Will removing scenery in other areas help speed up loading?

[tripecac 1]

I fly primarily in New Zealand.  I would like to reduce load times.

 

I've got the following add-on scenery installed:

 

1) GodZone RealNZ Southern Lakes Adventure (Wanaka, Tekapo)

2) ORBX New Zealand South Island

 

3) FS Genesis - World Mesh, North America

4) UTX USA

5) GEX North America

 

 

Clearly, the USA scenery isn't being used when I am flying in NZ.  I'm not sure about the FS Genesis World Mesh; it might be getting overriden by ORBX's NZSI or Godzone RealNZ.

 

My questions are these:

 

1) Is FS Genesis World Mesh even being used?  If not, is it slowing down the game or increasing load time?

 

2) Will disabling FS Genesis, UTX, and GEX increase the speeding of loading (or perhaps even frame rates)?

 

3) Is disabling scenery just as effective as uninstalling scenery completely (in terms of loading), or should we uninstall scenery if we want to minimize load time?

 

Thanks!

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

FSX only renders where you fly. Disabling will cause scenery to not be loaded if a Flight is loaded there. If you are in New Zealand, it won't affect anything.

[tripecac 1]

Okay, so it's not hurting anything (in terms of performance) to leave the North American scenery enabled when I fly in NZ, right? 

 

How about that FS Genesis world mesh?  Any idea if it is being used in an ORBX-covered area?

[HughesMDflyer4 470]

Whichever mesh is higher resolution will be rendered.

[Jeff H 63]

If you're talking about the amount of time it takes for scenery to load during flight, then I agree it wouldn't make any significant difference.  However, reducing the number of active sceneries does have an impact on the amount of time it takes for the sim itself to load up initially.  I use SceneryConfigEditor to group my scenery into regions.  It takes just a second or two to activate the scenery I need for a flight and to deactivate the ones I don't need.  I've seen a substantial improvement in the initial load time of the sim.

Cheers,

Jeff

[Capt Speirs 52]

I fly primarily in New Zealand.  I would like to reduce load times.

 

I've got the following add-on scenery installed:

 

1) GodZone RealNZ Southern Lakes Adventure (Wanaka, Tekapo)

2) ORBX New Zealand South Island

 

3) FS Genesis - World Mesh, North America

4) UTX USA

5) GEX North America

 

 

Clearly, the USA scenery isn't being used when I am flying in NZ.  I'm not sure about the FS Genesis World Mesh; it might be getting overriden by ORBX's NZSI or Godzone RealNZ.

 

My questions are these:

 

1) Is FS Genesis World Mesh even being used?  If not, is it slowing down the game or increasing load time?

 

2) Will disabling FS Genesis, UTX, and GEX increase the speeding of loading (or perhaps even frame rates)?

 

3) Is disabling scenery just as effective as uninstalling scenery completely (in terms of loading), or should we uninstall scenery if we want to minimize load time?

 

Thanks!

 

I had a similar idea a while ago and resolved it by buying 2 SSDs, windows boots up lighting fast and FSX is on the other drive which launches very fast.

[Jim Young 2,356]

I generally agree that only scenery that you will be flying over will be loaded but, if you have photoscenery, every bit of it will load no matter where you are in the world.  This is why the AVSIM CTD Guide recommends using the SceneryConfigEditor to disable any scenery you will not be using before you start up FSX (as Jeff H recommended).  FSDT and BluePrint airports, USA wide (including Hawaii) will be loaded during the flight.  I recently did a flight from Chicago to St Louis with MSE V2 States of Ilinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Missouri enabled.  I also left all of my FSDT airports enabled and the payware KSTL.  All of my other addon scenery was disabled.  I used FTX Central to return to the default and remove FTX/Orbx scenery in the Scenery.cfg.  I made sure there was nothing in the dll.xml that could load scenery.  So, the only scenery loaded was those areas in bold above.  I had Autogen disabled too as you don't need that for photoscenery.  At takeoff I loaded Process Monitor (filtered to read only FSX and no other events).  Guess what?  Autogen loaded from around the world, including Orbx/FTX Autogen (what's wrong with the Autogen off switch?).  Never saw so many FTX/Orbx trees being loaded!!  All FSDT airports were loaded.  Of course, all AI was loaded along with schedules and every default aircraft was loaded as well as all the ground vehicles at airports around the world (I used the default AI program).  It was about an hours worth of FSX data loading (which equaled a 6-7 GB log so you want to have the space if you plan on trying this yourself).  Is it a big thing?  Not really but I think FSX would run more efficiently.  If you have all of your photoscenery loaded around the world (and you might be surprised what is photoscenery), that will definitely, 100% for sure, bring down your system to a crawl as every photoscenery texture file is loaded.  So be careful.

 

Best regards,

[dmbusmc 46]

Just to add to what others have said, some users (including myself) have found that disabling sceneries not being used also reduces VAS load and can help with any OOM issues. I found with a plethora of sceneries active, especially those with photo-realistic bases, they still draw out and add to the VAS load even if I'm on the other side of the world.

 

I never really had OOM issues until the end of last year. After some testing I found using SceneryConfigEditor to only activate where I'm flying to/from plus alternate if applicable reduced the load and stopped the OOM's.

That plus what others have said your splash screen load time will greatly be reduced.

[tripecac 1]

Okay, I downloaded and installed FSX SceneryConfigEditor, and used it to disable these:

 

3) FS Genesis - World Mesh, North America

4) UTX USA

5) GEX North America

 

I also disabled ORBX's Olympic Peninsula freebie; I had forgotten about that.

 

The game loads, NZ scenery looks fine.  I can't tell for sure if it loads faster or not; my impression was yes, but that could just be wishful thinking.  I suppose if I want to be scientific about it I should time it before and after making those changes, but oh well...  So far it hasn't seemed to break anything, and might be a tad faster (certainly not slower), so that's good enough for me.

 

 

Is there any advantage in disabling the base FSX scenery as well?  For example:

 

- Las Vegas

- Rio de Janeiro

- St. Maarten

...

- Australia

- Asia

- Africa

 

etc?

 

Or are none of those likely to bog down the load time (significantly)?

[dmbusmc 46]

Someone else may know exactly, but out of caution I would not disable anything that is base for FSX. I would stick to just keeping addon sceneries deactivated.

[gboz 157]

.

 

Is there any advantage in disabling the base FSX scenery as well?  For example:

 

- Las Vegas

- Rio de Janeiro

- St. Maarten

...

- Australia

- Asia

- Africa

 

etc?

 

Or are none of those likely to bog down the load time (significantly)?

I disabled some of these and while there was no noticeable improvement nothing bad happened.

If any are essential for fsx to run it will not let you turn them off.

 

gb.

[Jim Young 2,356]

You can turn them on during a flight if you see anomalies by simply going to the Scenery Library and enabling them again. 

 

 

 

Okay, I downloaded and installed FSX SceneryConfigEditor, and used it to disable these:

3) FS Genesis - World Mesh, North America

4) UTX USA

5) GEX North America

 

I would not disable UTX USA through the Scenery Library.  Do it through their configuration program.  You could have problems.  You should also enable/disable GEX through the programs interface.

 

Best regards,