if you install lots of add on scenery and aircraft will that decrease the performance in fs2004, i know complex sceneries will obviously cause a fps drop, but i'm talking about a general drop, i notice it seems to take a lot longer to load fs2004 now that i have lots of sceneries installed, whats your views? and will 1 gig of ram make much difference in performance? my current system is:athlon xp 2.5 333mhzti 4200 128mb graphics card512 pc 2700 ram.Paul.

I myself just deleted over 2.5 gigs of unused gauges, scenery files, and aircraft- and wow- what a difference! Loading times are cut in half and the startup takes less than 10 seconds :)Jason :-wave

splash, is that just the loading time, or do you get better fps too? I don't mind loading time, but fps is king, hehe.billg

Howdy,Considering that I have all add-on scenery outside of CoF, loadup time is negligable. It is only when accessing photo-real locations (for example: Godzone's photoreal Christchurch) that things tend to slow down to a crawl. Then I'm only working with 512Mb RAM; upgrading to 1Gb. would certainly not go amiss on my system :-)

yeah, I've heard that ram dosn't really matter. But it does. Go for it Cap....billg

I've picked up little tricks along the way. One thing that has cut down on not only loading time (which is not that important to me, as stated it's the FPS), but more importantly, memory that FS requires to run.Ihave created a folder (called it "Addons") on my desktop and placed all my addon aircraft into this folder. Now when I start FS9 it loads faster and does not require as much valuable memory to load the extra aircraft. When I want to fly a particular aircraft I simply move it from my desktop folder back into my FS9aircraft folder. You have more system resources to run FS9 with,in the form of memory savings from aircraft not loaded on startup. If you have myTraffic tho, remember to leave theese folders where they are as the program requires their presence...lol. I also leave the default Cessna in the FS9 aircraft folder so I can load my default flight which is the Cessna at KSEA. All other default aircraft are moved into my desktop Addon folder. So as you can see there is minimal loading of aircraft when FS9 starts.Hope this helps,Tom

Hey Tom, an easier way to do this is with a small program by Martin Wright called ACMan, it creates hanger folders and when you start it up, you can switch out aircraft between the aircraft folder and any of the hanger folders in a single click. Works with any MSFShttp://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/index.htmRegards, MichaelKDFWhttp://www.calvirair.com/mcpics/PBTMCa.jpgCalVirAir International VACougar Mountain Helicopters & Aviation[link:www.cgrmthelos.com]Cougar Mountain Helicopters

Wouldn't work if you have a lot of AI-aircraft. I have roughly 1000 aircraft (1 paint = 1 aircraft), and about 95% of those are AI which has to be kept in the aircraft folder. Loading the select aircraft menu is slow, as is the startup, but fps doesn't seem to be influenced.As for addon scenery there is also a visible increase in load times, but again fps doesn't suffer, except when you are in range of the addon scenery of course.- Oyvind

Thanks for the info Michael, I'll check that one out.Regards,Tom

Easy tip for scenery - go into the scenery folder when you boot up FS and DISABLE all the areas you aren't going to fly in - just uncheck the box, do not remove the scenery. This makes load up times substantially faster and doesn't require any `trickery` with folders outside FS (which cannot decrease access time, only defer it, it just means the folder will have to be accessed some other time - before or after you load FS, it still requires loading time). Best of all, don't load up the sim with scenery and add-ons you don't use. If you have the zips you can always reinstall it if needed. Otherwise, what's the point of having detailed mesh and landclass for France,say, when you're flying in Alaska, going to Chicago? If you've got an airport you haven't flown to for a month, and are unlikely to for another month, delete it.Allcott

MichaelThanks for the link. It couldn't get any easier than this!David