for me, with 2,025 folders in the aircraft folder alone (I just checked).Al

1200 is alot, at least to me it is. I've got around 30-50. Mostly payware thought so that might be why i don't have as many as you. Also I own both FS9 and FSX.

I've been relaxing at my home in Sydney for the last couple of weeks, (thinking about may be moving home to L.A. for the Aussie winter), while waiting for my next development assignment. I've been a little bit bored and decided to see how many Freeware/Payware addons I can stuff into FS9. I'm at around 1200, (give or take a few), and was wondering if that is totally insane or what? Flight Simulator takes about 5 minutes to load because I've installed so many AI packages. So the question of the hour is...how many addons are to much and how many do you have?Thanks for the sanity check if you decide to respond!Mark

1200! :( That an INSANELY big piece of cake. :( "Mr. Owl, how many add-ons does it take to get to the center of a FS-toosie-pop?"I've begun to see the increased load time too. I have 1 traffic, 6 pay-ware planes, 6 pay-ware sceneries, 8 free-ware scenery g-max model sets, 31 pay-ware airports, 1 pay-ware utility, 1 pay-ware airport utility, 4 pay-ware airport ground scenery packs, and 10 free-ware planes. 68 add-ons in total, that I can remember. That's a far cry from 1200. :( I think FS can handle it. It just boils down to how much is to much for you PC to run FS9 smoothly.

Good question. I think one of the problems on that score is that since we tend to install things over a period of time, the longer and longer load times kind of creep up on us, until one day you start thinking: 'I've got time to roast that chicken while the sim loads up'I noticed that earlier on when I reinstalled FSX and just put SP1 and SP2 on and ONE add-on aircraft. That load bar whizzed across the screen faster than greased lightning, and it occurred to me that maybe I should get into the habit of trimming the fat from it every once in a while. Luckily for me, that kind of happens fairly often anyway, since when reviewing things for AVSIM, if I think there is a possibility that any untoward behavior of a product might be down to a clash, FS gets reinstalled in order to give the product a far shot at things.I just checked in the back up folder for FS add-ons I keep (that's only the payware download zipped files, not payware stuff on disk and not freeware). That folder is 23Gb in content. It doesn't even take into account the fact that some stuff I've bought over the years as downloads I have lost the serial numbers for, so it aint everything I've ever bought and downloaded by a long shot.FS9 is a bloated behemoth of add-ons for me, with 2,025 folders in the aircraft folder alone (I just checked).Al

Oh my goodness Alan...that is amazing. It appears that I can keep going then, that is, until my mouse arm falls off :)Mark

I tend to stay away from most freeware, not because I'm snobby but because I like a nice and tidy fs9/fsx install. I'm currently at 14 payware and 5 freeware. (Nice and clean!)14 Payware5 Freeware

I tend to stay away from most freeware, not because I'm snobby but because I like a nice and tidy fs9/fsx install. I'm currently at 14 payware and 5 freeware. (Nice and clean!)14 Payware5 Freeware

All but 20 of my planes are on the external hardrive. I need the space for scenery, AI aircraft and other addons to work with FS9. Anytime I want to fly one of the other planes it is easy to copy it using USB2.0 onto the main hardrive. When I am finish just delete the plane. All other parts such as gauges and sounds stay on the main drive. This helps with download time of FS9. I still have the FS9 folder at 45GB without the other planes. I also use fsfsconv for several planes to share panels and sounds. Looks like I am going to need a bigger internal drive. One of the other reasons I have not gotten 14GB FSX.Carl Perry

All but 20 of my planes are on the external hardrive. I need the space for scenery, AI aircraft and other addons to work with FS9. Anytime I want to fly one of the other planes it is easy to copy it using USB2.0 onto the main hardrive. When I am finish just delete the plane. All other parts such as gauges and sounds stay on the main drive. This helps with download time of FS9. I still have the FS9 folder at 45GB without the other planes. I also use fsfsconv for several planes to share panels and sounds. Looks like I am going to need a bigger internal drive. One of the other reasons I have not gotten 14GB FSX.Carl Perry

That's not a bad idea, you know. I think I might do it when I reinstall FS2004.That said, currently I have loads of stuff, mainly WoAI packages. For the rest, I think I have at least 15 payware aircraft, 10 payware scenery, 3 payware utilities, and over 200 freeware aircraft and scenery. Sometimes I really do want to trim down the FS, but the problem is I always stumble onto stuff I want to keep, even though I'm not flying it that often at all. That's kind a silly, but it's always "what if I want to fly it later?", and so I don't get rid of it.

Way too many to count! Not 1200 though :(

Hi,Well, I never counted folders and or addons. But, it takes me about three days to do a complete reinstall of FS9. The last time I checked, my scenery config file showed 254 entries.Right now I have about 75 CD/DVD's, some dual layer :( loaded with addons.

Hi,Well, I never counted folders and or addons. But, it takes me about three days to do a complete reinstall of FS9. The last time I checked, my scenery config file showed 254 entries.Right now I have about 75 CD/DVD's, some dual layer :( loaded with addons.

1200 is definitely more than me! :D I have never counted them and I don't even have all my payware stuff installed, but I'd say somewhere around 200 all in all. The issue for me is that I don't want to install something that messes up FS9 for me and that I then have problems tracking down (which means I am very cautious with freeware stuff...)! At different stages I have created mirror images of the partition contaning the FS9 installation. So resetting my FS9 computer to a point where I have some 30-40 GB of freshly installed stuff is just a matter of reloading the mirror image and waiting a couple of hours. A procedure I strongly recommend to everyone. Having all installation files and passwords/keys backed up on other storage media goes without saying.

Hi,Just out of curiosity, I decided to see how big my FS9 folder was.All I can say is W O W, it over 70 gig. 70.3 to be exact.That's a ton of addons.

..after 10+years of daily flight simming, (mostly touring the whole of Sunny California), I generally keep just a handful of my favourite, freeware, General Aviation, Prop Aircraft to suit my immediate needs, in my Hangar.Any more would be a waste of space, and mostly unused... :( ...!(I delete what I don't need/use!).For my daily Multiplayer, on-line flights, I always use the Default Aircraft so that they show up correctly to others.Definite Aircraft for a definite purpose... :( ..!Never bothered with shiny "Payware" Aircraft to admire...too busy looking out of the window and admiring the scenery outside!... B) ...!Paul..G-BPLF...FS 2004...FS Navigator...and a bottle of Sonoma Valley's finest Red.... :( .......!

Hi,Just out of curiosity, I decided to see how big my FS9 folder was.All I can say is W O W, it over 70 gig. 70.3 to be exact.That's a ton of addons.

14.7 gig for me - guess I'm a lightweight. And extremely fussy about what I install. :(

I've been relaxing at my home in Sydney for the last couple of weeks, (thinking about may be moving home to L.A. for the Aussie winter)Im more amazed at the luxury lifestyle. . . Enjoy, I wish! LA twice a year is as far as I get!