@ Jim

 

Thanks for the detailed reply mate, its very helpful indeed, as I didnt know any of this about FSX....

 

@ Meshman

 

Thanks for the sarchastic reply, you really know how to help us newbies to FSX who so far, dont know how much about FSX works. Given its age, and the plethora of addons, there is probably far too much for anybody to know everything, but thanks for ripping into my lack of FSX knowledge anyway, really makes a newbie feel welcome... Take a leaf out of Jims book mate....

 

I have ZERO idea how much RAM FSX use's to load all the scenery/aircraft/AI and other stuff, so was simply trying to give it a good fighting chance of staying smooth. Oh, and unlike SQL queries, we cant do anything about how much RAM can be used by FSX, hence my efforts to minimise its battle with RAM as I didnt know any better...

 

Thanks Jim, at least its always interesting and friendly reading your writings :-)

Thanks for the sarchastic reply, you really know how to help us newbies to FSX who so far, dont know how much about FSX works. Given its age, and the plethora of addons, there is probably far too much for anybody to know everything, but thanks for ripping into my lack of FSX knowledge anyway, really makes a newbie feel welcome...

 

Hi Richard,

 

Thanks for your comments. In regards to Meshman's response, he did say "I've no doubt that a lot of gamers think Microsoft hires people straight out some trade school and puts them to work of Flight Simulators, but in reality the people who worked on the FS franchise were/are pretty smart." Thanks again for your kind comments though. I appreciate it after do all the research for the few sentences I wrote and putting it all together. Just for the heck of it, I ran my Process Monitor program and started up FSX with FTX/Orbx scenery enabled in the Scenery Library. I decided to fly one of my payware Carenardo GA's and fly the default startup (at Friday's Harbor). I have two monitors so I was able to monitor the process on one screen and load FSX on the other. I hit the Fly Now button and the flight began to load. It sat at 6% loading for about 4 minutes and all that time it was loading FTX/Orbx scenery. Everyone of them. Then it took a quick break and loaded some of my SoCal MegaScenery and some of my Las Vegas MegaScenery then went back to more loading of FTX/Orbx scenery. In between I saw a few flashes of AI aircraft being loaded then back to loading FTX stuff. Finally, it finished and I was flying! Looking at the Process Monitor though it was still loading FTX/Orbx scenery and it did that throughout the short 10 minute session I had. I have every North America FTX region installed (PNW, NRM, CRM, etc.). So Process Monitor is a good program to let you really know what's happening. If you have an AI program installed though, disable it in the Scenery Library then restart FSX and see how much faster FSX loads. It really does kick one in the stomach! I'm dissatisfied with the Orbx/FTX delays in loading though and I'm going to see what it does if I reset it back to the default. Of course it will load faster but want to see what's loading. At the bottom of the Process Monitor it was saying that over 14 million processes had been loaded in the short time I started FSX up and closed it down. They also showed how many of the processes were placed in Virtual Memory (your page file)(most of them).

 

We are all still learning Richard. Especially me! I love doing research on stuff like this, time permitting.

 

Best regards,

Jim

lol, holy crap Jim! Thats an immense amount of stuff... Does that give any weight to my "figure it out as I go along" method of deselecting all the America/Africa and othe regions I will never fly at?

 

4 Minutes... Damn, I would give up by then.. Mine loads the default FSX stuff in 17 seconds at the moment, and I haven't disabled any of it yet, am on my 3rd fresh install of FSX, just finished today, and only got UTX Europe installed so far and have been messing about with getting to 4.8GHz all day, and fitting the soundproofing to my new case which is now done :-)

 

Am just messing with the CCC setup now to max out the 6990, but the loading of scenery, in my mind says "The less it has to load, the quicker we will be flying, and the less it has to store" as I don't have a swap file at all (Using 2 SSD's RAID0) but a few quick tests show that even with Asia/Africa/America/Australia etc all disabled, the load time is the same, so that throws the 1st theory out the window lol...

 

I wonder if you disable your "System protection" (Windows system restore) would you gain any speed in loading as its not having to watch everything you do, because disabling system restore does speed up most computers quite noticeably anyway..

 

I'm about to sit and re-install all the mega-airports next, then finally the 737NGX, but so far, default FSX scenery, so will test the load time again now I've just taken a default benchmark to work from..

 

Thanks for the wise words Jim, tempted me to test it out for myself and prove myself WRONG! lol DOH!

I think there is some confusion here. All of the scenery located in the scenery library, including the default, is not loaded for every fsx session. Just the scenery where you will be flying.

-SNIP-

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

As I mentioned in my original post, using Filemon, I saw FSX loading scenery files

that were located on the other side of the world from where I was flying. There

was no logical reason for this to occur, thus I began thinning out my scenery.cfg

files to include only the areas where I intended to fly. I do notice a difference in

load times with my various cfg files restricted to the 'local' regions.

