Switching off scenery Areas

[Dirk98 354]

Might be, but if it loads all of it FSX would OOM before it ever starts.

 

Who said it loads "all of it" at once? Where did you get it from?

 

Dirk.

[jandjfrench 3]

Hi Dirk,

It's probably from post #7 in this thread where it's written "The things that DO help are turning off photoreal areas when your not using them or flying over them since they load no matter where in the world you are".

Jim F.

[voodoo101 21]

Photo textures do load and increase VAS even if you do not fly over them unlike airport sceneries.

 

To the OP, take a look at SIMSTARTER, it is a very versatile program that allows you to set up different profiles for different aircraft. If you have a Cessna that you want to fly low and slow, you can set a profile to config FSX for better scenery, such as a higher LOD, more local airports and high quality scenery. If you want to fly a 777 for a few hours then you can set it to lower the LOD, only loads the departure, arrival and alternate airport, flying at 30,000 ft plus means that the scenery can be lower quality. All this is done automatically for you when you start the sim. You can have up to 8 profiles for different aircrafts, all with different fsx.cfg files, scenery files and other tweaks.

 

It also has a some nice extra features such as exporting a KMZ file of installed airports on Google Earth, especially good if you have a large collection of airports and the ability to start extra programs such as EFB, MCE, TrackIR or other programs that run outside of FSX.

[jandjfrench 3]

Hi,

I've always assumed that FSX builds a scenery database and loads (into RAM) scenery that's in close proximity to the aircraft.  As stated in this thread that is not the case with photoscenery.  As I don't have large areas of photoscenery I have no way of verifying this .  In a thread in a different forum I made a request to have someone evaluate this by following a procedure I suggested and didn't receive any definitive feedback.  

Here's what I suggested: "In a flight and in an area with photoscenery, right-click on the screen and click on Air Traffic. Select an aircraft and see if the scenery is loaded or takes time to load. Next press whatever button you have to select next in category. My guess is that there will be noticeable time for the scenery to load. I don't have large areas of photoscenery so I don't have any way to verify this."

If someone here with large amounts of photoscenery could try this and note any delay in the terrain being loaded.  Any delay would indicate that, in fact, the photoscenery is not loaded.

Jim F.

[voodoo101 21]

FSX handles different scenery in different ways.

 

Photo scenery basically overwrites the world ground textures, which FSX loads on start. It does not distinguish between local and non local ground textures, it just see's the world as a whole. This can be seen when you change to a top down view and zoom out. This is why photo scenery uses up VAS memory when you are not even near. You may be sat at Heathrow airport but have photo scenery in the USA loaded.

 

Airports and AI aircraft spawn when they are close to you. Airports will load only if you fly in the vicinity of them, it does not matter how high you are, it will load because FSX wants it there is case you look. If you have a flight over a lot of land then it will load a lot of airports. This is not a problems with FSX default airports as they are low textures and often consist a runway and a few buildings. The bigger problem is with high definition airports and also airports that have landclass or extra scenery.

 

All this would not have been a problem with the future in mind, however FSX was built with backward compatibility, built on a long line of Microsoft flight simulators, when PC's was powerful having 512mb of memory and 32mb graphic cards. Microsoft did not build FSX with the ability to clear memory very well as nobody thought the VAS limit would be a problems, in fact this is a fairly new FSX problems as hardware as overtaken. A few years ago people was asking on how to get good frame rates, trying to get the best out of FSX.

 

So basically, turn off any scenery that you are not using for your flight and let FSX revert back to default. If you fly a tubeliner then turn off airports and scenery you will pass and not look at. If you fly a Cessna then turn off scenery on countries you will not fly at.

[Dirk98 354]

Hi Dirk,

It's probably from post #7 in this thread where it's written "The things that DO help are turning off photoreal areas when your not using them or flying over them since they load no matter where in the world you are".

Jim F.

 

Jim, the key word was "at once" in context of the previous few posts before mine.

 

Cheers,

Dirk.

 

To the OP, take a look at SIMSTARTER, it is a very versatile program that allows you to set up different profiles for different aircraft. 

 

Normally I don't launch FSX without GoFSX, so it sounds like I should try SIMSTARTER as well.

 

Thanks,

Dirk.