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Stearmandriver

Another "scenery on a separate drive" question - just want to make sure I understand...

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Hello all,

 

I've been running FSX acceleration with ORBX global, PNW, SAK, PFJ, and Tongass Fjords X. Been mostly simulating Alaska Airlines operations up there in the NGX, and so I'd turned scenery complexity and density down a bit for smooth performance. Recently gotten hooked on some bush flying up there with RTMM... such fun, and DAMN they've made some realistic locations! Taku glacier lodge made my jaw drop, it's like really being there...

 

Anyway, flying low and slow of course it's fun to crank scenery complexity and density all the way up. Frame rates don't suffer at all, but I get occasional stutters. Research leads me to believe this is due to scenery loads from the hard drive? Agree? Disagree?

 

If so, I hear I can move my scenery to an SSD for a pretty good performance improvement. Agree, disagree?

 

And if so, here's the meat of the issue... the best way to do it? I see three options:

 

1. Reinstall the whole sim and all scenery and add ons to the SSD. Lots of time, would prefer to avoid.

 

2. Move all scenery including the ORBX folder to the SSD, then in the FSX scenery library, delete all the scenery and re-add it from its proper location on the SSD. I understand this may screw up ORBX updates, but I can live with that.

 

3. Move all scenery and ORBX folder to SSD, but just create a symlink to it there.

 

Does anyone know, is there any performance difference between numbers 2 and 3?

 

Thanks for any clarification or help, guys...


Andrew Crowley

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If so, I hear I can move my scenery to an SSD for a pretty good performance improvement. Agree, disagree?

 

And if so, here's the meat of the issue... the best way to do it? I see three options:

 

1. Reinstall the whole sim and all scenery and add ons to the SSD. Lots of time, would prefer to avoid.

 

2. Move all scenery including the ORBX folder to the SSD, then in the FSX scenery library, delete all the scenery and re-add it from its proper location on the SSD. I understand this may screw up ORBX updates, but I can live with that.

 

3. Move all scenery and ORBX folder to SSD, but just create a symlink to it there.

 

Does anyone know, is there any performance difference between numbers 2 and 3?

 

Thanks for any clarification or help, guys...

 

Depends upon what you mean by performance improvement.  The scenery will load faster, although my experience has been that it does so marginally, but it won't affect your frame rate,  VAS, or make the sim run noticeably faster.

 

As for where to load it..  I bit the bullet and moved all of my flight sim files, including scenery to the SSD.  If I put a stop watch to it before and after then I'm betting that loading from the SSD is actually

 

However, that's not what my brain perceives as I'm watching that black screen waiting for FSX to start.


Ernest Pergrem

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Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I'm not talking VAS, frame rates, or start up time. I'm just interested in trying to eliminate these stutters that seem to be associated with scenery loads when complexity and autogen density are maxed out. They're tolerable but it would be fun to minimize them.


Andrew Crowley

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You can move scenery anywhere you wish, as you must 'tell FSX' where it

is when you activate a folder in the Scenery Library.

 

One could edit the scenery.cfg file to add the new paths or you could rename

your 'old' scenery.cfg and then move the scenery. Let FSX build a new scenery.cfg

and then go about adding all the folders to the new Scenery Library.

 

I've done both in the past.

 

If all you want to do is move your entire 'Addon Scenery' folder you could move

it to th ROOT of a new empty drive or partition reserved exclusively for scenery

and then MOUNT that drive or partition into the EMPTY 'Addon Scenery' folder

in the FSX directory.

 

I have done that operation with m\y Addon Scenery, now residing on my "J:" drive

(FSX is on my" X": drive) as well as my OrbX scenery, now on my "O:" drive.

 

That removed over 1.5GB from my FSX folder :)

 

Another thing I do is swap scenery.cfg files...cfg's tailored for a given region or

type of flying.

I keep several scenery.cfg files in the default location with descriptive names.

Europe_scenery.cfg, USA_scenery.cfg, Missions_scenery.cfg, etc .

 

When I want to change scenery cfg files I simply open the desired cfg file in

Notepad and then do a 'Save as' operation or simply remove the prefix leaving

'scenery.cfg' and save that, overwriting the last used file. Do this BEFORE you

launch FSX to avoid any anomalies.

 

Another thing to do is disable any and all photos cenery if you do not intend to

fly in those areas. FSX loads them by default whether you fly there or not,

impacting your VAS.

 

   Paul


Wide-5.jpg

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Thanks Paul. Yeah, I want to move both add on scenery and ORBX to the same external ssd, so I guess I can't really mount the drive, that's a good idea though.

 

Editing the scenery.cfg file with new paths is also a good idea, I'll look into that. Seems easier than deleting and re-adding all the scenery in the FSX scenery library.

 

The easiest still seems to be creating a symlink that automatically points to the ssd, but lets fsx "think" the scenery is still in the main fsx install. I'm curious if anyone's done that, and if they find any performance hit vs actually telling fsx the paths have changed. To my mind it shouldn't matter, but I've not tried it.

 

Which I suppose is what I need to do... just try it lol.


Andrew Crowley

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