 

Paul

Hey Paul

 

Other than the "load times", would you say there is any other benefit to what you do, like having smoother flying as less mem is required to deal with the scenery for example?

As I mentioned in my original post, using Filemon, I saw FSX loading scenery files

that were located on the other side of the world from where I was flying.

 

Hi Paul,

 

That is strange indeed. In my post #17 I did not see this at all. Just loading of FTX/Orbx and some SoCal/Las Vegas MegaScenery. Nothing in any other part of the world loaded except some AI were also loaded. As far as setting up several different scenery.cfg's, I think it would be difficult for many and a somewhat laboring task. Wouldn't it be easier to start up FSX, go to the Scenery Library and disable (remove checkmarks) for all scenery you do not want loaded for this particular flight? Once you do this, you would not have to close FSX and restart it. Since you have to set up the flight anyway, this would be just one additional step in that process. Just a suggestion.

 

Since we are discussing load times, I'm looking at the load times after you hit the Fly Now button, not loading to the FSX setup screen. I haven't looked at what loads after you hit the FSX button. In any case, that's really fast for me, maybe 20 seconds like Richard posted above.

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Does that give any weight to my "figure it out as I go along" method of deselecting all the America/Africa and othe regions I will never fly at?

 

Hi Richard,

 

LOL! That's what I meant by doing some research along the way. It does not hurt anything (other than take up some time) to disable all the scenery you will not be using during a flight. Once it is disabled, then you can reenable the scenery you want. Just be careful not to remove things like Propeller Objects. Okay, I just disabled everything in my Scenery Library except for the FTX/Orbx stuff, MyTraffic, Global Libraries, and all default areas down to the 1107 Base. I did not see any difference in startup to the setup screen but loading time was less than a minute (vs the 4 minutes I reported earlier).

 

wonder if you disable your "System protection" (Windows system restore) would you gain any speed in loading

 

I have my System Restore disabled and Indexing. You have a super fast system so this may not affect you as much as someone running fsx on a laptop or an old desktop. Again, I don't think you will see much difference in load times until you install an AI program then it will change dramatically. The Process Monitor will provide you some valuable information about what is loading. Just don't be concerned when you see things like "name not found" or "buffer overflow" and some other error messages. There's nothing wrong. I save my Process Monitor log (which is quite large - takes about 3 minutes to save) and plan to look through it to see if I can find anything else that would be of interest to others. Good luck with your installs and FSX enjoyment!

 

Best regards,

Jim

 

Best regards,

Jim

Hi Jim,

 

Well I was just reading through some of your findings here regarding the scenery library in fsx. I didn't realise this thread would turn into something so interesting, lol.

 

I have just started to buy some of the FlyTampa scenery, considering the detail in their scenery, the fps hardly seems to drop compared with the default scenery for the same area.

 

One thing I was curious about reading your comments, does fsx install add on scenery layered ontop of the default scenery or instead of that area. IE if I have an addon airport are the original runways and taxiways hiding underneath the addon? I sometimes find when I have an aircraft sitting on the end of the runway and change views returning to the virtual cockpit that the aircraft seems to jump after a few seconds, like it has been dropped. Is this because the aircraft momentarily drops to the default runway situated below the addon one? Is there any way to prevent this happening?

 

Well slightly of course on the thread here but it is about scenery still.

 

Regards.

One thing I was curious about reading your comments, does fsx install add on scenery layered ontop of the default scenery or instead of that area.

 

Hi Dave,

It will 'trump' any default scenery. Any addon scenery must be installed above Propeller Objects in the Scenery Library. You have to be careful with AI programs like MyTrafficX as you might install that last or after you have installed addon scenery. The scenery folder for this program contains AFCADS for almost every airport in the world so that the AI can take off and land successfully. So you need to put the AI program way down, just above Propeller Objects then layer addons above that. Or you can go into the AI program and rename or delete airports that you have installed as an addon. It is common for aircraft to jump when changing views, especially in external views on the runway. There might be a fix but I would have to do some searching. Maybe someone else here on AVSIM can answer that question. But it is not a cause of layering.

 

Oh! Here's one possible fix - http://forum.avsim.net/topic/383833-jumping-fsx-aircraft/. Need to adjust mesh complexity and resolution until it stops. Hey! I just learned something! :lol:

 

Best regards,

Jim

Hi Jim,

 

Hehehehe I seem to learn something every day I come on here, I was just posting a guy who helped me with a door opening issue and his name was Jim too, lol Had me going for a minute suddenly thinking the two of you were one and the same guy, lol. Oh for your info your not! Two Jim's !!!!!

 

Yeah thanks for that reply anyway, I was just curious about the scenery layers and if that might have something to do with the aircraft jumping. If you can imagine the scenery layers in the sim layed down a foot above each other and the aircraft falling through the top layers to the default below!.

 

Might have to check that link you put in your post above later on when I have more time, but once again thanks for the reply.

 

Happy Flying,

 

Dave