Greetings,

 

Perhaps I should know this. But I don't. I am trying to find ways to decrease the load on the simulator. One thing I think I may be able to do is disable scenery that I won't be using for a particular session. 

 

What I don't know, is what P3D is going to load in a particular situation. What area will automatically be loaded? Say for example I takeoff from Friday Harbor (KFHR) to fly to Victoria (CYYJ). Will P3D also load Vancouver (CYVR) which is about 62 nautical miles NNE of Victoria? If I fly from CYVR to CYYZ (Toronto), will P3D load every airport I overfly at 35,000 feet?

 

These are specific questions. I don't want to be totally boring by asking more. Some general questions: Is there a rule of thumb or a calculation I can make so that I can disable the necessary scenery in order to improve performance in P3D. I know there is a reality bubble in P3D. I believe it relates to AI. Does it also relate to scenery? How big is it?

 

Finally, does disabling scenery actually have any measurable impact?

 

Thanks for looking in on this and sharing your knowledge and experience.

 

I am working with "SimStarter" in which I created several profiles (scenery sets) which exclude European/Australian/... Scenery when flying in US or vice versa. I even made different sets for flying in FTX NA or for flying in NON-ORBX-NA land. This helps me a lot, particularly with VAS/OOMs. Though, I would not go so far to disable Vancouver when flying in Seattle which is complicated/impossible to set up imo.

 

Cheers,

"Finally, does disabling scenery actually have any measurable impact?" 

 

Yes.  Best to only load add-on scenery that you are flying through.  Do not keep all your add-ons "active" (selected), as this will bog down your system, long start-ups and refreshes, eat up valuable RAM, especially photoreal scenery if you use that type.  Make changes in settings according to best fit your current flying situation.  P3D is not a set once and forget. Take advantage of the P3D settings to enjoy "low-n-slow", "high & mighty" or whatever type of flying you enjoy. 

Thanks clutch. How bout airports that are 36000 feet below me? Are they loaded?

Only non-photoscenery and AI in the immediate area will load.  Photoscenery around the world will load no matter where you are located if enabled in the scenery.cfg.  You can check out what is loading by setting up Process Monitor to load only P3DV2 and addons (see AVSIM CTD Guide, pages 4 and 5).  Once set up you will see exactly what is loading in your area and when.  If you have FTX/Orbx scenery and you did not disable it, the Autogen will load as it is located in the Scenery/World/Scenery folder (or that's where mine was located).  If disabled via FTX Central, the Autogen should be disabled but sometimes members disable FTX/Orbx scenery via the Scenery Library or SceneryConfigEditor (not recommended!!).  It's kind of fun to see what's loading at startup and during a flight.  I wouldn't do it all of the time though as the Process Monitor log can get really large after an hour flight.

 

Best regards,

Thanks Jim, Harry and Clutch.

I am bumping my post. Jim, I used Process Monitor. I must have done something wrong. It corrupted a number of programs on my system. Good thing I have a disk imaging program, or I would have been s-----d. I will say that P3D works very hard. I don't use photo scenery, mostly as I live in Canada. Photo scenery doesn't support my country. I reciprocate. Can you give me an idea how mesh is handled? I use FS Global Ultimate. How much of it gets loaded? It can't be all or most. Otherwise I would OOM before I could load a flight. I am just wondering what the effect would be if I disabled all continents other than the one I am flying in. Finally, how do I handle Global Vector? You stated that messing with Orbx in the scenery file can be perilous. Would I have to uncheck everything in the configurator? If I do that, would the default roads, bridges, etc show. Or would everything be blank. These may seem to be elementary questions. I am asking because I don't know the answers.

 

Thanks.

 

 

Will P3D also load Vancouver (CYVR) which is about 62 nautical miles NNE of Victoria? If I fly from CYVR to CYYZ (Toronto), will P3D load every airport I overfly at 35,000 feet?

 

I have done a lot of testing on VAS loading using a LUA script to record and monitor VAS loads as I fly towards a large payware airport, or overfly complex scenery addons, even high altitudes.

 

My testing showed me that within 60nm of an airport (even default) a hit on VAS occurs, even if overflying at 35000 feet (or any cruise alt). As one gets to within 20nm of an airport, VAS drops signficantly in proportion to the detail modelled / user-selected detail turned on at that airport.

 

So my rule is to turn off all unused "heavy" airports within 60nm of my flight path, except for the  departure and destination airports, if using a detailed aircraft simulation (eg.PMDG model). If flying into a heavy metro area, where you may have both detailed city scenery and several closely sited payware airports, this is crucial. For example if I fly into FAOR (Johannesburg, NMG payware), I must turn off FALA (Lanseria, NMG payware) if approaching from the north, as on approach I will be within 20nm of both airports, and incurr an extra hit on VAS as FALA loads, even though I am not using it or even wanting to see it in any detail.

 

Rob

Thanks Rob.