I recently purchased the PMDG 777 and have a question about VAS use.

 

I have most of the ORBX products on my system, including the various scenery regions. I also use FS Global Ultimate Americas.   I know that VAS usage is an issue, and I've restricted my 777 flights to airports that are far from the ORBX scenery regions.  A route I often fly is from Chicago to Detroit, and I believe it uses only the default P3D scenery.  I also follow the PMDG guidelines for minimizing VAS use.

 

My question is, would the ORBX products still consume memory on such a flight? 

 

I'm used P3D v3.2 on Windows 10.

 

I'm considering running two parallel P3D installations, one which has ORBX, and one which does not.  I have a few other aircraft where VAS usage is an issue, and if running without ORBX is a solution, I will try this.

 

Thanks

ORBX scenery, if controlled properly, should not give you trouble.  Opening the FTX Central v2 application and specifying the area you are flying will disable any other ORBX scenery from loading.  To play it safe, just activate FTX Global and leave the regions deactivated to minimize VAS issues.

 

Btw, in this forum, it is required that posters have their first and last name in their posts, to aid PMDG support with issues.

 

-Jim

The various scenery regions are VERY heavy on vas. You need to tweak your display and scenery settings, lower autogen down to normal, don't fly with AI traffic or cars/boats, and go through the Orbx regions and if you have another addon airport, remove the orbx afcad files. For example I have Flightbeam KSFO, and Orbx Norcal. So in the Orbx Norcal scenery folders there are 3 files with KSFO in the name. I removed them. THis helps with vas too. Once you have a stable platform you can start raising sliders like traffic and lod radious, autogen, etc. - David Lee

I do not see VERY heavy VAS loads from the Orbx regions or global and the impact that mesh has is nominal.  The Orbx Vector product can hit hard but it is easy to turn off unnecessary eye candy that you don't need for high altitude flight like small streams and secondary road details.

 

I wouldn't want to fly without the Orbx scenery to be truthful. Be sure to check the Orbx Forum for the compatibility thread because it has important tips on how to best configure things like the Flightbeam KSFOHD or other popular addons.

 

Finally, I keep an eye on my VAS remaining and if it is below a certain value as I approach TOD I will then save, quit, restart and load the flight to reset the VAS.  In v3.2 my current thresholds are 850 MB for the 77X and 700 MB for the NGX.  LM did a pretty good job with the VAS problem, although it's not gone, P3D works very hard to stay alive when the number gets low (<500 MB).