I have all the DLC apart from the planes without VC and have Flight on an SSD.

 

From starting to main menu: 18 to 23 seconds. I have done it about 5 times after rebooting the PC everytime because restarting Flight during the same 'Windows-session' usually goes faster.

 

From starting to loginmenu is usually 5-6 seconds, logging in (automatically) takes somewhere between 8 to 12 seconds (although it sometimes takes twice as long for some reason). After I am logged in the rest is loaded and it then takes about 5 seconds before the main menu appears.

 

From main menu to on the runway (without changing any options) takes something like 14 to 18 seconds.

 

All in all from starting to runway usually takes about 40 seconds.

 

Tips to start faster:

 

- when you start Flight you see that little blue circle: as soon as it disappears press the spacebar twice. When I do that the login window immediately pops up (and I am automatically logged in) even before the window appears that asks me to click to continue..! Sometimes I see that complete logo animation on the background when I am being logged in.

 

- when you are at the main menu you can wait until you can click on Play, but you can also press the up or down key (which will enable the arrow on the main screen) and then hit Enter (with will activate Play and bring you to the map). This only works when the main menu is loaded completely, but if you press up-enter a few times in a row while the main menu is loading, you can win one or two seconds...

 

- on the map instead of going to Free flight and click on Fly you can also simply and immediately press M which will load the flight instantly. (M is not only the key that brings up the map while flying but it is, so to speak, the toggle between flight and map.)

 

So you don't even have to touch the mouse after starting Flight to get to the runway! Obviously these tips only save you a few seconds...

Thanks for the "M" toggle tip/.

It takes me about 30-45 secs on cold startup with every DLC that is available from Load Screen to Main Menu. From the main menu, it takes me about 15 secs to load so I can fly. After exiting flight and entering again, my load time went from 15 secs to 4 secs.

 

And I'm pretty sure that when Alaska comes out, they will have a major title update to reduce the load times. Trust me, when I had every DLC in the beta, it took me nearly 5 minutes to get from load screen to in Flight.

Overall I'm taking approximately a minute to go from clicking on the shortcut to the Flight home page. I have everything but the Zero and Mustang.

 

My HD is a 7200RPM model and it seems that the HD is the "bottleneck" contributing to the startup time as the OP suggested.

 

I ran some tests using Performance Monitor (a great tool that comes with Windows) and examined memory paging (page faults along with reads/writes per sec), processor time (by core as I have 4), hard disk reads/writes per sec and read/write queue lengths + bytes read/write, network reads/writes among a few other counters.

 

I had plenty of free RAM (never dropped below 2GB free) and low page file usage.

 

I could see that there were a lot of hard drive reads and moderate cpu activity during the load. There is a lot of data being read at a steady 50MB/sec for nearly the entire load, in addition the read queue depth was holding steadily at 21 which is a bit high.

 

Network activity is showing a decent amount during the period that the user signs in to Live! I see about 4MB received and 1MB sent. There is a corresponding spike in HD reads and writes during the Live! login period.

 

I can't project how having Alaska installed would affect the startup time as I have no idea what the app is actually doing at startup. :Thinking:

I noticed the "Loading content screen for approx 30 seconds after downloading the previews

20 secs from icon click to menu screen. Another 8-10 secs to actual flying from map.

All DLC except zero.

installed on a Force Series™ GT 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s Solid-State Hard Drive

20 secs from icon click to menu screen. Another 8-10 secs to actual flying from map.

All DLC except zero.

installed on a Force Series™ GT 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s Solid-State Hard Drive

 

Wow, that's really fast. Is that on a cold start?

 

And also, what's your CPU?

Wow, that's really fast. Is that on a cold start?

 

Yes - Cold Start.

 

Specs:OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Ultimate - 64 bit

PROCESSOR: Intel i7 2600K 3.4 ghz - OC 4.8ghz

MOTHERBOARD: Asus P8P67 Deluxe

VIDEO: EVGA GTX 580

HDD: Crucial 128GB SSD (OS), Corsair 240GB SSD (FSX), WD 1.0 TB HD (Data),

RAM: 16 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600

 

 

Windows (from Windows Starting screen to desktop) takes 15 seconds. I love SSD's.

While new to the group

 

While running a I7-2700k 16 gigs of ram , 7200rpm drive and a 6770 video card the game takes about 40 secs to load and be flying

HDD: Crucial 128GB SSD (OS), Corsair 240GB SSD (FSX), WD 1.0 TB HD (Data),

 

It makes perfect sense that it would launch that much faster. Having installing it on an SSD would address the bottleneck.

 

The CPU usage is very low during launch. Having a fast CPU will make little difference in the start time.

 

A slow or poor internet connection is most likely the next biggest factor.

Maybe they won't load ALL of Alaska all at once, perhaps loading a different region when you fly into it, or when you move to it via the map. Hopefully, if you're flying, any region-loading activity will occur seamlessly in the background.

That's what it does now really. The terrain mesh and a basic texture is all loaded. The rest is being loaded as needed while you fly. That's why there is a load screen if you "warp" on the map.

Fsxkitty,

 

What are your system specs?

Fsxkitty,

 

What are your system specs?

 

I've got a 5-year-old PC.

 

Core2 Duo 2.4GHz

 

3GB DDR2

 

300GB 7200 HDD

 

GeForce 7950GT (512MB DX9.0c).

 

I think the reason why it took Flight 3-4 minutes to load was because my anti-virus was doing a background scan. It doesn't do background scans anymore so Flight starts in 2 and a half minutes, still way too long.

 

I'm building a new PC in July with a Vertex 4. Can't wait. :dance:

I doubt a new PC will work with the load times. Maybe a faster HDD or an SSD will work.