After doing another test flight it is clear to me that you guys are right. It is looking for ai aircraft and it has to look at every aircraft.cfg until it finds what it is looking for. Since I have a ton of ui aircraft, it has to look at most of them before it gets to the ai aircraft because of they way I have them named in the aircraft folder. 727-200 comes before CDAI and so on. I guess the easiest way to speed things up is to remove all of the ui aircraft to a hangar folder and only install the one I want to fly. I don't think that will be too much trouble and it will definitely make fs load faster. I will monitor the parking issues and address them as they come up. For the most part, my afcads are in pretty good shape.

you should narrow things down before moving your AI files.Filemon is a great program, but it can also take you down the wrong path. Filemon monitors only what your system is currently accessing, but that doesn't tell you the whole story. Your video card, sound card, etc all have their own processors and memory, and can swap/store stuff without showing up on Filemon (or show up delayed). If you experimenting, always set up a control situation. In windows, turn off all the extra tasks (you should only have 9-12 processes running when starting FS9). In FS9, turn off all your add-ons and set AI to zero. If the stuttering goes away, then slowly turn on each add-on and see which is causing it. If the stuttering remain, then you have other issues.i have a ton of AI planes as well (with traffic at 100%), but i never get stutters. The cause of stutters (or micro stutters) on my system were caused by the GPU swapping out textures. I optimized all the FS9 textures and now the game runs super smooth. hope this helps-feng

Quite a few people use the single lightmap, Ultimate Traffic for one.I have all my AI setup that way. I did a little bit of testing when I made that change and noticed a slight improvement in FPS.FileMon - which I do not think is the holy grail for finding FS slowdowns - shows the program searches for the first lightmap and does not search for additional copies. Where as if a lightmap in each folder - FS does multiple searches for the file - for each texture being loaded.I sincerely hope that FS does not send 40 separate copies of the same texture to the vcard.One documentable performance slowdown is multiple textures vs single textures. I use one daytime texture for 40 BAW A320's, that gives me better FPS than if I use 40 different textures with just a different reg # on each texture.I would assume the lightmap works the same way.

Well, its handy to see what is going on behind the screen.Some commerical planes, I've read here, tend to look up every second of an .ini file what is unlocked, but it tries to do unlock it. It takes CPU time. Thats bad and should be fixed.One can only be see that with filemon.If FS is looking for files what it cant find means someting is wrong.But I had the idea that FS is requesting a file faster than XP can deliver it. If you look at the log file, most of the files do come up eventualy.The .ini problem for a commercial payware plane I mentioned, is another thing, it consumes cpu cycles while it doesnt stop.JohanA LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, AND A LITTLE MORE ACTION PLEASE!HELP:http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=238882

When you say "I optimized all the FS9 textures" what exactly do you mean by that?Thanks,Jason Zhang

I'm not moving my AI aircraft, I am moving my UI aircraft. The AI is staying put at 100% - 50 traffic bgl's, UT and so on. I really have narrowed it down to when FS is adding new AI aircraft in to the mix. Since I am unwilling to part with my AI, I can make the search faster by getting rid of the extraneous UI. They will sit in a hangar folder on my external HD until I am ready to use a different aircraft. I usually don't alias sound and panels to other aircraft - I alias them to a archive folder within my AIRCARFT folder (kinda like a fsconv folder). That folder will stay along with the default aircraft. By doing so I have removed 250 aircraft.cfg's that FS has to search through to find what it is looking for. I don't know how much it will help but I know it can't hurt.These stutters are pretty isolated to this instance recorded in filemon. I just flew out of EDDF (Mega airport scenery), with AS6 cloud cover and loads of ai. I didn't have any issues until I got about 30 mins out of EDDF. The stutters happened in the middle of nowhere with very few clouds.Now, these stutters happened AFTER I took all of the aircraft out of the fs directory but they were much less pronounced. Maybe my HD is slow but I don't feel like getting a new one right now. Maybe something else is going on? I don't know.One thing that was mentioned was that I should have only 9-12 process going on. I use FSAutostart and I have disabled everything that it recommends but I still have 20 servicesApplication layerDCOM Server Process LauncherDHCP ClientEvent LogNetwork ConnectionsNLAPlug and PlayProtected storageRemote access connection managerRPCSecurity accounts managerSSDP Discover ServiceSystem RestoreTelephonyWindows AudioWindows firewall/internet connection sharingWindows Management InstrumentationWindows timeWindows user driver mode driver frameworkWorkstationCan I turn off anything else? My computer is set up on a home network.Thanks for the help everyone!

>One thing that was mentioned was that I should have only 9-12>process going on. I use FSAutostart and I have disabled>everything that it recommends but I still have 20 services>>Application layer>DCOM Server Process Launcher>DHCP Client>Event Log>Network Connections>NLA>Plug and Play>Protected storage>Remote access connection manager>RPC>Security accounts manager>SSDP Discover Service>System Restore>Telephony>Windows Audio>Windows firewall/internet connection sharing>Windows Management Instrumentation>Windows time>Windows user driver mode driver framework>Workstation>>Can I turn off anything else? My computer is set up on a home>network.>>Thanks for the help everyone!don't forget that some services are loaded during startup (not from the services.msc), and doesn't show up in the "start" folder. I recommend an utility called "Start Up Control Panel." It's a little tool that allows you to turn off a lot of useless crap that other apps like to load (ie: Quicktime, MS Office, iTunes Helper, etc).As far as your services go, you can turn off more...but make sure to backup or remember which ones they are. You can disable these:Telephony (set to manual) <- some ISPs require this service, so test it out and make sure your internet works with this disabled. If not, turn it back onWindows TimeWindows Firewall (window's own version is very crappy, use an external one instead, which you should also shut down during fs9)Application LayerNLA (this is not a default XP service, not sure what it is)Remote Access ManagerSSDPand the controversal System Restore <- if you are pretty smart about your system and don't install random stuff all the time, turn this off...it eats resources and can cause crashes...just like Indexing. But do it at your own risk.btw, how much memory does your video card have? Having worked in the game development world for the past 10 years, i've noticed stuttering is usually always caused by the loading and unloading of "something" - textures, models, etc. I bet when you get a stutter, your FPS is still high correct? Now, if you CPU is really having a hard time keeping up, the FPS will be the first to drop, then followed by the stutter...make sense right? However, the FPS is usually not effected by stutters. This is because the stutter is coming from either your sound card of video card, who's own processor is having a hard time (and possibily your harddrive and ram as well). anyways, i can write a whole article on this subject...-feng

Thanks for the info, feng. How do you optomize your textures?