Long Loading Times and Orbx Scenery

[Hypofx 10]

Hi I have SSD 500GB only for FSX everything smooth, im getting good framerate so no complain but the loading time was a bit strange i had normal hdd in my older config so i saw lot of long loading time but i thouhgt with a new config new ssds i will see better loading time but looks like not with Obrx:)  Of course 2 - 4 minutes not that long, My non simiulator game with 4k textures and massive visual stuff loads 1 minute:))) 

 

I saw some post about this 6% stuck and the guy talked about some texture mip map issue but i dont know all the details.

[Penzoil3 480]

I have OrbX only on my FSX install. I use FSX Steam for everybody else's scenery. That solved the load times for me. I had the 10 minute load time when I had everything in FSX.  I just switch, depending on where I fly.

 Sue

[Gregg_Seipp 568]

I use SimStarter NG and load things I want to load by region...just select the areas I want and nothing else gets loaded.  I have the following regions:

• US East
• US Central
• US West
• Europe
• Pacific
• Caribbean
• Orbx Vector

If I'm only flying west coast I load US West.  If I'm flying from there to Texas I'll load US West and US Central.  Vector is it's own 'region' so I can just turn it on and off.  If I'm flying up high or near complex areas I'll usually leave it off.  If a region gets too big I just divide it into two (thinking about splitting Europe into East and West as well.

[theskyisthelimit 48]

I too have a TON of things going on in the scenery.cfg and a ton of ORBX files.. This on a fast 4.7 6700 system with an SSD for everything.

 

**I saw it mentioned somewhere that if you create a junction point and move the ORBX folder elsewhere, that it can speed up loading time..

i'm not sure why this would be the case.. not sure if it was meant, move the folder outside the p3d folder but same drive, or move to a different drive?

 

I also use simstarter, but i use sceneryconfig editor to make the regions.. ie: NorthandSouthAmerica.. WesternUSAPlusCA only, EasternUSAPlusCA, USA only etc.. it helps slightly..

 

At any rate, Some case examples:

 

PAED FTX loading to runway with NorthAndSouthAmerica: 2min55sec (about 57 seconds to get past the splash screen) (for some reason PAED is a short loader compared to say KORS)..

 

KORS FTX loading to runway with NorthAndSouthAmerica: 4min55sec

 

KORS FTX loading to runway with WesternUSAPlusCAonly: 3min 37sec (about 1min 10 sec shorter going this route).

 

So worst case with all of north and south america, KORS may take as long as 5 mins, however, other areas (ftx ones included) might be shorter by a minute or more with this "fuller" test. Incidentally, these times are much shorter with SSD (in my case OS on one SSD, sim on another) than with a standard sata drive.. by as much as 5 minutes.. i had previously done some testing on the comparison.

[jason99vmi 157]

 

 

**I saw it mentioned somewhere that if you create a junction point and move the ORBX folder elsewhere, that it can speed up loading time..

i'm not sure why this would be the case.. not sure if it was meant, move the folder outside the p3d folder but same drive, or move to a different drive?

 

I have Orbx moved to my HDD from my SSD and load times are the same.  with 6% pause.   I don't know about on same drive but outside P3D folder.  Don't think it would matter. 

[TurboKen 221]

Fixed!!!

So since I updated P3D to the latest version, I had yet to take the time to install ALL of my ORBX stuff. I have LOTS... But with the new central making it so easy I thought I would give it a try. Well I am happy to report the long delays are gone, like completely gone...

Again I have ORBX global/vector/base/full fat regions and lots of smaller airports and all of them load in about 40 seconds. So anyone doing these crazy load this area or just that area to help load times improve, thats no longer necessary. I'm not sure if it was the file restructuring LM did a while back or what but glad its improved.

[AoA 6]

The regions also have airport files probably designed to help mesh better with their airports but also I'd bet a contributor to the longer load times.  My solution was to use Scenery Config Editor and only select the areas I'm flying in.  The Grouping system is a godsend, you can group airports, landclasses and meshes in a single group/area and select and deselect with a single click on a box. 

I have my sim on an HDD, but I've Symlinked Orbx, Scenery, Textures and SimObjects across two SSDs.  I was surprised to see the load performance was not dramatically improved.  Most of the loading isn't data transfer but processing.

http://fs-sceditor.sourceforge.net/index.html

[Sizel 4]

All my FSX and ORBX stuff is on SSD and i also still get the 6% upon loading and a long wait time. I do have Simstarter NG, does disabling scenery that i don't use worth doing? Wondering if SSD use is really that more beneficial.

[AoA 6]

My crystal ball is telling me the 6% delay is where Prepar3d's figuring out the priorities and what to load and apparently it's doing it for the whole world since at this point anywhere is a possibility.  There's definitely a difference in load time enabling only scenery you need. I've also read someone once noticed Seattle terrain being referenced for load while flying in England.  If you have payware in SEA it would probably help not to have it loaded while flying in England although I doubt an airport would be loaded.  I have to wonder if this is just an optimization and that it only keeps one reference to a particular terrain texture and if both SEA and England are loaded it uses which ever had the higher priority, it's still the same terrain.

Once in the sim though it's surprising how little disk access there is.  I'm also running Diskeeper though with an 8Gb cache but I don't think that was the reason.  Terrain textures in general are fairly limited and repetitious with exception of payware airports, mesh and vector data.  I flew for hundreds of miles at low level at 500knts on the coast even where you'd think vector would be regularly hitting the disk and never saw a single disk hit.  It's possible that was due to diskeeper, would have to test that again to be sure, either way I eliminated disk access as a performance issue with that little test.

[JRBarrett 3,070]

40 minutes ago, AoA said:

My crystal ball is telling me the 6% delay is where Prepar3d's figuring out the priorities and what to load and apparently it's doing it for the whole world since at this point anywhere is a possibility.

I believe the 6 percent point is where the underlying terrain mesh is accessed. Several years ago, I purchased the original version of Pilot's FS Global Ultimate mesh (worldwide). After it was installed, I immediately noted a much longer pause at 6 percent than prior to installing it.

I don't think that the sim actually LOADS all of the mesh for the entire world at that point - the total size of all the files would far exceed the system RAM capacity of a typical desktop PC, to say nothing of the 4GB process space available to a 32 bit program. Rather, it appears to be an indexing operation - where the sim (or Windows itself) has to to "touch" each file for future reference.

By the way, Pilot's said that they made some significant improvements in the way their mesh is accessed by the system in the latest version of Global Ultimate, and it appears to be true. I upgraded recently, and the pause at the 6 percent point is much shorter now.

[AoA 6]

Right, definitely indexing, you don't really see disks being hammered.  The worlds made of more than mesh however, I'd imagine it's building an index for everything, mesh, vector, textures, airports and prioritizing duplicates et all. 

[StewartH 66]

On ‎3‎/‎11‎/‎2017 at 6:42 AM, Sizel said:

All my FSX and ORBX stuff is on SSD and i also still get the 6% upon loading and a long wait time. I do have Simstarter NG, does disabling scenery that i don't use worth doing? Wondering if SSD use is really that more beneficial.

Short answer:  Yes, worth doing for a lot of folks, but it may depend on the system and sim you are using.

[Ron Attwood 3,465]

Another disciple of SIMstarter here. Chopped the world up into manageable pieces and it makes a world (sorry) of difference! Those nasty little pauses have gone, loads quicker (even SSDs must have their limitations?)

Altogether a SIMsaver...In my book.