I've been doing some initial testing with my new p3dv4 build.. granted its huge, .. but so was my p3dv3.4.9 build.

My p3dv3 build took around 4.5mins to full load with everything turned on.  My p3dv4 build takes about 8.5 mins with the same scenery installed, granted much of this scenery is Not officially p3dv4 ready yet.

I have used the add-on.xml in conjunction with the lorby tool to separate all scenery with the exception of p3dv4 titles.. meaning i have an isolated folder with all the scenery.. i also moved the p3dv4 titles into this folder as well.  The difference here.. for the p3dv3 titles i used xml component addons to isolate the scenery/world/scenery, texture folder, sounds, effects etc.. I did this by running the installer to p3dv3 skeleton folders and then moving the files into my V:\p3daddons subfolders.  I didnt try to "capture" any of the p3dv4 titles extra files because i figured they were stable and ok to allow to go in their usual locations.

This way i can turn all addons on and off at will and have a vanilla install back and running in no time.  I have quite a bit of orbx titles running.. these alone take about 2 mins of the load time.
The biggest slow down is from the moment of launching till the % screen finally appears.. it takes upwards of 3-4 minutes to that point alone.. I'm still trying to isolate the culprit via process explorer but so far no real luck.

I know that if i turn off all addons that are in my alternative location (and leave orbx checked off in regular scenery.cfg) the load will take around 2min23 (basically just ftx titles loaded), though another run seemed to be 4.5 mins.

I'm using an SSD drive (same as i did with p3dv3) and back on p3dv3 when i went from a regular sata to ssd, my load times got cut by some 3 mins or more.. now with p3dv4 it feels like i'm on the old drive again.  I'm pretty sure its probably just some glitch with one of the non compatible sceneries.. so i'm going through process of elimination to figure it out.

Has anyone else ran into this and can offer some quick suggestions on what to look for?

Thanks in advance

I stripped things down again, this time putting back an entire p3dv4 clean main folder.. then i added in the p3dv4 compat ftx titles (only).. no other addons..

My baseline for clean, nothing installed.. is 10 seconds till the loading terrain.. 24 seconds fully loaded direct to f22 florida profile.
With ftx p3dv4 going on, nothing else (no utx or fmx mesh this time and all p3dv4 ftx), the load times became 24 seconds past the splash then 6min30 on first run, second run took 5min30.

Still quite lengthy, considering there is far less addons going on, except a few big ftx like ftx global, openlcs, several regions (NA, EU, AU) and airports.

Again, this is a "clean" v4 folder and no extra aircraft addons either.. just native.

I suspect one of the reasons you are seeing a longer load time is the increased amount of memory that is being used.

I bet if you compared the amount of RAM that P3Dv4 uses (skies the limit) upon finishing loading to the amount of RAM that P3Dv3 used ( which could never load more than 3.5GB), that would be where your difference lies.

P3Dv4 is loading more into memory because it can (64-bit!) causing a longer load time, whereas P3Dv3 was ALWAYS limited to less than 3.5GB.

30 minutes ago, pmanhart said:

I suspect one of the reasons you are seeing a longer load time is the increased amount of memory that is being used.

I bet if you compared the amount of RAM that P3Dv4 uses (skies the limit) upon finishing loading to the amount of RAM that P3Dv3 used ( which could never load more than 3.5GB), that would be where your difference lies.

P3Dv4 is loading more into memory because it can (64-bit!) causing a longer load time, whereas P3Dv3 was ALWAYS limited to less than 3.5GB.

That is probably it. I have 32gb of memory. Though 5-6 min is rather slow. Not to compare as I love both sums but xp11 with full earth of ortho only takes about 3 I believe to load a given spot. Seems I'll definitely need to regionalize using simstarter to make things quicker 

Are you running TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10?  And/or do you have "Use high-resolution terrain textures" and LOD at Max?  Both of these will increase load time on startup.  The more entries in your scenery library, the longer the load time.  But be aware that if you make changes there will be an additional re-indexing process ... so be sure to do your testing AFTER first run and no changes.

But you're sending conflicting information you say you have "Clean" V4, but then also say you have Orbx FTX Global with OpenLC installed?  

I wish XP11 with OrthXP would load more into memory before starting the sim, it would reduce the long pauses I get.

Cheers, Rob.

Texture size exp 10 and high res addon mesh can add to load times

2 hours ago, Rob Ainscough said:

Are you running TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=10?  And/or do you have "Use high-resolution terrain textures" and LOD at Max?  Both of these will increase load time on startup.  The more entries in your scenery library, the longer the load time.  But be aware that if you make changes there will be an additional re-indexing process ... so be sure to do your testing AFTER first run and no changes.

But you're sending conflicting information you say you have "Clean" V4, but then also say you have Orbx FTX Global with OpenLC installed?  

I wish XP11 with OrthXP would load more into memory before starting the sim, it would reduce the long pauses I get.

Cheers, Rob.

What i meant was.. initially i put the "clean: p3dv4 folder back in place.. tested.. thats where you get the 30 sec total load to default area..

Then using that same "clean" i did my junction link to my ORBX folder in my seperate addon folder area.. then ran FTX central.. then tested the times.. with just this plus FTX p3dv4 areas(only, no forced p3dv3 ftx areas).. i'm at around 5min30 on second run (about 1 minute quicker after it indexes everything).. still quite lengthy.

I checked.. i dont have that check box checked off.. nor am i using that texture_size_exp entry at all (so whatever it defaults to .. 8 or 9 i think i read?)..

I'm not using an affinity mask.. not sure if it would help at all.. before with p3dv4 i was at AM of 85 (with my i7-6700 at 4.6ghz) which seemed to work well compared to all other choices when i tested it. (edit: no change with AM as expected)

What sort of load times are people seeing on average?

Update here.. seems the junction i had to the alternate location for the orbx was maybe causing the issue.. i removed the junction, moved the orbx folder into the root of p3d as it would normally be and now its much much faster.

 

 

I did some digging.. seems with a pretty good range of ftx installed at least.. the average is between 2min and 3min for SSD load times.. but if you throw an NVMe stick into the mix, it drops dramatically.. to something around 36-40 seconds or so.. but at the price of nvme of course.

Just a foot note on this.. i did some extensive testing.. When i have NO addons in the my documents addons folder.. and i turn on all of ftx + utx + FMX (lots of ftx).. my load times go from the bare bones 30sec on SSD to around 1min24sec (which isnt bad at all)..

However.. heres where it gets interesting.. if i leave the addons in my documents and use the tool to disable all the addons the time becomes 2min44 sec, about 1min24 sec and that apparently is due to the system probably parsing all the (tons) of addon files in that folder.. (load times get quite immense when these are all turned on, i forget maybe 6 mins)..

So that said.. there might actually be something to say for still using scenery.cfg instead (going to test this via the move to scenery.cfg option, disable them in there and repeat).

I have simstarter.. but i doubt that simstarter will literally "remove" disabled addons in the my documents folder when turned off.

I tested simstarter in this manner.. it just disables the entries as well... no full out moving of them.

Then using the Lorby Addon Manager, backup section/tab.. i was able to use the export feature to create one big scenery.cfg and test (and move all addon xmls out of my docs temporarily).

Results were interesting.. 3min29sec with all entries in scenery.cfg while with add-on.xmls (full enabled) it was 6min45sec..

So i guess i have two choices.. stick with scenery.cfg (though a few like fsdt and flightbeam use the addon-xmls).. or maybe create batch files that would move portions of the addon xml folders into the addons folder from a main copied area.. so that for instance it would move into there "North America" where thats only those folders/sceneries.. or "rest of world", which would help lower load times.