How much scenery can you install?

[terhi 0]

Hello allThe lurker (me) has decided to venture out into the light of discussion with the following question.I would like to know if there is any limit to the amount of "scenery" that can be installed. By "scenery", I mean Mesh, Landclass, specific Models and Textures.I have been collecting freeware and payware airports, textures and mesh for quite a while and now I want to populate "my" entire planet with high quality scenery so that on the spur of the moment I can just decide to fly somewhere and know that I will experience the best scenic apearance possible within the limits of FS2004. To put it another way, what I really want to know is whether there is any performance penalty if lots of scenery is installed in other parts of the world which are not in my immediate vicinity. For example, if I have a huge amount of stuff installed in the USA like Megacenery, Manhattan, Simfliers airports etc, and I decide to fly in a relatively sparse area like over some small islands, will my framerates be the same as I would get with no scenery installed in another area?GreetingsDave Britzius(Cape Town)

[Dark Moment 0]

Dave, for the most part FS only loads up what it uses. So if you have every bit of scenery known to man for New York, but you boot up FS and choose to fly in the Caribbean, the New York installation lies dormant and will not affect your Caribbean experience.That said .... should you fly in New York and then move to the Caribbean (or even fly there), depending on your settings the New York scenery may remain in cache, thereby using up memory. That might, or might not, slow your FS experience.As to limits on scenery, I haven't found one in FS9 yet. It used to be 331 layers in FS2002 - subsequent installations wouldn't show - but I have gone way beyond that in FS9 and so far, so good.MarkMark "Dark Moment" BeaumontVP Fleet, DC-3 AirwaysTeam Member, MAAM-SIM[a href=http://www.swiremariners.com/cathayhk.html" target="_blank]http://www.paxship.com/maamlogo2.jpg[/a]

[Midnight Music 252]

I'm up to 378 and all's well so far. I keep all my landclass from all sceneries in one directory and all my mesh in another. If a scenery doesn't cut it for whatever reason, either because of looks or frame rates it's out of there! I'd rather use the default with a good AFCAD than a poor scenery. I'm still on the default Amsterdam, EHAM, because every scenery done for it so far are frame rate hogs.Get one of those utilities that checks your scenery layers for problems. Very useful when managing a lot of sceneries. I've found that some automatic installers don't always install cleanly. I like Ranainside, forum at:http://softwares.ranainside.com/forum/index.phpOne tip on all flights, refresh your scenery when you get to your destination. You'll find the command buried in MS keyboard commands. I've assigned the number 9 to it. It seems to perk up things slightly when you fly into a new area and a new airport as you get ready to land.Lee

[Max Kraus 338]

I agree with Lee. I'm in the 300's as well and no problems. I don't think there IS an upper limit. As long as you manage the folders well and throw out stuff that is superceded or "up-revved". Separating mesh and landclass is also a good piece of advice. Management!!

[terhi 0]

Thank you all for your replies.If I understand correctly, if I install FS-Genesis mesh for the whole world - I have about 40 CDs from Justin - the FS2004 will perform just as well as if I had installed one such mesh and was currently flying over it? If I then install a whole bunch of landclasses, a host of enhanced cities, all the simflyers airports as well as a few hundred freeware airports then will I still have have a flyable setup?Dave

[RFields5421 1]

Yes,The FS Genesis mesh all goes in one folder - so it's only one addon. It will take a while to build the scenery database - but that will not impact your flying - other than the normal scenery issues about polygons and scenery complexity.Even a very small scenery can kill your FPS with something like a chainlink fence, while some very large ones are very FPS friendly.Now I won't comment on the hard drive size needed - but I use a networked 250GB for all my scenery - even moving the base levels out to this location.With I could move the aircraft folder.

[moss1 11]

Hey Dave, Just read this thread. One word of advice from my experience. Don't install all of them at once. I had done this in the past, then FS9 started crashing. Being I changed so much at one time, I could never find the problem, and had to reinstall FS9 from scratch. When it comes to scenery, mainly freeware,I hesitate installing it. I hope you don't have the problems I have had. Best of luck. Best regards, Jeff

[ideoplastic 86]

I have 765 entries on my scenery.cfg file - made up of an assortmentof Payware and freeware airports, mesh, landclasses, etc.Never had any trouble. When something goes wrong it is usually due to own mistakes or defective scenery. Last time I reinstalledeverything from scratch it took me 3 whole days to complete.Wife almost divorced me.Intend to continue building up until FS9 groans!